I am a latino and I really like Colombians, but this is a pathetic piece of pandering. At her personal level it is a nice story of course, but there are hundreds of thousands of cases like that. So she lived in Colombia, in what it was more probably than not a middle-class family (money to study in a exclusive and rare HS offering the IB and money to be sent to the US to live with family).She worked while getting a title at a community college (wow, unheard of) later got her BS, made her career at NASA and now she is a middle manager there.And that is now supposed to be some sort of incredible accomplishment for a "latina" woman. Talk about condescension, and setting the bar low.This is like the 6th different article I have seen about her in the last 2 weeks,so either some people is using her to "celebrate diversity" or she has a PR working efficiently to prop-up a future endeavor.
Let's put all the D&I bullshit aside. Someone, immigrating from a country, with so little money, working hard, going through the process of building rapport, reputation and delivering results, to attain a title of Director, taking up new responsibilities is inspiring to me. Really, it feels great in the heart. NASA PR is one thing - they gotta do what they gotta do, but if you see past all that, its nice to hear the story of someone from Columbia, perhaps going back home and telling their families that they work for NASA. Can you imagine the pride their loved ones feel? I feel your frustration with the publicity, PR machine, etc though.
But it feels like the news is trying to imply she got out of the slums to work in the great public sector of America, which feeds the premonition of "not USA or Europe or top 10 population country" = low-standard-of-living third world country.
Please don't cross into personal attack. graycat has an interesting history, and it's not good to be an asshole to fellow community members, even if you find a comment somehow inappropriate.
It’s surprising to me how many people (especially in the US) fail to realize that many South/Central American countries have significant middle- and upper-class populations.
We hace middle and upper class relative to our own levels of income.
A person with a median income in the US probably lives much better than a person with a median income in Bolivia, yet they're both middle class relative to their own countries.
You’re right everything is relative, but I think US media often gives off the impression of South/Latin America as a completely poverty-stricken landmass that people can’t wait to escape from so they come by foot or boat from Honduras or Cuba or Venezuela or Ecuador or Nicaragua or something.
Also, I know people who own large properties in Colombia and a friend of mine owns a 500 cattle ranch in Bolivia (called La Pradera)... These folks are very well off, even by international and US standards. There is significant wealth in South America if you look in the right places.
And many parts of Colombia are very metropolitan and modern, which has come as a surprise to people I know in the US/Europe.
Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world back in the early XX cent thanks to their beef industry (Mexico was also relatively well off at the time), on the other hand Finland and Norway for example were quite poor back then. Things can change and they do.
Things change, for sure. To say things change is probably an understatement... Just look at the history of the Middle East. From vast, wealthy empires to barren destruction, the Levant has seen it all.
True but people and nations have more agency than people give them credit for. Finland was invaded and at the mercy of imperial Russia, they also were under Swedish control, etc. in other words subject to imperialism. They suffered famines in the XX cent., not too long ago.
People think, oh, imperialists messed with you, no wonder you’re poor!
No, it’s local mismanagement. Look at Panama. From banana republic to a democratic republic. People have to work for it. Their government has to be more honest than not. Eliminate corruption as much as possible.
Conversely look at San Francisco. So much money and so much corruption and waste. A decent government and it would be such a better place for everyone, including the poor.
When I think of imperialism I often see the exact opposite. A more advanced society is (often violently) forcing modern customs upon the invaded population and when the imperialists leave a lot of those modern customs get lost and the country turns into a backwater again. The imperialists might be evil, but they clearly knew what they were doing.
Hey, thank you for the note. I just bought an iPhone and the autocorrect turns lowercase “colombia” into “columbia.” It does the opposite for cased versions of both words (Columbia -> Colombia).
Either way, both spellings come from the same person (Christopher Columbus/Cristoforo Colombo).
I've noticed that too. I got to visit Colombia twice in the past couple of years and it was lovely, yet before I went I mostly had the same associations you mentioned ("coffee and the drug war"). The Colombians I met (who are, of course, not reflective or representative of everyone in the country) were extremely optimistic and excited for the future of their country.
