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Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#121

Post by awjr »

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #114
awjr wrote: post #73

I did this on a 6 month contract as an experiment over a mild winter in the UK in 2011. You can pretty much do this anywhere. Couple of tricks: 1) Get a small camper/van that can park in one car parking space with a diesel heating system. Kitchen is irrelevant. Bed/toilet/heating system/space to sit and type/space for clothes to hang. 2) You need a toilet but usually you time your bowel movements to only need to use…

I was of the impression that in the UK sleeping in the back of your car when drunk could still lead to a charge of "drunk in charge of a vehicle". Could you elaborate on why it's different with a van, please?

UK caravan club got the clarification from the police years ago. The driver cabin is considered separate to the rear. They are two distinct 'rooms'. Unsure when you have a swivelling captain chair, but in my van the seats were fixed.

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#122

Post by jessaustin »

twistedpair wrote: post #112
guard-of-terra wrote: post #92

Moscow University main building has cafes, shops, dormitories and even a barber's shop. I've heard rumors that some students spent months without leaving the building. On campus this should be even easier, come on.

At MIT, it's a badge of honor how many days you spend during finals living in the library, studying all day, every day. Students literally move into the library and live there. There was even a student that secretly built his own dorm room in the steam tunnels. It's on the unofficial tour as the "Tomb of the Unknown Tool".

Having worked in Cambridge steam tunnels during the winter, I suspect the "room" wasn't actually all that close to any steam pipes, because otherwise they would have found his (her?) corpse.

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#123

Post by fishnchips »

Perhaps behemoths like Google could literally build company towns in the vicinity of their campuses with heavily subsidised rents. I'm not even being sarcastic here - I live in Ireland and until recently worked as an engineer for Google in Dublin. With 3k+ folks there - most young and single and not much into commuting - a few square miles around the campus is just a 'Google ghetto'. Some folks even happily connect to the office wifi using various contraptions. The only difference between that and a 'company town' is higher rents. I'd imagine that would work even better in SV where rents are outrageous as compared to Dublin, IE.

With regards to the original article I can testify to knowing a guy on the MTV campus who did that for a little while. To be fair his manager eventually got involved and told him to find either an apartment or a new job.

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#124

Post by gaadd33 »

netcan wrote: post #113
Iftheshoefits wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cities where a $140k salary exist in the same quantity as in the bay area are roughly equivalent with respect to the cost to live there. A job in SF that pays $140k might fetch $60-$90k in most of the rest of the US, with higher salaries being more rare. So while there are lots of places where $140k is practically king-like, the number of positions with that salary are both hotly competed for and far fewer in num…

This is the paradox. You can phrase it as a question: Why don't blubsoft or blub.ly open offices in city X and continue to pay the same salaries there . Relocated employees would be richer and blub.ly should have an easier time hiring. Obvious'y this doesn't happen even though a simple common sense "story" suggests that it should. Hence unintuitive. I'm not saying that individuals don't have their reasons for doing w…

Doesn't Google do that? I'm pretty sure salaries at their Pittsburgh office are pretty much on par with their NYC office despite Pittsburgh being half as expensive (or less).

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#125

Post by vidarh »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #79
blazespin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech folks tend to live in their heads. Houses, etc, is just boring distractions.

This. Currently all my stuff fits into two backpacks (a big backpacker one and a small one for the laptop). The only thing I miss from my old stationary lifestyle is a regular gym, sparring partners and a coach. The only thing I don't understand about living in the googleplex is sex. Logistics is everything - I remember once dealing with a month of involuntary celibacy due to a bad living situation. NOT an experience…

Most people go through much longer periods of celibacy than that on a regular basis when outside of long term relationships. For most people, the singles life is relatively sex-less. Presumably living on campus isn't a choice that most people make in the first place when they are in long term relationships and/or have regular options of companionship.

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#126

Post by jonknee »

notacoward wrote: post #72
onion2k wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And thus, Google becomes The Circle completely. I'm being a bit flippant, but really the last thing Google employees (and every other successful tech businesses to be fair) need is to be more isolated in their ivory towers. Meeting people outside of the tech industry keeps you grounded and stops you forgetting that there are vast numbers of people who aren't so intelligent and happy with massive changes every couple…

"Meeting people outside of the tech industry keeps you grounded" But does where you sleep affect that at all? Even where I am, many people live in apartments or houses and yet have almost no social interaction outside of high tech. I'm sure that's at least as true in Silicon Valley, with its corporate citadels and meetups and apartment complexes that specifically court techies with fast networks etc. Civic/community/…

> But does where you sleep affect that at all? Even where I am, many people live in apartments or houses and yet have almost no social interaction outside of high tech. I'm sure that's at least as true in Silicon Valley, with its corporate citadels and meetups and apartment complexes that specifically court techies with fast networks etc.

Not normally, but if you sleep at work then definitely yes. If you never leave the Google campus what are the odds you'll interact with people who don't work for Google?

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#127

Post by potatolicious »

electrograv wrote: post #15

Silicon Valley: Where highly paid ($100-$200k+) engineers sleep in cars to save money on obscenely expensive rent. Honestly, recently moving to Seattle has been refreshing to me in this regard. I find Seattle tech industry pay no less than SF, plus no state income tax, and for the same rent as SF you can practically live like a king/queen here. I wonder how long the housing situation in SV can keep up until everythin…

It's coming to Seattle too. I moved away from SEA 3 years ago and the rent on my old apartment has gone up by 50%. If you want to stick around, consider buying.

Anecdotally I've been hearing more Valley-style anti-tech sentiment coming out of Seattle lately. If not careful Seattle can just as easily turn into the same us vs. them, haves vs. have-nots story of San Francisco.

It'll just be the MS Connector instead of the Google Bus instead.

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#128

Post by BuildTheRobots »

awjr wrote: post #121
BuildTheRobots wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was of the impression that in the UK sleeping in the back of your car when drunk could still lead to a charge of "drunk in charge of a vehicle". Could you elaborate on why it's different with a van, please?

UK caravan club got the clarification from the police years ago. The driver cabin is considered separate to the rear. They are two distinct 'rooms'. Unsure when you have a swivelling captain chair, but in my van the seats were fixed.

Excellent -thank you very much for the details. Looks like I need to upgrade my vehicle :)

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#129

Post by awjr »

allegory wrote: post #108
mvlad wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that social groups are critical and so it seems that swimming and saunas, but when taking a piss, or having a kitchen are ``irrelevant'' topics.

As someone else who lived like this for a few months (except out of the back of a much smaller Land Rover Series III), pissing is done in hedges (and the odd beer can), shitting in public toilets or food restaurants and cooking on a gas bottle outside. Mine looked like this: http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/uploads/cars/land_rover/30328... Going for swim acts as an opportunity for showering. It's great fun after you ge…

Sounds like your set up was more rural. I was doing it in the middle of a city mostly, so really had to have everything self contained. Definitely would consider having the rear doors open and ability to pull out a cooking area and pop up an awning for those times when you are sitting on a beach and need coffee and a bacon roll.

Must admit it's a pretty good way of living but not sure I would do it for years on end.

Now canal boats....now that I could see myself doing one day.

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#130

Post by logn »

simonswords82 wrote: post #70
mithras wrote: post #8

maybe change the link to the quora thread? The article adds literally nothing. http://www.quora.com/Which-Googler-holds-the-record-for-livi...

I've started to see a trend, first on Forbes and now here, where "journalists" are scraping Quora for content rather than creating fresh copy. I get that it's tempting but c'mon.

I've noticed it's very common too. Seems to me that Quora, now in YC and having a mid-life crisis, should just start their own publication/blog featuring their best content.
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