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Zucktown, USA

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Re: Zucktown, USA

#21

Post by confounded »

apsec112 wrote: post #2

This article's main topic is just "tech companies are building big offices", dressed up in some purple prose. And they're also to blame for high rents. But if they build apartments to help ease the housing shortage, that's a "company town" and we can't have that either. And Amazon is a "commandeering leech" which "suck[s] up our resources and refus[es] to participate in daily upkeep", but when Google offers Mountain…

Appreciate the scare quotes, but company towns aren’t much fun for many employees to live in either.

Lots of people want to be part of a community that feels diverse and functional, rather than be part of some weird polarizing over-class just because they took a job.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#22

Post by rtpg »

rdtsc wrote: post #19

And you'd go to Zuckshop and buy Zuckbread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store It would be creepy having to live in a employers' housing unit. But if it is subsidized enough many would jump on it. The interview process at many of these company is already geared to bring in college graduates. So a dorm of sort would make sense. Then they could outfit them work spaces so you could live there and maybe work rem…

Japan has a lot of this, but it's usually a building in the middle of a city so you're not like... completely surrounded. But your neighbors are probably from the same company.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#23

Post by nostrademons »

apsec112 wrote: post #2

This article's main topic is just "tech companies are building big offices", dressed up in some purple prose. And they're also to blame for high rents. But if they build apartments to help ease the housing shortage, that's a "company town" and we can't have that either. And Amazon is a "commandeering leech" which "suck[s] up our resources and refus[es] to participate in daily upkeep", but when Google offers Mountain…

Or the age-old water test, where you throw a witch into the river. If she floats, she's a witch! If she sinks, well, she's dead anyway.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#24

Post by nostrademons »

confounded wrote: post #21
apsec112 wrote: post #2

This article's main topic is just "tech companies are building big offices", dressed up in some purple prose. And they're also to blame for high rents. But if they build apartments to help ease the housing shortage, that's a "company town" and we can't have that either. And Amazon is a "commandeering leech" which "suck[s] up our resources and refus[es] to participate in daily upkeep", but when Google offers Mountain…

Appreciate the scare quotes, but company towns aren’t much fun for many employees to live in either. Lots of people want to be part of a community that feels diverse and functional, rather than be part of some weird polarizing over-class just because they took a job.

For many people at the big companies, the job is the community that feels diverse and functional. It's just a re-drawing of boundaries. In many modern American cities or suburbs, you don't get community anyway; I can tell you (having experience on both the inside and the outside) that Google has a lot more community than Sunnyvale does.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#25

Post by Nullabillity »

nostrademons wrote: post #24
confounded wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciate the scare quotes, but company towns aren’t much fun for many employees to live in either. Lots of people want to be part of a community that feels diverse and functional, rather than be part of some weird polarizing over-class just because they took a job.

For many people at the big companies, the job is the community that feels diverse and functional. It's just a re-drawing of boundaries. In many modern American cities or suburbs, you don't get community anyway; I can tell you (having experience on both the inside and the outside) that Google has a lot more community than Sunnyvale does.

And what happens to (your access to) that community when you quit Google?

Re: Zucktown, USA

#26

Post by avar »

apsec112 wrote: post #2

This article's main topic is just "tech companies are building big offices", dressed up in some purple prose. And they're also to blame for high rents. But if they build apartments to help ease the housing shortage, that's a "company town" and we can't have that either. And Amazon is a "commandeering leech" which "suck[s] up our resources and refus[es] to participate in daily upkeep", but when Google offers Mountain…

The article is a badly written opinion piece that meanders through various topics, but your critique of it is beating a strawman.

It's not making the "you can't win" argument that tech companies should be critiqued whether or not they build housing.

Rather, it's that they're supposedly constructing "company towns" in the sense that the housing stock they build won't be for sale, and presumably only rented to employees. If you get fired you also get evicted.

Furthermore they'll own the nearby retail space as well. Will an Oculus competitor be for sale in the Facebook-owned chain of stores? Will someone trying to organize a Facebook union be allowed to use the meeting spaces at the Facebook town hall?

Re: Zucktown, USA

#27

Post by TeMPOraL »

mobiletelephone wrote: post #16
zdkl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very strongly disagree with the "unskilled" part. I am not a labor scholar either, but unions serve to federate common interests of workers who may not individually have leverage against their employer or relevant regulation body. Because your employer in tech can afford to give you a lifestyle easily in the highest couple percentiles doesn't mean you aren't replaceable and that you won't need representation as a c…

Wages are high if the supply of labour is low and the employer has money for wages. If supply is low and the employer does not have money, then the job won't exist. This is why tech workers wouldn't benefit from a union very much.

It's not gonna last forever this way. Unions are not very useful for developers now, but you might want to have them already in-place by the time they become needed.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#28

Post by geezerjay »

apsec112 wrote: post #2

This article's main topic is just "tech companies are building big offices", dressed up in some purple prose. And they're also to blame for high rents. But if they build apartments to help ease the housing shortage, that's a "company town" and we can't have that either. And Amazon is a "commandeering leech" which "suck[s] up our resources and refus[es] to participate in daily upkeep", but when Google offers Mountain…

> This article's main topic is just "tech companies are building big offices", dressed up in some purple prose.

It seems to me that the article's main topic is that tech companies are building company towns, comprising not only housing units (The expansion of its headquarters will boast fifteen hundred units of housing, 15 percent of which it claims will be “offered at below-market rates.”) but also commercial spaces to provide town services such as retail stores and police stations.

The article goes on about what the author perceives as being the perils of a company town, complete with emotive platitudes regarding capitalism, but it is in fact an article about company towns, not "tech companies are building big offices".

I really don't understand how you were able to completely miss the whole point made in the article. Have you actually read it?

Re: Zucktown, USA

#29

Post by z3t4 »

Last time I checked, Facebook, Google et.al where not philanthropic organizations. For it to be less evil they should build the houses, then sell the properties, not rent, for below market prices.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#30

Post by Cthulhu_ »

It's exactly these biggest companies that should take moral responsibility and relocate / redistribute their work to various cities on the one hand, and if they want to go through with the idea of company towns, campuses etc, they need to move way out of the SF area - there's huge wads of unused space in the US, they could found their own city if need be. Probably not something very attractive to their employees, but it is one possible solution; especially if they can build it near SF, with e.g. only a 30 minute hyperloop or maglev train trip required to get to HQ.
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