San Francisco Bubble(blog.larrold.com)
blog.larrold.com
San Francisco Bubble
http://blog.larrold.com/2016/01/29/san-francisco-bubble/
392 comments
Ok, as a perennial voice for free markets I agree with your observations, but not your point. Having lived through it I see the damage it is doing to individuals who will take years to recover.
Too many engineers today, perhaps like sports players, take a big salary, project it across 30 years and then say "Wow I've got millions headed my way, do I really need to bag my lunch?"
I've watched as they became both broke and depressed as the wave that was supporting those salaries and the technology that was supporting their employment have broken (as they always do) and they are suddenly "too old and too out of date."
Like the guy who was making $200K/year as a SOAP architect for some package that managed really expensive enterprise server and storage gear. When the wave passed and people moved to cheap white box servers in abundance using things like Docker or Chef to run and manage them, this guy walked into a world at 45 years of age with zero applicable experience to your distributed server cluster based company. And he is slowly burning what savings he had because the only entry level programmer job he could get is paying him $85K and his take home pay doesn't completely cover his burn rate (he optimistically expects to be promoted to a high paying job as soon as they see what he can do.)
If you are living the high life as an in demand engineer please don't be that guy. Start planning to provide funds for your kids education, or if you're not having kids ever then a fund to pay someone else's kids to take care of you when you're too old to work. Cut out recurring expenses in your life where ever you can and put excess money into savings or investment vehicles so that it can start working for you by earning more money. Understand that life is change until you die. Anticipate change to avoid having change drive your decisions.
Too many engineers today, perhaps like sports players, take a big salary, project it across 30 years and then say "Wow I've got millions headed my way, do I really need to bag my lunch?"
I've watched as they became both broke and depressed as the wave that was supporting those salaries and the technology that was supporting their employment have broken (as they always do) and they are suddenly "too old and too out of date."
Like the guy who was making $200K/year as a SOAP architect for some package that managed really expensive enterprise server and storage gear. When the wave passed and people moved to cheap white box servers in abundance using things like Docker or Chef to run and manage them, this guy walked into a world at 45 years of age with zero applicable experience to your distributed server cluster based company. And he is slowly burning what savings he had because the only entry level programmer job he could get is paying him $85K and his take home pay doesn't completely cover his burn rate (he optimistically expects to be promoted to a high paying job as soon as they see what he can do.)
If you are living the high life as an in demand engineer please don't be that guy. Start planning to provide funds for your kids education, or if you're not having kids ever then a fund to pay someone else's kids to take care of you when you're too old to work. Cut out recurring expenses in your life where ever you can and put excess money into savings or investment vehicles so that it can start working for you by earning more money. Understand that life is change until you die. Anticipate change to avoid having change drive your decisions.
I agree with everything you said but I think you're underestimating the importance of fighting lifestyle inflation at all costs. It's incredibly hard to justify a six-figure burn rate under any circumstances, even in San Francisco. If you've got a job making multiples of the median household income in the US, it's incredibly irresponsible to live in a manner that wouldn't support a pretty major pay cut at any point.
Young developer here.
The "lifestyle inflation is evil" mantra never made sense to me. The definition I usually find is "living better than a college student once you are a working professional," so apologies if you mean something different.
I was raised to save 15% for retirement, to never carry a credit card balance, to build a 6 month emergency fund, etc. All of these priorities come first. But, after they are funded:
I am in software in part because because I like it, but also because it enables the life I want: a decent apartment to myself, a decent car, some international travel, not having to agonize over small day-to-day purchases. I want these things much more than I want early retirement (which is not particularly useful if all I can do with it is sit in a low-cost-of-living-city home and eat Ramen). If you told me I'd be a broke college student forever, I'd probably go into theater.
Why should we compromise parts of our life for more money, and then carry that money in our savings accounts perpetually? It really seems like you should either use the money in a way that's important to you, or optimize for free time instead.
Silicon Valley as we imagine it might die, and I'm set to absorb a few months. I can't imagine the world will stop wanting code. And if it does, I can change careers like my parents both did in their 40s.
The "lifestyle inflation is evil" mantra never made sense to me. The definition I usually find is "living better than a college student once you are a working professional," so apologies if you mean something different.
I was raised to save 15% for retirement, to never carry a credit card balance, to build a 6 month emergency fund, etc. All of these priorities come first. But, after they are funded:
I am in software in part because because I like it, but also because it enables the life I want: a decent apartment to myself, a decent car, some international travel, not having to agonize over small day-to-day purchases. I want these things much more than I want early retirement (which is not particularly useful if all I can do with it is sit in a low-cost-of-living-city home and eat Ramen). If you told me I'd be a broke college student forever, I'd probably go into theater.
Why should we compromise parts of our life for more money, and then carry that money in our savings accounts perpetually? It really seems like you should either use the money in a way that's important to you, or optimize for free time instead.
Silicon Valley as we imagine it might die, and I'm set to absorb a few months. I can't imagine the world will stop wanting code. And if it does, I can change careers like my parents both did in their 40s.
I don't think he's talking to you. If you are under 40 and are saving for retirement, have no debt, and have 6 months of expenses then you are lightyears ahead of most people in the US and you should call your parents and thank them for teaching you well.
I think he's referring to how most people do it - carrying debt, little or no savings, paycheck to paycheck no mater how they make. And when they do get a raise, instead of putting the extra money towards getting on track financially, they just bump up their lifestyle so that they're always living right on the edge of what they can manage.
I think he's referring to how most people do it - carrying debt, little or no savings, paycheck to paycheck no mater how they make. And when they do get a raise, instead of putting the extra money towards getting on track financially, they just bump up their lifestyle so that they're always living right on the edge of what they can manage.
In San Francisco, anyway, having "a decent apartment to myself" and "a decent car" already seems like a huge extravagance. Median 1BR rent is $3,620, add $300/mo for parking and let's say $300/mo for a car lease, you're at $4,200ish before any sort of food, travel, etc. Even if you're making nominally $120k/year, you need a lot of frugality to make that work.
I remember moving to SF and making ~$110k, and renting a ~$2500 studio in a mediocre part of town with no car (I got a motorcycle eventually) and it was difficult to save any money, even if I wasn't bankrupting myself.
I remember moving to SF and making ~$110k, and renting a ~$2500 studio in a mediocre part of town with no car (I got a motorcycle eventually) and it was difficult to save any money, even if I wasn't bankrupting myself.
There are Oakland studios with parking for closer to $2200.
bcg1 is right - I am largely referring to people very much like the example in the comment I replied to. Also when i think of "lifestyle inflation" it's more geared toward currently working professionals - folks who get a raise and their take-home increases by $800/mo so they go out and buy a car with a $700/mo payment attached to it - and less the transition from student to worker.
Plan on getting out of software ASAP as age discrimination is rampant in the business.
hn has an outspoken minority actively competing in the cheapskate olympics. everyone's circumstances are different, do what makes sense to you.
there's always some penny pinching proselytizer trying to tell other people how to live.
i find it better to focus on making more money.
there's always some penny pinching proselytizer trying to tell other people how to live.
i find it better to focus on making more money.
My personal favorite are those people who are living in a rent controlled apartment that they split with a partner and pay $700 on.
They say "$2k for an apartment? That's way too much! Why don't you move to [place]?"
Honestly if you haven't rented an apartment in the last few years, you have no idea. You also have no idea how lucky you are to get that rent control subsidy.
They say "$2k for an apartment? That's way too much! Why don't you move to [place]?"
Honestly if you haven't rented an apartment in the last few years, you have no idea. You also have no idea how lucky you are to get that rent control subsidy.
Sure. You just have to be careful with the "make more money" mentality because it eventually leads you out of being a full-time software developer.
You can go manager or freelancer, of course.
You can go manager or freelancer, of course.
Yes, but you forget the protestant work ethic is strong in America. The more you suffer and the less money you make, the better of a person you are. Fucking-A hiring managers, no one is here to be "the salt of the earth", we're here for a paycheck and some mental stimulation.
Yep. The hedonic treadmill* is real. There are things worth paying for, and there are things whose net effect is only to make it more expensive for you to be happy. It's very much worth it to be deliberate in what luxuries you allow into your life, as once they've been there for a while you'll no longer derive any pleasure from them, but you'll miss them dearly if you were to give them up.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
I agree, but unfortunately what I've also seen is that cutting major costs frequently amounts to leaving areas altogether, which then torpedoes a lot of opportunities.
I was stoked to move to cheaper area and work remote for these reasons, but it put a serious brake on career/income growth. And all it takes is some old-school mgmt to come in and then you are treated like some pariah.
I was stoked to move to cheaper area and work remote for these reasons, but it put a serious brake on career/income growth. And all it takes is some old-school mgmt to come in and then you are treated like some pariah.
A 6 figure burn rate is what's required to own property in or near sf. Take a modest $900k 3 bedroom condo: it costs nearly $5k/mo in mortgage (even with a sizable downpayment), insurance, taxes, and maintenance. And you haven't eaten yet, or owned even a single car.
At 3.92% interest rate for 30-years fixed with a 20% downpayment that's about $3,400/mo and at $900k property tax is another $6k/year, insurance is less than $100/mo so you net out at less than $4k/mo in PITI. And maintenance you'd hope to check what's wrong with the house before you buy but a new roof costs about $20k so unless you replace a roof a year I doubt you'll be spending over $1000/mo for maintenance, at least I'm not. And 20% is not a sizeable downpayment but the minimum to not have to pay mortgage insurance, a sizeable downpayment is 30%, which in a 30 years fixed means paying less than $3500/mo PITI. Of course if you go with ARMs you'd end up paying even less since interest rates are even lower there. If you can afford the downpayment you'd be paying less than rent in SF most of the time.
How would you only be paying $6k/year property tax? I'd expect more than $10k/year or around 850/month.
The property tax rate is 1.1826% of assessed value in SF (1% state + a small % local). And your initial assessed value is based on your purchase price.
I think it's more realistic to say you'd be spending close to 4500/month net assuming you didn't live in a place with an HOA. If you live in a condo with an HOA, you could easily be spending 5000 to 5500/month.
On the plus side, at least you get to deduct all that mortgage interest and property tax on your federal taxes. When you are paying 3k/month+ in interest and taxes, that's a really nice tax advantage over renting a similar property.
The property tax rate is 1.1826% of assessed value in SF (1% state + a small % local). And your initial assessed value is based on your purchase price.
I think it's more realistic to say you'd be spending close to 4500/month net assuming you didn't live in a place with an HOA. If you live in a condo with an HOA, you could easily be spending 5000 to 5500/month.
On the plus side, at least you get to deduct all that mortgage interest and property tax on your federal taxes. When you are paying 3k/month+ in interest and taxes, that's a really nice tax advantage over renting a similar property.
actually, property taxes in sf are a little over 1%, so you're looking at $10.4k/year on that $900k condo (note: on the cheap for sf). $3400 + $900 tax + $100 insurance = $4.4k, again, without any condo fees, maintenance, or utilities. So you'll net much closer to $5k than $4k. Which to my claim, means you're out $60k post tax (over $100k pre) without eating, health insurance, owning a car, or parking yet.
Yeah the economics of SF just don't work out unless you have a trust fund or your company IPOs, that's why everyone I know who wants to buy a house is moving to Austin and Portland.
IMO, housing is a partial exception. You can easily opt out of 25$ for lunch and 6$ coffee seeming normal, but wasting hours a day driving is soul crushing. That said, making 150k and having roommates is completely reasonable.
Man, if there are any other young devs reading this, please take ChuckMcM seriously. I saw this happen to my dad in the dot com crash - luckily my family had saved enough money that my parents didn't have to make many compromises to take care of my brother and I, but it's still a damn scary experience. As a 25-year-old whose just getting started in the industry (through a bootcamp, no less), it's something I think about every day.
I totally agree with this. Tech waves can come and go so quickly that you could be obsolete before you even finish building something with the popular tech stack from last month (ok, a bit of hyperbole, but it sometimes feels like new things replace the last new thing before you even know why you would need the thing in the first place).
Not only do you need to try and save as much as possible (which is really hard if you are not single and able to live with roommates), you need to be constantly learning.
Not only do you need to try and save as much as possible (which is really hard if you are not single and able to live with roommates), you need to be constantly learning.
SFO is a region and city that lives in a boom/bust cycle. It's just the nature of the beast.
If you're attracted to the boom, but don't have the wherewithal to get rich, by definition you're not the type of person who plans well.
If you're attracted to the boom, but don't have the wherewithal to get rich, by definition you're not the type of person who plans well.
I agree with everything you've pointed out, but that's not the topic to which the OP was directing his attention to and hence why I didn't address it.
Part of the fallacy of this is the implication that you need "good" engineers for most startups. I think, frankly, that many startups need a website with a google form + some excel sheets to get started and if the thing takes off they can hire someone who can use google to bang on stackoverflow.
Very few things require genuinely novel pieces of code to work. Yes, lots of value can be captured using code, but you could totally start something like airbnb with a lot of manual labor clicking in a GUI.
Djikstra said "Beware premature optimization" and that's quite true. I think automation should be used when things hurt to bad to do manually anymore. For some people, that's any task which must be performed twice and then you write a script. For others it might be years manually updating excel for bookkeeping every night. One can go real far manually updating excel...
Very few things require genuinely novel pieces of code to work. Yes, lots of value can be captured using code, but you could totally start something like airbnb with a lot of manual labor clicking in a GUI.
Djikstra said "Beware premature optimization" and that's quite true. I think automation should be used when things hurt to bad to do manually anymore. For some people, that's any task which must be performed twice and then you write a script. For others it might be years manually updating excel for bookkeeping every night. One can go real far manually updating excel...
Excellent points. In most startups it doesn't take much technology to prove (or disprove) the business model idea.
For the few startups that do experience significant growth, it's much easier to find talent (engineering and otherwise).
For the few startups that do experience significant growth, it's much easier to find talent (engineering and otherwise).
>Djikstra said "Beware premature optimization" and that's quite true.
This is why a product I was working on almost got killed. The senior engineer working on it wanted perfection before delivery. The project was already one year overdue. He suddenly came in one day and rushed me to finish up something and he wrapped up a couple things and we launched at the end of the week.
Found out that the project was going to be axed if we didn't deliver very soon.
This is why a product I was working on almost got killed. The senior engineer working on it wanted perfection before delivery. The project was already one year overdue. He suddenly came in one day and rushed me to finish up something and he wrapped up a couple things and we launched at the end of the week.
Found out that the project was going to be axed if we didn't deliver very soon.
How does a guy like that become senior? As a senior one should know that there is a pragmatic balance lost in trying to aim for perfection.
He has his strengths. He produces exceptional quality code (albeit a bit on the spaghetti side) and is good at finding problems in code. He is also 63 and has decades of experience.
It's a challenge for me to imagine "exceptional quality code" with "albeit a bit on the spaghetti side". Can you elaborate?
It covers a lot of corner cases, it is fast, it is robust, and produces good quality data. Only thing is it is hard to navigate.
These developer descriptions sound like they are coming from the "Silicon Valley" tv show.
He can use goto :)
"exceptional quality code (albeit a bit on the spaghetti side)" is an oxymoron.
An excellent point. In fact, it is stated often that ZeroCater - a YC graduate - began as an Excel spreadsheet. (http://thehustle.co/stories/zerocater/)
>I think, frankly, that many startups need a website with a google form + some excel sheets to get started and if the thing takes off they can hire someone who can use google to bang on stackoverflow.
I agree, but this is mostly true because there's so much low-hanging fruit out there. If you look at the current successful startups like Uber and Airbnb, they're really trivial applications. That doesn't mean they can't create huge amounts of value by "trivially" repackaging services and connecting people.
Once the low-hanging fruit is developed during the next 10 years or so we can finally start focusing on actual high-tech engineering startups.
I agree, but this is mostly true because there's so much low-hanging fruit out there. If you look at the current successful startups like Uber and Airbnb, they're really trivial applications. That doesn't mean they can't create huge amounts of value by "trivially" repackaging services and connecting people.
Once the low-hanging fruit is developed during the next 10 years or so we can finally start focusing on actual high-tech engineering startups.
Tens of thousands of man hours have gone into making them seem trivial, and the fact that they seem so to you is a testament to their design.
Well the fact that they've hammered on them for years doesn't mean they're not trivial, it just means they've spent a lot of time on them. And I think we've got to differentiate between the app being [non-]trivial and the infrastructure behind it supporting the massive load being [non-]trivial.
Uber and Airbnb are most definitely not trivial. Anybody who has ever worked on a remotely complex two sided marketplace project can tell you that. The UI/UX alone is incredibly hard yo nail down. The fact that they made you think that they're trivial really shows that they are doing a lot of things right.
Trivial applications require tens of thousands of man hours. Actually, a lot more to make it scale. By trivial I don't mean "it doesn't require a lot of work". Any application requires a lot of work. By "trivial" I meant that they're not creating anything significantly new technology wise, and the value they create is mostly by making existing work/services easier to use and provide.
"Soylent" is a good example. They regularly post about their elaborate IT infrastructure. Based on their sales volume, they do about two transactions a minute. One shared server could handle their transaction load. They could get a low-end hosting account from Hostgator, use one of the six shopping cart programs Hostgator supports, and lay off most of their computer staff.
(Soylent doesn't even make the stuff. That's outsourced to Jasper Products in Joplin, MO.[1])
[1] http://www.jasperproducts.com
(Soylent doesn't even make the stuff. That's outsourced to Jasper Products in Joplin, MO.[1])
[1] http://www.jasperproducts.com
StitchFix started as an Excel sheet. https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/2rjqt2/stitch_fix...
The Book-of-the-Month club operated for 75 years before they had even a website.
> This is why the free market is so great.
I feel like I should just make this my email/social media signature since I say it so often:
A perfect requires these things:
- Perfect market information
- No participant with market power to set prices
- Non intervention by governments
- No barriers to entry or exit
- Equal access to factors of production
- Profit maximization
- No externalities
The less you have those, the less efficient your market is. "Free markets" aren't these magical things that arise on their own in nature. They are carefully crafted and maintained artificial environments and most are far from efficient.
Market forces are not a silver bullet that will solve all problems if we just sit around and wait long enough for the invisible hand to do everything.
I feel like I should just make this my email/social media signature since I say it so often:
A perfect requires these things:
- Perfect market information
- No participant with market power to set prices
- Non intervention by governments
- No barriers to entry or exit
- Equal access to factors of production
- Profit maximization
- No externalities
The less you have those, the less efficient your market is. "Free markets" aren't these magical things that arise on their own in nature. They are carefully crafted and maintained artificial environments and most are far from efficient.
Market forces are not a silver bullet that will solve all problems if we just sit around and wait long enough for the invisible hand to do everything.
