JD Vance - Career model

[Anonymous]

Beset by, not besotted.

For pity’s sake. JD may be a misogynist and an opportunist, but I’m sure he knows the difference!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Venture Capital.

He had a fake VC job given to him by Peter Thiel. He was kind of a DEI pick. He never did any work and was never in the office, according to those who actually did and were.

Source: I made it up lol

Sources:

USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/17/peter-thiel-boosted-jd-vance-career/74397520007/

NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/technology/jd-vance-tech-silicon-valley.html

CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-trump-vp-peter-thiel-billionaire/

Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/07/16/jd-vance-and-peter-thiel-what-to-know-about-the-relationship-between-trumps-vp-pick-and-the-billionaire/

Salon: https://www.salon.com/2024/07/22/jd-vance-owes-almost-everything-to-peter-thiel-a-pro-billionaire-and-new-right-ideologue/

Agence France Press: https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/how-peter-thiel-and-silicon-valley-funded-the-sudden-rise-of-jd-vance-20240718-p5jumu

Fortune: https://fortune.com/2024/07/15/venture-capitalists-get-own-of-their-with-trumps-vp-pick-what-to-know-about-j-d-vances-vc-career/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I actually had pretty much the same trajectory as Vance - I grew up really poor, single mom, kind of crazy household. I joined the Army right out of high school, spent 4 years in, got out, went to college, then a great graduate program - and a crummy government job. The only difference was I didn't go to law school so I think Vance, at least there, was smarter than me. I'm just shocked at how right wing he has become because I thought he'd land on the side of helping the poor rather than screwing the poor.

Pretty big difference that he went to Yale law school, not just law school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Beset by, not besotted.

For pity’s sake. JD may be a misogynist and an opportunist, but I’m sure he knows the difference!

Thanks! Scientist not an attorney, and to be clear I’m trying to keep the discussion civil and learn from JD, at now point I have been critical of him. I may be on a different political spectrum, but have admired his grit to go from hardscrabble to Eggs Benedict (or whatever would be actually fancy eggs, I still eat at Dennys).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually had pretty much the same trajectory as Vance - I grew up really poor, single mom, kind of crazy household. I joined the Army right out of high school, spent 4 years in, got out, went to college, then a great graduate program - and a crummy government job. The only difference was I didn't go to law school so I think Vance, at least there, was smarter than me. I'm just shocked at how right wing he has become because I thought he'd land on the side of helping the poor rather than screwing the poor.

Pretty big difference that he went to Yale law school, not just law school.

That is interesting too. He went to Yale law school from Ohio state? How did he manage that? Was he a star at Ohio — his stories seemed to be mostly about being drunk? Did he just kill it on the LSAT?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:JD Vance was professionally adopted by celebrity Amy Chua, who with her husband runs a weird little coven at Yale LAw School. He broke into the pseudo intellectual celebrity circuit, which got him a fake job at a VC.

These people have no skills except hobnobbing.

+1. Amy Chua and her husband even wrote a book a few years before Hillbilly Elegy about how certain groups (e.g., Jews and Asians) do well in this country and certain others (e.g., Appalachians and Black people) don't. I didn't read the book, only reviews, but the reviews that I read universally panned the book as racist and factually inaccurate. I was reminded of their book when reading Hillbilly Elegy and then learned of the close relationship between Chua and Vance. But, hey, it made him a household name, and now we're all living with the consequences.

Interesting, I hadn’t heard of this book before.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triple_Package

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m very similar to Vance; grew up lower middle class with a dysfunctional family besotted with mental health and addiction issues (but it sounds like a LOT less violence or drama, mine was more low key alcoholism)

I ended up going to an elite school, but in science because I loved the subject, and my career so far has been pretty limited (some government labs after earning my MS). I would have loved to get into tech, but never cracked that code

Vance however transitioned into VC pretty easily right out of law school, before his rise to prominence with Hillbelly Elergy presented as a rubric to understanding Trumps ascendency. I can’t figure out if he had some legal skills or accomplishments that were groundwork for that VC pivot, but I feel our similar backgrounds would hold some lessons?

Not accurate.

Hillbilly Elegy was part of his work at Thiel's firm.

You know how some people hire an underemployed person to camp out in line to get tickets to a show or to buy th new iPhone?

That's what Thiel hired Vance to do, to hold a place in government for Thiel to buy.

The bolded is wrong. "Hillbilly Elegy" began as a law school writing project on the thwarted economic mobility of Rust Belt residents. Vance's contracts professor and "authorial godmother," Amy Chua, pushed him to make the argument part of a memoir. In 2011, she had experienced success writing about her life and pronounced parenting views in "The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/hillbilly-elegy-made-jd-vance-the-voice-of-the-rust-belt-but-does-he-want-that-job/2017/02/06/fa6cd63c-e882-11e6-80c2-30e57e57e05d_story.html

[Anonymous]

The difference is that he understood the social trend. If you grow up poor, when did you become aware of what’s causing the poor to stay poor, what do you think contributed to that? What is our foreign policy and trade partner’ role in this? Why did we choose to “outsource” manufacturing in the 1980s?

[Anonymous]

JD Vance has never litigated a case and can't understand a balance sheet.
But he has a much more important and lucrative skill: he can ingratiate himself to powerful people: Chua, Thiel, Trump.
His wife ... she may have been beautiful once, but is not now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The difference is that he understood the social trend. If you grow up poor, when did you become aware of what’s causing the poor to stay poor, what do you think contributed to that? What is our foreign policy and trade partner’ role in this? Why did we choose to “outsource” manufacturing in the 1980s?

