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

Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

gregkroleski.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 187 posts

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#151

Post by mahyarm »

pmiller2 wrote: post #109
pkaye wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to live in San Francisco to work there. There are plenty of people who live on the other side of the bay and commute by train. This gives you a much more affordable place to live than San Francisco.

That has its own set of trade-offs. Prepare for at least an hour commute each way by BART if you work in SOMA, for instance.

Or 10-20 minutes if you live in oakland and your company is on market st. It's faster to live in oakland and get to work than live in the western side of sf in that case.

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#152

Post by stevewilhelm »

stevoski wrote: post #7

The more I read such articles, the more I think you'd have to be nuts to choose to live in San Francisco. And yet, clearly, plenty of people do choose to live in San Francisco.

Look at the founders of the author's employer: http://s831.us/1lcWYYh.

They can afford to live anywhere they want and start their company near their homes.

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#153

Post by tracker1 »

I'm about to move going from 1100sft to about 800, and bemoaning that change... it's hard for me to imagine 400... I lived for almost two years in under 500sqft, and don't think I could ever do it again... as soon as I was able, I moved into the biggest apartment I could find close to where I wanted to live.

I'm only making the change I am now because it's actually closer to the job I started a couple months ago, and I'm hoping in the next 18 months to have my credit clear (still paying off medical bills from 5-6 years ago), my car is paid off in 14 months, and want to have enough for a down payment for a house.

It's hard for me to imagine living in SF, where rent is significantly more than I pay now, and the pay doesn't quite correlate.

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#154

Post by maherbeg »

mahyarm wrote: post #150
codingdave wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is absolutely not where the most opportunities are. It is the place where the most startups are, which means the top of the opportunity pile eclipses other locations in terms of earning potential and networking. But quantitatively, the most programming jobs per capita are in Washington, Colorado, and Utah.

The more interesting companies are in the bay area I find personally. In Seattle you have amazon, which has a horrible reputation, and Microsoft, which has another kind of bad reputation, but is better than amazon. In the SFBA, you have facebook, apple, google, and many many others. Also I don't find jobs / people in the state the most accurate indicator. To someone living in LA, moving to SF might as well be moving…

That's actually wrong. Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Google all have some of their largest engineering satellites in Seattle.

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#155

Post by sologoub »

funkyy wrote: post #98
sologoub wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point - size-wise, that's subpar for the number of people. My grandparents received a 95 sq.m. apartment for them and my aunt (teenager at the time) across from a beautiful park in Moscow, now that was considered super lucky.

Two "lucky" strikes in the same family in Russia? It seems there might be more than just luck to that.

Military families had better luck than others. Only politicians did better in USSR, but that's long gone.

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#156

Post by PhantomGremlin »

hluska wrote: post #89

This is off topic, but in March 2016, I'll become a dad for the first time and I was wondering if some more experienced parents could answer a question for me. That article has a black board with a tally of diapers changed today. The count was up to thirty. Is that somewhat accurate/possible??? If so, holy shit, I'm investing in cloth....

There are only two words you need to know about handling disposable diapers. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it here yet. It's "better than sliced bread":

   Diaper Genie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaper_Genie

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#157

Post by jkot »

Harkins wrote: post #101

For anyone wondering how this is possible: by violating fire code. He says he, then he and his wife, then one or both of their children were sleeping in the closet. I'm not familiar with the language of the California Building Code, but in the 2014 verison, volume 1, chapter 10 gets into the limits. The closet is not a "sleeping unit": it doesn't meet the 120 sqft minimum, doesn't have a wide enough door, and doesn't…

At this picture you can see closet door was removed, there is just curtain.

http://www.gregkroleski.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/studi...

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#158

Post by nilkn »

goodJobWalrus wrote: post #79
Turing_Machine wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I bet you'd be surprised to hear that in some countries people actually prefer to live in apartments to houses." One sniff test for the credibility of this is to look at what rich people do. No matter where you go, the wealthy tend to have large country estates. Sure, they may have a luxury apartment in town as well, but where do they spend their leisure time? Bingo.

I wasn't referring to rich people. They have a whole different set of requirements. Also, they typically don't have to clean their own mansion, of take care of the pesky chores around the house.

He's using rich people as an example because in order to draw any inferences here you have to have a large sample set of people who could conceivably live in either a large house or an apartment, with no financial difficulties either way. Rich people are the simplest sample set to look at which trivially satisfies these criteria.

His basic point is that if your sample set consists of people who don't actually have the choice of buying a large home, then that's a major confounding variable whose influence you cannot reliably determine on the results. Beyond that, the sample set also must be large enough for it to not be anecdata. A single couple doesn't imply much about societal trends at large, but the behavior of an entire class of people -- the wealthy -- does, to at least some degree.

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#159

Post by alkonaut »

jonesb6 wrote: post #117
superuser2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote work is an excellent paradigm when you get an assignment, go work on it for a while in total independence/isolation, and then turn it in, i.e. when developer-hours are perfectly commoditized. Not every software project is like this at every part of its lifecycle. The same pitfalls that apply to outsourcing to low-cost-of-living countries should apply to hiring American remote workers: communication overhead, l…

I wouldn't forget that communication is deeply entwined with regional culture. I would argue that it is much easier to hire a remote worker from the same country then it is from a third world country (which are frequently known for remote work). Everything from time zones, work hours (say western European countries accustomed to ~5-7 actual work hours /day), laws, religion, etc.

Yes, one shouldn't confuse outsourcing and remote work: with remote work I mean people working in the same tools (version control, issue tracking etc) in the same time zone (+/- 1 hour), and being always available on chat/voice/video and occasional physical meetings.

Most people who work in a multi storey office communicate the same way with the people on a different storey as they would with people in a different city.

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#160

Post by kzhahou »

bsder wrote: post #118
eropple wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of places outside of SF are doing interesting things. Boston has plenty, as does Austin.

Austin is more hype than substance. And it has gotten really expensive as well. San Diego, for example, stomps all over Austin in terms of software jobs, and Austin's hardware scene is laughable.

What are the SD companies?
Post reply on HN