Are The Techno Riche Really Ruining San Francisco? Yes, Says Rebecca Solnit
businessweek.com> And it feels most like a mining town, in that it’s disproportionately young men coming in, and they’re transient. They’re not committed to the place, and they’re displacing a lot of people who are.
They're transient because screw-the-newcomer policies like Prop 13 and rent control make it unaffordable for many of them to settle down here. And it's disproportionately young men because these same policies, in conjunction with anti-development measures like 40-foot height restrictions across the street from BART stations, make it nearly impossible to live here without a tech worker's salary.
That quote is hilarious. So San Francisco is returning to it's roots? When the city was built, it was a mining town (well mining support town) and it was disproportionately young men coming in...
Are we sure this isn't how it's supposed to be?
Indeed. There are two forces pushing against each other in this discussion of the arts. On the one hand, tech money does find it's way into the hands of artists. (In NY there's a saying that "Every financial services job pays for an artist" and employment in the latter follows the former)
But artists need a place to live. When artists leave, they can't afford to move in because of anti-development policies that discourage investment in the housing stock. The rent control policies protect existing inhabitants of existing buildings, but wind up crushing everyone else. Good intentions, but terrible unintended consequences.
"I met a guy who lives at 24th and Valencia [Street]. He says the Wi-Fi signal on the buses is so powerful that when the Google bus pulls up in front of his house, it uses all the broadband and his Wi-Fi signal crashes."
That's not really how WiFi works. Chances are his router is on the same frequency as the buses and he can fix this by changing to a different frequency. Even more likely (since one SSID shouldn't make too much of a difference) is that his WiFi router crashes at random and there's some amount of false causation there.
I know this isn't the beef of the article, but this sort of magical thinking that insists on forcing every little thing into a framework of a class war between the upper middle class and the lower/lower middle class is.
Actually wifi does work that way, notwithstanding the odd word 'crash'. It's entirely possible that so much bandwidth is being used by the Google network that his network has extremely high packet loss and is effectively useless, especially if Google is using better gear (like directional antennas). And you're aware there's only actually three channels, and each bus wouldn't be using the same one, right?
But sure, use a partial understanding of technology to generate a narrative in which this guy has only a self-created problem, and take from him the benefit of the doubt. Then we can turn off our empathy circuits, reject this very dear example, and continue pretending that its workers (and users) are not pawns of a malevolent Google.
> each bus wouldn't be using the same one
Why is that? Do these buses frequently drive next to each other?
(Honest question. I don't live in the Bay Area, nor do I work for Google.)
I dunno, I find that little anecdote pretty hilarious.
Gives a new meaning to "noise complaint".
Actually, what constitutes "noise" in the context of noise volume laws? Devices have to accept interference as per FCC regulation, but isn't "overpowering" a specific WiFi frequency fundamentally the same thing as blaring music?
Yeah that was literally laugh out loud, I needed that today
What exactly does "uses all the broadband" even mean?
It probably clogs all the internet tubes.
But why should he have to fix it? Who was there first?
Michael Bolton? Is that you?
His setup is defective. He can either complain and live with it, or he can fix it.
Or Google could tune down the wifi on their bus? How powerful does it have to be?
They could, but realistically that isn't going to happen. Hence the Office Space reference:
Michael Bolton, the character in the movie, laments that he shares his name with a (real life) signer. He could go by another name, but refuses to because he thinks that the singer is at fault. Realistically Michael Bolton, the song singer, will never change his name, so Michael Bolton, the office worker, is choosing to instead complain and live with it. The humor comes from the ridiculous nature of the office worker's stance.Michael Bolton: Yeah, well, at least your name isn't Michael Bolton. Samir: You know, there's nothing wrong with that name. Michael Bolton: There *was* nothing wrong with it... until I was about twelve years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys. Samir: Hmm... well, why don't you just go by Mike instead of Michael? Michael Bolton: No way! Why should I change? He's the one who sucks.(Also, assuming the wifi on these buses is not in violation of FCC regulations, this really is this guys problem, not Google's.)
The spectrum WiFi operates in is free for any and all to use, and you don't get squatter's rights.
If you want a frequency nobody else has the right to use, you are going to have to buy your own spectrum.