Some random things I remember about Colombia:
* Cycling is big there. There are more bike lanes than pretty much anywhere else in Latin America. The practice of closing streets on a particular day for community cycling originated there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciclov%C3%ADa); in pre-pandemic San Francisco you might have encountered this as "Sunday Streets". It was mainly inspired by Colombia. Colombia has also had an increasing number of competitors in the Tour de France, including the 2019 overall winner, Egan Bernal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egan_Bernal).
* It's very, very mountainous. People in the U.S. might know Peru (and maybe Bolivia) as Andean countries, but there are four countries in the Andean Community (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andean_Community) (which is primarily a trade bloc rather than a geographic designation), and the mountain range continues along the entirety of the west side of South America. Most of Colombia's population lives near the mountains, although the biggest cities are primarily centered in valleys, sometimes stretching far up into the hills. There are dramatic views all over the place. Three cities have aerial tramways (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aerial_tramways#_Colom...) either for commuters or tourists. I also heard that, as in other mountainous regions elsewhere in the world, the major cities have maintained significantly different cuisines and dialects because of how much effort it took to travel between regions, even when they were pretty close by as the crow flies.
* There are lots of public parks in the big cities, and they get a lot of use, even long into the evening. It probably helps a lot that it's quite warm in Colombia, but I also felt that this was a cultural thing. I was impressed at how much safer I felt in parks in Colombia at night than I would in urban parks in the U.S., probably in a Jane Jacobs "eyes on the street" sense.
* There are well-attended tech meetups and conferences. :-)
Edit: A striking thing I forgot to mention is the calle/carrera system, where most cities make enormous use of numbered streets and avenues, to a much greater extent than ever I've seen anywhere else. Imagine if every city were like Manhattan, but with a numbered grid imposed over much larger parts of the city, even parts that weren't visually part of the main numbered grid. Colombian city streets are overwhelmingly numbered rather than named, and the Manhattan-style "5th at 40th" references are the norm.
I’ll add that the metro is efficient and clean by international standards, in case any readers think there was an implied “...for South America” at the end of that. It was cleaner, better maintained and more accessible to people with disabilities than any metro system I’ve used in the US, aside from _maybe_ the density of stations in NY.
Perhaps, but being somewhat over the hill and not too far from retirement I feel like the secret is already out regarding Medellin being a great place for US ex-pats to retire.
Her story is not unique. Millions of Immigrants have come to America and achieved great success. The country was built on Immigration. Some of the poorest and most desperate people (orphans, kids from slums, etc) have climbed to the very pinnacle of their industries. But never the less this story is another example of someone who was able to do what may have seemed impossible at some point in her life.
Every time there is a story like this on the frontpage of HN the top comment is usually something like this one. Should we stop celebrating people's accomplishments unless their name is Elon Musk?
> I have seen about her in the last 2 weeks,so either some people is using her to "celebrate diversity" or she has a PR working efficiently to prop-up a future endeavor.
I think celebrating diversity for the sake of diversity is stupid and the piece is probably PR for NASA.
But let me highlight that these sort of stories play a very very big role in many remote parts of the world (I come from one). The fact that someone owns a car, a house and has plenty of food on table can also be an inspirational story for many and I am not exaggerating.
I remember in my school when teacher asked us what our ambitions were our answers were "getting a job". One girl said she wants to be a "graduate" and the whole class laughed thinking she thinks too much of herself. So let us not downplay her achievement as "middle manager", I hope her story inspires more Colombians and let us hope that it also helps us think better of Colombia as a country and its people.
Sorry to be glib, but who the hell cares? If the article is to believed, she worked her way up here in the states and in some part hard work and dedication led to a job that she’s passionate about that’s doing things that are inspiring to the US and really a decent chunk of humans worldwide.
It’s not like the article is claiming that this one success story means all of our gender and inequality problems are solved.
This article claims only $300 as if that's the only value that this women posses. Society views women differently and often credit them with some innate value which can't easily be explained in context of men.
“Came to America with $x dollars in their pocket” is a common trope among many other immigrant stories like this, Arnold Schwarzenegger is another story that often begins this way.
Hm... Maybe I should get my story published someday too. Born and raised in Baghdad. Lived through three major wars and participated in the last one as a translator for the US army. Built Baghdad's first correctional service access database, which ended up being used at three prisons including Abu Ghraib. Spent over a year living as a refugee between Syria and Jordan before getting admitted to the US. Started with 20K of debt and.. who am I kidding.. No one gives a shit.
interested in this story. Did you get US asylum? What kind of deal do you get as a translator for US army? Super interested in your story and appreciative if you can write a 10-min summary. Cheers!
