[optiomal_isgood]

Thanks for sharing this. I saw myself so much on your comment talking about the sandwich that I decided to share my story too.

I was born in a Latin America country, middle class family, 375 USD monthly income for a house of 6 people.

Although I never went a full day without eating at least two meals, it wasn't rare to go sleep hungry.

My mom still managed to buy a PC for us, and that alone changed everything: I discovered programming in my early teens through a MMO game and learned web development, and since then I never stopped.

I'm now on my mid-twenties, but because I started so early with programming, I kinda hacked my career growth: to this day I already have 10 years of experience with JavaScript, as I was still a teen on my first internships. Started a CS bachelor but dropped as it was waste of time for me.

Today I work as the principal software engineer for a US startup remotely, and make 40x of my country's minimum wage.

Living through this gave me an empathy that I believe it's really hard to develop if you were born rich (definition of rich here: >upper middle class). There are so much things people take for granted, and they aren't available for people in lower classes at all. Geography is the biggest inequality in the world by a large margin.

[ido]

I felt the geography factor myself (despite being born in a developed country) when colleagues were telling about getting internships or junior positions out of highschool or when still living at home - there were little to no local (=same country) jobs or companies in my industry when I was young (the situation is better now, but I emigrated almost 20 years ago).

The idea of growing up in a city/metro area where you could know someone local working for such companies sounded like sci-fi.

[WalterBright]

> Although I never went a full day without eating at least two meals, it wasn't rare to go sleep hungry.

I go to bed hungry every night, not because I can't afford food, but because that's how I control my weight.

[so_dewy]

Thats a great thing to do voluntarily for your health if you have extra fat to spend (IMO)! But no so much when you are underweight and don't have means to procure another meal.

[WalterBright]

In America, obesity is epidemic among the poor, not underweight-ness.

[samatman]

The person you're replying to is in the part of the Americas where this isn't true.

This board is always a bit parochial, but there's no excuse for it when people are clear about where they are.

[WalterBright]

I did clearly say "In America".

[metters]

But it is your choice.

[WalterBright]

At last! Someone on HN agrees that people have choices!

Yes, it is my choice. I also noticed that my food bill went down substantially when I started this.