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San Francisco Bubble

blog.larrold.com

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Re: San Francisco Bubble

#331

Post by [deleted] »

acchow wrote: post #219
dawnbreez wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason free markets are great isn't their speed (though they are often faster than your average politician); it's the self-regulating nature of it. You don't have to tell people to stop buying overly-expensive food, nor do you have to tell the food stores to cut their prices. Over time, they each realize that the higher price isn't working; the customer buys elsewhere (either across the street or aceoss the state…

> Companies don't have to be told to improve, either, not when their competitors are improving and eating market space. At least, that's how it works in theory. A lot of industries have turned into demilitarized zones, both sides opposed but neither making a move. Telecom is the best example of how bad this gets. And yet even telecoms have invested huge swaths of capital to get us to 3G then LTE.

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#332

Post by bpchaps »

stvswn wrote: post #312
bpchaps wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rose tinted glasses much? Have you ever been to a poor area in your life? Even mentioning Uber, organics, bad engineers and mediocre engineers ignores places like the south side of Chicago and any gradient between. It's not as pretty outside as you think it is.

I forgot to answer your question. Yes I've been to a poor area before. I also forgot to apologize for mentioning Uber, organics, and engineering. You're right, but acknowledging the existence of those concepts I'm totally ignoring the South Side of Chicago. But by bringing up Chicago, you're completely ignoring sub-Saharan Africa and Bangladesh. It's not so pretty there, either. Are you going to apologize for that? L…

Because these areas are part of the nuance that allows SF-like mentalities to exist. Ignoring that nuance ignores the larger problem on how these bubbles can happen.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#333

Post by bcg1 »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #58
thelarry wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very hypocritical.

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.

To be fair... he's not working... he's on sabbatical :)

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#334

Post by pc86 »

superuser2 wrote: post #322
pc86 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything you said but I think you're underestimating the importance of fighting lifestyle inflation at all costs. It's incredibly hard to justify a six-figure burn rate under any circumstances, even in San Francisco. If you've got a job making multiples of the median household income in the US, it's incredibly irresponsible to live in a manner that wouldn't support a pretty major pay cut at any point.

Young developer here. The "lifestyle inflation is evil" mantra never made sense to me. The definition I usually find is "living better than a college student once you are a working professional," so apologies if you mean something different. I was raised to save 15% for retirement, to never carry a credit card balance, to build a 6 month emergency fund, etc. All of these priorities come first. But, after they are fun…

bcg1 is right - I am largely referring to people very much like the example in the comment I replied to. Also when i think of "lifestyle inflation" it's more geared toward currently working professionals - folks who get a raise and their take-home increases by $800/mo so they go out and buy a car with a $700/mo payment attached to it - and less the transition from student to worker.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#335

Post by pjlegato »

dawnbreez wrote: post #157
munificent wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The reason free markets are great isn't their speed (though they are often faster than your average politician); it's the self-regulating nature of it. You don't have to tell people to stop buying overly-expensive food, nor do you have to tell the food stores to cut their prices. Over time, they each realize that the higher price isn't working; the customer buys elsewhere (either across the street or aceoss the state…

Telcos are actually a great example of how the free market (eventually) routes around incumbents who fail to satisfy market demand.

The telcos have stalled residential broadband for decades, leaving most of the US stuck with early 2000s-level cable modems or DSL. None of them will make a move.

So what happened? https://fiber.google.com/about/

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#336

Post by pjlegato »

sholanozie wrote: post #113
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…

Sorry, but this is a totally heartless comment. By saying things like "Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave" you're completely overlooking the human costs and implications. Things don't just change overnight. It's an slow, painful, eventual decline. Things shouldn't need to be pushed to a breaking point for us to make necessary changes to alleviate these problems.

Empirically, all historic efforts to alleviate the heartlessness of market forces with centralized planning ("us" making necessary changes) have resulted in even worse and more heartless outcomes for even more people. Talk to some Cubans, Russians, North Koreans, or East Germans about how that whole process turns out.