The reason free markets are great isn't their speed (though they are often faster than your average politician); it's the self-regulating nature of it.
You don't have to tell people to stop buying overly-expensive food, nor do you have to tell the food stores to cut their prices. Over time, they each realize that the higher price isn't working; the customer buys elsewhere (either across the street or aceoss the state), and the grocery store lowers its prices until people decide that it's worth it again.
Companies don't have to be told to improve, either, not when their competitors are improving and eating market space. At least, that's how it works in theory. A lot of industries have turned into demilitarized zones, both sides opposed but neither making a move. Telecom is the best example of how bad this gets.
Companies don't have to be told to improve, either, not when their competitors are improving and eating market space. At least, that's how it works in theory. A lot of industries have turned into demilitarized zones, both sides opposed but neither making a move. Telecom is the best example of how bad this gets.
Telcos are actually a great example of how the free market (eventually) routes around incumbents who fail to satisfy market demand.
The telcos have stalled residential broadband for decades, leaving most of the US stuck with early 2000s-level cable modems or DSL. None of them will make a move.
So what happened? https://fiber.google.com/about/
The telcos have stalled residential broadband for decades, leaving most of the US stuck with early 2000s-level cable modems or DSL. None of them will make a move.
So what happened? https://fiber.google.com/about/
I wish you were right. I'm in Fremont, a half hour from Mountain View and Google. Google Fiber's still not available.
> Companies don't have to be told to improve, either, not when their competitors are improving and eating market space. At least, that's how it works in theory. A lot of industries have turned into demilitarized zones, both sides opposed but neither making a move. Telecom is the best example of how bad this gets.
And yet even telecoms have invested huge swaths of capital to get us to 3G then LTE.
And yet even telecoms have invested huge swaths of capital to get us to 3G then LTE.
The problem is that they basically habe a nonaggression pact. You'll find either AT&T or T-Mobile in any given area; not both. This means that, if you don't like their prices or their service...well, what are you gonna do? Build your own telco?
This lack of competition leads to a sort of mini-monopoly, meaning that they basically have no reason to not jack up prices.
That is, until Google comes along and kicks them out, as another comment points out.
This lack of competition leads to a sort of mini-monopoly, meaning that they basically have no reason to not jack up prices.
That is, until Google comes along and kicks them out, as another comment points out.
[deleted]
Yeah, okay. Until you hear stories like this.....
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131012/02124724852/decad...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131012/02124724852/decad...
I'm not in the "plug my ears and yell FREE MARKETS" camp, but markets do tend to be a pretty robust solution to many problems even in the face of some imperfections. That's the key point: you never deal with a perfect world, with either markets, or some kind of government intervention.
"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." All these problems also impact non-market solutions. If fact many ARE non-market solutions to other problems.
The non-market solutions would be something like these:
1 - Price controls
2 - Government approval of business ideas
3 - Rationing non-essentials
4 - Licensing engineers
The non-market solutions would be something like these:
1 - Price controls
2 - Government approval of business ideas
3 - Rationing non-essentials
4 - Licensing engineers
> - Non intervention by governments
except to define property rights and enforce them, which is kind of significant 'intervention'.
except to define property rights and enforce them, which is kind of significant 'intervention'.
Great points. Also a "free" market in practice will always tend to lead to extremes. For example, monopolies naturally form when economic power start becoming concentrated. That's why government regulations were put in place.
Sorry, but this is a totally heartless comment.
By saying things like "Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave" you're completely overlooking the human costs and implications.
Things don't just change overnight. It's an slow, painful, eventual decline. Things shouldn't need to be pushed to a breaking point for us to make necessary changes to alleviate these problems.
By saying things like "Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave" you're completely overlooking the human costs and implications.
Things don't just change overnight. It's an slow, painful, eventual decline. Things shouldn't need to be pushed to a breaking point for us to make necessary changes to alleviate these problems.
Empirically, all historic efforts to alleviate the heartlessness of market forces with centralized planning ("us" making necessary changes) have resulted in even worse and more heartless outcomes for even more people. Talk to some Cubans, Russians, North Koreans, or East Germans about how that whole process turns out.
It's not that the free market solution is great. It's that all other possible solutions are even worse.
It's not that the free market solution is great. It's that all other possible solutions are even worse.
Wait, what are the problems?
"Everyone rides an Uber" is great for the Uber drivers. "People spend too much on organic produce" is great for the farmers. "Even bad engineers are in high demand" is great for the mediocre engineers.
Housing is a problem, but this post didn't mention it.
So before we start making changes, what are the problems in your opinion?
And, then, what changes are you proposing?
"Everyone rides an Uber" is great for the Uber drivers. "People spend too much on organic produce" is great for the farmers. "Even bad engineers are in high demand" is great for the mediocre engineers.
Housing is a problem, but this post didn't mention it.
So before we start making changes, what are the problems in your opinion?
And, then, what changes are you proposing?
Well the problem is the people who haven't been included in the tech boom and are living on salaries that can't afford those things and are being forced out of their neighborhoods. You can say it's just free markets again but there is a huge human cost.
Being forced out of their neighborhoods is a housing issue. I think I agreed that housing is a problem. I totally agree we need much, much more housing in the Bay Area. Of course reasonable people can disagree about whether rent control and restrictive zoning helps or hurts the situation for the poorest neighbors. But no one was talking about housing.
"the people who haven't been included in the tech boom" ...are living on salaries that are supported by the people who have been included in the tech boom. It's exactly their expensive offerings to the tech people that is supporting their good income, BTW!
The changes I'm proposing are actually changes to our collective values. Namely, that we shouldn't worship economics and the power of the invisible hand to the point where we think about "market correction" before the well-being of the people around us.
Rose tinted glasses much? Have you ever been to a poor area in your life?
Even mentioning Uber, organics, bad engineers and mediocre engineers ignores places like the south side of Chicago and any gradient between. It's not as pretty outside as you think it is.
Even mentioning Uber, organics, bad engineers and mediocre engineers ignores places like the south side of Chicago and any gradient between. It's not as pretty outside as you think it is.
I forgot to answer your question. Yes I've been to a poor area before.
I also forgot to apologize for mentioning Uber, organics, and engineering. You're right, but acknowledging the existence of those concepts I'm totally ignoring the South Side of Chicago.
But by bringing up Chicago, you're completely ignoring sub-Saharan Africa and Bangladesh. It's not so pretty there, either. Are you going to apologize for that?
Let's just remember that we should always mention regions of extreme poverty whenever we discuss something.
I also forgot to apologize for mentioning Uber, organics, and engineering. You're right, but acknowledging the existence of those concepts I'm totally ignoring the South Side of Chicago.
But by bringing up Chicago, you're completely ignoring sub-Saharan Africa and Bangladesh. It's not so pretty there, either. Are you going to apologize for that?
Let's just remember that we should always mention regions of extreme poverty whenever we discuss something.
Because these areas are part of the nuance that allows SF-like mentalities to exist. Ignoring that nuance ignores the larger problem on how these bubbles can happen.
I really can't make any sense of this. Is it supposed to make sense? How can something be part of a nuance? What is the nuance you're talking about? And if ignoring the nuance means ignoring the "larger problem," how is it that it is a nuance at all? Is nuance just supposed to be a word for something you don't care to explain?
To me, 'nuance' is just a word to describe "the sub-surface stuff that has no immediate and apparent effect within a local system." So, when I say "ignoring the nuance ignores the larger problem", I'm suggesting that there's a large set of problems occurs when you ignore the lon-local effects - ideologically and physically.
It's a complicated problem with many, many components. Nuance is more relevant than you think it is. Think of fractals and weather patterns.
An effect of SF: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/globalcity/ct-global-city... Why it happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight
It's a complicated problem with many, many components. Nuance is more relevant than you think it is. Think of fractals and weather patterns.
An effect of SF: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/globalcity/ct-global-city... Why it happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight
Wait I'm missing something. How does largesse in the Bay Area cause poverty elsewhere?
"We can solve all of the world's problems!" - Bay Area
"What about us?" - The world
rant.
Maybe I'm a bit naively bitter on the subject, particularly after spending some time at Chicago's opengov hack nights. Something about it got very, very turned me completely away from modern civics and its problems solving. Much of it seems to stem from the same vain as high school grads building unmaintainable schools in "primitive" cultures many miles away.
My problem isn't that Uber, SF etc exist. Individually, "fuck yeah!". As a whole, though, they take the focus away from the nuance of actual problems and create comfort for those who can afford it. The poor, the mentally sick and the fringe simply aren't accounted for to the level that they can be. Especially after walking through SF streets earlier this year. It was infuriating to see so much homelessness and prosperity of achievement condensed in the same place. Chicago and NY have nothing on how sharp that difference was (although, I admit it might be selection bias).
Many techie-type folk my age tend to complain about the large economic/social problems. Very few of them ever take action - yet they complain about inaction! If that feeling is as pervasive as it seems, then maybe the problem just might be within some nuance that's not being addressed. When skill's diverted from that nuance towards Bay-like areas and their functions, then YES, they are part of the problem. Just maybe not directly or in an intuitive way.
rant.
Maybe I'm a bit naively bitter on the subject, particularly after spending some time at Chicago's opengov hack nights. Something about it got very, very turned me completely away from modern civics and its problems solving. Much of it seems to stem from the same vain as high school grads building unmaintainable schools in "primitive" cultures many miles away.
My problem isn't that Uber, SF etc exist. Individually, "fuck yeah!". As a whole, though, they take the focus away from the nuance of actual problems and create comfort for those who can afford it. The poor, the mentally sick and the fringe simply aren't accounted for to the level that they can be. Especially after walking through SF streets earlier this year. It was infuriating to see so much homelessness and prosperity of achievement condensed in the same place. Chicago and NY have nothing on how sharp that difference was (although, I admit it might be selection bias).
Many techie-type folk my age tend to complain about the large economic/social problems. Very few of them ever take action - yet they complain about inaction! If that feeling is as pervasive as it seems, then maybe the problem just might be within some nuance that's not being addressed. When skill's diverted from that nuance towards Bay-like areas and their functions, then YES, they are part of the problem. Just maybe not directly or in an intuitive way.
acchow(1)
1) Sure, eventually.
2) Sure, eventually.
3) Sure because you are so averse to being taxed that you will deliberately destroy your own potential to get to work rather than acknowledge the idea that this could be a shared problem solveable by shared funds.
4) Sure, eventually.
So your argument is that this is really bad at the moment, but over an unspecified amount of time, 'the market' will sort it out. No worries. No need to think about things. No need to consider things. Just the market. Isn't the market great.
So your argument is that this is really bad at the moment, but over an unspecified amount of time, 'the market' will sort it out. No worries. No need to think about things. No need to consider things. Just the market. Isn't the market great.
I think he was putting it more as a natural state of things. It's not "really bad", it's how things are ought to be. Yes, think about things, consider things for your life, plan out, et cetera. He does that and he is content (although I'm not sure how much he's actually considering in his daily thought sessions, as I've encountered more ignorant content people than thoughtful content ones).
> This is why the free market is so great.
I don't disagree with the points you made. But there is nothing free market about the housing market in San Francisco.
I don't disagree with the points you made. But there is nothing free market about the housing market in San Francisco.
"But there is nothing free market about the housing market in San Francisco."
How so? There is a supply (although limited), and there is a demand. The landlords are interested to maximize their profits, but can not ask more than the market can bear.
How so? There is a supply (although limited), and there is a demand. The landlords are interested to maximize their profits, but can not ask more than the market can bear.
There would be high demand for buying land to build new homes on. Or buying land with old low-rise buildings, and replacing the buildings with higher and/or more efficient design, to provide more homes on the same piece of land.
But even if the owner would like to sell the land, and buyer would like to pay a lot of money, this is usually not allowed, for political reasons.
If let to operate more freely, free market economy would be efficient in increasing the density of homes in high-demand areas. This is very much not happening in San Francisco.
If people are willing to pay Manhattan-prices (and even more), the free market response would be to build at Manhattan-density.
But even if the owner would like to sell the land, and buyer would like to pay a lot of money, this is usually not allowed, for political reasons.
If let to operate more freely, free market economy would be efficient in increasing the density of homes in high-demand areas. This is very much not happening in San Francisco.
If people are willing to pay Manhattan-prices (and even more), the free market response would be to build at Manhattan-density.
> Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms.
That's a rather nonchalant way of saying something that will likely be a very sharp, painful transition. And when a boom-town the size of San Francisco implodes it can have a huge impact on the entire country.
That's a rather nonchalant way of saying something that will likely be a very sharp, painful transition. And when a boom-town the size of San Francisco implodes it can have a huge impact on the entire country.
I don't see any reason to assume the free market will solve those problems- the local markets are doing just fine with the rich (spoiled?) part of the population, and have little to no incentive to change; dumb startups are doing just fine as VC fodder; bad engineers are doing fantastic at making CRUD apps for startups that don't need anything fancier.
If only that were the case. Especially in the internet age, one would expect that you could work in some far off place where you can get a mansion on a huge piece of land and have a drive jusr for the amount you pay in rent in SF, yet for some reason (it's free money bubble, stupid) people, i.e., kids that drank the Tech Crunch Kool-Aid, all cram into tiny little apartments to do useless shit. Ultimately the missing element from the market is rational actors.
> Ultimately the missing element from the market is rational actors.
Love the quote :)
Love the quote :)
What about the people who have already lived there, who aren't on engineering salaries and work service positions?
I think it's fun to be flippant, but there still certain demographics that are being displaced and negatively impacted by the bubble.
I think it's fun to be flippant, but there still certain demographics that are being displaced and negatively impacted by the bubble.
Coming from a family of immigrants that had to move around to find work, it's interesting to hear about people's sense of entitlement to a certain lifestyle. Especially the expensive beachside living lifestyle. Am I wrong for not feeling sorry for them?
Disclosure. I tried living in SF. The cost of living was too high. I left. Problem solved. Ta da, no bitching required
Disclosure. I tried living in SF. The cost of living was too high. I left. Problem solved. Ta da, no bitching required
I guess I don't get your argument. Not being displaced by an economic bubble is a now a sense of entitlement?
Based on your experience you described, you weren't displaced.
Based on your experience you described, you weren't displaced.
If you feel entitled to not be displaced - then yes, that's a sense of entitlement.
I was amazed by the people who felt entitled to a lower cost of living - all while blaming IT workers for gentrifying their beautiful oasis. I would have thought they lived in SF their whole life to feel that level of angst. More like a couple years. Intermittently. While their parents pay for their art degree.
I was amazed by the people who felt entitled to a lower cost of living - all while blaming IT workers for gentrifying their beautiful oasis. I would have thought they lived in SF their whole life to feel that level of angst. More like a couple years. Intermittently. While their parents pay for their art degree.
That's very tautological of you, but I'm guessing English isn't your first language.
A sense of entitlement is an English idiom for "having too high of expectations", and typically associated with narcissism. Expecting to not be displaced from your home after 20 years is not a sense of entitlement or narcissistic.
A sense of entitlement is an English idiom for "having too high of expectations", and typically associated with narcissism. Expecting to not be displaced from your home after 20 years is not a sense of entitlement or narcissistic.
"What about the people who have already lived there, who aren't on engineering salaries and work service positions?"
I'm trying to look at it in more brighter light, so I'll say that they can sell high their place (which is wonderful thing from a market player's prospective), then offer themselves as a gift to enrich some other lucky place (which is good for many under multiple reasons). It's a win-win!
I'm trying to look at it in more brighter light, so I'll say that they can sell high their place (which is wonderful thing from a market player's prospective), then offer themselves as a gift to enrich some other lucky place (which is good for many under multiple reasons). It's a win-win!
"they can sell high their place"
It must be nice to live in a world where even the service workers own property.
Of course, but their skin tone is a few shades darker, so nobody talks or cares about them.
People would rather argue in ivory towers about abstract problems that don't exist in the real world (sexism in video games, Internet feminism, etc), rather than work on unpleasant and unsexy problems that can easily be solved.
People would rather argue in ivory towers about abstract problems that don't exist in the real world (sexism in video games, Internet feminism, etc), rather than work on unpleasant and unsexy problems that can easily be solved.
> sexism in video games, Internet feminism, etc
What's abstract or unreal about them? What's "Internet" feminism, for that matter? I'd say sexism in videogames is real... and the level of aggression in online discussions about that topic is almost asphyxiating, enough that I consider it a serious problem. Would you similarly argue that it's "unreal" to argue about sexism (or racism, or whatever -ism) in movies?
It's a shame you said this, because I'm in agreement with the rest of your post.
What's abstract or unreal about them? What's "Internet" feminism, for that matter? I'd say sexism in videogames is real... and the level of aggression in online discussions about that topic is almost asphyxiating, enough that I consider it a serious problem. Would you similarly argue that it's "unreal" to argue about sexism (or racism, or whatever -ism) in movies?
It's a shame you said this, because I'm in agreement with the rest of your post.
"When people stop taking public transportation because it's fundamentally broken (ps - it's awful in SF) then it will force government organizations to re-think their planning."
The opposite, I think. I recently started taking public transportation MORE often, because traffic on the freeways has gotten so bad.
The opposite, I think. I recently started taking public transportation MORE often, because traffic on the freeways has gotten so bad.
Your comment is valid if we lived in a totally free market. We do not.
1) Want to build a skyscrapper? Having the same housing density as Tokyo or Manhattan? No .. sorry .. think of the traffic or view or ... whatever.
2) The place you live in has become very valuable. Pay the appropriate property tax. Umm .. no .. sorry. We don't want to make live unaffordable for seniors or umm whatever.
The reality is just wealth distribution. Away from people who are young and new to the area and towards those who were here before.
1) Want to build a skyscrapper? Having the same housing density as Tokyo or Manhattan? No .. sorry .. think of the traffic or view or ... whatever.
2) The place you live in has become very valuable. Pay the appropriate property tax. Umm .. no .. sorry. We don't want to make live unaffordable for seniors or umm whatever.
The reality is just wealth distribution. Away from people who are young and new to the area and towards those who were here before.
Exactly! Although, it isn't just that assessments need to rise in tandem with values, which Prop 13 prevents, but the rates on land ought to rise dramatically which Prop 13 also prevents. And taxes ought to be eliminated for improvements.
Considering people seem to have planned their lives around the implicit expectation of the current tax structure, it isn't ridiculous for seniors on "fixed incomes" to be nervous.
But let's remember that seniors are the wealthiest age demographic, and those among them who are actually financially needy can be easily cared for while still not stifling all the hopes of young entrepreneurs.
Considering people seem to have planned their lives around the implicit expectation of the current tax structure, it isn't ridiculous for seniors on "fixed incomes" to be nervous.
