text:  Shortly after J.D. Vance published his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, in 2016, another career began to rise in San Francisco. He was hired to work in a venture capital firm run by Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, who was one of the most powerful figures in Silicon Valley. Here's writer Max Chafkin, who wrote a book on Thiel that mentions Vance.