Do you really think that manufacturing is the road to riches, and not tech? Man, you're a dumbass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually had pretty much the same trajectory as Vance - I grew up really poor, single mom, kind of crazy household. I joined the Army right out of high school, spent 4 years in, got out, went to college, then a great graduate program - and a crummy government job. The only difference was I didn't go to law school so I think Vance, at least there, was smarter than me. I'm just shocked at how right wing he has become because I thought he'd land on the side of helping the poor rather than screwing the poor.

Pretty big difference that he went to Yale law school, not just law school.

That is interesting too. He went to Yale law school from Ohio state? How did he manage that? Was he a star at Ohio — his stories seemed to be mostly about being drunk? Did he just kill it on the LSAT?

He finished in two years.

This is a good lesson for kids from poor backgrounds: go to your local state school and knock it out of the park. It will be very easy for a bright kid, and all the really brilliant kids have headed off to the Ivy and private schools. If you go directly to an elite schools you will be competing with students who have attended elite private school (50% of students at Ivy went to private school, yet 10% of students nationwide attend private), and the Stuy, TJ, etc college level courses at elite public high schools. I’m sure his high school experience was probably the equivalent to a good FCPS middle school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:JD Vance has never litigated a case and can't understand a balance sheet.
But he has a much more important and lucrative skill: he can ingratiate himself to powerful people: Chua, Thiel, Trump.
His wife ... she may have been beautiful once, but is not now.

Vance could have looked like Elmer Fudd and ended up with her because they were setup by Chua as a power couple.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:JD Vance was professionally adopted by celebrity Amy Chua, who with her husband runs a weird little coven at Yale LAw School. He broke into the pseudo intellectual celebrity circuit, which got him a fake job at a VC.

These people have no skills except hobnobbing.

Socializing effectively is a sign of high interpersonal intelligence.

E.Q. is more important for career success past a certain base level of smarts.

Interesting, I am a very personable and have always made friends easily, but I’m not conventionally attractive (basically by buddies say I belong in the lab since I look like Igor — I mean not deformed, but short with exaggerated features). Vance is super tall, which always helps having presence, but I am not sure how good looking? His wife is beautiful so I have to think that speaks a bit to his looks.

I guess finding a mentor was a crucial bit of sounds like; I think I always felt like I didn’t belong so was somewhat shy around authority — maybe that was his skill, he carried the confidence to be noticed by Chua?

Vance is at least an average looking clean-cut guy which is good enough, I would say he's actually pretty smart (and sometimes comes across as seekingly intellectual), he was in the military, and he managed to make something out of himself. All big positives compared to wrinkly geriatric born-rich guys of various flavors. The bar is low.

I would say that Vance probably has excellent social skills. Most prominent politicians do, even if you don't like them or their ideas at all. It's certainly not all Amy Chua's doing. In fact, she and her husband got kind of cancelled at Yale recently due to personal scandals.

I think Donald Trump recognized Vance as a young "comer". Maybe he miscalculated about the political benefits, but Donald Trump is also good at reading people.

Even though I would never vote for Trump, I felt better when Vance got put on the ticket. Because he reads and thinks and I feel like he could read a CIA briefing and not turn around and share it with a golf buddy over cocktails. Trump told last go-around's VP candidates that they could run everything behind the scenes. What nervy young man wouldn't sign up to be defacto POTUS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:JD Vance was professionally adopted by celebrity Amy Chua, who with her husband runs a weird little coven at Yale LAw School. He broke into the pseudo intellectual celebrity circuit, which got him a fake job at a VC.

These people have no skills except hobnobbing.

Socializing effectively is a sign of high interpersonal intelligence.

E.Q. is more important for career success past a certain base level of smarts.

Interesting, I am a very personable and have always made friends easily, but I’m not conventionally attractive (basically by buddies say I belong in the lab since I look like Igor — I mean not deformed, but short with exaggerated features). Vance is super tall, which always helps having presence, but I am not sure how good looking? His wife is beautiful so I have to think that speaks a bit to his looks.

I guess finding a mentor was a crucial bit of sounds like; I think I always felt like I didn’t belong so was somewhat shy around authority — maybe that was his skill, he carried the confidence to be noticed by Chua?

Vance is at least an average looking clean-cut guy which is good enough, I would say he's actually pretty smart (and sometimes comes across as seekingly intellectual), he was in the military, and he managed to make something out of himself. All big positives compared to wrinkly geriatric born-rich guys of various flavors. The bar is low.

I would say that Vance probably has excellent social skills. Most prominent politicians do, even if you don't like them or their ideas at all. It's certainly not all Amy Chua's doing. In fact, she and her husband got kind of cancelled at Yale recently due to personal scandals.

I think Donald Trump recognized Vance as a young "comer". Maybe he miscalculated about the political benefits, but Donald Trump is also good at reading people.

Even though I would never vote for Trump, I felt better when Vance got put on the ticket. Because he reads and thinks and I feel like he could read a CIA briefing and not turn around and share it with a golf buddy over cocktails. Trump told last go-around's VP candidates that they could run everything behind the scenes. What nervy young man wouldn't sign up to be defacto POTUS?

So the career guidance I need to work on social skills and building mentor relationships.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The difference is that he understood the social trend. If you grow up poor, when did you become aware of what’s causing the poor to stay poor, what do you think contributed to that? What is our foreign policy and trade partner’ role in this? Why did we choose to “outsource” manufacturing in the 1980s?

Do you really think that manufacturing is the road to riches, and not tech? Man, you're a dumbass.

You're kind of a dumbass yourself, PP, because manufacturing and tech are intertwined. And there are huge national security implications. Reshoring is an active process right now.