I came in as a refugee. There was no deal; I took an English proficiency test at an L-3 Titan site and passed, then was offered a job at two different locations. One of them was the ICS (Iraqi Correctional Service), and the other was just too far from where I lived. At the prison, I discovered that someone was swapping the Pentium CPUs with Celeron and told one of the American advisors; He fired me, but later realized I knew what I was talking about and asked me if I could build a database. Fun times.
Thank you! Well, the rest of the story is pretty vanilla. When I got to the US, my best friend managed to get me an unpaid internship that later converted to a full-time job. The first year or so was tough, but I had good friends and good mentors who helped me move up the corporate ladder. I'm currently working on my own startup like most people here.
Yeah, getting people interested in the person who writes infrastructure software for torture sites is going to be harder than getting them interested in someone who shoots robots onto Mars.
Your comment makes it sound like prisons are nothing but torture sites, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. The database was necessary to establish a reliable paper trail and prevent corruption, which was widespread.
1. The most important point is, this is indeed an inspirational success story to many people. While discussing the rest of the points, let us not overlook that. Kudos to her.
2. For those asking how she was able to work, while being here: A student can work part-time under OPT program. The catch is, your work needs to be somehow related to the course.
3. Most immigrants I know came to this country with a few dollars. So that is not that rare. However, when an immigrant succeeds, there will be press releases and news stories about that. It is not unique to her case. In some cases, it may be them promoting themselves. In most cases, it is the media running away with an inspiring story (if it is not sufficiently inspiring, don't worry - they will make it so).
4. It is better to see these kind of stories (albeit slightly hyped, dressed up) than those spreading gloom and doom.
Why are people so fucking sour here? I critique shit all the time. Just look at my comment history. But is this really something to be critical of? A lot of people trying to poke holes, when this piece is not even meant for the HN type/crowd. The name of the website is Good News Network.
Just feel good about it or don't.... Why wasting so much energy in trying to shit on a feel-good article? I really don't understand HN sometimes.
HN is more about being argumentative for the sake of it than actually needed. May be more and more people feed on trying to prove others' wrong than proving themselves right.
As one of my previous comments said, "HN is not full of smart people, HN is full of people who think they are smart." And I may very well belong to the second category but I don't comment on every issue at least.
There was a submission about people wanting to help a cause and that the vast majority of people will merely do symbolic work that shows that you are working on the problem but not actually doing much to solve the real problem.
Common examples are unconventional water sources in remote places when the real solution is to just give them the same thing the "rich people" are having, namely access to tap water.
It's basically a sort of hero complex. Poverty tourism also falls into this trap. People go to some poor slum or village, help out for a week and then leave. It looks good on social media but you accomplished nothing.
This article is the exact opposite. Poor person gets the same treatment as all the other rich people and unsurprisingly stops being poor.
There probably are other factors at play here. But the whole framing of dirt poor immigrants coming to the US, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and achieving success seems like a patronizing trope at this point, used by the elites (most of whom had far less interesting stories, mostly through being born in wealthy/upper middle class families) as a goal for everyone who may be struggling financially in the US.
The reality is that most immigrants are just like other humans; they're not "work machines" and their successes should be lauded but not used as something that everyone should necessarily aspire for.
I know right? "Good News Network"... If you don't want fluff pieces pandering to an audience looking for GOOD NEWS then I don't know what to say. Certainly going to roll my eyes if you are using these articles as a vehicle to drive hot takes across enemy lines in your own personal war against pop-culture.
The obvious question I have: How did she handle the visa situation? I know lots of people do it, but doing housekeeping jobs while on a visa is technically illegal, and they really started cracking down on it after Sep 11.
This isn't so hypothetical to me anymore. The position of the US government is it can revoke citizenship based on failing to disclose a speeding ticket. This is an extremely dangerous position.
> They asked about a form that people seeking American citizenship must complete. It requires applicants to say, for instance, whether they had ever committed a criminal offense, however minor, even if there was no arrest. A government lawyer, in response to questioning, said that failing to disclose a speeding violation could be enough to revoke citizenship even years later.