But let's remember that seniors are the wealthiest age demographic, and those among them who are actually financially needy can be easily cared for while still not stifling all the hopes of young entrepreneurs.
Your points are great and all, but what about the local folks that the engineers displaced? The people who has lived in SF for decades, contributed to its wonderful culture but failed to catch on to the tech boom. After being pushed out by the high living cost you cannot just expect they will seamlessly move right back when the prices/market calibrates to normal.
Disclaimer: I don't live in SF and never would
> When people stop taking public transportation because it's fundamentally broken (ps - it's awful in SF) then it will force government organizations to re-think their planning.
I think what is much more likely is that the government will simply raise taxes to cover the shortfall and let the public transit die.
> When people stop taking public transportation because it's fundamentally broken (ps - it's awful in SF) then it will force government organizations to re-think their planning.
I think what is much more likely is that the government will simply raise taxes to cover the shortfall and let the public transit die.
"I think what is much more likely is that the government will simply [...] let the public transit die."
That kind of happened in other parts of the world (in the former socialist block). You know what happened afterwards? The significant demand for mass transportation encouraged private parties to step in. They weren't as good or as convenient compared to the former government-subsidized public one, but they solved the problem for a while.
That kind of happened in other parts of the world (in the former socialist block). You know what happened afterwards? The significant demand for mass transportation encouraged private parties to step in. They weren't as good or as convenient compared to the former government-subsidized public one, but they solved the problem for a while.
This is the archetype of magical thinking. You could just as well have said god will do those things with the amount of support you offered.
But it seems there is such an unquestioning faith in "the invisible hand" that the mere suggestion that misrembered high school economics may be an oversimplification, let alone in error, is viewed as unspeakable blasphemy.
Particularly ludicrous is:
>4. Bad engineers? Yup, I've met some of them. They'll eventually leave too when the system weeds them out.
But I'd ask the prophet of the invisible hand these questions:
Isn't the current state necessarily exactly correct given the panglossian invisble hand?
How is it other's using the same hand waving also claim the bay area economy is a permanent feature? Heretics I presume?
If the invisible hand is going to correct the situation, when will it happen? Next week? A hundred years? Or "soon, my son, soon"
But it seems there is such an unquestioning faith in "the invisible hand" that the mere suggestion that misrembered high school economics may be an oversimplification, let alone in error, is viewed as unspeakable blasphemy.
Particularly ludicrous is:
>4. Bad engineers? Yup, I've met some of them. They'll eventually leave too when the system weeds them out.
But I'd ask the prophet of the invisible hand these questions:
Isn't the current state necessarily exactly correct given the panglossian invisble hand?
How is it other's using the same hand waving also claim the bay area economy is a permanent feature? Heretics I presume?
If the invisible hand is going to correct the situation, when will it happen? Next week? A hundred years? Or "soon, my son, soon"
There is absolutely no reason for this post to be down voted. I am not sure why people are okay with "it will fix itself" -- it is an absurd position.
Considering how very non-free-market principles led to the regulation and law that made startup speculation such a hot, bubbly market, I am led to strongly question your underlying premise.
You are speaking of a free market that is highly theoretical, because there is no such "free market" in today's economy, no matter where you live. However, free market theory suggests that a situation such as SF is not possible under a free market.
San Francisco has a great deal of political might, which explains a lot of the founding contexts allowing it to survive in the way it does. Add the fact that employees cannot be held to an non-compete agreement, and you have a bunch of engineers stepping over one another to chase the next six month gig as the number of ridiculous startup options balloons to a totally unsustainable size.
You are speaking of a free market that is highly theoretical, because there is no such "free market" in today's economy, no matter where you live. However, free market theory suggests that a situation such as SF is not possible under a free market.
San Francisco has a great deal of political might, which explains a lot of the founding contexts allowing it to survive in the way it does. Add the fact that employees cannot be held to an non-compete agreement, and you have a bunch of engineers stepping over one another to chase the next six month gig as the number of ridiculous startup options balloons to a totally unsustainable size.
This is why the free market is so great.
Intractability issues of Nash equilibria aside, if that's your take on an article ostensibly about sustained market disequilibria, then I don't think you fully understand what a 'free market' is supposed to entail.
Intractability issues of Nash equilibria aside, if that's your take on an article ostensibly about sustained market disequilibria, then I don't think you fully understand what a 'free market' is supposed to entail.
Such a simple answer for a problem that is vastly more complex. Here's 2 simple ideas for you:
1. Some people can have more freedom than other people.
2. In a free market, rich people have more freedom than everyone else.
A free market is not truly free. Although this concept is frighteningly obvious it is incredibly hard to articulate. You are essentially telling people to get the fuck out of San Francisco because they're not rich enough.
1. Some people can have more freedom than other people.
2. In a free market, rich people have more freedom than everyone else.
A free market is not truly free. Although this concept is frighteningly obvious it is incredibly hard to articulate. You are essentially telling people to get the fuck out of San Francisco because they're not rich enough.
>> Speak with your wallets, not with your mouths.
Careful. Money=speech is a touchy subject. It implies that those with less money are somehow less important. That may be true from a libertarian absolute free market standpoint, but cities are not liberated markets. They are nests of overlapping interests and entrenched power brokers. Not everyone is free to move at the drop of a hat, nor should we expect them to bounce around chasing their market niche. We should respect that people want to live in community year after year without being forced out, or in, due to market fluctuations. There is value in establishing roots in a community beyond the financial.
Careful. Money=speech is a touchy subject. It implies that those with less money are somehow less important. That may be true from a libertarian absolute free market standpoint, but cities are not liberated markets. They are nests of overlapping interests and entrenched power brokers. Not everyone is free to move at the drop of a hat, nor should we expect them to bounce around chasing their market niche. We should respect that people want to live in community year after year without being forced out, or in, due to market fluctuations. There is value in establishing roots in a community beyond the financial.
Your examples are why the market is seriously flawed here.
Why does it take so long for the market to correct and why does the market allow such huge variance from normal?
I think the answer is obvious, people get acclimated to their environment very quickly and lose the ability to see systemic problems.
Therefore it seems the market will tend towards local minimum. Similar to how evolution works. It doesn't handle gross changes without a lot of pain.
Why does it take so long for the market to correct and why does the market allow such huge variance from normal?
I think the answer is obvious, people get acclimated to their environment very quickly and lose the ability to see systemic problems.
Therefore it seems the market will tend towards local minimum. Similar to how evolution works. It doesn't handle gross changes without a lot of pain.
I agree with everything you said but this:
> then it will force government organizations to re-think their planning.
Made me lol. As if any Government has ever changed it's offerings based on the market. They'll just keep paying public workers absurd wages to continue to suck because status quo is way more important than customer satisfaction when it comes to public entities.
> then it will force government organizations to re-think their planning.
Made me lol. As if any Government has ever changed it's offerings based on the market. They'll just keep paying public workers absurd wages to continue to suck because status quo is way more important than customer satisfaction when it comes to public entities.
Ever? Your bias is showing.
http://www.twincities.com/2015/12/31/mark-dayton-wants-100-m...
http://www.twincities.com/2015/12/31/mark-dayton-wants-100-m...
How does a politician wanting money to start a service defeat my point in any way? He's not fighting a status quo, he's adding a new service which is extremely sexy for a politician to do, especially in the leadup to an election. Not to mention he isn't actually doing anything yet, he's demanding funding to do something, which is also way easier to do then actually doing it.
A Government entity has no competition, or if they do (like the USPS for example) they can rely on subsidies from the Government and run at a total loss if they need to. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, but if you have a worker who knows their performance is tied to their ability to deliver a product and another worker who knows they're pay is coming whether the customers are happy or not, one of those is going to be motivated to make sure customers are happy and the other one is not, and they will act accordingly.
A Government entity has no competition, or if they do (like the USPS for example) they can rely on subsidies from the Government and run at a total loss if they need to. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, but if you have a worker who knows their performance is tied to their ability to deliver a product and another worker who knows they're pay is coming whether the customers are happy or not, one of those is going to be motivated to make sure customers are happy and the other one is not, and they will act accordingly.
>1. Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms.
What do free markets and San Francisco NIMBYism have to do with each-other?
What do free markets and San Francisco NIMBYism have to do with each-other?
What an extreme simplification and absurd push-under-the-rug statements.
I'm glad we could stand by free-market narratives while we waste untold amounts of capital on nothing.
I'm glad we could stand by free-market narratives while we waste untold amounts of capital on nothing.
I don't know if SF public transportation is awful . . . try living in Detroit.
Don't get offended. People are free to speak with their mouths.
The free market is great if you're wealthy... yes
Free market? Last I heard the money supply was decided by a few people in New York.
"Engineers are particularly spoiled. They can take an arbitrary sabbatical from work..." <---> (on the about page) "...Currently a principal engineer at AppNexus on sabbatical..." ???
I'm very hypocritical.
Yea no kidding.
"AppNexus helps brands connect with consumers, empowering agencies and advertisers with a uniquely powerful approach to programmatic online advertising."
Thanks for working on Ad Tech, the very thing that powers this bubble by trading attention as a commodity. Other people work on silly startups, but this shit is akin to HFT.
"AppNexus helps brands connect with consumers, empowering agencies and advertisers with a uniquely powerful approach to programmatic online advertising."
Thanks for working on Ad Tech, the very thing that powers this bubble by trading attention as a commodity. Other people work on silly startups, but this shit is akin to HFT.
Unless microtransactions for content take off, and they haven't, ad tech is necessary to incentivize content on the web. 90% of the websites you read could not exist without the ecosystem that appnexus is a big player in. Hacker News, being one big ad for ycombinator, doesn't need to bother.
So he's doing a real thing that provides real value to the web. And it's actually a sustainable business, to boot.
Lastly, there's absolutely no need to get so personal -- if his article offended you, discuss the article.
So he's doing a real thing that provides real value to the web. And it's actually a sustainable business, to boot.
Lastly, there's absolutely no need to get so personal -- if his article offended you, discuss the article.
See, whether a startup is silly or not is an opinion. I happen to have an opinion that adtech is evil. Whether it has a side benefit like allowing "content" to exist is tangential.
I usually keep that opinion to myself because it's not a popular one, but in this particular subthread we are not discussing the article, we are discussing the author who volunteered his "I am very hypocritical" comment.
Elsewhere in this comment thread I discuss the article.
I usually keep that opinion to myself because it's not a popular one, but in this particular subthread we are not discussing the article, we are discussing the author who volunteered his "I am very hypocritical" comment.
Elsewhere in this comment thread I discuss the article.
I don't get it - are you arguing that because you think your opinion is unpopular it's okay to be facetious?
No, I am stating the following (maybe unclearly):
1) In a thread where the author shows up and says "I am very hypocritical", standard rules like "discuss the article, not the author" do not apply. The author is fair game for discussion.
2) I don't usually crap on other peoples' industries, but not in this case, because (1).
1) In a thread where the author shows up and says "I am very hypocritical", standard rules like "discuss the article, not the author" do not apply. The author is fair game for discussion.
2) I don't usually crap on other peoples' industries, but not in this case, because (1).
"90% of the websites you read could not exist without the ecosystem that appnexus is a big player in."
That's ok. The internet would be better off without most junk websites, and the ones I like, I'm willing to pay for.
That's ok. The internet would be better off without most junk websites, and the ones I like, I'm willing to pay for.
Funnily enough, a big side effect of the ad tech's evolution over the last 10 years is that junk websites tend to get junk ads with junk CPM and quality websites get the higher-value stuff.
You don't need to incentivize content on the web. People's interests and need for collaberation and sharing should incentivize content on the web.
We're in enough of a media bubble already - there's so much media and so few trusted sources that its impossible to filter content anymore. Ads inject themselves after people's ability to filter burn out like a virus. Its not good for society.
We're in enough of a media bubble already - there's so much media and so few trusted sources that its impossible to filter content anymore. Ads inject themselves after people's ability to filter burn out like a virus. Its not good for society.
We like to call out politicians and such for who sponsors them. What's wrong with calling out our information sources in the same way? (serious question)
You know, this might be the year when microtransactions for content actually take off.
We would be ok without 90% of websites. Too much redundancy and junk content.
I could do without 90% of those websites, i suppose
Interestingly, this bubble is not powered by ads. Only one of the top 25 "unicorns" worldwide, Snapchat, is ad-based. The others provide a good or service paid for directly by their customers.
[1] http://fortune.com/unicorns/
[1] http://fortune.com/unicorns/
Advertising is a necessary part of selling a product. Selling a product is a necessary part of being profitable. Why hate on that? Way better than waste-my-time Farmville or an enhanced "like" button. Adtech actually helps commerce.
Many products succeed with zero advertising.
[deleted]
To be fair... he's not working... he's on sabbatical :)
Ignoring the hypocritical nature of this statement, I take offense in this generalization in particular.
If you're an engineer with a family here in SV, you cannot take a sabbatical. In most cases you need to get a job in a week or the rent will drive you to bankruptcy.
If you're an engineer with a family here in SV, you cannot take a sabbatical. In most cases you need to get a job in a week or the rent will drive you to bankruptcy.
You probably shouldn't be living in SV if the rent is so expensive that if you lose your job then you go homeless in a month.
[deleted]
Oh come on with the hyperbole, if you didn't spend so much money on a nice area and expensive stuff you could afford it easily.
I don't get people who are so smart and yet simultaneously so stupid that they think spending $100,000 a year is normal.
Wake up, you're rich, you're just too stupid to realize you could be living at a much cheaper level.
I don't get people who are so smart and yet simultaneously so stupid that they think spending $100,000 a year is normal.
Wake up, you're rich, you're just too stupid to realize you could be living at a much cheaper level.
Based on when you joined HN, I think it is safe to conclude that you have been here long enough to know the high signal-to-noise ratio that the community strives for here. I think that there are more eloquent and meaningful ways to express your opinion and disagree [1][2].
Just a friendly reminder:
1. There is another human being on the other side of the conversation.
2. Practice compassion when responding.
----
[1] http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham's_Hierarchy_o...
Just a friendly reminder:
1. There is another human being on the other side of the conversation.
2. Practice compassion when responding.
----
[1] http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham's_Hierarchy_o...
Hey, you know that the vast majority of businesses are not very friendly to remote work, and moving away from these areas frequently means a pay cut or sometimes inability to find work?
I'm not defending this at all, as I think it's stupid, but they are not "rich". They are frankly just less screwed than other middle class folks.
I'm not defending this at all, as I think it's stupid, but they are not "rich". They are frankly just less screwed than other middle class folks.
The median household income in the US is $51,939 (2013).
You seriously think having double or probably triple from just one salary isn't rich?
And where exactly are all your caterers and cleaners and gardeners and nannies and baristas and tavern workers and shop people living and buying their food with their minimum wage in the bay area? Obviously they aren't remote working.
Perspective is a bitch.
You seriously think having double or probably triple from just one salary isn't rich?
And where exactly are all your caterers and cleaners and gardeners and nannies and baristas and tavern workers and shop people living and buying their food with their minimum wage in the bay area? Obviously they aren't remote working.
Perspective is a bitch.
SF has the highest CPI and rent index in the entire U.S., so comparing it with median salary of the U.S. is non-sequitur.
...Especially when talking about perspective.
...Especially when talking about perspective.
>You seriously think having double or probably triple from just one salary isn't rich?
First of all, cost of living varies widely from locality to locality. Making 90k a year in middle of nowhere Idaho or some other piece of flyover country is totally different than making 150k in an urban area like NYC or SF.
Saying: "welp, it's your fault your cost of living is so high, you should move 2 hours away to Sacramento, stupid" is not only incredibly naive, but borders on a level of ignorance that I haven't seen in quite some time.
First of all, cost of living varies widely from locality to locality. Making 90k a year in middle of nowhere Idaho or some other piece of flyover country is totally different than making 150k in an urban area like NYC or SF.
Saying: "welp, it's your fault your cost of living is so high, you should move 2 hours away to Sacramento, stupid" is not only incredibly naive, but borders on a level of ignorance that I haven't seen in quite some time.
Just your regular self-aware engineer.
There is nothing hypocritical about acknowledging one's self is spoiled.
There is nothing hypocritical about acknowledging one's self is spoiled.
The combination of a cultural bloodthirst for hypocrisy, as well as the human intelligent capacity for abstraction and pattern matching guarantees that anyone can, and probably will, end up being labeled a hypocrite.
Takes one to know one. ;)
Ah, there's my morning coffee spit take. I've been online for a few hours already; it was late today.
Ad hominem
The author complains about that behavior, labeling it a sign of how 'spoiled' engineers are. The author also engages in this behavior. Pointing this out, and labelling it hypocrisy, does not constitute an ad hominem attack. Because what the author has done is the definition of hypocrisy.
It depends on the implication of the allegation of hypocrisy. Is it intended to discredit the author or his argument? Then it's a tu quoque fallacy.
Yeah but hypocrisy doesn't take away from the point the author is making. Something can be true and also be ad hominem.
It's actually the exact definition of ad hominem tu quoque.
Money has been close to free for years. As the interest rate ticks up everything will change. It's already starting to. More expensive borrowing, less leverage, and better places to put dollars than venture.
The one thing I really agree with though is the funny thing that happens here with the word "engineer". If you can make a website you somehow qualify for the title software engineer. By Bay Area standards, I myself am director level engineering talent—and I get offers for such all the time—and yet I don't even remotely consider myself an engineer. Because I can make a website? Because I know a little python, ruby and node? Come on. I've never written anything that lives in a real production environment and you want to hire me as your director of engineering? Are you mad?
The one thing I really agree with though is the funny thing that happens here with the word "engineer". If you can make a website you somehow qualify for the title software engineer. By Bay Area standards, I myself am director level engineering talent—and I get offers for such all the time—and yet I don't even remotely consider myself an engineer. Because I can make a website? Because I know a little python, ruby and node? Come on. I've never written anything that lives in a real production environment and you want to hire me as your director of engineering? Are you mad?
> [...] and yet I don't even remotely consider myself an engineer.
I phone screened somebody not so long ago who asked me if it was the "kind of job where you have to write a lot of code", because they "weren't that sort of software engineer". Didn't quite know what to make of that.
I phone screened somebody not so long ago who asked me if it was the "kind of job where you have to write a lot of code", because they "weren't that sort of software engineer". Didn't quite know what to make of that.
That person might be perfect for my job. I've been largely reading mountains of code that other people have written, until I understand what it does, and then make (usually small) changes in order to either fix a defect or add functionality.
I don't love it. Maybe the person you screened should be doing my job.
I don't love it. Maybe the person you screened should be doing my job.
It could be an awful way of saying he prefers maintenance to new development.
