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0 pointstaurath5y ago0 comments

FWIW I agree that paycheck to paycheck doesn’t mean poverty, but to say it’s only the people below the poverty line that can’t afford to take any risks with their source of income is also quite wrong.

Finances are quite tight overall - for the upper middle class that might mean living in an expensive area. For the middle class that might mean holding onto house and childcare payments. Those are choices sometimes, and others not.

What is also very common is to want a different job but not have the skillset people need, and no way to sacrifice the time it’d take to gain that skillset. Also age, if you wanted to be a programmer at 40 you could go to school for 4 years only to find there’s almost nobody willing to hire you at that age. This leads to people basically being stuck, unable to change their situation and certainly not able to have the runway to try to build out a business without an old fashioned bank loan.

Software engineers have a completely different set of problems than people who don’t work in tech.

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WalterBright5y ago· 2 in thread

My first job after college was at Boeing, where I received an entry level paycheck. We were paid every other Thursday at noon. Just before noon, there was a mad rush of people out the door, running to their cars and zooming off. I asked one of the old timers what was up with that, and he laughed and said they're running to the bank to deposit the paycheck before their checks bounced.

These were middle class people, paid much more than myself.

They had no money, but they had plenty of income. They just spent it all. And there were a lot of them. I can give you many, many real life examples.

As for unemployable ancient programmers, I'm one of them. I know about it.

The solution is hire yourself. Nobody can stop you from buying a computer and hanging out your shingle. Companies are much more likely to hire an older person as a consultant than as an employee.

Contribute to open source to build a reputation. Several companies regularly scan the D programming language forums looking for people to hire, and they'll often hire remotely.

Everybody has some opportunities that are closed off to them. But they do have avenues that are available to be exploited. Focus on those.

taurathOP5y ago

I think, and I mean this softly and in a non-accusatory manner, that you may overestimate the level of opportunity that passes by people. Many people don't end up completing college. Many people who do end up completing college don't end up getting a leg up from their degree. I know quite a few restaurant servers with decent degrees.

> Everybody has some opportunities that are closed off to them. But they do have avenues that are available to be exploited. Focus on those.

Are you sure about that, honestly? Or is it that it worked out for you, with your particular set of prerequisites and willpower? I too believe there are more opportunities for people than they realize, but much of my adult life has been doing all I can to mentor and help people find and hop onto opportunities. I've done this enough to see a lot more failures than successes. It makes me think that people, while they may think its "hard", still really underestimate how much further ahead they were of people who weren't doing as well as them. Mental health and childhood trauma being one of the biggest factors that people don't end up considering, but also just how deep the cycle and mindset of poverty gets ingrained into people.

WalterBright5y ago

> Are you sure about that, honestly?

Yes. People have free will. They can choose. They are not condemned to fate.

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