While technically true, that is clearly a bad way to think about this. It's analogous to someone playing loud music on the bus, and you telling someone, if you don't like it buy your own bus.
The people that gentrified the neighborhood 20 years ago, are upset that younger, richer people are moving in on their territory.
The NIMBYs are responsible for the complete lack of new market housing in SF, and have hilariously priced themselves out of the market.
There are actually a lot of new units coming on the market soon. This article from August claims there are twice as many units "in the pipeline" as the number that made it to market in the past decade:
http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2013/08/all_48000_san_fra...
I'd guess that there are NIMBY building costs that prevented housing construction until the rent got so high, but it does look like an end is in sight.
The author writes about how corporate shuttles insulate tech workers from transit problems, and how if this weren't the case, there'd be powerful forces pushing to make public transit better.
She misses an opportunity to make a similar point about antidevelopment San Franciscans being insulated by their rent control, but she comes close to it when talking about the Ellis Act. What makes this law so terrifying to longtime, usually antidensity, residents is that it puts them on equal footing with all the new arrivals. It forces them to lie in the bed they've made.
It's like how the draft can turn hawks into doves amongst people who wouldn't otherwise have children in the military.
Nevermind that the corporate shuttles exist mainly because of the transit problems. If the companies that provide the shuttles weren't aware of the transit issues, they never would have provided the shuttles.
That's her entire point though - in the past, the transit issues would've been fixed with the help/money of the companies moving there. Now, her issue is that companies have invested private money in the shuttles, mitigating the transit headache exclusively for their employees, rather than by providing a public good.
It's up to your own personal politics to decide which of those is more desirable though.
Is that the point? "In the past" there was a massive plan to build BART lines to all over the Bay Area[0] that never came to fruition. There isn't even serious talk about doing this. Modern companies, which didn't exist, are having to deal with the short-sightedness of times past (however, this is a regular lament of the young). It's not that these companies don't necessarily not want to provide for the public good (I don't know if they do or not, it's inconsequential), it's that the public didn't want them to. Even if there were plans, by the companies, to contribute to "solving" transit issues, it's easy to have it tied up in frustrating planning stages, a la Geary Bus Rapid Transit[1].
Meanwhile, people have to get to work.
What we're seeing is the result of a number of strong, independent, competing systems (transit, property rights, rent control, NIMBY, etc), working in isolation, resulting in a massive, fustercluck that doesn't have a solid solution that does anything other than continue to perpetuate it's own bureaucracy.
And again, saying that the companies are not doing anything to "solve" the transit problems ignores the fact that busing employees, in fact, are part of "solving" transit problems, specifically those of highway traffic (and second order impacts like greenhouse gas emissions and roadwear).
[0] this makes the internet rounds with Bay Area people every few months, https://www.google.com/search?q=bart+map+1950s
[1] http://sf.streetsblog.org/2013/02/06/geary-brt-advisor-resig...
> Caltrain does run down there. We could have beefed up that system and had a tremendously efficient train system, with trains leaving every 15 minutes or so for the peninsula
The problem is that Caltrain (and BART outside SF proper) has its stations along the periphery instead of the heart of town. You can't jump on Caltrain in the Mission or Noe Valley or even Market St, and on the southern end, it's not going to drop you off anywhere near anything.
This is because California, and the Bay Area in particular, follows a policy of "The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many", and when previous generations were deciding where to put stations, they didn't use eminent domain like most municipalities would; instead, they built them either in the few parcels of vacant land off on the periphery, or along the freeway land they already owned, which is perhaps the most pedestrian-hostile arrangement possible.
Uh...have you actually ridden Caltrain? Outside of SF, Caltrain stops in the very heart of each down town. San Bruno, Burlingame, San Mateo, Belmont, San Carlos, Redwood city, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain view, San Jose all have stations that border the historical main down town (I think Sunnyvale and Santa Clara as well). In SF proper, it's probably more to do with geography than land purchases. Trains really don't like hills and tunneling is expensive.
The problem is really, that the train tracks were built in the 1860's when all these places were little towns linked by farms and fields. Then the automobile took over and there was just not seen the need for branch lines. Now it's solid industrial/suburbia all the way up and eminent domain would be way too expensive both in terms of money and politics.
> Uh...have you actually ridden Caltrain?
