Do you think there is a class difference in the tech world? I most definitely do. For some reason there is a difference between people who work with their hands and people who work with their minds. For some reason people who work with their hands are considered "lower" in status - on a different field. There is no reason for this other than the fact that the conception that those who work with their hands are in some sense not "educated." The mark of modern society is that the educated do not have to use their hands to earn a living. It is considered a mark of the wealthy to avert having to use one's hands to be successful. However, oftentimes we are wrong.
Today at the office I was optimizing my code for Autotegrity when the electrician who was moving the lights from the path of the wall that was being installed in the office started talking to me. Everyone else in the office seemed to pretend that he wasn't in the room (and more or less ignored his presence). When he started talking to me, he walked over to my cube. My office mates just pretended he wasn't there. The electrician was about 40 years old and had frizzy hair akin to Einstein. He looked at me and commented on my looking eastern European. We then had a conversation for 15 minutes about Russia, during which he spoke to me in Russian for a bit. Turns out, not all manual laborers are uneducated.
