those from the lower economic classes who want to get ahead in life are limited by a lack of opportunity and exposure.
.. I knew from my parents and brothers that good internships early on in college were an important stepping stone to a good job after graduation. After one aborted attempt, I returned to my network for help. This time, the aid came from my now-father-in-law, who worked at a major corporation with a top tier internship program.
.. He put in a good word for me and the next thing I knew I had spent two semesters in a world-class professional setting making good money.
.. Just recently I applied to an interesting role and quickly discovered that I knew five different employees of the company through my LinkedIn network. I reached out to one of them and my application was immediately moved to the top of the stack for consideration.
.. I must constantly remind myself that most job applicants are simply ignored when they apply to a role because they don’t have the advantage of knowing someone on the inside.
.. Jake knows that internships are important, but most of the good ones are unpaid. He does manage to squeeze in one semester at a pretty good company, but other than that he needs to keep up his hours at Wendy’s.
.. The most successful get “handed” opportunities while the rest have to work for their success. Trump’s dad gave him a million dollar loan. My father-in-law to-be helped me get a top tier internship. While these anecdotes are illuminating, they don’t tell the whole story: this societal “favoritism” continues throughout life. My first six years in the professional workforce have allowed me to cultivate a network that was critical in me raising funding for my first startup and will undoubtedly play a key role in whatever is in store for me next.
.. This is how the successful get ahead. They don’t just worry about the skills that show up on their resume. They don’t focus on putting in long hours at the office, staying humble, and earning their fair share. They’re constantly on the lookout for opportunity, meeting people, exchanging favors, and trying to get ahead. This is true for virtually every investment banker, management consultant, lawyer, and Fortune 500 CEO in the world.
.. Flitting from conversation to conversation at a mixer looking for the person who can be of the most use to you is shallow and annoying, but engaging in meaningful conversations with as many people as possible helps everyone have a good time and get something out of the event
.. Why is there no prominent social network for connecting successful professionals as mentors to the up-and-coming? Theoretically something like LinkedIn could play this role, but it doesn’t. I know plenty of my colleagues who would be excited for the opportunity to find ambitious young students interesting in hearing about their experience.
.. Imagine if this mentor/mentee social network also helped you identify other professionals with whom you share a common interest or passion. I, for instance, would make use of the network’s capability to meet other people in the Midwest excited about the ability of AI to shape our future. There’s no dominant medium for me to do that today.
.. A platform with that focus would do things like tell you when a connection has a trending social media post that you could comment on. It would identify popular online articles that match the interests of your connections, flag the article to you, and remind you to send it to your connections with some of your own thoughts.
.. What if instead of logging on to Facebook a couple of times a day, the Jakes of the world could get on this platform and find people willing to help them out with knowledge, feedback, and introductions? Wouldn’t that be something.
a16z Podcast: Software Programs the World
There is $10 trillion sitting in government bonds getting negative yield. There’s a big opportunity to put that money to work doing productive things. The world has never been so ripe for innovation that would really be quite easy to finance. (28 min)
How can we have silicon valley without doing any of your recommendations?
How will this decision be viewed by others throughout the whole company? (38 min)
Businesses will treat you more seriously if you charge more.
Internships Are Not a Privilege
And while many Americans believe fervently and faithfully in expanding opportunity, America’s internship-industrial complex does just the opposite.
.. We often hear that success is “all about the people you know” — as if it’s just a matter of equal-opportunity relationship building. We rarely talk abouthow one knows them, or about the privilege that has become a prerequisite to knowing the right people.
.. America’s current internship system, in which contacts and money matter more than talent, contributes to an economy in which access and opportunity go to the people who already have the most of both.
.. Fortunately, there is another option. Many organizations are beginning to pay interns. This is important because employers should not only compensate students for their time and contributions, but also eliminate barriers that prevent low-income and underrepresented students from pursuing these opportunities.
Republican Elite’s Reign of Disdain
Call it death and The Donald: Analysis of primary election results so far shows that counties with high white mortality rates are also likely to vote Trump.
.. Stripped down to its essence, the G.O.P. elite view is that working-class America faces a crisis, not of opportunity, but of values. That is, for some mysterious reason many of our citizens have, as Mr. Ryan puts it, lost “their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.” And this crisis of values, they suggest, has been aided and abetted by social programs that make life too easy on slackers.
.. several decades ago the sociologist William Julius Wilson argued that the social ills of America’s black community didn’t come out of thin air, but were the result of disappearing economic opportunity. If he was right, you would have expected declining opportunity to have the same effect on whites
.. Meanwhile, the argument that the social safety net causes social decay by coddling slackers runs up against the hard truth that every other advanced country has a more generous social safety net than we do, yet the rise in mortality among middle-aged whites in America is unique: Everywhere else, it is continuing its historic decline.