Maybe he was an IT person who doesn't know what IT is called.
Some of the funnest jobs are when you delete lots of code.
It's the dotcom stuff all over again. I remember interviewing some guy who wanted to be my VP of engineering.
Have you ever fired anyone? "Nope"
Have you ever shipped a product and supported it for more than a year? "Nope"
Do you have any quality engineers that would come with you? "Nope"
Have you ever managed a manager? "Nope"
I noped his ass out the door.
Fear not, this craziness will pass.
Have you ever fired anyone? "Nope"
Have you ever shipped a product and supported it for more than a year? "Nope"
Do you have any quality engineers that would come with you? "Nope"
Have you ever managed a manager? "Nope"
I noped his ass out the door.
Fear not, this craziness will pass.
You can thank companies giving out VP or Director titles to their first technical hires for that.
At my last company, my boss was the first technical hire. His title was Director of Software Engineering. He got that title and the responsibilities that came with it solely because he was the first technical hire.
He had no management experience at all. He was a great engineer, but he couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag. He had the double whammy of both not knowing a thing about process and not understanding people. He didn't think having a process was necessary because his own code was amazing, he wrote the initial versions of our software all by himself in what actually is a solid example of a well-engineered project, and he couldn't fathom how anyone's code could be less than amazing. He also couldn't handle stress, and he had a habit of screaming at his subordinates and treating us like children whenever he got stressed.
His management was the biggest reason I quit.
At my last company, my boss was the first technical hire. His title was Director of Software Engineering. He got that title and the responsibilities that came with it solely because he was the first technical hire.
He had no management experience at all. He was a great engineer, but he couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag. He had the double whammy of both not knowing a thing about process and not understanding people. He didn't think having a process was necessary because his own code was amazing, he wrote the initial versions of our software all by himself in what actually is a solid example of a well-engineered project, and he couldn't fathom how anyone's code could be less than amazing. He also couldn't handle stress, and he had a habit of screaming at his subordinates and treating us like children whenever he got stressed.
His management was the biggest reason I quit.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
I think engineers/developers/hackers tend to undervalue the skills necessary to manage a project well. Basically considering the work a lot easier than writing code or building something and thinking that anyone can do it (including themselves in your example).
I think the reason for this is because a lot of people can do a shitty job managing a team and it's not as obvious as when people do a shitty job programming (or at least there are more people that can be a bad manager undetected than can be a bad programmer).
It's harder to bullshit technical skills, but a bad manager could have good enough social/political skills to get power and it's probably also more likely to attract people looking for power. Engineering seems to provide a filter to avoid some of this naturally.
That said being a really effective PM, Manager, VP is a skill different from programming and with a similar depth that shouldn't be dismissed easily. This is more obvious to HN probably because startup founders often have to get better at it in order to build a company. Since it tends to rely a decent amount on empathy and social skills in addition to being able to understand the technical pieces/prioritization it's also harder to know how good you'll be at it when starting.
It is something you can get better at though, just takes investment/learning like anything else.
Reminds me of Tom West from Soul of a New Machine.
I think engineers/developers/hackers tend to undervalue the skills necessary to manage a project well. Basically considering the work a lot easier than writing code or building something and thinking that anyone can do it (including themselves in your example).
I think the reason for this is because a lot of people can do a shitty job managing a team and it's not as obvious as when people do a shitty job programming (or at least there are more people that can be a bad manager undetected than can be a bad programmer).
It's harder to bullshit technical skills, but a bad manager could have good enough social/political skills to get power and it's probably also more likely to attract people looking for power. Engineering seems to provide a filter to avoid some of this naturally.
That said being a really effective PM, Manager, VP is a skill different from programming and with a similar depth that shouldn't be dismissed easily. This is more obvious to HN probably because startup founders often have to get better at it in order to build a company. Since it tends to rely a decent amount on empathy and social skills in addition to being able to understand the technical pieces/prioritization it's also harder to know how good you'll be at it when starting.
It is something you can get better at though, just takes investment/learning like anything else.
Reminds me of Tom West from Soul of a New Machine.
I wish there was a popular Rate my Manager site like Rate My Professor. Or companies at least took the time to poll people anonymously about their managers and took action against it. Managers make or break your experience at work.
In my experience, once you are in management it takes a hell of a lot more fuck-ups before you are ousted.
In my experience, once you are in management it takes a hell of a lot more fuck-ups before you are ousted.
What does any of that have to do with 'dotcom stuff' or bubbles? People apply to jobs they're unqualified for in every field all the time.
> apply
Because they got the job.
Because they got the job.
Again, this is not startup/bubble-specific. There are unqualified people all over the place.
Did you eventually find this perfect candidate that ticked all your checkboxes? Or are you still "looking".....?
In Canada, you get sued if you call yourself an engineer when you're not part of an order of engineers.
Even if you're a bona fide engineer, but not enrolled in the order, calling yourself one opens the floodgates of hell where spaghetti coders do the same and get hired by retarded HR departments to take the lead on some mission-critical software.
I like this. I am a self-learned developer. When my peers call themselves engineers, I spit my coffee.
Even if you're a bona fide engineer, but not enrolled in the order, calling yourself one opens the floodgates of hell where spaghetti coders do the same and get hired by retarded HR departments to take the lead on some mission-critical software.
I like this. I am a self-learned developer. When my peers call themselves engineers, I spit my coffee.
> In Canada, you get sued if you call yourself an engineer when you're not part of an order of engineers.
Ehhhh. If you try to stamp and sign structural engineering documents as an engineer, and then a bridge collapses, you're open to litigation. I don't think anyone has been (successfully?) sued for declaring themeselves as Software Engineers in Canada. There are no damages.
Interestingly, you can call yourself an "SE," and its fine (according the professional engineering associations), but companies in YVR actively recruit "software engineers" (e.g. Electronic Arts)
Ehhhh. If you try to stamp and sign structural engineering documents as an engineer, and then a bridge collapses, you're open to litigation. I don't think anyone has been (successfully?) sued for declaring themeselves as Software Engineers in Canada. There are no damages.
Interestingly, you can call yourself an "SE," and its fine (according the professional engineering associations), but companies in YVR actively recruit "software engineers" (e.g. Electronic Arts)
I wish it were a protected word in the states, maybe an Engineering association sitting over it. Would help with things like H1B flooding
Many jurisdictions in the US have protected titles such as "professional engineer" or "licensed engineer." IEEE's position is that "engineer" is an available title for people who have graduated with a degree from an ABET or EAC accredited engineering program and the legally protected titles should remain protected.
As an experienced Canadian developer who is seeking a work visa to work in the US, it is actually extremely difficult to get one.
It seems as though the US prioritizes shit-developers/wannabe-engineers over experienced Canadian developers. Which kind of makes sense, in that you feed your own before feeding your neighbour.
So I really doubt that H1B flooding is a thing. Open to debate though.
It seems as though the US prioritizes shit-developers/wannabe-engineers over experienced Canadian developers. Which kind of makes sense, in that you feed your own before feeding your neighbour.
So I really doubt that H1B flooding is a thing. Open to debate though.
It's difficult for people like you specifically because of the H1B flooding.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/us/large-companies-game-h-...
"Many of the visas are given out through a lottery, and a small number of giant global outsourcing companies had flooded the system with applications, significantly increasing their chances of success. While he had one application in last year’s lottery and lost, one of the outsourcing companies applied for at least 14,000."
A quick fix would be to award H1B based on salary instead of lottery.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/us/large-companies-game-h-...
"Many of the visas are given out through a lottery, and a small number of giant global outsourcing companies had flooded the system with applications, significantly increasing their chances of success. While he had one application in last year’s lottery and lost, one of the outsourcing companies applied for at least 14,000."
A quick fix would be to award H1B based on salary instead of lottery.
Yes that makes sense. I stand corrected. Thanks for the info!
The first part of your statement doesn't really agree with your last.
On paper, it's the same in the US. In practice, no one cares, and you see the title "Front end engineer" for "guy who tweaks the CSS until the site looks right" and "UX engineer" for "guy who makes pictures of what the product should look like in Photoshop".
I do cringe, though, at the extreme overuse of the term in software; I have two parents who are legit PEs in the US and drilled the distinction in with me.
At the very least, it should be reserved for someone with a broad theoretical and practical background who solves more complicated problems ... but you know how title inflation goes.
I do cringe, though, at the extreme overuse of the term in software; I have two parents who are legit PEs in the US and drilled the distinction in with me.
At the very least, it should be reserved for someone with a broad theoretical and practical background who solves more complicated problems ... but you know how title inflation goes.
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Here in states 23 year old fresh graduates list themselves as "software engineers" on linkedin so they can demand 'senior' level salaries.
We do it because it works...
We do it because it works...
Interest rates aren't going to tick up. The Fed isn't going to raise rates, they're going to cut and launch a new round of QE. That's not even a debate at this point, it's blatantly obvious. Will that end at some point with another asset crash? Maybe, however it's not going to happen soon. The Fed will print your brains out first to support stocks and real-estate. They have a lot of room to abuse the dollar from where it's at today.
If I was a betting man, I'd side with you on this one in that low interest rates may be a permanent fixture until the Fed has pushed to the extreme and the system can bend no further.
Can you elaborate on why you think it's "blatantly obvious" though? I can't make any of these types of guesses with high confidence.
Can you elaborate on why you think it's "blatantly obvious" though? I can't make any of these types of guesses with high confidence.
If you have an engineering degree from an accredited program, you're an engineer. If you don't you're not. The US is very lax with usage of the word but in other countries it's classed in the same way "Doctor" is.
The funny thing being, most of the best "software engineers" are people without software engineering degrees. Because the practice has existed longer than the degree has.
That's not the reason. If that were the reason, death would swiftly make it so the best engineers are those with degrees.
The reason is because they learned out of innate curiosity and true passion. You always go farther with those.
However, you go even farther with curiosity, passion and a degree.
The reason is because they learned out of innate curiosity and true passion. You always go farther with those.
However, you go even farther with curiosity, passion and a degree.
I guess that the vast majority of "software engineers" of any kind (not just the best) don't have software engineering degrees. Maybe you were thinking computer science degrees?
I would even go so far as to say that you are not an engineer until you are a PE. This is coming from a "Software Engineer".
US is very lax with words, in general.
The latest is data scientist or even scientist in general. People have realised that marketing and charisma will get them most of the way so they bs and reap the rewards. Sad but true.
> I've never written anything that lives in a real production environment
You've never maintained a production app and you're getting offers as director of engineering?
You've never maintained a production app and you're getting offers as director of engineering?
A good friend (and ex boss) is a VP of engineering at a very large publicly traded "ex-startup" he has no engineering background outside of what he's picked up managing engineering teams (and I've seen him hack around every so often). At the Director or VP level in many companies managing engineers doesn't always mean you're actually an engineer, and in fact you may not want your best engineers in those roles.
I would've thought having technical experience and the ability to get your hands dirty would be a requirement of being VP of Engineering (or similar). Two things that immediately come to mind is the ability to make competent technical decisions and estimate required time/resources required. Strong engineering/technical background is a requirement for the two. How do you even get into this leadership role without having the foundation?
I completely agree that you may not want your best engineers in this role because interfacing with and leading people is a completely separate skill, but I would still think any competent exec with a technical title will have some technical experience.
I completely agree that you may not want your best engineers in this role because interfacing with and leading people is a completely separate skill, but I would still think any competent exec with a technical title will have some technical experience.
Constantly. At least one a month. It's as strange to me as it is to you.
What's worse, the people interviewing me know even less than I do. The patchwork of bullshit runs deep in San Francisco.
What's worse, the people interviewing me know even less than I do. The patchwork of bullshit runs deep in San Francisco.
I have written code full-time for the past 7 years and been an engineer for the past 13, but have never maintained a "production app". There are large numbers of software engineers operating in fields where there is no such concept.
What is that exactly? I'm really curious. Presumably the code you write gets used by someone, right?
Tangent but: I doubt the rate raise will stick. They'll probably have to cut it again. I see a "planet Japan" scenario in which global central banks are zero-bound for decades, if not "forever". Rapid growth is over. There are no more frontiers and birth rates are stabilizing. From an ecological point of view the stabilization of birth rates is good, but it basically breaks all the economic assumptions of the past 250+ years. A heavily leveraged credit economy does not work without fairly rapid growth, and until the economy is fundamentally restructured toward something built for a more steady-state mode of operation we'll have to hack it by constantly printing money to prevent deflationary collapse.
The only thing that might change this is something like the opening of the final frontier-- space. But in that case I'm not sure if it would... distances between say Earth and Mars are so vast that any Martian economy would effectively be a separate entity. It might experience rapid growth but I'm not sure if that would translate over here. The Homeworld might still be like Japan-- a zero-bound no-growth economy.
I suppose an AI explosion that wasn't destructive might change things too by creating a lot of new non-corporeal economic entities, but we're well off into sci-fi land here.
Edit: I don't necessarily mean that all forms of "growth" are over. We could still have tremendous growth in knowledge, technological capability, standard of living, and some amount of economic growth. But heavily leveraged inflationary credit economics requires crazy exponential growth in an absolute sense. Without crazy growth it breaks, and the only way to keep it nominally running is to pump money into it to prevent cascading default.
In a sense I think the "pop Austrians" are right that the present system is broken, but they've historically had the failure mode exactly wrong. The failure mode is not hyperinflation-- it's hyperdeflation that's permanently held at bay by money printing ("Japan"). That's because pop Austrians don't get the money multiplier. Almost all money in circulation is credit/debt, not M1. You'd have to print absurd amounts of money and make sure it's distributed more widely than banks to cause a non-localized hyperinflation in a credit economy. (Localized hyperinflation is possible due to bubbles but these usually collapse.)
Of course another way of keeping the illusion alive is to pump up localized credit bubbles repeatedly. These give the illusion to certain sectors or regions that the economy is still growing the way it should... for a while. But then they pop and you need another round of money printing to prevent hyperdeflation. Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile these bubbles distort the price structure of the economy, such as by making housing ridiculous or driving certain commodities crazy.
The only thing that might change this is something like the opening of the final frontier-- space. But in that case I'm not sure if it would... distances between say Earth and Mars are so vast that any Martian economy would effectively be a separate entity. It might experience rapid growth but I'm not sure if that would translate over here. The Homeworld might still be like Japan-- a zero-bound no-growth economy.
I suppose an AI explosion that wasn't destructive might change things too by creating a lot of new non-corporeal economic entities, but we're well off into sci-fi land here.
Edit: I don't necessarily mean that all forms of "growth" are over. We could still have tremendous growth in knowledge, technological capability, standard of living, and some amount of economic growth. But heavily leveraged inflationary credit economics requires crazy exponential growth in an absolute sense. Without crazy growth it breaks, and the only way to keep it nominally running is to pump money into it to prevent cascading default.
In a sense I think the "pop Austrians" are right that the present system is broken, but they've historically had the failure mode exactly wrong. The failure mode is not hyperinflation-- it's hyperdeflation that's permanently held at bay by money printing ("Japan"). That's because pop Austrians don't get the money multiplier. Almost all money in circulation is credit/debt, not M1. You'd have to print absurd amounts of money and make sure it's distributed more widely than banks to cause a non-localized hyperinflation in a credit economy. (Localized hyperinflation is possible due to bubbles but these usually collapse.)
Of course another way of keeping the illusion alive is to pump up localized credit bubbles repeatedly. These give the illusion to certain sectors or regions that the economy is still growing the way it should... for a while. But then they pop and you need another round of money printing to prevent hyperdeflation. Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile these bubbles distort the price structure of the economy, such as by making housing ridiculous or driving certain commodities crazy.
> Tangent but: I doubt the rate raise will stick. They'll probably have to cut it again. I see a "planet Japan" scenario in which global central banks are zero-bound for decades, if not "forever". Rapid growth is over.
Agreed nominal interest rates will likely drop down again to zero to restimulate the economy, but I doubt that will stick for the next decade, as inflation should creep back in forcing the Fed's hand. However, if you believe that "real interest rates" (ie subtracting inflation) will be zero for a long time, I can concur -- currently they are negative.
Agreed nominal interest rates will likely drop down again to zero to restimulate the economy, but I doubt that will stick for the next decade, as inflation should creep back in forcing the Fed's hand. However, if you believe that "real interest rates" (ie subtracting inflation) will be zero for a long time, I can concur -- currently they are negative.
"Zero-bound" means "at or near zero." Inflation is easy to kill in today's world: just raise interest rates a little tiny bit for a short period of time and the deflationary downdraft will snuff any little inflationary ticks upward. But they'll be forced to drop rates again quickly or we'll fall back into deflation. The instant they raise rates the debt defaults and asset price collapses will start.
Earth is now Japan. Perhaps Mars is the next America.
Earth is now Japan. Perhaps Mars is the next America.
Earth is not Japan yet. We still have China and India...
China is facing a demographic cliff similar to what happened to Japan after the 80s boom. India and Africa could experience growth for a while but they have major problems, chief among them very deep structural corruption at all levels of society. Even if they can overcome this they will eventually face the same demographic cliff as China today and Japan in the 90s.
0/Near 0 interest is the end-game of fractional reserve banking. Consider the alternative: Rates climb back to 20%. You (and everyone else borrowing) now need to somehow collect an additional 20% (ignoring compounding and early payments) money each year. 1) that's not going to happen unless massive amounts of money are borrowed by lots of people 2) that money must move fast enough (and be continually reborrowed) to make it out to everyone who has an upcoming (very large) interest payment.
The banks are a serious drain on the system. They get to extract percentages from the economy year over year, while contributing nothing (except interest obligations).
The banks are a serious drain on the system. They get to extract percentages from the economy year over year, while contributing nothing (except interest obligations).
Do you see a potential solution?
Some type of "normalization" process can probably be used successfully for a while, but more seriously: I think we need to track dependencies; as in, the full supply chain.
Then, perhaps, we try to figure out how to engineer solutions that will guarantee certain certain conditions will be met (e.g. Enough food for every person in an area will make it to that area for everyone there to live satisfactorily).
As the dependencies are mapped out and tracked, it will become obvious which tasks are necessary to fulfill the current economic objectives. Then, it's simply a matter of performing the tasks.
Then, perhaps, we try to figure out how to engineer solutions that will guarantee certain certain conditions will be met (e.g. Enough food for every person in an area will make it to that area for everyone there to live satisfactorily).
As the dependencies are mapped out and tracked, it will become obvious which tasks are necessary to fulfill the current economic objectives. Then, it's simply a matter of performing the tasks.
Rapid growth doesn't need more economic entities (whether natural or AI), it just needs more production. Rapid increases in productivity with a steady state population suffices to achieve that.
