Is this fairly common in the valley?
They have them in Seattle as well. They come up when looking for a place or Airbnb.
My life with 12 programmers, 2 rooms and one 21st-century dream (2016)
21–30 of 181 posts
Re: My life with 12 programmers, 2 rooms and one 21st-century dream (2016)
#22This really is only one small segment of the programming population. I really hate superficial shit like this that paints tech workers in a bad light bc most have ordinary jobs and live ordinary lives and aren’t social recluses.
I work typical 9-5, wife and kids. We go grocery shopping and make dinner every night together. We live very modestly and we have lots of non-tech friends and family. It’s literaly nothing special.
Re: My life with 12 programmers, 2 rooms and one 21st-century dream (2016)
#23It's a weird story for me and I have absolutely no understanding for it. (no, I don't mean tolerance)
I'm not from the US and am far from any startup experience, but I am a young programmer myself, without either good budget nor education.
Programming is the love my life but I would never bear this situation at any cost for it.
He states himself that programming was just "means to an end" for him. So why even bother? I just can't comprehend? Sorry for being ignorant or something ... I'd really like to understand
Re: My life with 12 programmers, 2 rooms and one 21st-century dream (2016)
#24Seems crazy to live like that for $1200/month when you could find a few roommates and get 4 people in a 2 bedroom for about the same. Still tight, but it beats 12 people in a 2 bedroom for sure!
Folks doing bootcamps often are doing it on a shoestring budget. They can't scrape together significant deposits and proof of income needed to rent a more legit place.
And a bootcamper might need a place for 14 weeks. Hard to get a lease for that length of time.
Though I don't know why people need to live in an expensive city for a bootcamp.
Re: My life with 12 programmers, 2 rooms and one 21st-century dream (2016)
#25I know the author wised up and moved on, but I would rather work construction for the rest of my life than be a programmer and live like this. I worked for a startup for a couple of years that really got it right. The CTO really wanted a certain lead developer as his first hire (they had previously worked together) and the lead dev said (paraphrased, of course) "Nope. Not interested in working more than 40 hours per…
I got two takeaways:
The early hires (especially engineer #1) can have a huge influence on the culture. I think that's important to note both for founders and for prospective early employees.
> devs have only worked longer than a 40 hour week maybe 5 times total.
> That dev team has consistently deployed great feature after another at an incredible rate.
This second takeaway, that being disciplined about working hours is a boon to productivity, is generally supported by what few studies [1] have been done on productivity versus working hours.
[1] I believe most of, especially the early ones, have specifically studied industrial/factory output, including an early-1900s experiment showing that reducing working days from 9 hours to 8 hours actually increased output.
Re: My life with 12 programmers, 2 rooms and one 21st-century dream (2016)
#26I came up the same way as the author of this article. If you don’t go to Stanford or otherwise earn yourself a CS degree, you’ve got to rightly, and almost by definition, build experience and connections from the barest of circumstances.
Nobody said a nice, well-paid coder job, let alone a successful startup and early position there, would be easy.
Besides, he misses the point. There are brilliant men and women in the SF Bay, doing magical things. Maybe they spent time on the Sisyphean path he and I did, maybe not.
But don’t go bashing everyone here because you chose the riskiest route and then lived it. He’s right that this place remains a beacon of hope and opportunity all over the world.
That’s a good thing dammit
Re: My life with 12 programmers, 2 rooms and one 21st-century dream (2016)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Why do it if you don't like it? Uhh, because it pays well, has good job security and benefits, doesn't require multiple degrees, is respected socially, isn't physically intensive, etc. etc. Most all of my non-programmer friends don't really like their jobs all that much, so if you're not passionate about anything else, my question is why not go into software development?
Then go write back end code for Allstate. (I don't mean any insult to Allstate nor their staff; simply that it'll be a reliable, well paying 9-5). The things the author complains about (low pay, long hours, uncertain future) are positive things for me, which is why I chose the path I did. It usually includes working with really interesting people. I'm glad he abandoned it as it sounds like he would not enjoy it. Ther…
I don't know the author, but it sounds like he's coming from a non traditional background trying to break into the tech industry. The advice I've often seen given to these people is to move to the city and find a reputable boot camp.
Now, this was probably good advice 6 or 8 years ago. But rising rent costs, an overabundance of coding boot camps, and a relatively lower supply of jobs willing to employ boot camp grads has made that advice much more questionable.
I'm glad he abandoned that housing nonsense, but even in SF there are sane tech jobs that only expect 40 hours out of you per week.
Re: My life with 12 programmers, 2 rooms and one 21st-century dream (2016)
#28Is this fairly common in the valley?
...I don't think so? Or at least, it's totally alien to me as someone who's spent ~6 years in SF tech.
1,200 $/mo is more than enough to get a room to yourself in the nice neighborhoods; admittedly, you'll need to put in the time on craigslist to find sublets, "interview" with potential roommates, etc. I can see if you're desperate to find a place in a hurry, an airBnB like this might make sense for a month, but more than that seems insane.
Getting scammed by false promises of equity riches is definitely a thing that happens to people, but it's far from the norm. Again, take a job like that if you need something right away, but spend your time hunting for something better, because the vast majority of programming jobs in SF are nothing like this.
Re: My life with 12 programmers, 2 rooms and one 21st-century dream (2016)
#29This really is only one small segment of the programming population. I really hate superficial shit like this that paints tech workers in a bad light bc most have ordinary jobs and live ordinary lives and aren’t social recluses. I work typical 9-5, wife and kids. We go grocery shopping and make dinner every night together. We live very modestly and we have lots of non-tech friends and family. It’s literaly nothing sp…
What kind of software do you work on?
Re: My life with 12 programmers, 2 rooms and one 21st-century dream (2016)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Folks doing bootcamps often are doing it on a shoestring budget. They can't scrape together significant deposits and proof of income needed to rent a more legit place.
And a bootcamper might need a place for 14 weeks. Hard to get a lease for that length of time. Though I don't know why people need to live in an expensive city for a bootcamp.
I imagine the best boot camps are in tech hubs, which are usually expensive cities to live in.