No, and that's sort of my point. I've lived in SF since the summer of 2008, and not once in all that time has Caltrain ever been useful to me. It doesn't pick up anywhere near anything, and it doesn't run to any place I want to go.
Meanwhile, when I lived in New York, I rode the subway, the LIRR, the PATH train, Metro North, and even Amtrak all over the place, in no small part because Penn Station and Grand Central are located right in the middle of everything and thoroughly connected to local transit.
But your argument as to why has little to do with the actual reasons to two public transportation systems differ and you make assumptions about the history of California that are flatly just wrong. Not to mention ignore the differences in geography. California has a certain flavor of liberal politics but remember that this is recent and has not always been so, and to this day varies quite a bit depending where you are in the state. Hell, it varies depending on where you are in the bay area...
During the time New York was building some of it's latter public transportation infrastructure, my father and his brother, as teenagers, were wandering around what is now Xerox Parc and surrounding tech campuses and what would become 280 with their 30-06 rifles shooting anything they pleased. No one cared because there was no one around. It was just unused hill country. Much of the explosion of building in the Bay Area has been recent and during a period that no one wanted public transportation, they wanted a car. New York built up much of it's rail infrastructure before the car became commonplace and people really wanted to use it.
Consider this: how late in the history of New York were those grand stations built? Compare that to how far in to San Francisco's history they are building the Transbay Transit Center...
> Much of the explosion of building in the Bay Area has been recent and during a period that no one wanted public transportation, they wanted a car.
You're saying that the region's transit was built up during a time when people didn't care about public transit. I think that's mostly true, and it led to a milquetoast "well, let's just sort of put some train stations around the edge but not do anything that might upset anyone" plan that, today, serves the region a lot less well than New York's strategy of "let's cut-and-cover tracks right down all our major avenues".
> Consider this: how late in the history of New York were those grand stations built? Compare that to how far in to San Francisco's history
If you think you can't build good transit late in a city's history, how do you explain London or Paris?
"well, let's just sort of put some train stations around the edge but not do anything that might upset anyone"
And this is the crux of my point. Those CalTrain stations, when they were built, were EXACTLY where people wanted to go. The center of each down town. Look on a map. Caltrain is a very direct route to San Jose. The opposite of your argument that it is in any way "milquetoast". Even BART served where people wanted to commute to when it was planned out. The Bay Area has exploded with building since then.
"If you think you can't build good transit late in a city's history, how do you explain London or Paris?"
Uh...train technology not existing for most of those two cities histories?
FWIW, I live in Mountain View, have a car, and still frequently use Caltrain to get up to friends or events in the city. I'm within walking distance of the station, and during rush hour traffic Caltrain will often get me there faster than 101 will.
It's somewhat ironic (and telling about SF) that as a suburban commuter I've made better use of public transit than you have in the city, but it really is pretty convenient if you're going to any of the downtowns on the Peninsula, anything BART-accessible, or Candlestick Park.
> It's somewhat ironic (and telling about SF) that as a suburban commuter I've made better use of public transit than you have in the city
Who said I don't take transit? My wife and I both take trains to work, and ride transit whenever possible. The primary factor in choosing our home was to be within walking distance of transit.
It's just Caltrain that I've found totally useless.
Ironically, most of the larger tech companies based out of the valley are closer to the highways than they are to the Caltrain stations; the shuttle shitshow at MTV/PA is testament to that.
Nothing ironic about it. When these plots were being sold off the car was king (and really still is) and passenger train service was almost discontinued due to lack of ridership. Putting tech centers next to freeways was quite sensible at the time.
This sentiment has its roots in the Freeway Revolts of the 60s and 70s. Caltrans had massive plans to wrap the entire Bay Area in freeways (plans which were only partially implemented) and the backlash put the brakes on not just new highway construction, but any kind of major infrastructure improvement. The high number of land takings is part of the reason why high speed rail is drawing a lot of criticism. In fact, peninsula residents more likely oppose the aerial grade-separation structures that would improve Caltrain service as well, not HSR itself.
Outside of SF proper, Oakland, Berkeley and at least a few other stations...
That's true, but just take a look at this BART map:
http://ctchouston.org/blogs/christof/wp-content/bart_row.jpg
The purple lines are the tunnels. The yellow lines are the stations built along freeways. Only the tiny non-purple, non-yellow fragments were built where the actual demand is.
