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Zucktown, USA

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Re: Zucktown, USA

#31

Post by michaelt »

tanilama wrote: post #17
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…

Good point. The bus thing is not the only example those people are contradictory against themselves. They blame techies for the hike of real-estate price, which to certain degree is justified. But at the same time they also oppose any construction of high density accommodation, blaming the company for destroying the neighborhood culture, talking about the good old days with orchards and trees. I think what is really…

  They blame techies for the hike of real-estate price,
  [...] they also oppose any construction of high density
  accommodation
My theory is there are three parties in this discussion.

Renter Roy can't afford a house, and thinks tech companies' money is bidding up prices. Homeowner Harold has lived and worked in this neighbourhood for 40 years and doesn't want its character to change and his house's value to fall. Techie Tammy wants somewhere to live, she'd prefer not to spend a fortune to live in a hovel while her neighbours shame her for gentrifying.

Any pair of Roy, Harold and Tammy can get on OK - but it's just not possible for all three of them to get what they want.

There seems to be a contradiction - but that's because any time Roy and Tammy are about to agree, Harold is motivated to enter the conversation and disagree - and the same thing happens when Harold and Tammy are about to agree.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#32

Post by [deleted] »

avar wrote: post #26
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 employee…

[deleted]

Re: Zucktown, USA

#33

Post by humanrebar »

avar wrote: post #26
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 employee…

> If you get fired you also get evicted.

If you get fired, you basically lose your healthcare, which in many cases is much worse. Though quite a number of Americans seem fine with that arrangement for some reason.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#34

Post by eru »

Nullabillity wrote: post #25
nostrademons wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's actually not too bad. I quit, and am still friends with them. You can still get a visitor pass to go boardgaming etc.

Of course that might be just a best case scenario..

Re: Zucktown, USA

#35

Post by humanrebar »

michaelt wrote: post #31
tanilama wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. The bus thing is not the only example those people are contradictory against themselves. They blame techies for the hike of real-estate price, which to certain degree is justified. But at the same time they also oppose any construction of high density accommodation, blaming the company for destroying the neighborhood culture, talking about the good old days with orchards and trees. I think what is really…

They blame techies for the hike of real-estate price, [...] they also oppose any construction of high density accommodation My theory is there are three parties in this discussion. Renter Roy can't afford a house, and thinks tech companies' money is bidding up prices. Homeowner Harold has lived and worked in this neighbourhood for 40 years and doesn't want its character to change and his house's value to fall. Techie…

Seems like only Bay Area homeowners lose out if big tech companies decide to stop colocating all their workers in a handful of zip codes. And they won't get much of a say in that case.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#36

Post by jccalhoun »

moonka wrote: post #3

The wording makes this really hard to read.

Agreed. I had to stop reading it. The subtitle gives you all the information you need: "Facebook, Amazon, and Google are reviving the ill-fated 'company towns' of the Gilded Age."

I am troubled by privately-owned "public" spaces but the writing of this article isn't doing anyone any favors.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#37

Post by eru »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #27
mobiletelephone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unions are mostly there to keep out newcomers and non-union members. Eg strike breakers.

I'm internationally mobile, so I'm often the newcomer.

(And from a philosophical point of view, programmers are so well paid that even taking that down a nodge to the benefit of the general public would be fine. What we have to make sure is that forming new tech companies becomes easier and easier---so that any general cheapening of programmers benefits the customers and not the owners of companies.

Traditionally, unions are the very opposite of lowering barriers to market entry.)

Re: Zucktown, USA

#38

Post by humanrebar »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #30

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…

> Probably not something very attractive to their employees...

I keep hearing this meme and I'm skeptical. Far more people live outside the Bay Area than inside it. Are they all poor saps who are waiting to move to Silicon Valley but haven't yet figured out how?

Re: Zucktown, USA

#39

Post by eru »

nerfhammer wrote: post #15
chis wrote: post #13

The linked anti-union article is more interesting than the original article IMO. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/silicon-valleys... I would tend to agree with the tech-ie opinion that unions are becoming obselete in the US. Unions existed to protect workers who were unskilled and interchangeable; the endgame of tech is to automate all those jobs. But obviously I’m not a labor scholar and this is just an…

Unions seem to have more tractability where you expect to have the same employer for life.

It's a bit hard to talk about unions in general. Eg the Americans have these unions for people working in the entertainment industry (eg actors guild or so?), and those people usually work on a project basis, don't they?

On a historical note, I am currently reading A Generation of Materialism. The book has some very interesting bits about the early history of unions in Europe.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#40

Post by eru »

d_theorist wrote: post #20
moonka wrote: post #3

The wording makes this really hard to read.

Yes, it’s annoyingly over-written. Some parts barely even make sense. I also question whether the author knows what the word “capitalism” actually means.

Alas, capitalism means many different things to many different people.

(As a mildly interesting example of a similar phenomenon: the pro-business libertarian / neo-liberal FDP party in Germany still proudly calls itself 'liberal'.)

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