Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

salon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 97 posts

Re: I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

#81

Post by marktangotango »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #71
crimsonalucard wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasting money on rent is the bigger tragedy.

Yep, every time I sign a check for Bay Area rent, I consider how I'm in the wrong industry, since the land owners have to do very little to continue to extract rent from their one-time-purchase of land (I know, tax is a thing too, but pales in comparison to the returns they must be getting on the land). I'm not super interested in buying a house here, since >half a million for a tiny spot of land in the suburbs with…

Mini van, parking garage :) I knew a guy on college who had mini van xe ked for camping, could easily do as a min rv.

Re: I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

#82

Post by lsc »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #22
peter303 wrote: post #21

I read a couple of essays from googliers who did this. Google provides nearly all your needs in office- free food, recreation, laundry- save a many hour sleep spot. And people work and hang out 12, 15 hours then. So why pay high rent only to sleep and put up with terrible commute traffic. In the open office environment of new techs finding sleep spots is harder. But many sleep in their vehicles in a climate rarely fr…

If I got paid a Google salary, there's no way I couldn't afford to find an apartment in Santa Clara County. Note I didn't say fancy condo, 3 bedroom ranch house with two car garage and spacious lawn, or townhouse.

>If I got paid a Google salary, there's no way I couldn't afford to find an apartment in Santa Clara County.

Sure, an a google or facebook or linkedin salary, you can afford a place to live in the area, no question. But two or three grand a month, post tax? That's still a lot of money. I mean, it's not the choice I would make, but I can totally understand why someone would want to live in the office, even though they could instead spend a lot of money on rent.

There's a lot of reasons why you'd want to save that money; Just one reason: How many of us remember 1999? If this is anything like that, a lot of us will only have a few years in this industry, or we will have a few years in this industry, then spend half a decade doing jobs that pay dramatically less before the economy recovers to the point where we can work in this industry again. Salting away as much cash as you can while the hunting is easy is not a bad idea.

Re: I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

#83

Post by crimsonalucard »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #71
crimsonalucard wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasting money on rent is the bigger tragedy.

Yep, every time I sign a check for Bay Area rent, I consider how I'm in the wrong industry, since the land owners have to do very little to continue to extract rent from their one-time-purchase of land (I know, tax is a thing too, but pales in comparison to the returns they must be getting on the land). I'm not super interested in buying a house here, since >half a million for a tiny spot of land in the suburbs with…

Here's a plan I often thought about for living in the big city while skipping out on paying rent for an apartment:

Spend about 10k for a used casita travel trailer. The trailer fits in an area the size of a compact car. Rent/buy a parking spot and setup the trailer. In the big city you can get gym membership to cover sewage and showers. For internet you can easily purchase some sort of cellular or wifi service. Almost everything I need would be covered.

It's not for everyone but for myself, I have no qualms about small spaces, so I'd totally execute this plan if it wasn't for the complication of accessing the power grid. There's really no easy way to get a power line up into the trailer if it's in some parking garage. Perhaps solar? but that leads to other complications.

Re: I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

#84

Post by sliverstorm »

Retra wrote: post #63
crucifiction wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cumulative happiness over your life is the goal then the first one is clearly the wrong approach. The probability that you will die/become incapacitated/have health issues before you can either build up or enjoy for a long period of time that F-U money puts a discount on the entire end state.

Why would cumulative happiness be a goal? Happiness is not a things that accumulates.

Looking forward to the next 100 days, which is your preference?

- That you be really happy 2 days

- That you be fairly happy 90 days

Re: I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

#85

Post by wingerlang »

oAlbe wrote: post #66
digisign wrote: post #56

Must have been pioneer in this area. A bit over ten years ago I once had a good job in Santa Monica, but was tired of paying ridiculous rent for a shoebox that I was never at. So I packed up, slept in the underground parking garage, and went to the gym every day. Was in the best shape of my life and saved 40k that year, which I later turned into a 2-year trip around the world. Was definitely worth it.