(Source: http://www.ctchouston.org/intermodality/2006/05/06/tale-of-t...)
> The yellow lines are the stations built along freeways.
Per the legend, that's "existing right-of-ways" which include freeways and existing railways.
> Only the tiny non-purple, non-yellow fragments were built where the actual demand is.
Well, except for much of the East Bay (certainly the two northern lines, which I'm most familiar with), where the freeways BART follows (including the tunnels that follow them) also run right through the heart of the main cities.
Just because they had existing right of way of leverage doesn't mean that it wasn't where the actual demand is.
Honestly, I'm surprised Jason Fried and DHH haven't picked up on this news trend to point out how bizarre it is that these companies still bus people around at 40 MPH instead of their communication at the speed of light.
Isn't this just another argument for the innovative promise of remote work? That both the old centralized model of the company town, and the hub-and-spoke suburban campus model, impose all kinds of costs and limitations on employees and the community as well as the company? It's surely impressive that certain companies have become cultural forces in their region, but it's not always eventually a good thing (see the Great Lakes area), and the inevitable cultural conflicts are bloody and never-ending.
Also, I wonder if other parts of the continent (whom would probably buy Google the buses to transport people in or out of their city) laugh or cry when they read about these first-world-economy problems.
It seems that it is currently more efficient to bus people around, using (abusing, some might say) the infrastructure that already exists than to battle municipalities and telcos to provide/get/allow-you-to-install higher speed network connectivity.
Good point, and it is a long game, although Google doesn't yet seem to be incentivizing people to move to Kansas City. And the buses are a good testbed for an autonomous vehicle fleet, like how Uber dispatches human-driven cars today in order to grow the market for 3-7 years from now.
In the post-WW2 era, suburbs like Irvine here in the LA area built up a large economy by providing growing industries with land use they couldn't find in the metropolis. And the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System provided an infrastructure that citizens appreciated and trucking companies were able to use to diversify goods movement. Maybe forward-looking municipalities or larger government entities have an opportunity to enable further economic progress by providing superior access to high-speed connectivity.
In nature, when a single-celled organism grows large, it divides. Silicon Valley--or more accurately the tech companies located there--needs to diversify geographically. It has gone beyond a critical mass and is starting to hurt itself and the surrounding communities from the excess.
The problem is that there are few other nucleation sites that a viable tech community can condense around. The major tech employers are not spreading out to lower their impact. There's no reason why 2000 employees all need to be on the same campus. There is no way in Hades you are cross-pollinating your divisions to that extent.
Spread out and invest in connectivity technologies that make talking across the continent as easy as over a cubicle wall.
>>The problem is that there are few other nucleation sites that a viable tech community can condense around.
What? There are lots of places that could fill this role.
30 is not "lots", in my opinion. I don't have the same freedom to choose my hometown that nurses or auto mechanics or plumbers enjoy. I'm stuck with a few metropolises and a handful of other areas. And some of those areas are predominantly government contract work, which are almost universally terrible.
Is it just me or does it make less sense to blame a group of people for having jobs well-paying enough for them to afford living in San Francisco than to blame city zoning laws which have rather unreasonably constrained the supply of rented units and driven prices to what they are now?
> In another era, the captains of industry would have said, “OK, our workers live here, our factory is there; let’s encourage, enforce, and subsidize the improvement of public transit.”
Uh, what?
This is kind of a silly point, but I think it exemplifies how misplaced all this tension is.
For example, mayor LaGuardia put a TON of work into forcing the privately owned transit lines to become a public good in NYC. The "captains of industry" didn't improve public transportation - they just started their own transportation companies. It took a lot of hard work by a lot of great government officials for the NYC subway to become the awesome service that it is today (incoming jokes about the L train).
The city of San Francisco's biggest enemy in this whole "nouveau riche" problem is the city of San Francisco. But everyone's too busy cuttin' each other's throats to realize that.
No, you're right. She just randomly makes stuff up in that article as presents it as fact. Like, she tries to claim that the minimum monthly rent in San Francisco is $4,000. No. No, it's not.
There is a lot of focus on Ellis Act evictions, but the fact is that there just aren't very many of them. This article claims only 116 in the last year, which is significantly less than the numbers 5 or 10 years ago:
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-eviction...
