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capital_omegaon American Dream is Elusive for New Generation

You know nothing about the upper class. They don't need to hire PR firms (which is very expensive and unaffordable to a bootstrapped startup). They have their well-connected daddies and uncles make phone calls to get press coverage, etc.

capital_omegaon American Dream is Elusive for New Generation

Startup founders do not go into poverty.

To do a startup, you have to be middle-class, at least, from the start, because otherwise you have no hope of getting the funding or building up the savings.

The most successful startups are an exception to the fact of American society being tiered, but these types of sociological statements always admit exceptions. If you want to see our tiered society in action, note how difficult it is to get venture capital and press coverage if you're not from an upper-class background, and compare it to how easily rich kids are able to get these resources.

capital_omegaon Ask HN: If ideas are worthless, why are some startups in stealth mode?

Answer: ideas aren't worthless.

An idea has no value to you if you can't execute, but it has long-term value if you might be able to do so in the future, and it definitely has value to competitors who may wish to execute it now.

[Edit: Also, "ideas are worthless" sounds like the speak of arrogant VCs who want to downplay the importance of entrepreneurs... I've never heard an entrepreneur make such a statement.]

capital_omegaon American Dream is Elusive for New Generation

A good barometer for whether a decent college grad should take a job is how elite business schools will perceive the work experience-- they generally require four years of real-world work experience in applicants. I'm not saying that everyone needs to go to Harvard Business School (I most likely won't) but that people should only take jobs that are putting them on the right track.

capital_omegaon American Dream is Elusive for New Generation

I don't know, but I think both are bad. If I were him, I'd probably bump the college degree by a couple years.

capital_omegaon Why Parents Hate Parenting

This has more to do with higher parental expectations, coming out of the general climate of economic insecurity in the United States. Upper-middle-class parents can hire maids to do some of the chores, but raising children is still exhausting in a society where young people have to be in the right track from preschool in order to have a decent shot at getting anywhere in life.

I don't think the type-A helicopter parents who insist on their children matriculating to elite pre-schools/boarding schools/colleges are that way because they expect their child to be the next Mozart. Obviously, there are some parents like that, but they exist in every society. Most of the parents who drive their children so relentlessly to be overachievers are that way because they realize what happens, in this country, to those who fall off of the elite track.

capital_omegaon American Dream is Elusive for New Generation

He's working odd jobs and as a volunteer firefighter, so he is doing useful work. He's also sending out five resumes per week, which is a lot if he's actually researching the jobs and positions. (I know some people send out 200 per day, but let's not encourage resume spam.) It's not like he's playing video games 14 hours per day. So yes, he is sympathetic.

He's being selective about the work he'll take, but maybe he should be. Put yourself in the employer's perspective. Do you want to hire someone who'll leave in 12 months when something more suitable to his desired career path comes along, or would you rather that he "self-select" out?

capital_omegaon American Dream is Elusive for New Generation

This is an entirely different country from what it was in the 19th century. Although early industrial America was brutal in a lot of ways that our society isn't, it was possible to "work your way up" then. Now it's not. The work environment in 1900 had a one-tier society-- with extreme inequality and brutality within that tier, but it was still only one tier. Line workers could become foremen who could become managers who could become executives. Now we have multiple tiers and it's nearly impossible to jump from one to another. The people who are running large companies today never worked "regular jobs"-- except during high school and college, maybe, where it doesn't count because career and lifestyle are not on the line-- they went into business school and, although they became "only" middle managers after that, they started on the inside track.

capital_omegaon American Dream is Elusive for New Generation

Also, though a lot of people won't admit to it, he's putting himself in danger by taking a mediocre job. He can very easily be typecast into that sort of role for a long time.

capital_omegaon Why Parents Hate Parenting

Of course, this should not be a surprise. If you are no longer fretting about spending too little time with your children after they’re born (because you have a year of paid maternity leave), if you’re no longer anxious about finding affordable child care once you go back to work (because the state subsidizes it), if you’re no longer wondering how to pay for your children’s education and health care (because they’re free)—well, it stands to reason that your own mental health would improve. When Kahneman and his colleagues did another version of his survey of working women, this time comparing those in Columbus, Ohio, to those in Rennes, France, the French sample enjoyed child care a good deal more than its American counterpart. “We’ve put all this energy into being perfect parents,” says Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, “instead of political change that would make family life better.”

This is an important note. Despite the "family values" posturing of the American right wing, the "socialist" Europeans are actually far more pro-family than the conservatives who dominate (even now, having a sizeable minority of the Democratic party) in American politics.