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Comment by Crito | Hacker News Reader

I am curious whether anybody else has experienced this in professional settings.

I make as much money as most of my peers at work, but fairly regularly I am made aware of the fact that my upbringing was less affluent than many of theirs. They have stories about exotic vacations they went on with their families, while my stories are about manual labor on farms. On some occasions somebody has made a crack at the expense of blue-collar workers, but I don't feel particularly far removed from that life.

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I struggle with this all the time, even with my wife. Spring break? You mean catch up on math / work extra hours week? Hey, I'm finally going to <insert location> next month! Oh, you've been there regularly since you were a kid? Then I suppose it would be boring. Oh, did I pronounce another word funny? Sorry, I only ever learned it from reading, nobody ever said it. But you can't say that shit out loud; you have to just grin and bear the embarrassment. I've learned to never ever bring up things like collecting cans/scrapping/etc.

I've definitely noticed that, though I think it varies by region and industry quite a bit. Engineering feels to me a little more "blue-collar" than the tech industry in its attitudes, even though engineers often don't make any less money. Some may have to do with where people come from, e.g. in large parts of engineering, the big "feeder schools" are good but not "elite" public schools: places like Purdue, Texas A&M, and Ohio State. People who at least sometimes work on-site in plants might also have more direct contact with blue-collar workers and feel more part of the same enterprise, though that is a minority of engineers.

In terms of region, SF, LA, and NYC are just about the worst for being full of "moneyed family" type attitudes. I lived some years in Indiana and it was far more tolerable on that front, despite what you might expect from the respective regions' politics.

Purdue graduate here, and I think that's a fair assessment. The rich kids seemed to be Management majors. They just needed a degree so that they could take over Daddy's company when he retired in a few years.

Its always amazing to me how otherwise fairly empathetic people can be 100% blind to how people below their social class live and what problems they have, and then I remember how little I know about the struggles of people in say west africa. The social glue that keeps people's friends in one class is pretty strong.

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