Agree, and obviously my history and K1's can make the case for a whole slew of other traits besides that one.
By "who you are" do you mean a persons intrinsic traits?
I think the fact that "who you are" in these cases implicitly includes a persons network, access to capital and other _extrinsic_ traits should be spoken aloud and acknowledged.
There are a lot of poor, smart kids who feel _less than_ as a result.
A trait I have that is hard to present is that for every dollar invested in me the ROI has been a minimum of 25x, those numbers start at 15 when I dropped out of HS to pay my families rent (with an "illegal" w2 smb network admin job I turned into a coding/marketing automation job) because of my mothers cancer diagnosis.
Many of us end up being out leveraged early on and our map to success takes far more personal torque and grit than others born into more connected and wealthier circumstances.
By who you are I meant whether you come from a rich and privileged family or not.
>I think the fact that "who you are" in these cases implicitly includes a persons network [...]
Yes, you're right, in some sense a person with a good pedigree is bringing these implicit connections to the table, and that has value, for sure. But then that leaves outside the other 90% of people who do not pass that litmus test.
Yes, the problems continue to compound in this almost invisible way to people who haven't experienced it.
My luck of course is that my parents were brilliant observers and educators (just lacked any financial background.) Just unplugged from material humanity due to their respective upbringing. Which was lovely, and in many ways very wholesome, but killed them and devastated my family in the end, I still miss them dearly.
Can confirm the Michael O'Church quote.
Long before I had financial security I learned to code switch, to present that demurring, almost embarrassed and indifferent attitude towards money, if you met me in person I can come across as a pretty standard tech bro from a wealthy background. It helps immensely with the leverage imbalance, to appear as an almost gadfly, but it's all very complicated and there are trade offs and unlearned implicit things that I don't have an intuitive grasp on.
I don't really talk about poverty and climbing out of it except on HN, it's usually not personally fruitful and not part of my daily headspace. Everything is smoother when you focus on the similarities of your conversation partners and commonalities. We are all one humanity after all, even if not everyone grasps the depth of that truth.
I'm at risk of sounding "conspiracy theory" but I question the official narrative on why mchurch had to get got. I don't think the stupid feud had anything to do with it, because I struggle to see why anyone would care.
Instead, he was gunned down for pointing out the nonexistence of meritocracy in the startup world. He certainly wasn't the first to figure it out, and he wasn't the first to say it, but he was for whatever reason the one who turned it into common knowledge.
I wonder where he is now and I hope his book (Farisa's Crossing, is it called?) lives up to the hype.
By "who you are" do you mean a persons intrinsic traits?
I think the fact that "who you are" in these cases implicitly includes a persons network, access to capital and other _extrinsic_ traits should be spoken aloud and acknowledged.
There are a lot of poor, smart kids who feel _less than_ as a result.
A trait I have that is hard to present is that for every dollar invested in me the ROI has been a minimum of 25x, those numbers start at 15 when I dropped out of HS to pay my families rent (with an "illegal" w2 smb network admin job I turned into a coding/marketing automation job) because of my mothers cancer diagnosis.
Many of us end up being out leveraged early on and our map to success takes far more personal torque and grit than others born into more connected and wealthier circumstances.