I appreciate this tangent. There's a lot in here, and well reasoned. slowclap
interest rates are nosediving around the globe as i type. euribor a year out is -.33% BID. us rates are going LOWER.
> Everything is too expensive. I’m from New York...
I take issue with this one. It's entirely possible to live frugally while living IN San Francisco. I moved here about 7 months ago and expected it to be incredibly expensive but it hasn't been the case (beyond rent).
The author mentions $15 crappy local IPAs but I've actually never found a beer for this price. There is no shortage of $7 craft beers you can buy at a brewery or bar, no shortage of Trader Joe's with the same prices as, say, Charlottesville VA.
I've found that other than rent, the prices are comparable to other places. If you get a salad delivered on postmates or uber eats or something then that's what you're paying for. That isn't SF.
I think a lot of people are living a lifestyle where they have no problem paying for stuff like a delivered salad when they can walk next door, or uber instead of taking the bus, but lots of people are walking and grocery shopping and not paying those prices.
I take issue with this one. It's entirely possible to live frugally while living IN San Francisco. I moved here about 7 months ago and expected it to be incredibly expensive but it hasn't been the case (beyond rent).
The author mentions $15 crappy local IPAs but I've actually never found a beer for this price. There is no shortage of $7 craft beers you can buy at a brewery or bar, no shortage of Trader Joe's with the same prices as, say, Charlottesville VA.
I've found that other than rent, the prices are comparable to other places. If you get a salad delivered on postmates or uber eats or something then that's what you're paying for. That isn't SF.
I think a lot of people are living a lifestyle where they have no problem paying for stuff like a delivered salad when they can walk next door, or uber instead of taking the bus, but lots of people are walking and grocery shopping and not paying those prices.
Compared to NY, he's wrong.
Compared to most other places, even other metro areas, he's very right :)
Prices in SF are definitely 2x-3x what I have paid anywhere else.
In fact, every time i visit, say, chicago, or atlanta, i'm strongly reminded of this fact.
Can you find quality places in SF where that's not true? I'm sure. But on average, it's definitely the case that it's significantly more expensive here.
You can compare the CPI as well: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
Groceries should not be 40% more expensive in SF :)
Prices in SF are definitely 2x-3x what I have paid anywhere else.
In fact, every time i visit, say, chicago, or atlanta, i'm strongly reminded of this fact.
Can you find quality places in SF where that's not true? I'm sure. But on average, it's definitely the case that it's significantly more expensive here.
You can compare the CPI as well: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
Groceries should not be 40% more expensive in SF :)
$7 beer? Frugal? In Berlin a beer costs $1 from the shop and maybe $2-3 from a bar.
I think his point was that you CAN buy a $7 beer in a bar, but you can also buy a $1 beer at a grocery store like Trader Joes. So $7 is the high end here, not the "frugal" option.
Years ago, I met a French woman who had decided to take up residence in Berlin. She told me that the city's unofficial motto was "poor but sexy".
I believe it may even have made it into official marketing campaigns since then. Berlin is gentrifying fast though. The Neukölln neighbourhood is unrecognisable to the place I moved to 4 years ago.
You'll pay $7 for a 20oz point of something nice at a bar.
You can buy 6 packs of good craft beer for $7/$8 at any grocery store.
You can buy 6 packs of good craft beer for $7/$8 at any grocery store.
Grocery store prices are not adjusted to local rental rates?
I don't see why not, they have to pay rent too.
That was my question. $7-8 for 6 pack of beer seems exceptionally good value for a city like SF.
Im thinkning of moving to München, this might be another reason too. A Heiniken 33cl beer in Stockholm costs around 12 USD if you are at a nightclub, otherwise around 10 USD.
> otherwise around 10 USD
wat? it's 1.5$ actually
http://www.systembolaget.se/dryck/ol/heineken-153603
wat? it's 1.5$ actually
http://www.systembolaget.se/dryck/ol/heineken-153603
Sorry, I meant at a pub or a bar.
Munich is much more expensive across the board.
Compared to Portland, $7 a beer is actually pretty expensive. Not as crazy as the mythical $15, but for a local craft beer it should be more like $5-6. But that could all just be taxes.
(and we do have $7-12 beers, they're just known to be extra fancy or aged)
(and we do have $7-12 beers, they're just known to be extra fancy or aged)
I've heard that Portland COL prices are climbing sharply due to people moving in. Is that true?
What do people normally count in cost of living? Utilities and services are fine, and groceries are easy to find reasonably priced. Transportation is fine.
So I think as others have mentioned, rent and house prices are the things climbing sharply. I know someone paying $900 for a room in a 3 person house, in a really great part of town (Division, for locals). I've heard studios go for well over $1000, and fill up fast. But really, you don't have to look very hard to find something cheap(er). Surrounding areas (with new access to light rail that goes down town) are reasonable.
I don't think it's really as bad as some people make it out to be, but it definitely is getting more expensive in town. I mean, that's the nature of the housing market recovery :)
So I think as others have mentioned, rent and house prices are the things climbing sharply. I know someone paying $900 for a room in a 3 person house, in a really great part of town (Division, for locals). I've heard studios go for well over $1000, and fill up fast. But really, you don't have to look very hard to find something cheap(er). Surrounding areas (with new access to light rail that goes down town) are reasonable.
I don't think it's really as bad as some people make it out to be, but it definitely is getting more expensive in town. I mean, that's the nature of the housing market recovery :)
Vocal minority.
Overall Portland is still relatively cheap. The only thing getting out of control is rent and house purchasing (because of the serious lack of inventory), but the entire nation is seeing this so it's not specific to Portland.
Overall Portland is still relatively cheap. The only thing getting out of control is rent and house purchasing (because of the serious lack of inventory), but the entire nation is seeing this so it's not specific to Portland.
True of rent, for sure. The rest is fairly stable.
$7 for craft beer FROM the brewery is madness. $3-$5 is typical here in Portland and we have some of the best beer in the world.
Do you have kids? It's expensive for families..
I agree - I'm yet to find a $15 IPA! If anything, I'd say that rightly or wrongly the prices are very comparable to that of New York. I often spend more on food when I visit New York but admittedly I'd be taking the opportunity to go to a popular restaurant or bar rather than trying to find a convenience store etc. I can only anticipate the same thing would happen if I lived in NY and were visiting here.
Agree,
I'm visiting from Australia and its maybe 10% to 30% more expensive, and alcohol is cheaper. Nothing like what we paid for stuff in new york.
I'm visiting from Australia and its maybe 10% to 30% more expensive, and alcohol is cheaper. Nothing like what we paid for stuff in new york.
Rent is expensive, but I pay 6-8$ for a good craft beer and ~12 for a nice bowl of pho for lunch. I dont even know where you could go to buy 14$ beer? Some hotel sky bar or a nightclub?
Can we stop the whole "engineers make a lot of money" spiel? Most engineers make between 120 - 160k in SF, where the median household income is 104k. They don't make more than product managers, project managers or even many BART operators. See http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area if you don't believe me. Sure, they make a bit more than average, but if that's the standard of "a lot of money", you have a totally skewed view of how capitalism works and the wealth gap in the US. Very few engineers are members of the capitalist class, commonly referred to as the 1% that own 40% of the country's assets. Making 50% more than the median is not a lot. Making 500% more is a lot.
Yeah, this is kind of aggravating. I'm not an engineer, but I know many, and anyone who thinks they are all just living the high life is crazy. With the cost of living they are no doubt faring better than many traditional working class folks, or service industry folks, but let's be real--they aren't just idle rich bathing in tubs of caviar.
In fact, while they might be able to purchase a home still, it often times will be quite a bit smaller, more run down, and in a worse neighborhood due to the sheer cost of buying one. And often times they are only buying out of desperation because they don't want to be forced out of the area entirely due to rents beyond their control.
In fact, while they might be able to purchase a home still, it often times will be quite a bit smaller, more run down, and in a worse neighborhood due to the sheer cost of buying one. And often times they are only buying out of desperation because they don't want to be forced out of the area entirely due to rents beyond their control.
I think a lot of engineers make more money then the value they provide. Last year I worked for 3 different places. I worked at one startup, and one large company on a new product in a new market. Both products were purely speculative plays They did make money, but not enough to support the staff. My pay was not based on how much value I provided, but how much value I could have provided if the products took off (they didn't, thus the 3rd job).
All i'm saying is you should look at other markets that have been propped up by speculation... and see what happens when the market corrects. Most of the time they over-correct before finding a new better more stable price.
All i'm saying is you should look at other markets that have been propped up by speculation... and see what happens when the market corrects. Most of the time they over-correct before finding a new better more stable price.
Your pay was based on how much value you provided plus a risk premium for working on something highly speculative that would cause you to work at 3 different places in a year and take a hit on your résumé.
You have to understand risk in order to understand that you were not overpaid.
You have to understand risk in order to understand that you were not overpaid.
"They can take an arbitrary sabbatical from work, they cannot be told no or reprimanded, and they make so much money that they can just take random breaks from employment to chill."
I have yet to hear a convincing argument why this is a bad thing.
I have yet to hear a convincing argument why this is a bad thing.
The guy sounds pretty bitter, to be honest.
Bad news if his life is as grey as his type....
Honestly?
It isn't sustainable and its not a productive use of capital.
This lifestyle is going to implode when the economy stumbles.
It isn't sustainable and its not a productive use of capital.
This lifestyle is going to implode when the economy stumbles.
Yea, no.
JM Keynes said eons ago that with increases in efficiency we will eventually be able to get to a 15-hour work week. So, a particular industry in a particular area was able to get to an approximation of that, and the counter-argument is that this is not a productive use of capital?
Besides, TFA complains that all these people are working on silly startups, which is presumably not a productive use of capital either. You can't have it both ways.
JM Keynes said eons ago that with increases in efficiency we will eventually be able to get to a 15-hour work week. So, a particular industry in a particular area was able to get to an approximation of that, and the counter-argument is that this is not a productive use of capital?
Besides, TFA complains that all these people are working on silly startups, which is presumably not a productive use of capital either. You can't have it both ways.
> a particular industry in a particular area was able to get to an approximation of that
On the backs of whom? How much are those Uber drivers, grocery deliverers, and artisanal salad chefs making?
It is good that one group of people is moving forward, we just have to be careful that we aren't doing it at the expense of other groups. The impression I get is that in the US today, it's not just that some people are getting richer, many others are getting poorer.
On the backs of whom? How much are those Uber drivers, grocery deliverers, and artisanal salad chefs making?
It is good that one group of people is moving forward, we just have to be careful that we aren't doing it at the expense of other groups. The impression I get is that in the US today, it's not just that some people are getting richer, many others are getting poorer.
I'm confused. At least in this subthread we are discussing just the sabbatical part here, not the general economic inequality. Are you saying that someone who has enough money to take a sabbatical is doing it on the backs of uber drivers and grocery deliverers?
> On the backs of whom?
I don't believe there is such a law of economics.
I don't believe there is such a law of economics.
Seriously, most tech startups are not bringing a bump in productivity, but are a mere pixel moving money waste for VCs, who don't really care if about the 9 failures if 1 startup pays off massively. The problem is that VC's don't even care about profitability anymore, they only care about being bought-off by next stage VCs. So all the money actually comes from 1 ad supported startup which became profitable and the losses for all the others were written off.
Most countries outside the US manage just fine with decent statutory leave.
What are you measuring in terms of productivity?
The employee certainly improves their value in terms of skills acquired during a sabbatical. The employee also gains significantly in terms of value of life experiences when they take time to travel, support kids, etc.
Certainly there are unproductive poor team players who dissapear whenever trouble happens but we shouldn't set our policies based on this minority.
The employee certainly improves their value in terms of skills acquired during a sabbatical. The employee also gains significantly in terms of value of life experiences when they take time to travel, support kids, etc.
Certainly there are unproductive poor team players who dissapear whenever trouble happens but we shouldn't set our policies based on this minority.
"There are thousands of dumb startups" This.
Most of the blame is cast on the big companies (Twitter, Facebook etc) but the reality is that there are hundreds of smaller companies choosing SF and the valley in general.
And again I say, until companies allow people to work from wherever this will be fueled more.
Finding talent is getting ever more difficult already, if you expand your search area to the entire country/world there's a better chance you'd find people no?
Most of the blame is cast on the big companies (Twitter, Facebook etc) but the reality is that there are hundreds of smaller companies choosing SF and the valley in general.
And again I say, until companies allow people to work from wherever this will be fueled more.
Finding talent is getting ever more difficult already, if you expand your search area to the entire country/world there's a better chance you'd find people no?
"There are thousands of dumb startups"
This is a feature not a bug. The whole VC model the Bay Area thrives on is based on the premise of hitting on only a small percentage of successful startups and you never know what's going to be a hit. Many successful startups have pivoted out of "stupid" ideas. I'm sure at one point "Blogging 140 characters at a time" was considered a stupid idea.
This is a feature not a bug. The whole VC model the Bay Area thrives on is based on the premise of hitting on only a small percentage of successful startups and you never know what's going to be a hit. Many successful startups have pivoted out of "stupid" ideas. I'm sure at one point "Blogging 140 characters at a time" was considered a stupid idea.
"Blogging 140 characters at a time" was considered a stupid idea.
I struggle with this all the time
I try to put myself in the shoes of VCs hearing AirBNB, Uber, Twitter and other pitches. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't give them money. (and then, I would post on HN saying "How I missed AirBNB. Including email threads with the founders and beating myself up).
This is indeed the premise of VCs but even with that in mind, some startups being funded are just ridiculous.
I struggle with this all the time
I try to put myself in the shoes of VCs hearing AirBNB, Uber, Twitter and other pitches. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't give them money. (and then, I would post on HN saying "How I missed AirBNB. Including email threads with the founders and beating myself up).
This is indeed the premise of VCs but even with that in mind, some startups being funded are just ridiculous.
It's worth remembering that at the time it wasn't "blogging 140 characters at a time" it was "SMS blogging" which is a much easier idea to pitch in that the use case is more obvious (being on the go) and the character limit isn't arbitrary.
Tell you what, hard engineering problems are never not a hit. But nobody cares, because they require so much money and so much hard work... Same with bio-engineering, and whatnot.
No, let's just make yet another app which brings insignificant incremental deveopment to calendar viewing apps.
Be serious.
No, let's just make yet another app which brings insignificant incremental deveopment to calendar viewing apps.
Be serious.
They don't need talent. They need mindless drones to work from 10am to 9pm in cramped co-working spaces. There is nothing interesting or challenging about the "problems" these startups are "solving".
Exactly. Read my latest post - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10976903. I hate the culture/environment of co-working spaces. I don't understand why people are so opposed to working from home, they automatically assume everyone is a child that can't manage themselves. Now I have to waste YEARS of my life getting to an office.
I like SV and do wish it would spread around more. But it does seem like companies aren't considered a startup anymore unless you are paying some of the highest rents in the country in SF. Something doesn't compute, high rent is not the best decision for early stage companies except in SV, unless there is some other angle like maybe you own the building/real estate. Maybe in the end lots of VC is real-estate plays parallel to product development.
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I have to say that I didn't really understand the perspective the writer was coming from. It kind of felt like he just wanted to finger wag at SF.
> Everything is too expensive.
Just normal supply and demand economics. This happens all the time all over the world when lots of high earning people suddenly move to an area.
> There are thousands of dumb startups.
Yup. And most of them will die. And some of them will become AirBnB. The problem is, it's extremely difficult to predict which is which. That's just the nature of searching for "the next big thing". I'd rather live in a world where there are lots of dumb companies so that the few exceptional ones have a chance to get started.
> People are spoiled.
No, people in SF value their time, as it's the only resource you can't get more of. I absolutely understand why someone with the money would have groceries deliver for them. It's more efficient. The locally sourced and organic thing does feel a bit silly though, although I would say that's a fad you see everywhere.
> There cannot be these many quality engineers.
I'm sure there are some bad engineers there. But SF has a massive pool for exceptional talent, and while I'm sure not every engineer is extremely high quality, I have no doubt that a substantial amount of top tier programmers are in SF. If the majority of programmers weren't making meaningful contributions to their companies, I don't think you would see them being compensated the way they are.
> Everything is too expensive.
Just normal supply and demand economics. This happens all the time all over the world when lots of high earning people suddenly move to an area.
> There are thousands of dumb startups.
Yup. And most of them will die. And some of them will become AirBnB. The problem is, it's extremely difficult to predict which is which. That's just the nature of searching for "the next big thing". I'd rather live in a world where there are lots of dumb companies so that the few exceptional ones have a chance to get started.
> People are spoiled.
No, people in SF value their time, as it's the only resource you can't get more of. I absolutely understand why someone with the money would have groceries deliver for them. It's more efficient. The locally sourced and organic thing does feel a bit silly though, although I would say that's a fad you see everywhere.
> There cannot be these many quality engineers.
I'm sure there are some bad engineers there. But SF has a massive pool for exceptional talent, and while I'm sure not every engineer is extremely high quality, I have no doubt that a substantial amount of top tier programmers are in SF. If the majority of programmers weren't making meaningful contributions to their companies, I don't think you would see them being compensated the way they are.
>> I absolutely understand why someone with the money would have groceries deliver for them.
There is s difference between lazy, spoiled and pretentious. Rich people have existed for a very long time. Few have ever had groceries delivered. The hire personal shoppers, housekeepers, chefs, maids to buy their food. This getting groceries delivered is a passing fad, an affectation for people looking to cultivate an image of themselves. Having more money than time is nothing new.
There is s difference between lazy, spoiled and pretentious. Rich people have existed for a very long time. Few have ever had groceries delivered. The hire personal shoppers, housekeepers, chefs, maids to buy their food. This getting groceries delivered is a passing fad, an affectation for people looking to cultivate an image of themselves. Having more money than time is nothing new.
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tldr: Guy comes to SF, figures it all out in a weekend, sees things that I've never seen living here like 'dozens of co-working facilities in 10 blocks'. Here's my take: The concentration of wealth here still pales to NYC area, Google, Apple, Facebook alone are giant money funnels from the whole world into this area, and there are more funnels being built every day. Not saying it will or should go up in a straight line, but personally I'd bet on the trend.
No, it was a three day period in the middle of the week.
Well that's plenty of time to make sweeping generalizations. Carry on.
Sweeping and evidently spot on as well. Carry on!
A couple quick notes from a longtime (20 year) San Franciscan:
Everything is too expensive
Things are expensive, yes, but more so in neighborhoods with high concentrations of new residents, namely SOMA and most of the Mission. You can get an IPA at nearly any of the bars in my neighborhood for $4, and coffee for $2.
There are thousands of dumb startups
I agree 100%. I've had the (figurative) banana hammock recruiter call me, too, and it's shocking to me how many people are repeating the mistakes of the 90's boom.
