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Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

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Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#251

Post by hwstar »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #193
hwstar wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PE firms kill companies over the long term by sucking all of the value out, then spitting out the (much smaller) shell of a company. When a company becomes controlled by PE, cost-cutting is the number 1 priority. Layoffs happen, the company slow-pays its suppliers and is constantly on credit hold, pay gets cut, benefits are cut, schedules become completely unrealistic, and misconceived products are launched which fai…

Perhaps that is their goal: "Buy it, get 30% return on it, let it die. BUT if the people there somehow manage to revamp it, sell it."

No doubt. There's a term for this: Harvest mode. I worked at a company pre-ipo all the way to the point where they were almost ready to turn off the lights. This was a 25 year timespan. In hindsight it was a mistake. I should have left when the PE guys took control.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#252

Post by kajecounterhack »

morgante wrote: post #73
steven2012 wrote: post #36

Most people don't live by themselves in a 1 bedroom. They usually live 2+ people per room, so that they can afford it. For example, a 2 br apt might have 5 people living there, two couples and then one living in the living room. That's how they can afford the $5000/month rent.

> Most people don't live by themselves in a 1 bedroom. Citation required. None of my post-college friends are sharing a room (though many do share their apartment). Yes, rent is high, but it's not that high when compared to dev salaries.

> Yes, rent is high, but it's not that high when compared to dev salaries.

This is skewed if all your friends are devs. The sentiment is true to my experience as far as my non-dev friends go. Many share rooms with strangers or live with their significant other.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#253

Post by chucky_z »

yellowbeard wrote: post #217
chucky_z wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say you can park in Palo Alto in an RV for free... but it looks like that's changed in recent history. Kind of sad! :(

Pretty sure I see people living in RVs in Palo Alto, on El Camino and around Cal Ave. Definitely plenty doing it in SF. Has something changed in PA recently?

I do as well, and while looking around for laws about it I stumbled across this:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023038478045794799...

and a few articles like it. It seems the laws aren't well enforced though (probably for the better).

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#254

Post by blisterpeanuts »

eitally wrote: post #240
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you are living and working in SF and making $150K (plus bonus, stock options etc) and you decide to move to, say, Phoenix and buy a house for $140K, they'll say, "OK, minimaxir, we'll be cutting your salary to $90K to reflect the vastly diminished cost of living, although of course we'll be able to give your desk to a new hire and save money on office space!" -- ?? Seems unlikely. If you're contributing, no rat…

You can't make a statement like that without facts to back it. The truth is that companies do this all the freaking time. Besides that, it has also been common for a decade+ for CA-based employees (both LA & SFBA) to sell their artificially inflated house and quit their job to move a lower COL state (often Texas, Washington, Oregon, or North Carolina, all of which are much cheaper and have lower income tax schedules)…

Any citations for this "all the time" claim? It's not against the law, but I would think (and online discussion/blog/advice seems to support) that most people would rather quit, as you suggest.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#255

Post by pbreit »

ionforce wrote: post #208
pbreit wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a new hypothesis that I may actually try out: it's the business people that should be in the Bay Area but the engineers can be elsewhere. A lot of the companies having a great deal of success are iterating on the business model, customer acquisition and user experience side of things far more so than on the technology or engineering. I am hypothesizing that it is those people that benefit from being in the Bay…

Why isn't this already done?

The prevailing wisdom has been that engineering teams have to be in the Bay Area.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#256

Post by pbreit »

sjg007 wrote: post #204
pbreit wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a new hypothesis that I may actually try out: it's the business people that should be in the Bay Area but the engineers can be elsewhere. A lot of the companies having a great deal of success are iterating on the business model, customer acquisition and user experience side of things far more so than on the technology or engineering. I am hypothesizing that it is those people that benefit from being in the Bay…

they tried this with outsourcing and it didn't work.

I think employees are preferable to outsourcing.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#257

Post by s73v3r »

eitally wrote: post #234
mason55 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly...160k salaries for some sw roles are silly When you think about the value that a single SWE can create it's not that crazy

That's not a fair way of looking at it, though, from a business-owner's perspective. You need to look at the overall market, and you can find equally good developers in cheaper parts of the country for fractions (50-60%) of that cost.

It's an entirely fair way of looking at it. Just because other developers live in cheaper areas of the country doesn't change how much value a good developer is bringing to your business.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#258

Post by avasylev »

azakai wrote: post #136

The reasoning here seems wrong. Yes, > "the rule of thumb is that you shouldn't spend more than 30% of your monthly take home on rent", as they say, but that's just a rule of thumb. What actually matters is how much money you end up with. For example, assuming taxes remove 30% of income (probably close enough; would need to look up federal and state tax codes to be precise), 1. A Zynga employee makes 147,000, loses 3…

Problem with high housing cost is that it drives up prices for all things in the area - from fastfood to haircut and day care. Of course iPhone, cars cost the same, but all the local services would cost more.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#259

Post by JBReefer »

autobahn wrote: post #158
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #38

I love these high salaries. My thought is to find a job in SF, live there temporarily for 3-6 months, then become remote and move back to my real home on the east coast. Is that feasible? Aren't these kinds of companies pretty comfortable these days with video conferencing, IM, screen sharing etc.?

no. Telecommuting was a pipe dream of the 90s. Some people do it, but at most companies the "butt in the chair employee is best employee" thing still sticks.

It's because working from home is terrible, or it was for me. Social contact brings the small frictions that help build big sparks

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#260

Post by saryant »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #178
saryant wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Houston and San Antonio for several years. I grew up in the Bay Area and I now live in Boulder. I've also lived in Wyoming and France. Having sampled a fair number of places, I can safely say quality of life in Houston and San Antonio is far better than people on HN believe.

> I can safely say quality of life in Houston and San Antonio is far better than people on HN believe. Unless you have a family. Texas schools are absolutely terrible.

That's a broad and rather incomplete generalization.

I spent two years in a California high school and two years in a Texas high school. I have seen first hand how terrible schools can be in CA and, conversely, how fantastic they can be in Texas.

For reference, I'm comparing Benicia HS in the North Bay with Seven Lakes HS in suburban Houston.

In California, teachers were restricted to six pieces of copier paper per student per year. One security guard for 1500 students. Ancient textbooks and the most antagonistic administration you can imagine. AP classes? Gone. School buses? Discontinued. Arts and music? Better hope your parents can pay for it.

Between my sophomore and junior years I moved to Texas. Seven Lakes was the most expensive school ever built. We didn't just have a computer science class, we had a computer science department. Our AP US History teacher had more students score 4 or 5 on the AP exam than any other US history teacher in the country.

To Benicia's credit, their band was actually quite a bit better.

And just to underline the difference in affordability, the average home price in Benicia at the time was $629k. Katy's average was $161k.

Safe to say I have no regrets about having left California.

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