The Supreme Court rejected the arguments:
> The justices unanimously rejected the government’s position that it could revoke the citizenship of Americans who made even trivial misstatements in their naturalization proceedings.
However, it isn't immediately obvious at least to me that the SCOTUS can't revisit this issue in the future.
This is total whining. I'm proud of my white father who came to the US with not so much education, worked four jobs, and put all his kids through college. Don't fall for this victimhood mentality of "I'm white so I have so many problems boohooo". That's divisive.
Props to Trujillo. She worked hard, did a bunch of cool stuff, and at this moment also has the communication skills to do a bunch of science outreach. My daughter & I watched the NASA broadcast in Spanish (first one!) and the kid actually learned something about what this rover plans to do. Great way to spend an evening. Good message. Better than Paw Patrol.
Of all the crappy things in the world... I'll take a feel-good science story any day.
Being proud of being Scottish, or Norwegian, or Irish or whatever is great. Nothing wrong with being proud of your roots.
But being proud of having white skin specifically without any other context is... odd.
Conversely black people in America do have a common cultural context binding them regardless of what specific culture their forebearers were originally taken from - they all came from ancestors in slavery, they all share a common cultural understanding of being in America because of this.
This is why black pride (and Colombian pride) is okay, and white pride is not.
> Conversely black people in America do have a common cultural context binding them regardless of what specific culture their forebearers were originally taken from - they all came from ancestors in slavery, they all share a common cultural understanding of being in America because of this.
Besides being flat out wrong, this is just condescending. Have you never heard of Barack Obama? Did it not occur to you that there have been many, many people who immigrated to the US from Africa since 1865?
There is currently a large debate in the African American community regarding the identity of American Descendants of Slavery compared to African immigrants.
Personally I think it’s a dumb thing to be proud of. But saying a group of people can’t do something because of their skin color is the definition of racism. These double standards have to stop if we want healthy race relations.
>But saying a group of people can’t do something because of their skin color is the definition of racism.
That's a terrible definition of racism. Easy example, saying I can't stay outside for long periods because of my skin color is obviously not racism.
In general, racism requires an idea that one race is superior, a sentiment arguably more apparent of being proud that you're white than being proud that you are not.
When other people say someone can’t do something because of their skin color, that is racism. The idea that whites are more racist than other races is also racist. It’s an idea not based on facts but on feelings.
>When other people say someone can’t do something because of their skin color, that is racism.
Still a terrible definition, someone telling me my previous example doesn't turn it racist either.
>The idea that whites are more racist than other races is also racist
The idea that whites have used racism as an excuse to exploit people over the past few hundred years is a fact. Nobody would care about who has more innate feelings of racial superior that they didn't act on.
You can only be proud of your race if your great-great-great-great-great grandparents were in circumstances outside of their control?
The Chinese were nearly universally oppressed by Imperial Japan before/during WW2. Later, they nearly universally suffered some level of starvation under the reign of Mao. As far as the oppression Olympics goes, I’d say the Chinese are ahead of the blacks.
Maybe playing oppression Olympics is just a bad idea in general though. I’m not sure.
I don't think you quite understood what I was saying, reread the first sentence. You can be proud of coming from any culture, China included. I just can't fathom any reason other than racism for being proud of just your skin color.
I think OP is saying that Indian fathers will dress up their poverty in order to appear more virtuous than they actually are. Like grandpa who walked uphill to school both ways. I don't really agree with this racist aggrandizement of lived experiences, but I think that is what OP was getting at.
Not dismissing her accomplishments or anything, but to keep things in perspective, do understand that NASA is a government organization, and the incentives for vertical growth within government organizations are quite perverse, as they are not meritocratic and mostly related with politics.
If a majority of those salaries are in Florida or Houston, I'd say that's a generous salary range, plus they're eligible for a pension (of course, I still think NASA should be funded more to compete for top talent and resources)
The problem isn't that NASA tops out salary in low-cost cities barely above entry/mid-sw engineer salary levels in SV, it's that entry/junior engineer salary levels are the "minimum" amount to live comfortably + save in those high cost cities in the first place. I don't think many would mind a pay cut (and the subsequent tax cut) if their rent + cost of living was cut accordingly.
