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Zucktown, USA

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Re: Zucktown, USA

#71

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

humanrebar wrote: post #38
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?

> 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?

Usually when people claim that companies should try to recreate Silicon Valley in some cheaper "heartland of America", they are talking about flyover country. And demographically, many people still in flyover country may well be poor saps who haven't yet figured out how to move to the coasts, as statistics show a steady drain of young people to the coasts or at least a few major metropolitan areas in their part of America.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#72

Post by cupscale »

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…

Actually, does Harold ever agree with either party? Tammy and Roy both want low housing costs, and Harold doesn't.

Sure, you can get to an armistice with Harold and Tammy: Housing costs are high but your salary is such that even spending 66% of your pay on housing leaves you with an ample amount of money.

But I wouldn't call that agreement anything other than begrudging.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#73

Post by notacoward »

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 existed to protect workers who were unskilled and interchangeable

I think that's pretty offensive to a lot of tradespeople. If you think plumbers, carpenters, or electricians are unskilled, try doing what they do. Unions protected both skilled and unskilled workers. Whether they continue to do so, or whether they can serve in that role for information workers, is quite an interesting question, but skilled vs. unskilled is not at the crux of it.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#74

Post by emodendroket »

humanrebar wrote: post #33
avar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OK but that doesn't make it positive or neutral to move even further in that direction.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#75

Post by emodendroket »

zghst wrote: post #68

Such lazy, barren journalism. Automatically slanted towards racism, Marxism, and other hot topics of the day. This didn't inform me in any way other than the author's personal agenda.

If you're clicking a link to the Baffler expecting something other than a withering critique of some aspect of modern society it's your own fault. It's not intended to be "journalism" in the sense you mean it.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#76

Post by heedlessly2 »

eru wrote: post #34
Nullabillity wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

but realistically, you'll be hanging out less often and you'll fade into feeling like an outsider?

Re: Zucktown, USA

#78

Post by michaelbuckbee »

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…

This is some William Gibson level stuff - in some of his stories the protagonists would be fixers who were hired to extract people from their companies they worked for.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#79

Post by [deleted] »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #67
eru wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

Doesn't that seem a bit insane to you though? You're essentially saying the company is permitting you to continue your friendships. What about when they stop doing that?

[deleted]

Re: Zucktown, USA

#80

Post by emodendroket »

Houshalter wrote: post #5

Oh Lord. A bunch of poor 19th century miners in a remote town is not the same as this at all. These are some of the richest and easily employable workers in the country living in one of the most populated regions. They wouldn't have to do this if the local government wasn't so restrictive either. These companies don't care if their employees own their own homes or not. But unfortunately big companies are the only gro…

Well, there are a couple responses there. Obviously the mining towns are the most extreme expression of the problem, but is it not reasonable to say you might see smaller echoes of this in the tech companies' case? White-collar workers in general are working longer hours, etc., so I don't think we can say they write all the rules.

But perhaps a bigger question is, what about all the people who work at Google or Facebook who are not in-demand engineers? It seems like once you've established the principle it's easier to expand it to less prestigious positions.

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