The solution to the rising price to rent is to increase supply. Anybody in SF should be able to drive up Market and see evidence of the massive number of units just opening up.
Ellis Act is tricky. It's threatened far more than it's executed. That's because it bad for renter credit (supposedly) to have an eviction and it imposes a bunch of random restrictions on the owner. So it gets threatened and then occupants take a payout and move out quietly.
"Anti-everything activist writer in opposition to everything shocker"
The busses make San Francisco into Silicon Valley's bedroom community. So what? Is it too good for that? This article is arrogant SF-resident bull.
"Are Job Creators and Tax Paying Workers Really Ruining San Francisco? Yes, Says Rebecca Solnit", fixed that for you.
The idiocy of this article is disturbing:
"Twitter got this tax break to stay in San Francisco that they blackmailed out of the mayor" (They "blackmailed" him? Really?)
"young men coming in, and they’re transient. They’re not committed to the place" (which is why they bought a house in a dump neighborhood to fix up and keep for the rest of their lives. Jesus give them time, they're not going to settle down, get married, and have kids right after college.)
It seems no journalist is willing to see this from the other point of view. Which is blaming San Francisco's politics. 1 of 4 things is happening here:
● Politics have bought out journalism to such a degree that a serious conversation criticizing San Fran cannot take place.
● Journalists today really are that one sided.
● The media is trying to fuel a class war, they just got done fueling a race war with the Trayvon Martin trial.
● Somebody has a serious hatred for Google in particular because all of this anger is directed towards them.
"young men coming in, and they’re transient."
Isn't that similar rhetoric that was employed in the 20s and 30s? That comment conjures up memories of reading Of Mice and Men.
She should just have the balls to say she's anti-immigrant, wherever they're from.
I feel like, as far as this topic goes, everything that needs to be said has already been said. There's been a lot of talk about "class warfare" in San Francisco, and nothing new has developed. Until then, we're stuck with speculation from a handful of writers that (in my opinion) are dredging up news where none exists.
That, and the term 'Techno Riche' is hipster jerkfood and needs to die today.
There's a related conversation happening in the neighborhood I live in, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Not about techies specifically, but about the general wave of wealthier young folks moving in and driving up rents. Displacing existing residents. Gentrifying. Etc.
Now, I can afford to continue living there, so maybe it's easy to hold this view, but I never felt I could get too upset about this situation.
First: It's a great sign that the neighborhood's so desirable that people will spend to move there. It's bringing in business (and helping existing businesses). It's making things safer. Making things more interesting.
Second: I've been around for longer than many people, but I transplanted there at some point, as well.
Third: Neighborhoods and cities change. No way around it. Much rather they grow and become popular with smart, upwardly-mobile young people (with a creative streak) than grow stale or decay.
Fourth: If something is a limited resource but in high demand, the price goes up! While I don't believe people should be kicked out their homes willy-nilly, I also believe that if a ton of people want something, then it's fair for the market to respond by raising prices (with some constraints, of course, which I'm not going to get into here). To me, this is one of the downsides of renting. You run that risk. If that's not appealing, then one should try to own (which could be a nice investment if your area is booming).
Am I being a douchebag gentrification-sympathizer? Maybe I'm just one of the people the "real residents" get to hate on -- a white male with a bit of extra disposable income.
Anyway: Not SF-specific. But certainly other parts of the country are having similar issues. (I lived in Austin for 27 years, and though I don't keep up with local politics there, I bet they're also going through a light-weight version of this in areas.)
> "Maybe I'm just one of the people the "real residents" get to hate on"
I think here you have touched on the root of all of these sort of "issues": the notion that people how have lived in a neighborhood longer than others are somehow "better", "more deserving", or "'real' citizens".
> Am I being a douchebag gentrification-sympathizer?
Maybe. Do you interact with poorer and long-time residents, or only other wealthy people? Do you support longstanding shops, or just the new expensive ones?
She skipped high school altogether, enrolling in an alternative junior high in the public school system that took her through tenth grade, when she passed the GED.
This is from Rebecca Solnit's Wikipedia page. This is the longest way of saying, "Dropped Out of High School" I have ever heard.