I buy a SF house and start paying the SF mortgage with my SF salary, I spend the next 10 years living there with a cost of living that's around 40% higher than Texas.
At the end of it I sell at SF market rates and move to Texas. I now have an extra $1.24m even if prices didn't increase by a cent.
It’s easy. I don’t want to live in San Francisco for 10 years to have an extra $1.24m. Most of my family would not be “just a plane flight away” where as right now I make good money and it’s a 3 hr car ride to see them. Those things mean something to me that money won’t replace. The cost of living being nice here just means I can also do all the things I want to do easier with less money.
Sure, but you're anticipating CA housing prices keep rising or the very least don't crater and that Texas real estate prices don't continue skyrocketing (in the past 5 years, the average 3bd/2ba home in Dallas has doubled from 200k to 400k. As all major cities in Texas are among the top fastest growing in the US each year, it looks like there's a good 5-10 years of 10%+ property value growth, at minimum). Like almost all arbitrage opportunities, the spread will eventually be narrowed as more and more people take advantage of it.
Furthermore, your 1.24m figure is over-inflated, as CA has high state/local sales/income taxes. And don't forget San Franciso transfer taxes on real estate (around $50k-100k due at close)! Texas has no state or local income taxes, aside from property taxes.
Not to mention that if you have kids, you don't really have the luxury of waiting that long. You can put them into a better school district for cheaper, or you can even send your kid to top-tier well-known private schools for $25k/year rather than $60k/year. Even in-state college tuition at UT, a nationally renowned public university on par with UCLA and UC Berkeley, is only $5k/year, versus near $20k in CA.
I live in Los Angeles now, but I grew up in Dallas. Obviously I'm choosing to stay in California for a reason, but I'm not ignorant as to why someone would move from CA to TX.
Indeed. I have a pension through a state job with a pension and my partner has a federal government job with a pension. It makes retirement planning much easier and it allows us to be much more financially aggressive in our 30s.
Also good health insurance, paid parental leave (in the US!), job security, a known and transparent progression path...honesty I’ll take lower uncertainty for slightly lower pay because it saves me money over time.
I've had better health care on private plans and promises of pensions in 30 years are worth less than startup stock options. Which is really saying something when I consider stock options from startups to be worthless.
NASA's budget isn't the reason they don't pay more. They're just not allowed to because of federal pay scales. People generally don't like the idea of their tax money funding cushy salaries.
If you look at the defense industry the contractors can pay way above the federal pay scales. That's why people with security clearances often just move to a contractor and they literally end up on the same project doing the same work but get paid double what they were while working directly for the government.
I'm sure she's a smart, capable woman. But it doesn't take much imagination with articles like this that in a government bureaucracy she's advancing in part because she's a woman from South America, not in spite of that fact.
If we really cared about minorities and believed they were equal (which we should) we wouldn't write articles about career success as though it was completely unexpected. If I were her I'd be insulted.
People like you are why it’s still hard to get ahead as a women. Imagine in every meeting, people assume you’re less qualified for the job before you even start talking.
Unfortunately with actual real-world policies like affirmative action that implement reverse racism and sexism in corporations and universities throughout the United States, often the people at these meetings *are less qualified* than ones who did not get hired under same policies.
Human brains are Bayesian filters. Affirmative action policies will understandably influence the prior even among individuals who believe in diversity and inclusion.
When she "starts talking," a fair-minded individual will develop a posterior that appropriately updates any suspicions that were previously held.
A truly Bayesian machine never eliminates the old priors. It updates them, but they remain in there. If somebody starts behind, they stay behind, forever.
And while there are some who are fair-minded, many are not. So such a person is in a lose-lose situation. Those with bias will discriminate against them -- and "fair minded individuals" will use take their poor relative performance to inform their prior. Try to compensate for that, and those fair minded individuals use that, too, against them.
So "fair-mindedness" leads us to perpetuate discrimination. Which doesn't seem very fair.
Reading about how foreign workers get imported who have no money then somehow end up in high value position now makes me deeply curious about why those roles at United States government agencies can’t be filled by local workforce?
I am actually completely skeptical that there is an engineering shortage in America and stories like this make me wonder why this back door pipeline is needed? And why am I supposed to celebrate this?
