81–90 of 547 posts
You'd think they could spend a bit to "buy" someone like Senator Atkins, who effectively killed SB50. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-housing-single-fa...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and face-to-face communication is very important to this job [citation needed] It can be important for some people, and for some teams, but it's not very important for every person or every team.
I don't think the fact that humans are social animals needs a citation. Most people are healthier and happier spending their time in social groups. Even as a highly introverted person, I'd much rather interact with live people every day than work remotely and only interact electronically. Of course there are exceptions, but I would guess that building a company, or even parts of it, from the exceptions is a lot of tr…
Humans can (and should) get their social needs met anywhere, not only at their place of employment.
I've worked both onsite and remote throughout my career. I'd never advocate for forced remote work (because some people want to get their social needs met through their employer).
Rather, I'd argue that it should be considered as an option.
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The 'root' cause is that industries tend to concentrate, and that's not an easy problem to solve. And at the same time there's a massive economic draw, California refuses to let the market provide anything like enough housing.
People respond to this agglomeration factor with the argument we should “hire remote cuz the internet thing”. But the other factor to consider is how we are less tied by our jobs to physical location and that allows more choice in where people decide to live too. A lot of people want to live in the Bay Area and other coastal cities. They don’t want to live where housing is cheap in the Midwest. So you may have a libe…
Hah - see my comment elsewhere.
Local politicians are definitely the choke point that doesn't allow the market to function properly.
1) open more large centers in other states. having a single supercenter with good jobs in one place only is bad for that place and country as a whole
2) encourage and promote remote work
Most major tech companies want to hire onsite, when there are plenty of places in this country where you can buy a lot of real estate for much cheaper than the Bay Area. I pay less on my mortgage for a large house with over an acre of land than friends of mine pay for rent for studio apartments in San Francisco or Seattle. Investing $1B into housing in the Bay Area seems nice at the surface, but maybe if we stopped d…
> I pay less on my mortgage for a large house with over an acre of land than friends of mine pay for rent for studio apartments in San Francisco or Seattle. That studio in San Francisco or Seattle comes with the opportunity of a high paying job at a tech company. The large house with an acre of land gives you other opportunities, but if that one specific dimension is what you care about then it falls short.
- Good schools
- Lots of like-minded people to befriend
- Lots of places to eat, activities, venues, etc.
- Several higher and continuing education opportunities
- Good (well, better than almost all mid-sized cities, at least) public transit options
I definitely understand the appeal of living out in the country, but, for reasons I don't entirely understand, on many threads like this, people seem to completely overlook all of the myriad ways that living in a city is actually great.
It's not all grim concrete jungle hellscape. If I lived out in the sticks, I could afford a couple of acres and a +2,000 square foot home. But I couldn't afford a zoo, aquarium, bike trail, running path, music venue, movie theater, personal chef, playground, and coffee house to go with it.
The fundamental tenet of urban density is that by giving up some personal space, we all get access to a much greater variety of shared spaces.
It's sad how many times I walk around in SF and see basically crumbling buildings or empty parking lots and wonder why new housing has not been built there yet? And more importantly who would actually oppose development on crumbling or wasted land?
It's great that Google wants to increase housing, but is this really going to work? The housing shortage in the Bay Area is not a money problem. If it were possible to build 20,000 houses in the next 20 years, it would absolutely happen without Google's help. The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism. SF doesn't want to allow taller buildings and denser housing complexes. It's vastly worse in the…
That's $50K/home. Is that even remotely realistic in the Bay Area?
Surprised as well, for that money in the bay area it sounds more like motor-homes or something like that. I still don't get why all this concentration is needed in the bay area in the first place and don't buy the argument that they need to be all in the same area. There could be multiple bay area like places throughout the US. All these problems would suddenly disappear. Other areas would flourish, more people could…
Welcome to Googleville. It's been a while since I've read cyberpunk novels like Cryptonomican, but I feel like the reality of corporations becoming villages and societal entities is slowly getting there anyways. Your move, We.