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San Francisco Bubble

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Re: San Francisco Bubble

#181

Post by throwupper247 »

jbooth wrote: post #75
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea no kidding. "AppNexus helps brands connect with consumers, empowering agencies and advertisers with a uniquely powerful approach to programmatic online advertising." Thanks for working on Ad Tech, the very thing that powers this bubble by trading attention as a commodity. Other people work on silly startups, but this shit is akin to HFT.

Unless microtransactions for content take off, and they haven't, ad tech is necessary to incentivize content on the web. 90% of the websites you read could not exist without the ecosystem that appnexus is a big player in. Hacker News, being one big ad for ycombinator, doesn't need to bother. So he's doing a real thing that provides real value to the web. And it's actually a sustainable business, to boot. Lastly, ther…

I could do without 90% of those websites, i suppose

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#182

Post by Arjuna »

mattmanser wrote: post #71
avitzurel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring the hypocritical nature of this statement, I take offense in this generalization in particular. If you're an engineer with a family here in SV, you cannot take a sabbatical. In most cases you need to get a job in a week or the rent will drive you to bankruptcy.

Oh come on with the hyperbole, if you didn't spend so much money on a nice area and expensive stuff you could afford it easily. I don't get people who are so smart and yet simultaneously so stupid that they think spending $100,000 a year is normal. Wake up, you're rich, you're just too stupid to realize you could be living at a much cheaper level.

Based on when you joined HN, I think it is safe to conclude that you have been here long enough to know the high signal-to-noise ratio that the community strives for here. I think that there are more eloquent and meaningful ways to express your opinion and disagree [1][2].

Just a friendly reminder:

1. There is another human being on the other side of the conversation.

2. Practice compassion when responding.

----

[1] http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham's_Hierarchy_o...

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#183

Post by danharaj »

munificent wrote: post #115
mbesto wrote: post #62

This is why the free market is so great. 1. Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms. 2. Dumb startups? Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave. 3. People are spoiled? Uber is cheaper and more convenient in some cases than taking the local transportation. When people stop taking…

> This is why the free market is so great. I feel like I should just make this my email/social media signature since I say it so often: A perfect requires these things: - Perfect market information - No participant with market power to set prices - Non intervention by governments - No barriers to entry or exit - Equal access to factors of production - Profit maximization - No externalities The less you have those, th…

> - Non intervention by governments

except to define property rights and enforce them, which is kind of significant 'intervention'.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#184

Post by spikels »

munificent wrote: post #115
mbesto wrote: post #62

This is why the free market is so great. 1. Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms. 2. Dumb startups? Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave. 3. People are spoiled? Uber is cheaper and more convenient in some cases than taking the local transportation. When people stop taking…

> This is why the free market is so great. I feel like I should just make this my email/social media signature since I say it so often: A perfect requires these things: - Perfect market information - No participant with market power to set prices - Non intervention by governments - No barriers to entry or exit - Equal access to factors of production - Profit maximization - No externalities The less you have those, th…

"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." All these problems also impact non-market solutions. If fact many ARE non-market solutions to other problems.

The non-market solutions would be something like these:

1 - Price controls

2 - Government approval of business ideas

3 - Rationing non-essentials

4 - Licensing engineers

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#185

Post by jobu »

heraclez wrote: post #144
brianwawok wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish it were a protected word in the states, maybe an Engineering association sitting over it. Would help with things like H1B flooding

As an experienced Canadian developer who is seeking a work visa to work in the US, it is actually extremely difficult to get one. It seems as though the US prioritizes shit-developers/wannabe-engineers over experienced Canadian developers. Which kind of makes sense, in that you feed your own before feeding your neighbour. So I really doubt that H1B flooding is a thing. Open to debate though.

It's difficult for people like you specifically because of the H1B flooding.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/us/large-companies-game-h-...

"Many of the visas are given out through a lottery, and a small number of giant global outsourcing companies had flooded the system with applications, significantly increasing their chances of success. While he had one application in last year’s lottery and lost, one of the outsourcing companies applied for at least 14,000."

A quick fix would be to award H1B based on salary instead of lottery.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#186

Post by cylinder »

mbesto wrote: post #62

This is why the free market is so great. 1. Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms. 2. Dumb startups? Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave. 3. People are spoiled? Uber is cheaper and more convenient in some cases than taking the local transportation. When people stop taking…

Free market? Last I heard the money supply was decided by a few people in New York.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#187

Post by vonmoltke »

debaserab2 wrote: post #94
themagician wrote: post #3

Money has been close to free for years. As the interest rate ticks up everything will change. It's already starting to. More expensive borrowing, less leverage, and better places to put dollars than venture. The one thing I really agree with though is the funny thing that happens here with the word "engineer". If you can make a website you somehow qualify for the title software engineer. By Bay Area standards, I myse…

> I've never written anything that lives in a real production environment You've never maintained a production app and you're getting offers as director of engineering?

I have written code full-time for the past 7 years and been an engineer for the past 13, but have never maintained a "production app". There are large numbers of software engineers operating in fields where there is no such concept.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#188

Post by MAGZine »

heraclez wrote: post #104
themagician wrote: post #3

Money has been close to free for years. As the interest rate ticks up everything will change. It's already starting to. More expensive borrowing, less leverage, and better places to put dollars than venture. The one thing I really agree with though is the funny thing that happens here with the word "engineer". If you can make a website you somehow qualify for the title software engineer. By Bay Area standards, I myse…

In Canada, you get sued if you call yourself an engineer when you're not part of an order of engineers. Even if you're a bona fide engineer, but not enrolled in the order, calling yourself one opens the floodgates of hell where spaghetti coders do the same and get hired by retarded HR departments to take the lead on some mission-critical software. I like this. I am a self-learned developer. When my peers call themsel…

> In Canada, you get sued if you call yourself an engineer when you're not part of an order of engineers.

Ehhhh. If you try to stamp and sign structural engineering documents as an engineer, and then a bridge collapses, you're open to litigation. I don't think anyone has been (successfully?) sued for declaring themeselves as Software Engineers in Canada. There are no damages.

Interestingly, you can call yourself an "SE," and its fine (according the professional engineering associations), but companies in YVR actively recruit "software engineers" (e.g. Electronic Arts)

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#189

Post by ktRolster »

mbesto wrote: post #62

This is why the free market is so great. 1. Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms. 2. Dumb startups? Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave. 3. People are spoiled? Uber is cheaper and more convenient in some cases than taking the local transportation. When people stop taking…

"When people stop taking public transportation because it's fundamentally broken (ps - it's awful in SF) then it will force government organizations to re-think their planning."

The opposite, I think. I recently started taking public transportation MORE often, because traffic on the freeways has gotten so bad.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#190

Post by misuba »

Apocryphon wrote: post #135
vectorjohn wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to Portland, $7 a beer is actually pretty expensive. Not as crazy as the mythical $15, but for a local craft beer it should be more like $5-6. But that could all just be taxes. (and we do have $7-12 beers, they're just known to be extra fancy or aged)

I've heard that Portland COL prices are climbing sharply due to people moving in. Is that true?

True of rent, for sure. The rest is fairly stable.
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