Someone really need to write about all the side-effects of the technology and finance workers leaving San Francisco. What will the real estate prices be like? How will it affect local businesses? City taxes? Crime? How about we see the truth from all angles?
"And I have other friends who are homeowners, but the majority of people I know are renters, and I keep teasing my friends who are economically vulnerable that maybe they should go to Vallejo or Stockton, which are in economic crisis, and create a great, thriving bohemia there."
I think she's on to something here... A smart community activist in conjunction with a pro-active real estate developer with a really long term vision could 'organically' help create neighborhoods ready for gentrification (and profit handsomely) and help create great places for artists, writers and activists to live at the same time.
All that's needed is a website that organizes groups of artists, writers and activists to tell them where to go live next, flash mob style. Once the artists, writers and activists have sown the seeds of gentrification, the developer can then provide the members some financial (or non-financial) reward to move on to the next neighborhood and start the process anew.
Basically it'd be comp'ing the group for all the work they have done to create a live-able, dynamic neighborhood which is not happening today.
I don't know about San Francisco because I live in Oakand, but I know there are lots of wealthier (like people who can afford $600+/mo in rent) people moving in who are hurting my neighborhood. I try to mitigate the harm I'm doing, but know I'm one of them too.
We don't acknowledge other people in the street. We draw arbitrary lines between "scary" people and "less scary" people, but in reality are using race and class markers to make those decisions. And we treat somewhere between "the scary few" and "everyone not white" as if they don't exist. We don't shop at local shops and restaurants, we leave the area to go to restaurants that either appeal to their class background or their racial comfort zone.
I'm not trying to place blame, or say we are "classists" or "racists". As someone who tries and often fails to do the opposite, I can see how hard it is. There are real dangers to be afraid of. It's not easy to walk into a barbeque place where you're the only white person and have that be your Date Night go-to spot.
That said, I think a lot of people moving out here aren't even trying to understand what it's like having a different class of people move into your neighborhood and "walk among you" as if you don't even exist, terraforming the space you struggled in your whole life with a snap of the fingers.
I know San Francisco is a different place, and it's more white, which changes some of this stuff. But in the Mission I know there are similar things happening in Latin@ neighborhoods. People who have been living in those neighborhoods for decades who were central contributors to that place are being pushed out to the East Bay and elsewhere because they can't afford rent.
Maybe it's inevitable, and maybe it's no one's fault. But I don't see how anyone can deny that important cultural institutions are being destroyed so that rich tech folks can have nice apartments to live in in "funky" neighborhoods.
Like there’s a $3 million prize that some of the Facebook and Google billionaires have put up for medical breakthroughs. They seem to misunderstand how medical research takes place.
This lady is out of her gourd. She appears to be talking about this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/science/new-3-million-priz...
This alone makes it obvious what her real problem is. She wants people to give their money to causes that she supports. She does that by stating that they aren't civicly minded but she's just belittling what civic-minded tasks they're doing because she thinks other ones are important.
Entire article was a waste of time to read.
In general, the argument here is "Fucking rich people!! They're ruining it for the rest of us!", which I don't think has ever been a successful way to get anything you want. Moreover, they're missing half of why this is happening: their beloved shitty neighborhoods are being cleaned up by new business and new housing.
If they got enough political control over the zoning board or the city council they could make it impossible for new businesses to be approved, make it harder for the ones there now, and generally make it difficult to impossible to create new condos. Either they suck at local politics or they're being too anti-authoritarian to accomplish their goals in a meaningful way.
I wonder how she feels about hispanic immigrants to the USA? Does she think we should keep them out because they're "ruining" American culture? This whole thing smacks of this weird anti-immigration mentality that I wouldn't have expected from the left-leaning groups leading the protests. I'm going to make a side-by-side of Texans upset about Latinos and San Franciscan hipsters upset about techies.
Anyone else burst out laughing after reading this?:
"I met a guy who lives at 24th and Valencia [Street]. He says the Wi-Fi signal on the buses is so powerful that when the Google bus pulls up in front of his house, it uses all the broadband and his Wi-Fi signal crashes. And that’s like a tiny thing that happens to one guy, but it signifies, “We are so mighty, we are crushing your reality.”"
This is where I stopped reading.
