Dorm living for professionals comes to SF • Hacker News Board

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#101

Post by vladimirkon » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:45 AM UTC

BadassFractal wrote: post #40

stale2002 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. The big X tech companies, and hot unicorns in the bay area pay crazy salaries for engineers. 3k a month doesn't seem too bad when you are making 200k+, which is close to ~triple what you'd make in some rando mid sized city. Working for the average SF startup though? Yeah, you'd be better off somewhere else.

Are that many SF tech workers making over 200 grand a year?

Pretty sure that not too many. Some do, but again, most are capped at about 180k (that if with 7+ years of experience) For some stock options make a difference, but again, that is if you're lucky

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#102

Post by closeparen » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:52 AM UTC

jadedhacker wrote: post #81

closeparen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years-long waiting lists for apartments shared with many strangers are the historical norm under socialist housing schemes and the only evidence-based expectation were we to implement one today. This despite central-planning allocation of graduates to work assignments and no freedom of internal movement. This alone would probably "solve" the housing crises in major cities today: just stop letting people move to them…

I really appreciate your perspective. I'm still learning about all of this. My understanding is that most often these setups were started in relatively poor countries that didn't have enough housing to start with. That is not the case in the US where many houses remain vacant in the face of homelessness so that speculators can speculate. In China, they are building entire ghost cities and then filling them as fast as…

The problem in both cases is urbanization. Soviet central planners explicitly set out to industrialize their agrarian society; market forces are moving America's center of gravity from the Midwestern factory to the coastal R&D office. As populations move (or are ordered to move) to follow these changes, it creates blight and abandonment in the places they leave and a housing crunch in the places they head to.

The empty houses are in the places that are no longer economically relevant; the housing crises are in the places everyone is moving to.

The Soviets responded by building space-efficient housing in cities as fast as they could, which was just not fast enough. American cities are actively refusing to let this happen at any significant scale.

We would first need these cities to decide to want enough housing for their ballooning populations. Then we could argue over whether the state or private developers should build it.

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#103

Post by volgo » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 7:01 AM UTC

vladimirkon wrote: post #72

jdpigeon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying you make ~200k/year 2 years out of college? That is not normal.

Don't believe it! maybe salary + stock options + benifits - that's a possibility (even though a pretty rare one). But 200k cash, BS, no employer would pay that to someone with 2 years of experience... One exception is if that guy possesses some unique skills of some hype industry (blockchain, AI, VR), but that really a very unique situation. Most of people here make around $130k/year + some stock options/rsu's

No, it's $210k cash. Additional RSUs and bonuses up to $70+ depending on company and individual performance.

No hype. I work harder than anyone else and complete projects at least twice as fast. I constantly push for promotion and raises and hop jobs to get the raise.

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#104

Post by volgo » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 7:02 AM UTC

kikki wrote: post #86

volgo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are some extremely skewed numbers. I live in a $1.7k one bedroom. Rent is like 10% of my pay and I'm just 2 years out of college. No student debt because my family is poor. San Francisco is an amazing place for technies if you're not bad with money

Is this in San Fransisco proper or the outskirts? I've been looking around as I may potentially be moving and can't find anything reasonable under 2.3k that isn't roomsharing

20 mins fron downtown

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#105

Post by closeparen » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 7:06 AM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #19

zootam wrote: post #8

> to turn into dorm rooms for the middle class. let's be real here, the middle class in the bay area/SF makes $250k+ per household. there's nothing wrong with living in dorms, but there is something disturbing about calling this the 'middle class' in SF.

Median household income in SF is $78k.

This is a useless semantic game: do you define middle-class as however median-income earners live locally, or do you define middle-class as an objective standard of living (based on national norms) and then check what income is necessary to obtain it?

Housing is also sticky. Many (not all) $78k earners locked in mortgages or rent control back when that was a lot of money, and live much better than any newcomer could on 2x that today.

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#106

Post by tonyedgecombe » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 7:06 AM UTC

adrianmonk wrote: post #12

zootam wrote: post #8

> to turn into dorm rooms for the middle class. let's be real here, the middle class in the bay area/SF makes $250k+ per household. there's nothing wrong with living in dorms, but there is something disturbing about calling this the 'middle class' in SF.

Agreed. Middle class shouldn't be defined by what sounds like a lot of money. It should be defined by what sort of spending power you have in the area where you actually live.

Perhaps it shouldn't be defined at all, we can see here everybody has a different definition depending on the point they are trying to make.

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#107

Post by vladimirkon » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 7:09 AM UTC

volgo wrote: post #103

vladimirkon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't believe it! maybe salary + stock options + benifits - that's a possibility (even though a pretty rare one). But 200k cash, BS, no employer would pay that to someone with 2 years of experience... One exception is if that guy possesses some unique skills of some hype industry (blockchain, AI, VR), but that really a very unique situation. Most of people here make around $130k/year + some stock options/rsu's

No, it's $210k cash. Additional RSUs and bonuses up to $70+ depending on company and individual performance. No hype. I work harder than anyone else and complete projects at least twice as fast. I constantly push for promotion and raises and hop jobs to get the raise.

You definitely hustling :) Can you share what kind of tech work you do? And how often you hop jobs?

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#108

Post by erdojo » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 7:09 AM UTC

adrianmonk wrote: post #9

This article says it's "an unusual experiment", but how is this different from an SRO? http://www.ccsroc.net/s-r-o-hotels-in-san-francisco/ Description from this article of the "experiment": "Shared bathrooms at the end of the hall and having no individual kitchen or living room". Description from the SRO web site link above: "A typical S.R.O. is a single eight (8) x ten (10) foot room with shared toilets and showers…

Plus, back in the 40s-60s, there were boarding houses in big cities for single women. Not an unusual or experimental concept at all.

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#109

Post by closeparen » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 7:15 AM UTC

readhn wrote: post #88

djrobstep wrote: post #32

Last time I was in SF I stayed near the Tenderloin area: I've never seen anything like that level of homelessness, neglect and dysfunction in any other first world country. The existence of such conditions in a city of billionaires is shameful shit. The US economy generates over $100k per household, and people are living on the street, or crammed into dorm rooms? It's a cruel, obscene disgrace.

I was shocked as well. All these leading tech companies, some of the richest people on Earth and can't fix the house they live in? It is such a bizarre contrast to see so much wealth and people living in card boxes on the streets. No body cares enough to actually get it fixed.

Does anyone actually want to see Big Tech "disrupt" homelessness policy/services?

Re: Dorm living for professionals comes to SF

#110

Post by candiodari » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 7:18 AM UTC

pcl wrote: post #71

nostrademons wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per capita world GDP is about $16K/year. That's significantly more than $10/day, but it's also significantly less than anyone in the Western world is accustomed to living on.

$16,000 / 365 = $44 / day. And wealth and income are non-linear [1], so 70% of the population could easily be below the mean. [1] citation needed

You can't calculate it like that. That's total revenue, not the amount paid out to employees.

That number can only be said to be strictly higher than average daily wage. But probably at the very least 50% higher than average wages.