141–150 of 275 posts
Must be kind of hard to bring a date home to... a car in some corporate parking lot, with the windows blacked out. But I guess for Googlers, that's not such a high priority.
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…
Is the problem mentioned in the post, typically, relevant to singles?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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/…
I see your point, but I'd still venture living on campus or in dormitories is worse. I used to live in an apartment building Seattle that was immensely popular with Amazonians and Microsofties. Social interaction there was very limited to high tech (to an annoying degree), but at least we ate at local places, drank at local places, visited local grocery stores and barbers, etc. So yeah, "insular techies" can't be ful…
Of course, companies like Google know this. The whole reason they provide the meals is so that people's attention stays focused within Google instead of elsewhere. That probably leads into a whole 'nother discussion of whether meals at work are really a good thing, but I'll just leave it there for now.
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 t…
http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2012-12-18/corporat...
I guess I'm wondering if Google actually cares. Seems like if they think it will help employee productivity to let them hangout at work 24/7 then seems like a win for everyone. Maybe they formalize it and set up a few bunk beds with lockers or something. Doesn't seem out of the question.
Does anyone else feels like we're really getting towards the cyberpunk universe ? with corporations that completely own the life of their employees by providing them with everything, and a violent lawless and miserable outside world. And as always, it all started with the best intentions.
I can't see to recall the name of the book though. Soon enough we will be getting there though.
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…
Isn't a huge part of the housing issue in SV the zoning? I recall reading about how large swathes of land have been zoned away from residential, largely because of the influence of the wealthy who live in and near the area. Never underestimate the politics!
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…
Rent in central cities is one of the unintuitive outcomes of the modern economy. SV might be an extreme example, but it isn't the only one. The world is far more globalized. People work with clients, customers, and coworkers mostly through the internet, even if they are in the same building or city. Google's a good example. They have offices all over. They have clients everywhere. Common sense would dictate that empl…
http://www.amazon.com/The-Geography-Jobs-Enrico-Moretti/dp/0...
He talks about why things have not gone 'flat'.
Does anyone else feels like we're really getting towards the cyberpunk universe ? with corporations that completely own the life of their employees by providing them with everything, and a violent lawless and miserable outside world. And as always, it all started with the best intentions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bournville
Cadbury was rather late to the game. UK companies were building villages for their workers all the way back to the late 1700s: