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The Monoculture and Me

jamie-wong.com · 1,082 words · saved by 1 readers

Note from Dec, 2019: This is a piece I wrote in 2016 while between jobs, originally posted as a note on Facebook. There’s a pretty bitter tone underlying this. I don’t feel quite the same way any more, but it was a pretty honest representation of how I felt in 2016. I’m on the Caltrain back to Mountain View following a Friday night karaoke session. I hear a guy and a girl across the aisle two rows up talking the standard Silicon Valley talk. Startup equity, interns, and rent. “I’m just out of college, so I can’t take a job just on equity — what am I going to tell my landlord? I’ll give you 1% of the 20% of $0, ten years from now?” They laugh and talk, and I hear the same conversation topics I’ve heard cycled hundreds of times. I find myself pulled away from reading my book, unable to stop eavesdropping on this conversation that irritates me so much. I’m trailing behind my dad’s rattling shopping cart in Grade 11, absorbed in my copy of “The Programming Contest Training Manual”. I’m exc

The Monoculture and Me Photo credit Katie Dowd Note from Dec, 2019: This is a piece I wrote in 2016 while between jobs, originally posted as a note on Facebook. There's a pretty bitter tone underlying this. I don't feel quite the same way any more, but it was a pretty honest representation of how I felt in 2016. I’m on the Caltrain back to Mountain View following a Friday night karaoke session. I hear a guy and a girl across the aisle two rows up talking the standard Silicon Valley talk. Startup equity, interns, and rent. “I’m just out of college, so I can’t take a job just on equity — what am

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