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Joining Apple 40 years ago

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Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#111

Post by kilbuz »

bovermyer wrote: post #61
mattlutze wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the time that's passed since then, you'd be one of the old rich person. Austin sounds like an up-and-coming Valley, as do a few other really gorgeous locations around the US. The trick is to pick one and settle in early.

Minneapolis is also gorgeous, and relatively cheap. There's a "greenway" for bikes and pedestrians that's a converted railway. It has a huge music and art scene. There are tons of local breweries and more than a handful of startups and big name companies with a presence there.

As a former resident, you're not mentioning the elephant in the room -- October - May. I grew up in the Midwest, so I get it, it doesn't seem that bad. But after moving away, it's hard to imagine going back, or convincing others to overlook it.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#112

Post by ghaff »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #80
supernova87a wrote: post #4

Can you imagine moving to the Bay Area in the 80s? To grow up when land was still cheap, before college competition was cutthroat and unaffordable, when relatively simple competence could get you a solid job and VC/PE firms weren't plundering and incentivizing the latest 30-second attention-span app to reach $1B? It would be me living in Los Altos now, instead of the old rich people who I curse for refusing to die or…

You have a distorted picture. I moved to the bay area in 85, stayed 20 years, then left. If you moved there and were already well established, sure, real estate would have been more affordable then than now. But as a young engineer, things were still pretty expensive. My starting salary as a BSEE working for a minicomputer company was $30,000. Two weeks after arriving they had layoffs. They were nice to the new hires…

I started as a product manager (with engineering degrees and an MBA) for a minicomputer company at almost exactly the same time getting paid $42K as I recall. This was one of the Route 128 companies. But, based on some recruiting conversations I had over time, the Bay Area salaries weren't really a lot higher and housing was more expensive. That's one reason I never moved out West. I think I was paying similar in rent initially but it was a bigger 2BR townhouse.

Housing has gotten relatively more expensive but it hasn't been cheap in much of the Bay Area for a very long time and tech salaries didn't used to be anything special.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#113

Post by factsonly »

linguae wrote: post #45

I'm a big fan of Jean-Louis Gassée and I wish there were more visionaries like him in the personal computing industry. He helped push the Mac further during his tenure at Apple, and his work at BeOS also pushed the state of the art of personal computing. There are two major standouts in his career that I greatly appreciate: 1. His transformation of the Mac from the non-expandable appliance it was in the original 1984…

Try out https://www.haiku-os.org it's the spiritual successor and binary compatible.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#114

Post by ghaff »

barry-cotter wrote: post #72
johannes1234321 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Na issue is that with expansion distances increase. Thus you lose the benefit of being in the city (close to work, close to friends, close to cultural offerings, close to shops, close to ...) While Japan did a few things to help, like reliably working high speed railway, which allows commute over wide distance, while central places are crowded during rush hour and can't take much more.

> Thus you lose the benefit of being in the city (close to work, close to friends, close to cultural offerings, close to shops, close to ...) This is the “Brooklyn is boring” problem. It’s temporary. The old city centre (Manhattan) is unlikely to decline rapidly in relative importance but cultural and economic life will happily extend itself from central areas to less central ones given the population and the money t…

Tokyo doesn't really radiate from a single center anyway. It's really an agglomeration of centers of activity. This is also true of NYC to some degree (but in a different way). "Downtown," i.e. Wall Street, isn't the cultural and social center.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#115

Post by ghaff »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #79
mikerg87 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California in the early 80s wasn’t fun. We left SF in ‘83. Interest rates around 15%. Minimum wage around $2.50/hr. Gas rationing. you could only buy gas on certain days based on your license plate. There was an apartment above a garage in SF that sold for $200,000 that was fixup and the garage wasn’t part of the deal. My parents moved us to they east coast where they did finally purchase their own home.

My parents almost had to leave in the late 70s. They moved to San Jose to work in tech. Bought a house in 72 or so. Their home value tripled in around 6 years and so did their property taxes.

