Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests • Hacker News Board

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#231

Post by antt » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 11:13 AM UTC

Sargos wrote: post #193

antt wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When they move into your town and your rents double you can't just be retrained. Why?

It's not a politically correct thing to say but most people aren't smart enough to work in tech. It's a fairly top tier field unless you're doing something really, really basic.

I fundamentally disagree. The only reason why tech is hard to get into is because tech education is so terrible that teaching someone to use Word is what passes for IT. Something that makes as much sense as writing dotted lines with chalk as a prerequisite for mathematics.

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#232

Post by camillomiller » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #172

camillomiller wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation in both Seattle and San Francisco is effed-up big time, and that's because of Big Tech. There's no comparison yet with Berlin, and Berliners simply showed that social cohesion still counts. It's a fight against tone deaf giants that can't see themselves doing any harm ever in the name of progress. What happened to Google in Berlin was the best possible outcome.

The situation in San Francisco is mostly due to NIMBYism and a refusal to build housing. Tech jobs don't magically make housing prices rise - shortages of housing make housing prices rise. Seattle is handling this better than SF, in large part because SF had messed with the natural interaction of supply and demand. Given what the above commenter wrote, Berlin looks like it is in the same situation as SF: trying to so…

Have you ever been here in Berlin? Baustelle (working sites) everywhere. Right now a huge complex for rich people is being built close to Alexanderplatz, while a Plattenbau (sort of prefab building) for good affordable housing is being built in front of it. There's a lot of space and a lot of socially oriented development. What you call, wrongly, Nimby-ism is purely the acknowledgement that we don't need to tear apart the fabric of social cohesion by letting random flying saucers (like Google's campus) land in areas which are not fit for properly welcoming them. There's plenty of places in still central but more depressed areas of the city where the Google Campus could have made much much more sense.

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#233

Post by cyphunk » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

Sargos wrote: post #193

antt wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When they move into your town and your rents double you can't just be retrained. Why?

It's not a politically correct thing to say but most people aren't smart enough to work in tech. It's a fairly top tier field unless you're doing something really, really basic.

It's not about being smart enough. It's about time required to retrain and the cost to do so. Until Google, or PeidPeiper, have a on-job training program sufficient enough that they can walk into every Shop of Kreutzberg and say "here, we we'll teach you the skills you need just come work for us" -- we should assume their setting up shop will displace a ton of people. Until those companies add to that "and we'll pay your cost of living until you transition" their movement into a neighborhood should perceived as a Tax by the state.

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#234

Post by cyphunk » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

Xylakant wrote: post #220

cyphunk wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mere mention of google already turned up into most housing and office space sale adverts. The effect on housing costs is real but the amount debatable. Rents in the neighborhood have gone through the roof the past couple years and protestors are looking for symbolic wins to make the city more urgently address the problem.

> Rents in the neighborhood have gone through the roof the past couple years Exactly my point. The rents are on the rise with our without google. I really don't think that the victory is anything but a symbolic win. It does nothing to push the city to solve that issue.

Companies paying workers 3 to 10 times the average wage for an area adds real stress. Berlin's problems are that, and also:

+ A global shift toward freelance and remote work letting people take a risk and move to a new place.

+ The first German renaissance back toward the east after the wall fell. The older generation in the west still remember Berlin and people from Berlin in a negative light, but their children have quiet a different impression and their parents are alltohappy to buy property for them in under-priced Berlin. Additionally reunification gutted all industry in the east causing a renter exodus to larger east German cities

+ A global debt surplus and rich people everywhere looking for stable places to stash wealth with Germany's open markets an attractive destination. In some odd way financially conservative Germans think they win with this, not considering how it increases costs of all social services and thereby their tax burden as well.

Focusing on overpriced jobs is definitely only one of many places to start. Google just made it very easy that people target them first because their products are so disliked for their lack of care for privacy: post-snowden I'm not sure I know of a single service Google has switched to being e2e encrypted.

Re: Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests

#235

Post by derEitel » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 7:48 PM UTC

mercer wrote: post #230

VonGallifrey wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that Google wanted to go to the very specific and small space in Berlin where tons of artists are. Berlin is "big" (although not as big as you might think), so why would Google need to be in Kreuzberg when it can be ANYWHERE else.

The main issue is that all the programmers want to live in Kreuzberg too...

I'm doing a PhD in Berlin, living in Kreuzberg and I can tell you far from all of the programmers that I know want to live here!

What makes Kreuzberg attractive for startups and a Google campus is that it's central and perfectly connected infrastructurewise. Most other regions like Schöneberg, parts of Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg and maybe Moabit, are all harder to reach from some other regions, even though more start-up employees live there. You can see on the maps of rental e-scooters like Coup how during the day there is a lot of activity towards Kreuzberg whereas after work the district is basically empty of their scooters. Imho kreuzberg is too dirty for most startupers. I guess they don't want to see the heroin junkies of Kotti when they do their grocery shopping.

In general I liked the sentiment of the activists against placing a Campus in Kreuzberg. Nevertheless I didn't like much of their public attitude ("bullets for google") and some arguments seemed superficial ("other Google campuses have increased rents" idk about the causality and factor here). I wouldve liked a Google campus in Schöneberg for example, just as I liked the Google campus in Madrid. In Madrid it offered a nice environment for work, some interesting talks and I didn't feel like it was in an artsy district that suddenly gentrified and turned hip. This could've added something to Berlin, but meddling with the activist scene in Kreuzberg was a poor choice.