Man, I am 100% sympathetic to the issues Solnit is talking about -- gentrification, the plight of the poor, public transit -- but I find this approach & framing completely off-putting. It's hard to articulate why. Maybe the whiff of entitlement to SF the way Solnit believes it ought to be, as if that's somehow purer SF than prior waves of change.
The upshot is that I'm way more conflicted than I might have been otherwise. And while it's not like I, as an individual, have some great sway over this debate, I can't imagine I'm the only leftie who feels sympathetic but alienated.
Maybe that's that cost of doing business here, so to speak. It's no secret there's a huge libertarian streak running through tech. And it's not difficult to imagine how unpopular a lot of obnoxious young white men in tech might already be in some areas.
And finally: big name tech companies = big headlines.
Disclosure: I work for one of the big companies discussed in this piece.
On the flip side its kind of amazing that such a beautiful city with a mild climate and massive protected harbor has maintained being so affordable for so long prior to today. Its kind of a fluke that some really awful urban planning disasters happened to blight the city enough in the 50's to open a window for activists and artists to affordably settle down there in the 60's and 70's. Otherwise it would probably never have been a counter culture mecca to begin with
I really hope there won't be any financial industry like cold response to these issues. It be good for all involved if tech companies and people (who are definitely capable of this) to reach out and allay these concerns.
I'm sympathetic to these arguments, largely until the people making them open their mouths.
Yes, but the anger at the Google buses and the people who ride them is misplaced. These people really don't want to be paying $3000 per month for housing, and they have no power. In fact, many would be happy to live in low-COL regions (instead of cramming into SF) if it weren't for the career-limiting effects (at least at Google, you have to work in MTV if you want a decent shot at getting a real project; there are good projects elsewhere, but far fewer of them.)
Google's rank and file are not the bad guys. Irritating them does no good to anyone. When poor proletariat fight somewhat richer proletariat over their rides in "luxury buses", the real bad guys win. Divide and conquer.
The real bad guys aren't "techno riche". They invest in and manage software companies, but they don't know (or care) about technology. They couldn't write a line of code to save their lives. Those software execs making $250k++ per year while working 11-to-3 are MBA-culture colonists (Damaso Effect) who came in because we, as technologists, failed to prevent them from conquering us and drawing off almost all of the wealth we produce. We're very good at busting our balls (and ovaries) to solve hard technical problems, but we're terrible at protecting our own interests, especially as a group.
Any company with $250k++ execs working 11:00-3:00 is not going to be around very long. Among the execs in those ranks I've known, if you're a corporate exec making $500k+, the company owns you. When the CEO calls at 2:00 AM Sunday and says, "We've got a problem is Shenzhen", you're on a plane a 6:00 AM, too bad if your daughter's senior recital is 2:00 PM that day.
Any company with $250k++ execs working 11:00-3:00 is not going to be around very long.
Actually, there's something worse for a typical company than a typical exec making $250k++ while working 11-3: that same exec working a full day.
if you're a corporate exec making $500k+, the company owns you. When the CEO calls at 2:00 AM Sunday and says, "We've got a problem is Shenzhen", you're on a plane a 6:00 AM, too bad if your daughter's senior recital is 2:00 PM that day.
That's what they want you to think, so you don't hate them or covet their jobs. Ever hear of the complain-brag? It's not true. The politicking involved in getting those jobs is quite competitive, but once you're in the club, it's a pretty easy life if you want it to be. [ETA: being a CEO of a small or mid-sized company, on the other hand, is usually quite demanding.]
Note the words typical company though, it depends a lot on the culture I think. Reminds me of this BTW: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2011013
many would be happy to live in low-COL regions (instead of cramming into SF)
Isn't Mountain View (or pretty much anywhere else in the valley) cheaper than SF? If these people have no time outside of work to appreciate SF and can barely afford the rent, why are they living there?
It probably correlates more to age than anything. SF is a more popular place to live if you are young, single, and outgoing (i.e. more to do there). Mountain View (and areas like PA, Menlo Park, etc) are much more appealing to people with families.
And introverts. I've never understood the complaints about the South Bay being socially dead. I've got a very busy social life here with a number of friends within walking distance, it's just my idea of socializing involves going out to dinner or over to someone's house for Starcraft or board games or a movie instead of doing a pub crawl of half a dozen bars or having a raucous house party.