Which is why Prop 13 got passed. It may have bad features and bad side effects but IMO you really don't want to force people to sell their homes because their property taxes have rapidly gone up.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#116

Post by dragonwriter »

ghaff wrote: post #115
bcrosby95 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents almost had to leave in the late 70s. They moved to San Jose to work in tech. Bought a house in 72 or so. Their home value tripled in around 6 years and so did their property taxes.

Which is why Prop 13 got passed. It may have bad features and bad side effects but IMO you really don't want to force people to sell their homes because their property taxes have rapidly gone up.

The bad features and bad side effects are the point, avoiding forcing people on limited incomes out of their homes was a convenient leverage point that could be much better served by more targeted policy.

Like, for one, if that was actually your policy goal, the policy would only apply to primary residences, not all real property.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#117

Post by giantrobot »

dkarl wrote: post #85
supernova87a wrote: post #4

Can you imagine moving to the Bay Area in the 80s? To grow up when land was still cheap, before college competition was cutthroat and unaffordable, when relatively simple competence could get you a solid job and VC/PE firms weren't plundering and incentivizing the latest 30-second attention-span app to reach $1B? It would be me living in Los Altos now, instead of the old rich people who I curse for refusing to die or…

> when land was still cheap Twenty years from now, you will be able to tell the same story about wherever high-earning, highly educated young people settle in the meantime. All you have to do is predict and buy in.

Land was cheap in the Santa Clara valley in the past. Huge portions were still orchards and farms that were selling out for new subdivisions. The issue is it's a valley. There's no more open land unless you move impractically far away.

Growth in any area will raise prices but here the issue was compounded by a lack of extra land available after the cheap land was sold.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#118

Post by ghaff »

dragonwriter wrote: post #116
ghaff wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why Prop 13 got passed. It may have bad features and bad side effects but IMO you really don't want to force people to sell their homes because their property taxes have rapidly gone up.

The bad features and bad side effects are the point, avoiding forcing people on limited incomes out of their homes was a convenient leverage point that could be much better served by more targeted policy. Like, for one, if that was actually your policy goal, the policy would only apply to primary residences, not all real property.

Totally agree. I have no personal stake in it but Prop 13 certainly seems to be overly broad for its goal as I understand it of not forcing people out of their homes and neighborhood if they gentrify or otherwise shoot up in value. (Mind you, you can also make points about a long-time neighborhood restaurant that's forced to close because of taxes.)

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#119

Post by lliamander »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #80
supernova87a wrote: post #4

Can you imagine moving to the Bay Area in the 80s? To grow up when land was still cheap, before college competition was cutthroat and unaffordable, when relatively simple competence could get you a solid job and VC/PE firms weren't plundering and incentivizing the latest 30-second attention-span app to reach $1B? It would be me living in Los Altos now, instead of the old rich people who I curse for refusing to die or…

You have a distorted picture. I moved to the bay area in 85, stayed 20 years, then left. If you moved there and were already well established, sure, real estate would have been more affordable then than now. But as a young engineer, things were still pretty expensive. My starting salary as a BSEE working for a minicomputer company was $30,000. Two weeks after arriving they had layoffs. They were nice to the new hires…

> $27K/year ($65.3K in 2020 dollars)

Side bar: that is a breathtaking amount of inflation in just 35 years.

Even if wages kept up with inflation, the impact this would have on cash savings is just devastating.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#120

Post by dragonwriter »

greedo wrote: post #82
mikerg87 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California in the early 80s wasn’t fun. We left SF in ‘83. Interest rates around 15%. Minimum wage around $2.50/hr. Gas rationing. you could only buy gas on certain days based on your license plate. There was an apartment above a garage in SF that sold for $200,000 that was fixup and the garage wasn’t part of the deal. My parents moved us to they east coast where they did finally purchase their own home.

Gas rationing in the 80s? I think you're off a decade. I lived in SoCal in the 80s and there was no rationing. During the Oil embargo in 73 there was the odd/even rationing, but that didn't continue into the 80s.

California (and several other states) also implemented even/odd rationing in response to the 1979 oil crisis.
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