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Comment by switchstance | Hacker News Reader

What's the saying? "Where you are in life is a result of choices you made in the past."

Something like that. While not 100% accurate, I've found it to be mostly true with people in my life.

In the UK at least, the people who've managed to bootstrap themselves to success through hard work and good decision making are the overwhelming minority.

The causal chain seems to roughly be: Top jobs tend to belong to those who attended top universities. => Top universities are attended by those who went to private schools. => Those who went to private school are either from wealthy families or attending on scholarship due largely to the fortune of genetics and/or an educated family. I certainly benefited from that (school scholarship => Oxbridge => good tech job), but I don't know that I could have if fortune hadn't smiled on me.

I agree that even with all those benefits, you can still fail if you make poor choices. However, I don't think the vast majority of people with worse circumstances can just choose their way out of it. It's not to say that it's impossible - my grandma has a rags to riches story that's only slightly marred by her similarly ethically dubious sales techniques...

For software engineering in the UK, they actually look at where you went to school?

I’ve done probably a couple hundred interviews (me as the interviewer) in SF and outside of the “oh you went to MIT? Cool” it was still onward with the live coding session. No one got a free pass.

I’ve definitely seen people from MIT, Stanford, get passed up on.

I’ve seen boot-campers hired, hearing impaired, white/black/Asian/Indian. For any of them, not a clue where they originally went to school.

1) Having a public project will get you an interview.

2) Being able to discuss design decisions surrounding that code will earn you points.

3) Being able to make changes, refactor on the fly, will win you a job.

3a) Some places will have you code an algorithm - also a way to win the job.

Oh, I certainly don't mean that a good university place guarantees you a top job. My company targets top universities, so it naturally has to reject a bunch of people who just aren't the right fit. However, it is certainly the case that you can usually infer the other way around (i.e. that people with top jobs tend to have good degrees from well-respected universities).

For many graduate software roles over here, recruiting targets people studying "any numerate discipline". These people don't have any professional software dev experience or a CS background, so wouldn't be able to demonstrate those skills from the start. However, the decent degree from a good university is a proxy for the appropriate skillsets required.

The problem remains that there are people with all the skills who just can't get their foot in the door because their background just didn't give them a reasonable opportunity to do so.

In the US none of my friends went to a top university and we all make a good living as programmers (150k+). Of course we're from the previous generation (in our late 30s) and things might be different for people in their 20s.

Edit to add: my dad dropped out of high school. My mom did not have a college degree. My siblings and I are the first generation in our extended family to graduate from college. None of us went to private school. My siblings have a similar income to me: 1 works as a CPA, 1 as a lawyer, and 1 as a software project manager.

I still consider myself lucky, and recognize that not everyone may have had the same support as we had growing up.

That's great to hear to be honest. It sounds like you're one of the self-made grafter types. :) My parents' background is similar - they both put themselves through university as adult learners having a pretty poor time of it at the end of high school (for various reasons).

My dad is potentially a good, albeit anecdotal, example of this. He's one of those people who's had every semi-skilled job under the sun, mainly to make sure that he could provide for his family. Eventually, he paid his way through university and chartership and now he does what he enjoys and he's a very well-regarded psychologist. But the thing is that he could have had all that for his whole life, instead of having to struggle his way up there, if he'd lucked into the right background to begin with.

The other thing that we on HN have to consider is that we're generally able to work very well in analytical and numerate disciplines compared to the average of the population. As another anecdotal example, my sister has a (mild) learning difficulty, but it really does just mean that her prospects are much more limited compared to mine. She has a great life, but it's very unlikely that she'll ever be a high-earner. It's most certainly not for lack of will or graft though, just the lottery of life.

For my lot, I'm just glad I happen to have the skills that people want to pay money for. I recognise that I worked hard to get here, but I also acknowledge that luck played a substantial part in everything and I'm grateful for that.

Tell that to the millions who choose to be born in the slums. Then there is also the fact that we are not equally the same upon birth. Everyone has different traits. I suspect that when you really weigh in the factors, a lot of the result we get is caused by a lot simply being at the right time in the right place.

One simple change to the statement accounts for your observation:

    "Where you are in life is a result of choices you AND YOUR PARENTS have made in the past."

If by some remote chance there's a young person reading these comments and you are living in the slums, you have to start making better choices than your parents did (and their parents did) TODAY if you want your kids to have it better than you do.

Start with Walter Williams (Economics Professor at George Mason) advice on how to not be poor:

    1. Graduate from High School.
    2. Don't have children until you're married and stay married once you get married.
    3. Take any kind of job (except illegal ones).
    4. Stay out of jail.

Start there and move up as opportunities arise and it is almost guaranteed that your kids will do better than you (if you are currently in the slums.)

Please see "not 100% accurate." I get that uncontrolled circumstances are inevitable, but hearing others bitch and complain about how good others have it while riding their pity pony drives me mad.

The original author (clearly not living in slums) didn't have to get married, have two kids, and take out a mortgage on a home. Also, being a mediocre developer is in his control too.

Get your big boy panties on, change your mindset, and make change in your life, not excuses.

Sorry for being a hardass, but the original author sounds like me 11 years ago. I thought life happened to me, and I had no control over it. I've since changed my way of thinking, and just this week my bootstrapped company reached 10 million in ARR.

i'd wager a four figure sum that birth zip code (or 'hood outside the US) more accurately predicts outcome than choices you've made in the past.

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