>> Here's a litmus test to know whether you're likely disconnected: As a techie/doctor/engineer did you become by far the highest paid person in your wider family by your mid 20s? If the answer is "NO", then you would be disconnected by default - unless you consciously invested effort to educate yourself.
As the article hints at, many people who come from er, non-traditional tech backgrounds, enter the tech industry later in life. Your test of "by your mid 20's" would hoover them up along with the people you're trying to point to.
Let's just not group people together indiscriminately, shall we? That should be a rule of thumb that might work once in a while.
I think you're using "indiscriminately" as if it meant "if I personally don't like it".
But you're right, my litmus test is very sloppy and it could be phrased much more precisely. I hope most people will understand the spirit of it though.
If you grew up with access to upper middle class (or higher) wealth, which is what your parents would need to be to match today's early career Silicon Valley software engineer incomes, you probably don't know what it's like to not have access to many of the institutionalized resources you grew up with, because you probably never lived that experience.
That might be an overly broad test, but the underlying point is pretty clear.
As the article hints at, many people who come from er, non-traditional tech backgrounds, enter the tech industry later in life. Your test of "by your mid 20's" would hoover them up along with the people you're trying to point to.
Let's just not group people together indiscriminately, shall we? That should be a rule of thumb that might work once in a while.