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Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

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Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#101

Post by pteredactyl »

expathacker wrote: post #43
fjsolwmv wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't local government use these techies' income tax money to pay for schools and development? This smells like classic blameshifting.

If you've ever been to the San Francisco Bay Area, you'll find that this never happens. Quite the opposite in some cases, the influx of thousands of upper middle-class young techies has priced out families (and teachers). This lowers enrollment, which results in school closures. Circularly, school closures reduces educational funding to the detriment of schools while increasing distance for children to travel to scho…

Source?

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#102

Post by chobeat »

simonh wrote: post #3

I'd be interested to hear the opinions of any Berlin residents. Vocal NIMBY minority driving away new jobs and beneficial development? Genuine victory in preserving local culture and character? Bit of both? Other?

Programmer in Berlin here. I'm very happy Google gave up. The political implications of being anti-gentrification are complicated: here I know many anarchists that are fervently in favor and others that are fervently against. Same for the commies. I have my opinion but I don't think it's worthy to bring it into the discussion.

I'm happy for a single reason: as long as Berlin startup scene preserves its working culture (that reflects German working culture in general), it will be a better working environment than the Silicon Valley. Big campuses and the presence of foreign corporations in general will have a slow but steady cultural influence on the IT workforce, normalizing the level of individual and systemic exploitation that is acceptable in the USA but not in Germany. Unpaid hours, unclear separation between work time and leisure time, ideological brainwashing, identity politics are all things I wouldn't like to see in the company I work for, but if a majority of my colleagues have worked for American corporations before (because they can afford to offer good salaries), it's more likely for it to happen.

Zalando is enough of a meat-grinder, we don't want more.

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#103

Post by woodpanel »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #92
badpun wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fear was that the incubator would accelerate gentrification. Sort of understood, given that Germans are a nation of life-long renters (as opposed to home-owners). Gentrification is generally great for the owner and terrible for the renter.

well you would have thought that after a while Germans should have realised that renting (long term is a mugs game). - Just entrenches the power of the elites.

It's not – at least in Germany. Laws prohibit intense rent hikes, thus you can lock in a low rent, with a delta to new leases that is just ever increasing.

Also, the idea to make everyone a landlord while widely accepted in housing economics to be a good thing, I happen to think is shortsighted and contradicts the principle of "economics of scale".

Housing companies (can be non-profit co-ops as well) often provide much more quality/€ to tenants than the landlord, who owns 1 flat and is always overstrained with the simplest maintnance requests.

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#104

Post by m23khan »

There is a city called Hamilton in Ontario, Canada. Houses a good University called McMaster and is near Waterloo University - premier Computer Science university in Canada.

City (Hamilton) is fairly well developed with a functioning International Airport and since it was initially built around manufacturing, its prestige within Canada has suffered somewhat in last 20-25 years. If firms like Google would be so kind to invest there, the locals and the children of locals and other Canadians would welcome them with open arms.

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#106

Post by brainwad »

narrator wrote: post #47

Google people want to work where there is culture because they don't have any. They just consume it with algorithms, extract the value, reprocess it and redistribute it. They pull everything out of context so it looses its broader meaning. For instance, if I google image search for "women in bikinis" I get hundreds of thousands of women in bikinis, but not the broader narrative of their lives and personalities. It is…

You see the simple answer to your query because Google decides what to show based on what users will prefer, and most users just don't give a fuck about "the broader narrative of their lives and personalities".

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#107

Post by Xylakant »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #22
jschuur wrote: post #9

If I read the article correctly, this wasn't about building a new 'Google campus' (i.e. a huge building to house a large number of Google employees as their main regional HQ). This was about building Campus Berlin, an incubator for startups like they pioneered first in London and then brought to other cities. See https://www.campus.co/berlin/de and https://www.campus.co/london/en . It's easy to misunderstand this bec…

> help diversify the tech ecosystem in Berlin and give them access to facilities and other resources. Another way of looking at that, is "gentrify the vibrant neighbourhood by trucking in techbros to displace the artists". It's not new (1) I don't necessarily agree with that framing, but it is understandable and coherent, not a misunderstanding 1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18282143

The building was originally renovated by ID Media, one of the largest digital media/web development companies in Berlin at the end of the nineties. It’s been filled with IT companies ever since they went bankrupt and currently has an incubator as one of the renters. It’s never been full of artists for the last 20 years.

So while I’m not surprised (and very much not sad) that the plans didn’t work out for a host of reasons I really don’t think that the campus would have led to substantial gentrification in that region.

Disclosure: we (still) have our office in the complex.

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#108

Post by lg »

m23khan wrote: post #104

There is a city called Hamilton in Ontario, Canada. Houses a good University called McMaster and is near Waterloo University - premier Computer Science university in Canada. City (Hamilton) is fairly well developed with a functioning International Airport and since it was initially built around manufacturing, its prestige within Canada has suffered somewhat in last 20-25 years. If firms like Google would be so kind t…

note there's already a google office nearby in kitchener.

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#109

Post by malvosenior »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #22
jschuur wrote: post #9

If I read the article correctly, this wasn't about building a new 'Google campus' (i.e. a huge building to house a large number of Google employees as their main regional HQ). This was about building Campus Berlin, an incubator for startups like they pioneered first in London and then brought to other cities. See https://www.campus.co/berlin/de and https://www.campus.co/london/en . It's easy to misunderstand this bec…

> help diversify the tech ecosystem in Berlin and give them access to facilities and other resources. Another way of looking at that, is "gentrify the vibrant neighbourhood by trucking in techbros to displace the artists". It's not new (1) I don't necessarily agree with that framing, but it is understandable and coherent, not a misunderstanding 1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18282143

What makes "artists" better to live around than "techbros"? Having lived in my fair share of neighborhoods inhabited by both, I can say neither is better/worse than the other.

It's basically the difference to people living off their parent's money (artists) vs. people living off money they make themselves (tech workers).

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#110

Post by repolfx »

ahartmetz wrote: post #74
doombolt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all places in Spain Madrid is probably the "meh"est. Not wanting to be snark but the selection process seems strange indeed.

The selection process is strange indeed. Google's first German office was in Munich of all places. Extremely expensive, not very exciting (for people to move to), and very high competition for IT workforce. So they have one of Germany's best universities for IT, but the differences between universities actually aren't that large here.

I think that was because of an acquisition.
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