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Urszula Solarz's avatar

Woah -- this was an amazing piece of writing. As an Ivy League student from a big East Coast city, I am so ashamed and angered that we're not having more of these conversations in American colleges. Our future *literally* depends on it. The pipeline to finance and big tech is so real and heartbreaking. Thank you so much for writing this. Thought you might like this article: https://emaggiori.com/employed-in-tech-for-years-but-almost-never-worked/ Another related topic I'd love to hear your thoughts on is whether the American Dream is still alive and how attainable it is compared to the past. I was recently yelled at for saying I believe in the American Dream by an economist who said social mobility is so much harder than it used to be.

Also, I'm working on an urban studies-meets-CS project soon and will be heavily referring people to your work. I was curious if you've received any answers/gotten more info regarding the talent/career path questions you posed in the article since posting this?

Btw my Twitter handle used to be part-time tech optimist, haha, so I love the name of this.

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Sam Flamini's avatar

On the American Dream.

This is a topic worthy of an entire post. However, it is something I think about a lot.

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Sam Flamini's avatar

Hey Urszula, thanks for reading this and for the thoughtful comment.

The response to this has been multi fold:

1-Some people questioned the premise of the argument and cited that market forces should prevail and that there really is no “shortage” if wages for mfg work are so much lower than big tech/finance wages

2-Others provided some variant of the “Americans just don’t want to work any more” argument and just kind of gave a general impression that this is a losing battle in its entirety

3-A third group (like yourself) really resonated with the ideas here and felt like this is a problem we should be taking seriously.

I do believe that it’s *real* that our ability to build in the physical world is declining and that it *is* a problem. Our path to this state of affairs has so many components: foreign & domestic policy, economics, culture, and even technology had a role in leading us here.

In terms of a “solution” to this set of problems that we find ourselves with today, I don’t have any clear answer. But I want to surface them, and I currently am trying to just *understand* them.

Step 1 was this piece which highlighted cultural forces pushing young Americans away from an industry that needs more attention. And the next step will be a more comprehensive post that I’ll be releasing soon on the economic & policy dynamics that led us here in the first place

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Urszula Solarz's avatar

Hmm - group one is an interesting take. If only more people realized how small-medium businesses (though not necessarily mfg) CAN make up for lower wages with higher quality lifestyle. Perhaps the rise of cities like Charlotte (and eventually Austin) are evidence of this starting. Looking forward to that next post! Thank you!

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