It's not that the free market solution is great. It's that all other possible solutions are even worse.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#337

Post by nawitus »

JackFr wrote: post #217
nawitus wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think, frankly, that many startups need a website with a google form + some excel sheets to get started and if the thing takes off they can hire someone who can use google to bang on stackoverflow. I agree, but this is mostly true because there's so much low-hanging fruit out there. If you look at the current successful startups like Uber and Airbnb, they're really trivial applications. That doesn't mean they can'…

Tens of thousands of man hours have gone into making them seem trivial, and the fact that they seem so to you is a testament to their design.

Trivial applications require tens of thousands of man hours. Actually, a lot more to make it scale. By trivial I don't mean "it doesn't require a lot of work". Any application requires a lot of work. By "trivial" I meant that they're not creating anything significantly new technology wise, and the value they create is mostly by making existing work/services easier to use and provide.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#338

Post by tizzdogg »

whybroke wrote: post #280

Please be aware that moving to the bay area for any reason other than fun will be a serious life mistake. If you move to the bay area in your 20s, by the time you're in your 40s you will have a specific knowledge of a fad language that is 20 years old. But even if you somehow keep up with new tech in your spare time, you will look 40 something and thus be nearly unemployable solely on those grounds. And you simply wi…

"There are few middle-aged and effectively no old people there".

Well that's just total bullshit. There are tons of middle aged and elderly people in SF, most of whom moved to the city in the 60s or 70s and bought property before it became ridiculously expensive. There is a huge population of aging hippies still in SF. Now if you mean "there are few middle aged people working in the startup world", you might be correct, but I'd guess that's the same for startups anywhere.

Not everything in San Francisco is the tech world, and the city does not just consist of the Mission and SOMA. Most of the city is non-tech families and less exciting residential neighborhoods. People who dont live in SF usually dont see that side of it.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#339

Post by gearoidoc »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #220
ionforce wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a guy like that become senior? As a senior one should know that there is a pragmatic balance lost in trying to aim for perfection.

He has his strengths. He produces exceptional quality code (albeit a bit on the spaghetti side) and is good at finding problems in code. He is also 63 and has decades of experience.

"exceptional quality code (albeit a bit on the spaghetti side)" is an oxymoron.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#340

Post by yarou »

the_af wrote: post #245
yarou wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but their skin tone is a few shades darker, so nobody talks or cares about them. People would rather argue in ivory towers about abstract problems that don't exist in the real world (sexism in video games, Internet feminism, etc), rather than work on unpleasant and unsexy problems that can easily be solved.

> sexism in video games, Internet feminism, etc What's abstract or unreal about them? What's "Internet" feminism, for that matter? I'd say sexism in videogames is real... and the level of aggression in online discussions about that topic is almost asphyxiating, enough that I consider it a serious problem. Would you similarly argue that it's "unreal" to argue about sexism (or racism, or whatever -ism) in movies? It's…

I'm on a completely different planet than you, and lately I've realized I'm completely different from the vast majority of commenters here.

I could explain it to you, but it would be an experience akin to a blind man seeing for the first time.

Experience is the mother of all teachers, and while I wouldn't wish my path on anybody else, it certainly has given me clarity on certain topics of discourse.

"Sexism in video games" is an abstract problem because it's basically mental masturbation. Suppose you are right, and there is a problem. What is the net benefit to society? Some privileged child somewhere will feel good about themselves for a brief moment, until they find another abstract issue that ultimately is meaningless.

There are much more pressing problems in our world today, that are ugly, unsightly, and less "rewarding" in the short term dopamine releasing sense. Like income inequality, the increasing erosion of civil liberities, and single moms.

An Ask HN with thousands of replies so you we can collectively pat ourselves on the back doesn't count as solving anything. If anything, it just shows how far we've fallen.

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