People are spoiled
Don't confuse a small yet vocal minority with the City as a whole. There are still plenty of starving artists, passionate musicians and dedicated activists; they just live in different neighborhoods than they did 5 or 10 years ago.
There cannot be these many quality engineers
Again, I agree 100%. During the 90's dotcom boom I worked with a web developer who literally didn't know how to write HTML; all his code was copied from other parts of the project. It's not surprising that it's happening again this time around, but as mbesto wrote, they'll eventually leave too when the system weeds them out.
All in all, most of these are things long-time San Franciscans dislike about our city, too. What's left to be seen is whether or not enough of the people who made San Francisco a desirable place to live can afford to live here once the tech market cools off.
Everything is too expensive
Things are expensive, yes, but more so in neighborhoods with high concentrations of new residents, namely SOMA and most of the Mission. You can get an IPA at nearly any of the bars in my neighborhood for $4, and coffee for $2.
There are thousands of dumb startups
I agree 100%. I've had the (figurative) banana hammock recruiter call me, too, and it's shocking to me how many people are repeating the mistakes of the 90's boom.
People are spoiled
Don't confuse a small yet vocal minority with the City as a whole. There are still plenty of starving artists, passionate musicians and dedicated activists; they just live in different neighborhoods than they did 5 or 10 years ago.
There cannot be these many quality engineers
Again, I agree 100%. During the 90's dotcom boom I worked with a web developer who literally didn't know how to write HTML; all his code was copied from other parts of the project. It's not surprising that it's happening again this time around, but as mbesto wrote, they'll eventually leave too when the system weeds them out.
All in all, most of these are things long-time San Franciscans dislike about our city, too. What's left to be seen is whether or not enough of the people who made San Francisco a desirable place to live can afford to live here once the tech market cools off.
This is probably the worst item I've ever seen rise to #1 on Hacker News. It's poorly written, is based completely on a weekend worth of anecdotes and makes several claims that seem impossible ($15 IPAs).
Re: There cannot be these many quality engineers.
I've seen grads come out of boot camps that are better programmers than people who have been programming for years. They might lack the knowledge, but they've got good sense and hustle, and at the end of the day, I'd take that over a stubborn engineer who looks like they're gonna age into a Dilbert comic.
I've seen grads come out of boot camps that are better programmers than people who have been programming for years. They might lack the knowledge, but they've got good sense and hustle, and at the end of the day, I'd take that over a stubborn engineer who looks like they're gonna age into a Dilbert comic.
I mean, if I am developing an app for millions of users - I would hope there is at least 1 engineer on the team that understands O(n) vs O(n^2).
If the app is for 10 users or for the other 75% of employees, may be less important...
If the app is for 10 users or for the other 75% of employees, may be less important...
I taught at a bootcamp for a while and always covered big O. It's pretty important for interviewing. Bootcamp kids know more CS than you might think...
It sounds like prep school for interview exam
Not withstanding everything else, I've lived in this town for years, and always found it easy to find a reasonably priced beer.
Yup. It's still shockingly easy to find good beer at a reasonable price in the SFBA. Same for food if you know where to go.
The only thing that's really hard to avoid spending way too much money on is housing.
The only thing that's really hard to avoid spending way too much money on is housing.
> The only thing that's really hard to avoid spending way too much money on is housing.
Live in a van down by the river, or a cargo truck in a Google parking lot.
Live in a van down by the river, or a cargo truck in a Google parking lot.
TruckBNB
Next billion dollar startup
Next billion dollar startup
> The only thing that's really hard to avoid spending way too much money on is housing.
And people shouldn't discount that.
Here in suburban Dallas, I'm paying $1220 (soon to go up to $1270) per month for a 1513 sq. ft. townhouse that I have entirely to myself. And my commute isn't bad because most of the tech companies here are also in the suburbs (the Telecom Corridor in Richardson).
Good luck finding anything like that in SF.
I'm a very private person, and I like having a lot of space to myself. The idea of having a roommate or living in a small apartment (especially in an urban environment) makes me physically ill. I'd never be able to live there.
And people shouldn't discount that.
Here in suburban Dallas, I'm paying $1220 (soon to go up to $1270) per month for a 1513 sq. ft. townhouse that I have entirely to myself. And my commute isn't bad because most of the tech companies here are also in the suburbs (the Telecom Corridor in Richardson).
Good luck finding anything like that in SF.
I'm a very private person, and I like having a lot of space to myself. The idea of having a roommate or living in a small apartment (especially in an urban environment) makes me physically ill. I'd never be able to live there.
You're probably right. I was being a bit excessive with the beer comment, I just found it funny that I never recognized anything on tap. I'm also not really an IPA guy =/
Kind of a weird swipe at bootcamps comparing them to devry. The top bootcamps produce junior engineers better than the average undergrad with more work experience (although in a different field such as mechanical engineering or accounting). Many have STEM degrees from places like Berkeley, Stanford, UMich, UW, UCLA, Harvard, etc. I'd prefer to have their weirdness to the vanilla CS undergrad anyday, and their unique perspectives add meaningful contributions to a team.
The only guy I've ever worked with whom I knew to have trained at DeVry was a great sysadmin.
We have been hearing and reading similarly titled articles for the last couple years. This, however, is the most stupid one in my opinion.
What the author describe is a lavish (according to him) standard of living, judged startups to be dumb by their name/description (but they got investor money). He concludes that we are in a bubble.
Here are the metrics that matter:
* Are current startups generating enough money to pay salaries.
* Are current startups raising enough funds to make ends meet.
* Are there new startups funded.
* Is the number of exits/IPOs higher to create new millionaires.
* Is the number of failed startups higher to create new unemployed engineers and free capacity.
If someone is interested to know these numbers, maybe finance me for a couple months of research and get the right facts.
What the author describe is a lavish (according to him) standard of living, judged startups to be dumb by their name/description (but they got investor money). He concludes that we are in a bubble.
Here are the metrics that matter:
* Are current startups generating enough money to pay salaries.
* Are current startups raising enough funds to make ends meet.
* Are there new startups funded.
* Is the number of exits/IPOs higher to create new millionaires.
* Is the number of failed startups higher to create new unemployed engineers and free capacity.
If someone is interested to know these numbers, maybe finance me for a couple months of research and get the right facts.
I think you forgot another important metric:
* Are the startups that are hiring taking up enough of the talent compared to large established companies with billions in the bank such that if there were a bubble, and it were to pop, it would actually make an impact on the hiring environment.
I'd love to see some hard data on the % of people employed by the "startup ecosystem" vs. large established giants like Google, FB, Apple, Adobe, MS, Amazon, etc. These companies have MASSIVE hiring needs and will likely continue to for some time. Should interest rates cause lots of startups to die, I have a hard time believing it would result in a similar situation to the last dotcom bust. Salaries might be depressed for a while, but these giants would still be fighting each other to swoop up the talent.
I'd seriously love to see some hard data on how much of an economic impact it would have in the Bay Area housing market and the public markets in general if all of the funded startups were to go poof overnight. My current bet is "not much in the scope of things."
* Are the startups that are hiring taking up enough of the talent compared to large established companies with billions in the bank such that if there were a bubble, and it were to pop, it would actually make an impact on the hiring environment.
I'd love to see some hard data on the % of people employed by the "startup ecosystem" vs. large established giants like Google, FB, Apple, Adobe, MS, Amazon, etc. These companies have MASSIVE hiring needs and will likely continue to for some time. Should interest rates cause lots of startups to die, I have a hard time believing it would result in a similar situation to the last dotcom bust. Salaries might be depressed for a while, but these giants would still be fighting each other to swoop up the talent.
I'd seriously love to see some hard data on how much of an economic impact it would have in the Bay Area housing market and the public markets in general if all of the funded startups were to go poof overnight. My current bet is "not much in the scope of things."
Hiring is definitely a good indicator of the bubble bursting because hiring indicates that startups are getting funding and they turn around and hire people. When the funding dries up, these same startups tighten the belt, the hiring drops and then the layoffs start.
A good indicator of a bubble in SF/SV startups is measuring the IT job market using local Craiglist and Dice job postings since startups heavily use them.
I used both websites on & off since the late 90s to find contract & permanent full-time jobs. Back then at the height of the dot-coms, the Dice home page showed 120,000+ jobs, right after the crash (2001-2003) that number fell to around 20,000-30,000. Now it's around 80,000.
On Craigslist, at the dot com height, the Software section for the Bay Area (https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof) had so many job postings per day that the list of postings for that day would spill over to the next page (there are 100 listings per page). A year & a half ago (late 2014) there was a good amount of postings and I got a frenzy of replies when I contacted them. Now, there's only a handful of postings per day.
A good indicator of a bubble in SF/SV startups is measuring the IT job market using local Craiglist and Dice job postings since startups heavily use them.
I used both websites on & off since the late 90s to find contract & permanent full-time jobs. Back then at the height of the dot-coms, the Dice home page showed 120,000+ jobs, right after the crash (2001-2003) that number fell to around 20,000-30,000. Now it's around 80,000.
On Craigslist, at the dot com height, the Software section for the Bay Area (https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof) had so many job postings per day that the list of postings for that day would spill over to the next page (there are 100 listings per page). A year & a half ago (late 2014) there was a good amount of postings and I got a frenzy of replies when I contacted them. Now, there's only a handful of postings per day.
I guess I'm making a clear distinction between "startup" (ie. no clear business model or path to profitability yet) vs. "established tech giant."
The latter has such massive hiring needs in comparison that even if funding dried up (which they do not need since they have lots of profit and are already oftentimes publicly traded), I don't think it would slow down the market THAT much.
The latter has such massive hiring needs in comparison that even if funding dried up (which they do not need since they have lots of profit and are already oftentimes publicly traded), I don't think it would slow down the market THAT much.
Tech giants do have funding in the form of CapEx. Like Apple throwing money into their 'Apple Car' project or Twitter doing the same into building new features. These tech giants have these semi-independent projects that have that 'startup' feel. Google has many of these, including their self-driving car team.
When these tech giants have layoffs - usually in the 100s or 1000s - it's a big hit to the job market. May not be reflected on Craigslist or Dice, but there'll be a lot more job-seekers. Instead of getting 50 resumes per job posting, hiring managers would be getting hundreds.
When these tech giants have layoffs - usually in the 100s or 1000s - it's a big hit to the job market. May not be reflected on Craigslist or Dice, but there'll be a lot more job-seekers. Instead of getting 50 resumes per job posting, hiring managers would be getting hundreds.
Yahoo and AOL aren't hiring these days.
"To big too fail" isn't a thing.
"To big too fail" isn't a thing.
> Yahoo and AOL aren't hiring these days
If I may ask..how do you know this? And can you provide some detail?
Bottom line is - hiring (or lack of) is a leading indicator of a company's financial health. A company that doesn't have any open jobs for a sustained length of time (3-6 months to a year) is in belt tightening mode - which comes right before layoffs or worse, closing shop.
Btw - Yahoo is already doing layoffs or 'downsizing'. If Yahoo wasn't hiring during the past 3-6 months, that definitely was an indicator of this.
Yahoo Downsizes In Latin America, Closes Mexico And Argentina Operations http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/28/yahoo-downsizes-in-latin-am...
Here are some news sites that track layoffs. I recommend keeping a close eye on things.
http://techcrunch.com/tag/layoffs/
https://twitter.com/search?q=layoff%20OR%20layoffs%20OR%20%2...
Or better yet, keep an eye on the Dice jobs number which is prominently displayed on the Dice.com home page.
As of today, January 29, 2016 that number is 84,201. My take is that if this number goes below 60,000 then the bubble is bursting.
Bottom line is - hiring (or lack of) is a leading indicator of a company's financial health. A company that doesn't have any open jobs for a sustained length of time (3-6 months to a year) is in belt tightening mode - which comes right before layoffs or worse, closing shop.
Btw - Yahoo is already doing layoffs or 'downsizing'. If Yahoo wasn't hiring during the past 3-6 months, that definitely was an indicator of this.
Yahoo Downsizes In Latin America, Closes Mexico And Argentina Operations http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/28/yahoo-downsizes-in-latin-am...
Here are some news sites that track layoffs. I recommend keeping a close eye on things.
http://techcrunch.com/tag/layoffs/
https://twitter.com/search?q=layoff%20OR%20layoffs%20OR%20%2...
Or better yet, keep an eye on the Dice jobs number which is prominently displayed on the Dice.com home page.
As of today, January 29, 2016 that number is 84,201. My take is that if this number goes below 60,000 then the bubble is bursting.
Looks like this week is "Maybe Startups Aren't Inherently Great" week on Hacker News. :p
That being said, the number of startups in San Francisco is fine as long as there is corrective balance. At the least, startups which are failing will die faster due to rent alone.
That being said, the number of startups in San Francisco is fine as long as there is corrective balance. At the least, startups which are failing will die faster due to rent alone.
Valid point. Maybe rent is a control factor. Otherwise they'd just hang on forever.
It's a gold rush. Nothing new. Fun to watch once you have the context to understand what is happening.
Except in a gold rush everyone is trying to get a piece of a real, actual resource.
What are folks flocking to? A unique combination of deep VC pockets and gullibility that can only be found in the SF geological record?
No, this looks more like a regular ol bubble to me... The flywheel is spinning up, driven by run of the mill irrational exuberance and a belief that everyone in the bay area is just smarter than everyone else. Anyone on wall street in 2007 should find that eerily familiar...
What are folks flocking to? A unique combination of deep VC pockets and gullibility that can only be found in the SF geological record?
No, this looks more like a regular ol bubble to me... The flywheel is spinning up, driven by run of the mill irrational exuberance and a belief that everyone in the bay area is just smarter than everyone else. Anyone on wall street in 2007 should find that eerily familiar...
Gold isn't particularly real, as resources go. It doesn't have that many practical uses.
That's what makes gold rush economics similar to bubble economics: Everyone decides to chase after a nebulous source of value.
San Francisco has always been the Gold Rush City.
That's what makes gold rush economics similar to bubble economics: Everyone decides to chase after a nebulous source of value.
San Francisco has always been the Gold Rush City.
[deleted]
I can see where this guy is coming from. Though he's obviously exaggerating things by a mile.
SF is pretty ridiculous in a lot of ways. But I would take an SF as ridiculous as if everything he said were exactly true over one where there weren't any truth to it. Through all that froth does come actual creativity and innovation. The banana hammock delivery disrupters will fizzle in due time. The people who got inspired by all the energy and potential and decided to build a VR product that revolutionizes medicine will survive. I'd rather see a lot of false positives than risk a couple of false negatives. And besides, it makes for an endless supply of entertaining stories for people aren't from here.
SF is pretty ridiculous in a lot of ways. But I would take an SF as ridiculous as if everything he said were exactly true over one where there weren't any truth to it. Through all that froth does come actual creativity and innovation. The banana hammock delivery disrupters will fizzle in due time. The people who got inspired by all the energy and potential and decided to build a VR product that revolutionizes medicine will survive. I'd rather see a lot of false positives than risk a couple of false negatives. And besides, it makes for an endless supply of entertaining stories for people aren't from here.
I've never lived in SF, but I've talked to companies out there over the years. Then I look at a cost of living calculator and rent prices and quickly write it off.
The place sounds like a magnet for talent, no doubt. But the flip side of that is, everyone going to SF leaves other locations talent-starved and willing to be very accommodating.
The place sounds like a magnet for talent, no doubt. But the flip side of that is, everyone going to SF leaves other locations talent-starved and willing to be very accommodating.
The guy makes some good points, and there does seem to be a lot of questionable startups, but it's not like they're tapping into public funds. Somewhere, somehow, some angel investor thought that it was a good team and a good idea and they were happy to part with their money. It's better that we live in a more optimistic world than one where every crazy idea is a bad idea.
However, how is taking Uber to work every day 'spoiled'? I bet the guys owns a car where he is from and spends significantly more on monthly transportation than I do. For $4 more than a bus, I get point to point pick up and drop off, and save about 40 minutes of my time (which I can use to go work out in the mornings).
And some others have figured out that it makes sense to spend $20 on grocery delivery rather than spending 90 minutes doing it yourself if you're working 60-80 hours per week and make more than $20/hour. To be sure, a lot of people work long and hard. They make certain sacrifices but just because they are not the same sacrifices that the author would make it doesn't mean they're bad.
However, how is taking Uber to work every day 'spoiled'? I bet the guys owns a car where he is from and spends significantly more on monthly transportation than I do. For $4 more than a bus, I get point to point pick up and drop off, and save about 40 minutes of my time (which I can use to go work out in the mornings).
And some others have figured out that it makes sense to spend $20 on grocery delivery rather than spending 90 minutes doing it yourself if you're working 60-80 hours per week and make more than $20/hour. To be sure, a lot of people work long and hard. They make certain sacrifices but just because they are not the same sacrifices that the author would make it doesn't mean they're bad.
> For $4 more than a bus
Depending on where you live, Uber/Lyft can be a lot more expensive than a bus.
In Dallas, a monthly public transport pass costs $80. This comes with unlimited uses of the buses and trains for an entire month. Let's say you work twenty days (four weeks) a month, with a trip each way. That amortizes to $2 a trip, less if you also use your pass for personal trips on weekends.
Lyft costs me about $11 on average to get me between home and work. If I were to take Lyft to and from work every day for a month, again assuming twenty working days a month, I'd be paying about $440 a month. That's not $4 more; it's $9 more. That's 5.5 times how much I'd be paying for public transport. Again, that's not counting using it for personal trips on weekends (here, the minimum is $5.70, including the trust & safety fee).
If Uber/Lyft is only $4 more than a bus in SF, then buses are way expensive there.
Depending on where you live, Uber/Lyft can be a lot more expensive than a bus.
In Dallas, a monthly public transport pass costs $80. This comes with unlimited uses of the buses and trains for an entire month. Let's say you work twenty days (four weeks) a month, with a trip each way. That amortizes to $2 a trip, less if you also use your pass for personal trips on weekends.
Lyft costs me about $11 on average to get me between home and work. If I were to take Lyft to and from work every day for a month, again assuming twenty working days a month, I'd be paying about $440 a month. That's not $4 more; it's $9 more. That's 5.5 times how much I'd be paying for public transport. Again, that's not counting using it for personal trips on weekends (here, the minimum is $5.70, including the trust & safety fee).
If Uber/Lyft is only $4 more than a bus in SF, then buses are way expensive there.
Agreed that it definitely depends on where you live. I don't, but could, take an Uber/Lyft for my commute everyday and it would cost about $5-$7, whereas a ride on SF public transit would take $2.25 and + 10-20 extra minutes.
