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pmoriarty

The median family income in the US is about $60k[1], and most Americans have less than $1000 in savings.[2]

Way too many SV employees are completely out of touch with just how privileged they are.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

[2] - https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/13/how-much-americans-at-have-i...

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I'm not sure privileged is the right word. I mean, they have to work hard at learning the skills and keeping skills up to date. It's not just given to them. Perhaps fortunate to pick a good, growing career maybe.

I'm sure privileged is the right word. Coming from an impoverished past, I'm certainly very privileged to have been born with the intelligence to go through a physics PhD, have had the guidance of teachers and educators who saw the potential, and am now able to earn ~$200k/yr. These are all lucky coincidences that most are not privileged to have had.

So in this case, privilege and luck are synonymous?

That doesn't fit easily into the definition. I mean I guess if you think nature / God granted you intelligence, but nature grants lot of people intelligence. The fact that you had good teachers and were impoverished is more luck than privilege.

Privileged doesn't typically mean luck, it means advantages granted to you because of social class or parents and whatnot. I mean I guess you could stretch it to mean luck.

>a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.

There is earned privilege and unearned privilege. You can work hard and "earn" whatever privilege you have. That won't make you any less privileged.

Someone far less privileged than you are could also be working far harder than you are.

SV costs of living is also completely out of touch with the rest of America.

> The median family income in the US is about $60k[1], and most Americans have less than $1000 in savings.[2]

As a mostly out of touch techie: How does that scale with living expenses? Do average people in SF have more than $1000 in savings because their living expenses are also that much higher?

I come from a relatively unrich area in Europe and when I had $1000 in savings over there, I felt super rich and like nothing can touch me. Now I'm in SF and I have 20x more savings, but feel like I'm one small catastrophe away from homeless.

My decision to leave a career where I made very little (hospitality), teach myself software engineering, and then make this transition successful was...work, not privilege.

You had the opportunity and means to do so. That's a privilege many are not afforded, due to various circumstances.

Privilege isn't a bad thing. Acknowledging it shouldn't take away from the fact that you had to work really hard, maybe harder than many others, to get to where you are.

Sure, but I feel like people just throw that word around so much that it glosses over the fact that people did work hard to get to where they are. Maybe I just have privilege fatigue after hearing it at conferences, meetups, work, forums, etc.

Privilege is not necessarily something you're born with (though some are certainly born very privileged). Starting from very little one could achieve great privilege. Endless stacks of motivational books and accounts of self-made men bear constant witness to this.

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