All these people are hitting me up on LinkedIn asking how I got into FB/tech and looking for advise. I also see it on blind. What I really want to say is “I got here bc I happened to have been born in a great neighborhood and therefore went to great schools, my parents had enough money to support me (school/ internships), and I’m white.” Telling them to work hard, be ambitious & you’ll get there is just a farse. What do I advise a young(ish), poor kid who wants to get into tech? I really want to be helpful but don’t know what to say.
Then tell them that along with any actionable advice you might have for someone in their situation
I think you are honest and are telling the truth at least for your and many other cases. With that said, never underestimate the potentials of poor young kids. Indeed with some good advices at some critical points of their lives, if they can get some good advices, they can be very successful. Usually they can't get that good advice from their parents so your good advice will be very valuable.
Thanks that’s helpful
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Sounds like you already think any advice you can offer them is a farce so you are probably a bad person for them to talk to. If you don’t personally believe they can get to where they want to be, please consider directing them to someone who didn’t have those opportunities and succeeded anyway. Start looking around for people in those roles they’re aspiring to that only have high school degrees or may have openly spoken about having a hard time before they started their career.
Hard to find, any suggestions how to find those people? Never met anyone at FB without a degree..
I’ve met at least one person like that everywhere I’ve worked. They’re there somewhere. Maybe poke around a bit by randomly asking a coworker who has been there for a while “do you think you could get where you are today by teaching yourself instead of going to college?” That type of discussion (or rather, the general ROI of college given how expensive it has gotten in this case) is how I found out from a friend that a dev manager that I have a ton of respect for never went to college. I’ve worked with people who had it worse than Mark Cuban started off and obviously did not rise as high but did well for themselves.
Good on ya for some real self awareness there . Too many people on here thinking they are the reason their life is the way it is. Btw , it’s farce not farse..
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What do you think is wrong with a kid who got rejected by 9 colleges?
You actually talk to strangers on LinkedIn?
Alumni of organizations I’ve been a part of, friends of friends, I used to work in the public sector so people from there too.
I would just ignore their invites but maybe you are too nice to do that 😇