Lyft Line (the thing where you share with other people) is capped at $6 within a decent size swath of SF. Muni is $2.25 and Bart is $1.95 for within the same general area. I think that's where the $4 came from.
In Austrian business cycle theory, this phenomenon is known as malinvestment, see https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Malinvestment, there are some historical bubble examples there.
The general idea, as I understand it, is that if someone invests and makes a ton of money, then other investors come in trying to do something similar to make a lot of money too, only what they are investing in is no good. But all the money creates a temporary illusion of an economic boom, which is what has been happening in the S.F. Bay area for some time now.
I'm old enough to remember the .com bust quite well. At the time the "irrational exuberance" (as Greenspan/Shiller dubbed it) made perfect sense, and the ideas were fundamentally sound, the problem was that investors did not understand that it would take another 10-15 years to get to ubiquitous Internet, and the impatient ones got burned when the bubble burst.
The general idea, as I understand it, is that if someone invests and makes a ton of money, then other investors come in trying to do something similar to make a lot of money too, only what they are investing in is no good. But all the money creates a temporary illusion of an economic boom, which is what has been happening in the S.F. Bay area for some time now.
I'm old enough to remember the .com bust quite well. At the time the "irrational exuberance" (as Greenspan/Shiller dubbed it) made perfect sense, and the ideas were fundamentally sound, the problem was that investors did not understand that it would take another 10-15 years to get to ubiquitous Internet, and the impatient ones got burned when the bubble burst.
According to the about page, the author is an engineer at a startup and is on sabbatical. That feels weird given the criticisms leveled in the piece.
FWIW I live in New York and prefer it massively to SV, but I mean....
FWIW I live in New York and prefer it massively to SV, but I mean....
LOL, you can tell this article touches on something sensitive from the reaction to it on HackerNews. Its a pretty accurate description of SF, I just doubt NY is any different.
Hmm.. Here's Rosamunde's beer list plenty of $6 IPAs..
https://www.beermenus.com/places/1609-rosamunde-sausage-gril...
https://www.beermenus.com/places/1609-rosamunde-sausage-gril...
I'm surprised he didn't have the $16 artisanal salad delivered to him by one of the 37 delivery services.
This is pretty much the only place i know of where people are okay with paying $30+ total for a salad and think it's normal
This is pretty much the only place i know of where people are okay with paying $30+ total for a salad and think it's normal
I've lived here since 2005 and have yet to see a $30 salad.
I said "$30 total" (IE salad + delivery).
Written exactly like someone who visited SF from NYC for a few days. The pen is dripping with poison and vitriol.
I've tried to have this conversation with many people on that coast, and there was even a panel at TechCrunch about it.
"Do you make your startup people eat more ramen, or do you provide more funding?"
As costs keep going up, people STILL think they have to move to SF to get funding or find talent. Yet there is plenty of talent or ideas in other places but the money doesn't move, the dumb part is the VC dollar will go farther in other places.
So who's job is it to prompt the move? The idea makers or the money providers?
"Do you make your startup people eat more ramen, or do you provide more funding?"
As costs keep going up, people STILL think they have to move to SF to get funding or find talent. Yet there is plenty of talent or ideas in other places but the money doesn't move, the dumb part is the VC dollar will go farther in other places.
So who's job is it to prompt the move? The idea makers or the money providers?
Does anybody know of any major open source contributor that lives in SF?
I used to be active in the Python/Django community earlier and am getting involved in the JS-React-Redux community. Not only do most people live outside SF, they live in a remote place that you wouldn't have heard about.
Software, good software is creative and creativity needs serendipity. The pressure to meet the next funding round criteria or to get an Uber through the traffic hearing my next track not making eye contact with my uber-pooler isn't the best frame of mind conducive to creativity.
I'm sure a lot of top CEOs and the top guys in select areas have a great social circle - smartest people who they eat/hangout with, which is very good. But there are also a lot of me-toos, for whom just living in SF is the thing they are achieving that feed their egos.
I used to be active in the Python/Django community earlier and am getting involved in the JS-React-Redux community. Not only do most people live outside SF, they live in a remote place that you wouldn't have heard about.
Software, good software is creative and creativity needs serendipity. The pressure to meet the next funding round criteria or to get an Uber through the traffic hearing my next track not making eye contact with my uber-pooler isn't the best frame of mind conducive to creativity.
I'm sure a lot of top CEOs and the top guys in select areas have a great social circle - smartest people who they eat/hangout with, which is very good. But there are also a lot of me-toos, for whom just living in SF is the thing they are achieving that feed their egos.
interesting op is on a sabbatical himself
> Currently a principal engineer at AppNexus on sabbatical, I am trying to have a new post every day.
> Currently a principal engineer at AppNexus on sabbatical, I am trying to have a new post every day.
Who cares? If you're not part of the scene there, why does it matter to you? If those people weren't in "silly" startups, they'd probably end up in silly corporate roles. Or even worse, they'd be unemployed and be another strain on the current system.
There are a lot of ideas you may find silly but others find interesting enough to spend their working hours to make a success. If you only focus on finances, tons of them will fail. If you look at the experience they'll have doing it, I'm sure some of them will find it was a success.
I've worked at a couple startups and I've worked at some big corporations. There are bad coders everywhere. There are bad ideas everywhere. There are also a lot of jealous people who apparently get bent out of shape because people who are not the best engineer ever are making more money than them and getting to take time off arbitrarily.
Instead of focusing on how much you think their startup is stupid, or how they shouldn't get time off because they're not as good as you (based on who knows what), why not just focus on what you have, what you do, and what you like? Stop living against them and live for yourself.
There are a lot of ideas you may find silly but others find interesting enough to spend their working hours to make a success. If you only focus on finances, tons of them will fail. If you look at the experience they'll have doing it, I'm sure some of them will find it was a success.
I've worked at a couple startups and I've worked at some big corporations. There are bad coders everywhere. There are bad ideas everywhere. There are also a lot of jealous people who apparently get bent out of shape because people who are not the best engineer ever are making more money than them and getting to take time off arbitrarily.
Instead of focusing on how much you think their startup is stupid, or how they shouldn't get time off because they're not as good as you (based on who knows what), why not just focus on what you have, what you do, and what you like? Stop living against them and live for yourself.
nothing against the author but it seems like he is painting a very wide brush with something he's seen for 3? days.
i certainly have never taken ubers everyday to work even though i could probably(?) afford to do so. seems like an expensive daily habit though.
i actually live in the city where it's not some huge loft in fidi/downtown. good for anyone who can get their groceries sent up to their room but i'm not sure how close to the norm that is. tech workers are all across the board in terms of how they live, how much they get paid and how willing they are to fetch their own groceries.
i live on the first floor of a older apartment complex, but i have to walk down a hill to fetch my groceries. i do sometimes use one of the gazillion food delivery services to eat dinner though.
anyways i would say this is similar to someone who goes to ny, visits the financial district in manhattan for 3 days and then proclaims, "everyone in ny is rich! of course they can afford all that housing! they're so stuck up! why are the cabbies so rude? why are new yorkers so rude?"
i certainly have never taken ubers everyday to work even though i could probably(?) afford to do so. seems like an expensive daily habit though.
i actually live in the city where it's not some huge loft in fidi/downtown. good for anyone who can get their groceries sent up to their room but i'm not sure how close to the norm that is. tech workers are all across the board in terms of how they live, how much they get paid and how willing they are to fetch their own groceries.
i live on the first floor of a older apartment complex, but i have to walk down a hill to fetch my groceries. i do sometimes use one of the gazillion food delivery services to eat dinner though.
anyways i would say this is similar to someone who goes to ny, visits the financial district in manhattan for 3 days and then proclaims, "everyone in ny is rich! of course they can afford all that housing! they're so stuck up! why are the cabbies so rude? why are new yorkers so rude?"
I think a good indication of a bubble is measuring the IT job market using Craiglist and Dice job postings.
I'd like to ask you all about what you've experienced & seen on Craiglist and Dice that would give you an idea on how good or bad the IT job market in San Francisco (and the Bay Area in general) is or was. I hear conflicting stories of qualified people not able to find jobs after a year of searching (like the SOAP architect below) and on the flip side, of companies not able to find people (the so-called 'IT talent shortage').
I used both websites on & off since the late 90s to find contract & permanent full-time jobs. Back then at the height of the dot-coms, the Dice home page showed 120,000+ jobs, right after the crash (2001-2003) that number fell to around 20,000-30,000. Now it's around 80,000.
On Craigslist, at the dot com height, the Software section for the Bay Area (https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof) had so many job postings per day that the list of postings for that day would spill over to the next page (there are 100 listings per page). A year & a half ago (late 2014) there was a good amount of postings and I got a frenzy of replies when I contacted them. Now, there's only a handful of postings per day.
I think it'd be good to get an idea of SF/SV IT job market's fluctuation over the years by compiling these data points. I did a Google search for charts with these data points but couldn't find any. If any of you used these two sites anytime from the late 90s to today and remember the # of postings for that specific date or time period, please post. Ideally, month to month data with high interest on data points from 1999-2003 (dot-com bubble) and 2006 to today (credit bubble).
I'd like to ask you all about what you've experienced & seen on Craiglist and Dice that would give you an idea on how good or bad the IT job market in San Francisco (and the Bay Area in general) is or was. I hear conflicting stories of qualified people not able to find jobs after a year of searching (like the SOAP architect below) and on the flip side, of companies not able to find people (the so-called 'IT talent shortage').
I used both websites on & off since the late 90s to find contract & permanent full-time jobs. Back then at the height of the dot-coms, the Dice home page showed 120,000+ jobs, right after the crash (2001-2003) that number fell to around 20,000-30,000. Now it's around 80,000.
On Craigslist, at the dot com height, the Software section for the Bay Area (https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof) had so many job postings per day that the list of postings for that day would spill over to the next page (there are 100 listings per page). A year & a half ago (late 2014) there was a good amount of postings and I got a frenzy of replies when I contacted them. Now, there's only a handful of postings per day.
I think it'd be good to get an idea of SF/SV IT job market's fluctuation over the years by compiling these data points. I did a Google search for charts with these data points but couldn't find any. If any of you used these two sites anytime from the late 90s to today and remember the # of postings for that specific date or time period, please post. Ideally, month to month data with high interest on data points from 1999-2003 (dot-com bubble) and 2006 to today (credit bubble).
The talent issue is particularly acute.
If you're mature and hardworking, I have no problem with you taking PTO whenever you need it or not committing to hard deadlines. But those are earned privileges based on trust and a history of delivering.
It is so hard to hire software engineers and there are tons of them. Bootcamps are not the answer. It is not a quantity problem, it is a quality problem.
If you're mature and hardworking, I have no problem with you taking PTO whenever you need it or not committing to hard deadlines. But those are earned privileges based on trust and a history of delivering.
It is so hard to hire software engineers and there are tons of them. Bootcamps are not the answer. It is not a quantity problem, it is a quality problem.
The problem is that you never know which one of the "silly" startups will succeed. ¿How about a startup disrupting the "large" market of air-mattress renting to complete strangers?.... mmmm... Let's toss a breakfast in...
That's is, let's call it: "Air Bed and breakfast"... it is silly?
I don't think an engineer being able to take sabbatical or paid well is something to label engineers as spoiled. As long as work ethic is there, this is actually what an employee in any profession should get.
That people are paid here well is a result of the huge imbalance of wealth in the world is another discussion topic.
That people are paid here well is a result of the huge imbalance of wealth in the world is another discussion topic.
> People are spoiled. A friend of mine takes an uber to and from work every day, and apparently that is fairly common.
Hard to take any of this seriously. Lots of people regularly taxi to work in large cities and I cannot imagine how it's indicative of a bubble. Author seems too emotional about such an assertion.
Hard to take any of this seriously. Lots of people regularly taxi to work in large cities and I cannot imagine how it's indicative of a bubble. Author seems too emotional about such an assertion.
No one wants to "throw this out there" but I will.
SV has been overpriced for decades and it is only the importation of CHEAP h1b labor that has allowed the growth to continue.
You know something is a miss when you build ever and ever more future slums being 4+ story apartment buildings resulting in h1bs stuffed 12+ into an apartment paying $3K+ or even more for a 1BR apartment.
Americans won't live like that. Or so I hope.
If you didn't have h1bs then the jobs most likely would have gone to cheaper parts of the country as the wage costs would have started to rise to levels such that the products couldn't be developed here.
Works for me.
We have (or had) a choice of allowing IT to be offshored "like everything else" or wreck Silicon Valley making it into a (future) slum.
We made the wrong choice.
SV has been overpriced for decades and it is only the importation of CHEAP h1b labor that has allowed the growth to continue.
You know something is a miss when you build ever and ever more future slums being 4+ story apartment buildings resulting in h1bs stuffed 12+ into an apartment paying $3K+ or even more for a 1BR apartment.
Americans won't live like that. Or so I hope.
If you didn't have h1bs then the jobs most likely would have gone to cheaper parts of the country as the wage costs would have started to rise to levels such that the products couldn't be developed here.
Works for me.
We have (or had) a choice of allowing IT to be offshored "like everything else" or wreck Silicon Valley making it into a (future) slum.
We made the wrong choice.
It still shocks me that Europe hasn't yet built a response to SF. Sure, London's a tech hub, but not anywhere close to SF.
Eastern europe has a lot of talented engineers, but lacks capital and know-how on building an international business, places are cheap to live in and so on.
Eastern europe has a lot of talented engineers, but lacks capital and know-how on building an international business, places are cheap to live in and so on.
They're too risk-averse. In SV, it's ok to fail. In Europe, it's not.
The most ironic thing about this article is that it sounds like he's complaining about tall the niceties of living in SF but he himself works at an ad tech company and is currently on sabbatical and wants to write a new blog entry once a day. WTF???
I don't necessary disagree with any of the claims, but it has a very "Old Man Yells at Cloud" sound to it:
http://i.imgur.com/91sn32Q.jpg?fb
One of the best and most underrated thing about all these crappy startups? It gives a lot of people the opportunity to learn valuable skills on someone else's dime. Those that are good engineers in crappy startups eventually migrate to the unicorns. The shitty startups may not go anywhere, but they allow a lot of young people to accumulate skills that they can take with them to companies that actually need that talent.
Without the shitty startups acting as free training wheels, the unicorns would have a much harder time finding quality talent.
Without the shitty startups acting as free training wheels, the unicorns would have a much harder time finding quality talent.
Regarding dumb startups - I can't wait for the coming collapse. There are lots of talented developers/designers working on dumb startups, which makes it very difficult for me to find good people to work with.
There might be a bubble, but extremely limited anecdata isn't enough to prove it.
Who cares if people are spending money to get shit done for them that they don't want to personally do (laundry, groceries). As long as they can pay for it and are utilizing hours to what they actually want to do in life I don't see the harm.
And expensive food exists in most major cities.
There might be some truth to the title, but the article lacked the data to support any of it. I'm flabbergasted that it got upvoted on the frontpage of HN.
Who cares if people are spending money to get shit done for them that they don't want to personally do (laundry, groceries). As long as they can pay for it and are utilizing hours to what they actually want to do in life I don't see the harm.
And expensive food exists in most major cities.
There might be some truth to the title, but the article lacked the data to support any of it. I'm flabbergasted that it got upvoted on the frontpage of HN.
While I agree with the sentiment, the attitude of the post is appalling.
> This reminds me of the first dot com bubble where people with degrees from devry were joining companies and making big salaries
Why do you care about where people got their degrees from? What does that have to do with commanding a high salary or not? If the people seem to be overpaid for what they do, fine. But that has nothing to do with their degrees. Or even their abilities.
> This reminds me of the first dot com bubble where people with degrees from devry were joining companies and making big salaries
Why do you care about where people got their degrees from? What does that have to do with commanding a high salary or not? If the people seem to be overpaid for what they do, fine. But that has nothing to do with their degrees. Or even their abilities.
Well all we need is to look at historical facts to understand what is going on in SF:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mansions_of_the_Gods
Seriously though, this movie does touch many aspects related to gentrification and what happens when supply stays the same but demands spikes sharply ... chuckles all around.
Seriously though, this movie does touch many aspects related to gentrification and what happens when supply stays the same but demands spikes sharply ... chuckles all around.
There are lots of dumb startups. But a handful of these dumb startups are going to turn into big, meaningful companies that change some aspect of people's lives, hopefully in a positive way (at a minimum they will offer employment). Because of that, it's worth putting up with these "dumb" ones because 0.1% of them will pay off the other ones.
Companies evolve, and some don't stay dumb forever.
Companies evolve, and some don't stay dumb forever.
meaningful way? Something like Facebook has certainly changed things, but whether or not the change is meaningful remains up for debate. Most of these 'changes' just make our lives slightly more convenient or seem a bit more futuristic, but these are illusions.
Change that is categorically meaningful involves things like a cure for cancer, a new source of energy, etc..etc.. If we are to judge whether this startup trend has changed peoples lives in a meaningful way, we should look for changes that are categorically meaningful.
Change that is categorically meaningful involves things like a cure for cancer, a new source of energy, etc..etc.. If we are to judge whether this startup trend has changed peoples lives in a meaningful way, we should look for changes that are categorically meaningful.
I think the problem is that many of the business models of these startups is basically taking VC money and shuffling it around.
I've been to many startup competitions in the last couple of years and most of the winners have no business model.
For instance, last year, the winner was a startup that was "Twitter with 255 character limit". It think it was awarded $20,000
I've been to many startup competitions in the last couple of years and most of the winners have no business model.
For instance, last year, the winner was a startup that was "Twitter with 255 character limit". It think it was awarded $20,000
I agree, things are probably too good to be true right now. I really don't think it's fair to blame engineers though. My only advice to people working in this industry is to save your money -- be sure to be keeping your money in an emergency fund of some kind incase something happens. That's my best practical advice.
> people with degrees from devry were joining companies and making big salaries
one of the best engineers I've ever worked with has a degree from DeVry. I know many great engineers who don't have CS or engineering degrees. And I know plenty of dummies with lots of letters after their name.
one of the best engineers I've ever worked with has a degree from DeVry. I know many great engineers who don't have CS or engineering degrees. And I know plenty of dummies with lots of letters after their name.
> People are spoiled
I recall when I was in SF in 1999, limo after limo pulling up to what was a pretty ordinary club. I didn't really care how people pissed their money away, but it seemed so bizarre and so detached from reality. I was glad to get out of there.
I recall when I was in SF in 1999, limo after limo pulling up to what was a pretty ordinary club. I didn't really care how people pissed their money away, but it seemed so bizarre and so detached from reality. I was glad to get out of there.
Part of the whole venture capital startup game is diversification if investment. VC's expect a lot of their startups to fail (angel investors too), while a few grow and maybe if they are lucky one of them takes off.