Doesn't this affect your health? An year is a pretty long time to spend sleeping in a car seat, that is definitely less comfortable than an actual bed. Plus there is to consider that in an underground garage humidity levels should be pretty high, which can cause headaches (to say the least) and make the entire thing of sleeping in a car seat even worst for the back. How did it work out for you? (geniune question)

> "Was in the best shape of my life"

Also he might have had a big car, van, trailer or whatnot.

Re: I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

#86

Post by waps »

Retric wrote: post #34
waps wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having commuted to work in Brussels, a city often described as having great mass transit (and when it's not busy, that's absolutely true) Here's my observations : 1) despite not paying for itself (the state pays hundreds of millions yearly to make up for the losses of the public transport system) it's a little bit more expensive, per kilometer, than taking a car (train + metro vs gas). Even for longer distances, plan…

Cars are terrible at scaling. The core problem is roads take a lot of surface area so adding traffic lanes reduces density which forces longer commutes. Add to that you need parking at both ends which reduces density further. http://streets.mn/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/car-vs-bike-vs-... They are also worse for the environment and kill lot's of people. PS: Cars also have huge direct and indirect subsides, consider w…

You're absolutely right that cars don't scale well in theory, but when it comes to expanding capacity when that is necessary, cars outperform public transport. This is mostly because space is not often in short supply, but money always is.

Cars seem to have much better support for their expansion from governments, and that this results in better real-world scaling. It seems to me this is in no small part because car infrastructure is way cheaper per extra person of capacity than mass transit.

Both cars and mass-transit have huge subsidies, at least in Belgium.

Re: I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

#87

Post by halviti »

DanBC wrote: post #33
bigtunacan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get this attitude. It's not for everyone, but it's a great way to save money. Do this for awhile and you can save up to purchase a home outright or at least have a sizable down payment. I interviewed for a job in Chicago with a company where one of the employees lived in the office. Unlike the Salon article, this employee openly asked if he could live in the office to save himself the cost of rent. The…

> this employee openly asked if he could live in the office to save himself the cost of rent. The employer had no issue with. I'd be interested how it affects insurance.

If the building is commercially zoned, doing this would technically be illegal.

So if they found out this was a factor in something they would normally pay out for, you can be sure they wouldn't.

Re: I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

#88

Post by DanBC »

halviti wrote: post #87
DanBC wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this employee openly asked if he could live in the office to save himself the cost of rent. The employer had no issue with. I'd be interested how it affects insurance.

If the building is commercially zoned, doing this would technically be illegal. So if they found out this was a factor in something they would normally pay out for, you can be sure they wouldn't.

I'm pretty sure they wouldn't pay out even if he wasn't a factor. I think they'd try to claim that him being there makes the insurance invalid.

Re: I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

#89

Post by Retric »

waps wrote: post #86
Retric wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are terrible at scaling. The core problem is roads take a lot of surface area so adding traffic lanes reduces density which forces longer commutes. Add to that you need parking at both ends which reduces density further. http://streets.mn/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/car-vs-bike-vs-... They are also worse for the environment and kill lot's of people. PS: Cars also have huge direct and indirect subsides, consider w…

You're absolutely right that cars don't scale well in theory, but when it comes to expanding capacity when that is necessary, cars outperform public transport. This is mostly because space is not often in short supply, but money always is. Cars seem to have much better support for their expansion from governments, and that this results in better real-world scaling. It seems to me this is in no small part because car…

Belgium has decent public transit and is below the point where cars have issues with scaling. It's really more an issue with sprawling mega city's where the suburbs can only expand in one direction. So ocean / mountains on one side, north and south huge city's so everyone is coming from one direction.

Re: I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

#90

Post by chiph »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #71
crimsonalucard wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasting money on rent is the bigger tragedy.

Yep, every time I sign a check for Bay Area rent, I consider how I'm in the wrong industry, since the land owners have to do very little to continue to extract rent from their one-time-purchase of land (I know, tax is a thing too, but pales in comparison to the returns they must be getting on the land). I'm not super interested in buying a house here, since >half a million for a tiny spot of land in the suburbs with…

There are people who stealth camp on the city streets in conversion vans or smaller Class C RVs. They never park in the same place twice, and once it gets dark, have to be careful to not give themselves away (interior lights, movement, etc).

http://www.donniemyer.com/were-doing-this/1096

Post reply on HN