> A company to “disrupt the banana hammock ordering process” cannot possibly do well yet someone invested money into it and it is paying employees.
Is this actually a real company and if so can someone post a link?
Is this actually a real company and if so can someone post a link?
I didn't even know that "banana hammocks" were a thing. Maybe whoever runs bananahammockworld.com reads HN....
http://www.bananahammockworld.com/banana-hammocks-for-men/
http://www.bananahammockworld.com/banana-hammocks-for-men/
Should carry a NSFW warning. I had no idea what a banana hammock was, I thought it was an actual hammock.
I thought it was somehow tied into the hipster-foodie thing, like you'd get charged $15 for a 50 cent banana if it was delivered to you by some precariously employed scooter driver swaddled up like the baby Jesus.
Perhaps it's my unadventurous lifestyle, but I have never found myself in a situation where I so urgently needed a posing pouch that 'Uberising' the industry would have helped me out.
Perhaps it's my unadventurous lifestyle, but I have never found myself in a situation where I so urgently needed a posing pouch that 'Uberising' the industry would have helped me out.
Apologies: I didn't think of that.
I had no idea what it was either, so I thought I was saving you a search.....
I had no idea what it was either, so I thought I was saving you a search.....
Could be talking about [0] meundies. Although that seems to be an LA company based on their hiring website.
[0] https://www.meundies.com/
[0] https://www.meundies.com/
Replace San Francisco with London and your article is still valid.
When you compare that to Detroit trouble, you will see that bubble is not that bad after all. All those overrated engineers will have connections and confidence.
I would rather have too many startups then not enough - I am from Detroit and we would love a more entrepreneurial environment and more investment capital.
So its a bubble. What do you do about it? Move?
That's what I did in early summer of 2008. I moved away from Mountain View because everything felt over-priced and unsustainable. So I voted with my feet. Hello from Chicago. :-)
Typing this from MV right now having moved from Chicago in 2013. Really wishing I'd moved out here in summer of 2008 as it would likely mean I'd be able to afford much more home than I can right now.
>Every food item has to be locally sourced and organic, which seems more important than taste and quality.
Ummm... that's the point?
Ummm... that's the point?
Next up on TechCrunch, "The 'Bubble' Bubble: What It Means To You When It Pops"
> People are spoiled.
I'll extend that statement to any of us living the western lifestyle!
I'll extend that statement to any of us living the western lifestyle!
The jobs are all going to h1bs working 168 hours a week for $300.
Yes, there are a lot of dumb startups but I'm still not convinced this is a bad thing. Why does every 24-year old have to be changing the world?
Imagine you have a 2x2 matrix where the x-axis is positive value added to the world and the y-axis magnitude of impact. You want your job to be in the top right corner, high impact, high value added to the world but there's two ways to get there. You could do something that has high value but low impact like working at a non-profit in DC helping with excel spreadsheets or whatever, you're delivering value to the world but making a very small impact. The other approach is that you could learn how to build a large scalable system for delivering a solution to millions of people first. Maybe you're making the 100th best photo sharing app and it will never add large value to the world, but you're learning how to deliver impactful solutions you just need to figure out how to deliver real value. I'm not sure why there's a bias against the second approach. I lived in DC for five years and most of my friends are doing less interesting things than my friends in SF. Someone who gets experience at a startup that builds interesting technology but never takes off could be the next CTO of a political campaign for all you know.
Also, it's a complete myth that San Francisco is expensive to live in. You can leave cheap or expensive in any city. SF has a culture where being poor is totally cool. Everyone gets it, you're in tech you're an entrepreneur etc... There's no pressure to go to nice restaurants for social status like there is in New York. I spend much less money in SF than I did living in DC just because of the lifestyle I'm living. Buying a house in SF is impossible due to the insane prices, but it's really not that bad living in an apartment here.
I don't think people are spoiled here, I think your perceptions are off. First, programming takes place entirely inside a persons head. Mental state is really important, and the 9-5 office job with a commute to and from the office every day doesn't work very well for engineering. I like to break up my day into two halves. The first half of the day and the second half of the day, this gives me two discrete time periods where I can do work and I like to take a bike ride in between because I can think about the problems, and then not have to go to the gym later in the day. When I was working for a company in DC there was no way I could have left at 2:00 to take an hour bike ride, even if that's how I work best. I think it's ridiculous to say that people working in their optimal workflows makes them spoiled.
And again, it takes probably 3 years to become a high-quality engineer. So I'm not sure what you would want coding bootcamp graduates to do after 3 months, get together and talk about how hopeless life is? I'm glad that people are getting into the industry, the only way you're going to get better is by getting real world experience. So what someone with 8-months experience isn't a great engineer yet? By continuing to get better over the next couple years he will become a better engineer and then be able to add significant value to the world, I'm not sure why you would want to discourage developers from perfecting their craft. This would be like heckling a Med School student for not being a great doctor yet.
Imagine you have a 2x2 matrix where the x-axis is positive value added to the world and the y-axis magnitude of impact. You want your job to be in the top right corner, high impact, high value added to the world but there's two ways to get there. You could do something that has high value but low impact like working at a non-profit in DC helping with excel spreadsheets or whatever, you're delivering value to the world but making a very small impact. The other approach is that you could learn how to build a large scalable system for delivering a solution to millions of people first. Maybe you're making the 100th best photo sharing app and it will never add large value to the world, but you're learning how to deliver impactful solutions you just need to figure out how to deliver real value. I'm not sure why there's a bias against the second approach. I lived in DC for five years and most of my friends are doing less interesting things than my friends in SF. Someone who gets experience at a startup that builds interesting technology but never takes off could be the next CTO of a political campaign for all you know.
Also, it's a complete myth that San Francisco is expensive to live in. You can leave cheap or expensive in any city. SF has a culture where being poor is totally cool. Everyone gets it, you're in tech you're an entrepreneur etc... There's no pressure to go to nice restaurants for social status like there is in New York. I spend much less money in SF than I did living in DC just because of the lifestyle I'm living. Buying a house in SF is impossible due to the insane prices, but it's really not that bad living in an apartment here.
I don't think people are spoiled here, I think your perceptions are off. First, programming takes place entirely inside a persons head. Mental state is really important, and the 9-5 office job with a commute to and from the office every day doesn't work very well for engineering. I like to break up my day into two halves. The first half of the day and the second half of the day, this gives me two discrete time periods where I can do work and I like to take a bike ride in between because I can think about the problems, and then not have to go to the gym later in the day. When I was working for a company in DC there was no way I could have left at 2:00 to take an hour bike ride, even if that's how I work best. I think it's ridiculous to say that people working in their optimal workflows makes them spoiled.
And again, it takes probably 3 years to become a high-quality engineer. So I'm not sure what you would want coding bootcamp graduates to do after 3 months, get together and talk about how hopeless life is? I'm glad that people are getting into the industry, the only way you're going to get better is by getting real world experience. So what someone with 8-months experience isn't a great engineer yet? By continuing to get better over the next couple years he will become a better engineer and then be able to add significant value to the world, I'm not sure why you would want to discourage developers from perfecting their craft. This would be like heckling a Med School student for not being a great doctor yet.
> Also, it's a complete myth that San Francisco is expensive to live in.
Cool. Can you point me to where I can get an apartment in SF for less that $1k/month?
Cool. Can you point me to where I can get an apartment in SF for less that $1k/month?
Bernal Heights, Portrero Hill, actually there's < $1,000 rooms all over the city, just look on craigslist.
Maybe not a single apartment to yourself, but definitely a room in a shared apartment.
There are a lot of cities btw where you can't get a single one-bedroom apartment for < $1,000
Maybe not a single apartment to yourself, but definitely a room in a shared apartment.
There are a lot of cities btw where you can't get a single one-bedroom apartment for < $1,000
You can't just change the qualifications of his question and then go "I answered it!"
But if the question is getting a single one-bedroom apartment for < $1,000 a month I think that excludes a lot of cities. New York, DC etc... So it's not meaningful to say SF is a bubble because of a trait that exists in many cities.
The jobs are taken by h1bs working 168 hours a week for $300.
If you hate current day SF, you'll looooovvve NYC...
I moved from The Bay Area to NYC. Things I miss about The Bay Area include: meetups where the attendees are actually useful people you want to talk with, more similar developers (NYC developers tend to have +20 years on SF developers unless you're at a we-only-hire-22-year-olds startup), developers more plugged in to current trends instead of just getting on board with what was introduced 5 years ago, in NYC every other company is in "adtech," in NYC the typical career path is startup/company -> create your own HFT startup, lack of winter (but I don't miss the lack of water), ....
What do you like about NYC? I spent a couple weeks there recently, to which I was really looking forward since I had never been there, and after about a week I loathed the noise, the garbage everywhere, and the lines at all the stores. Shortly thereafter, I caught the Norovirus from delivered food and I was knocked out physically and mentally for almost 2 weeks.
What did I like? Seeing a few famous landmarks, a couple of the restaurants, and my rental apartment had free NetFlix.
What did I like? Seeing a few famous landmarks, a couple of the restaurants, and my rental apartment had free NetFlix.
What I like: not needing a car (no car payment, no car insurance), any event (concert/meetup/parade/show/etc) is only 20-30 minutes away door-to-door and you don't need to park since you have no car, central park is okay (but it's no red rocks or la honda), you'd think having 6 million people within a 6 mile radius would make it easy to meet people but... not so much, housing prices are (supposedly) less than SF but it's still painful, tons of non-chain places to eat, my 300+ Mbps home Internet access for $80/month, can be at any airport in about 30 to 60 minutes (taxi to LGA or subway+airtrain to JFK or nj transit+airtrain to EWR), etc.
I've done the whole norovirus dance once too. It really does knock you out for a week or two. (I started feeling sick when walking around outside one morning, decided to take the subway back home, the first sickness struck while waiting for the train—I just had to throw up on the subway tracks. Pretty awful. Some nice bystanders gave me an unopened bottle of water they had with them which was nice.)
I've done the whole norovirus dance once too. It really does knock you out for a week or two. (I started feeling sick when walking around outside one morning, decided to take the subway back home, the first sickness struck while waiting for the train—I just had to throw up on the subway tracks. Pretty awful. Some nice bystanders gave me an unopened bottle of water they had with them which was nice.)
I found that there are a lot nice people in NYC that have to put up with a minority of absolute jerks that give the place a undeserved bad rep. This part is not much different from SF IMO.
Yeah, the weird thing about NYC is it's more heavily actor/waiter/bartender focused on the youth spectrum so everybody you meet is almost maximally different from everybody else. It causes a strange effect where people form overly homogenous groups when they do find people who are similar (crossfit cults, every actor has slept with every other actor, revolving doors of finance firms, etc).
In some ways it seems all the "regular" people get absorbed into other levels of success/purpose outside of technology here, so technology is left with a larger weirdo population than SF since there are many more non-techonlogy things to make regular people happy around here.
In some ways it seems all the "regular" people get absorbed into other levels of success/purpose outside of technology here, so technology is left with a larger weirdo population than SF since there are many more non-techonlogy things to make regular people happy around here.
The author is from NYC.
IMO (speaking from my recent disastrous stay in NYC): Pot.Kettle.Dystopia...
I feel like the best reply to this is:
"Well, yeah. So?"
"Well, yeah. So?"
Didn't Arcade Fire say this years ago?
A bit dramatized, but the concept is good.
local IPAs are $15
Is that actually true?
Is that actually true?
TBH, the author sounds like he would end up in a place that sells $15 IPA's. That's says more about the author, than SF.
No.
I've actually never seen a beer over $12 before. $5-7 is the norm.
I've actually never seen a beer over $12 before. $5-7 is the norm.
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You should rename this thread California Bubble...
Please be aware that moving to the bay area for any reason other than fun will be a serious life mistake.
If you move to the bay area in your 20s, by the time you're in your 40s you will have a specific knowledge of a fad language that is 20 years old. But even if you somehow keep up with new tech in your spare time, you will look 40 something and thus be nearly unemployable solely on those grounds.
And you simply will be unable to save any reasonable amount of money no mater how many beers you don't drink. Like anyone else in the states, your sole savings would be home equity which you won't have because you won't be able to buy any kind of home in the few years your age makes you employable.
If in doubt, for those still in SF, determine the savings of your co workers in their 20s and 30s (who are now near then end of their employability), and whether they rent or own (good luck finding a 50 something coworker to ask). Be aware that you do not leave the bay area rich, you leave it because you can't afford it. And be aware there are few middle aged and effectively no old people there. And beware that 45 is only half way to retirement age.
If you move to the bay area in your 20s, by the time you're in your 40s you will have a specific knowledge of a fad language that is 20 years old. But even if you somehow keep up with new tech in your spare time, you will look 40 something and thus be nearly unemployable solely on those grounds.
And you simply will be unable to save any reasonable amount of money no mater how many beers you don't drink. Like anyone else in the states, your sole savings would be home equity which you won't have because you won't be able to buy any kind of home in the few years your age makes you employable.
If in doubt, for those still in SF, determine the savings of your co workers in their 20s and 30s (who are now near then end of their employability), and whether they rent or own (good luck finding a 50 something coworker to ask). Be aware that you do not leave the bay area rich, you leave it because you can't afford it. And be aware there are few middle aged and effectively no old people there. And beware that 45 is only half way to retirement age.
"There are few middle-aged and effectively no old people there".
Well that's just total bullshit. There are tons of middle aged and elderly people in SF, most of whom moved to the city in the 60s or 70s and bought property before it became ridiculously expensive. There is a huge population of aging hippies still in SF. Now if you mean "there are few middle aged people working in the startup world", you might be correct, but I'd guess that's the same for startups anywhere.
Not everything in San Francisco is the tech world, and the city does not just consist of the Mission and SOMA. Most of the city is non-tech families and less exciting residential neighborhoods. People who dont live in SF usually dont see that side of it.
Well that's just total bullshit. There are tons of middle aged and elderly people in SF, most of whom moved to the city in the 60s or 70s and bought property before it became ridiculously expensive. There is a huge population of aging hippies still in SF. Now if you mean "there are few middle aged people working in the startup world", you might be correct, but I'd guess that's the same for startups anywhere.
Not everything in San Francisco is the tech world, and the city does not just consist of the Mission and SOMA. Most of the city is non-tech families and less exciting residential neighborhoods. People who dont live in SF usually dont see that side of it.
I'm in Canada and every time I consider prospects of getting into United States, comments like this frighten me. More specifically the Valley area for its renowned reputation of tech-oriented culture, and make good earnings. Compared to what I see in, say, Toronto area with bad housing and a bunch of old .NET 2.0 I feel that it must be better there.
What I find lacking in such comments, though, is some explanation on why and the suggested alternatives. Would you mind sharing why? Java/C# were the hot things of 10-15 years ago and people still make a living out of it. It sounds like an argument for classic Red Queen problem where the only winning move is not to play.
What I find lacking in such comments, though, is some explanation on why and the suggested alternatives. Would you mind sharing why? Java/C# were the hot things of 10-15 years ago and people still make a living out of it. It sounds like an argument for classic Red Queen problem where the only winning move is not to play.
There's a happy medium somewhere between the wasteland of legacy "enterprise" jobs (.NET 2.0 and such) and the nutzo SF/SV orbit.
I live in Southern California (LA/OC). It's not cheap by any measure but it's within the bounds of economic sanity compared to SF/SV. There are tons of very interesting tech jobs in cutting edge areas like computer vision, AI/ML, the latest web and DevOps tech, and a lot of hardware/EE stuff. There are many other places like this. Canada probably has a few too. Even NYC, which is more expensive than LA, is still "sane" compared to SF when you consider what you get. In NYC car ownership is very optional, which mitigates the high rents, while in SF you must own a car if you ever want to leave the peninsula.
I've turned down numerous offers in SF/SV because it just seems economically insane. The housing prices are clearly unsustainable and the OP's comment about it being a "serious life mistake" rings true. The craziness has also priced out much of the interesting culture that made SF compelling in the first place.
Edit: I keep hearing about the relentless ageism in SF/SV tech. I don't see so much of it elsewhere. Is it really that bad? If so it seems like a SF/SV thing and not necessarily true everywhere. In that case it might make some sense for young people to spend some time in SF/SV getting into the latest stuff and learning and then bail before 30.
I live in Southern California (LA/OC). It's not cheap by any measure but it's within the bounds of economic sanity compared to SF/SV. There are tons of very interesting tech jobs in cutting edge areas like computer vision, AI/ML, the latest web and DevOps tech, and a lot of hardware/EE stuff. There are many other places like this. Canada probably has a few too. Even NYC, which is more expensive than LA, is still "sane" compared to SF when you consider what you get. In NYC car ownership is very optional, which mitigates the high rents, while in SF you must own a car if you ever want to leave the peninsula.
I've turned down numerous offers in SF/SV because it just seems economically insane. The housing prices are clearly unsustainable and the OP's comment about it being a "serious life mistake" rings true. The craziness has also priced out much of the interesting culture that made SF compelling in the first place.
Edit: I keep hearing about the relentless ageism in SF/SV tech. I don't see so much of it elsewhere. Is it really that bad? If so it seems like a SF/SV thing and not necessarily true everywhere. In that case it might make some sense for young people to spend some time in SF/SV getting into the latest stuff and learning and then bail before 30.
I of course don't know the why. I lived in the bay area coding for 10 years and left 5 years ago when the current state of affairs was just starting. Upon every visit back upon seeing the falling quality of life, especially for housing, I'm thankful I'm out.
But I too would dearly like someone to show me that I am wrong. To disprove my observation that the vast bulk of people who move to the bay area do not stay there happily and prosperously the rest of their lives but eventually move out, maybe with a wistful blog post.
But I too would dearly like someone to show me that I am wrong. To disprove my observation that the vast bulk of people who move to the bay area do not stay there happily and prosperously the rest of their lives but eventually move out, maybe with a wistful blog post.
1. Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms.
2. Dumb startups? Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave.
3. People are spoiled? Uber is cheaper and more convenient in some cases than taking the local transportation. When people stop taking public transportation because it's fundamentally broken (ps - it's awful in SF) then it will force government organizations to re-think their planning.
4. Bad engineers? Yup, I've met some of them. They'll eventually leave too when the system weeds them out.
I too think it's weird here, but since I do enjoy my life in the Bay area enough, I'm happy to wait for the market to correct to normalcy. The people who are here just to chase the "me too's" will soon be forgotten.
EDIT: I should probably clarify my overall sentiment. People who come to SF and complain that this situation is less than ideal have the freedom to simply choose not to play. The cost of living is driven by the simple laws of supply and demand. Speak with your wallets, not with your mouths.