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San Francisco Bubble

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Re: San Francisco Bubble

#371

Post by ryandrake »

luckydude wrote: post #89
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…

It's the dotcom stuff all over again. I remember interviewing some guy who wanted to be my VP of engineering. Have you ever fired anyone? "Nope" Have you ever shipped a product and supported it for more than a year? "Nope" Do you have any quality engineers that would come with you? "Nope" Have you ever managed a manager? "Nope" I noped his ass out the door. Fear not, this craziness will pass.

Did you eventually find this perfect candidate that ticked all your checkboxes? Or are you still "looking".....?

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#372

Post by rorykoehler »

vectorjohn wrote: post #314
rorykoehler wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grocery store prices are not adjusted to local rental rates?

I don't see why not, they have to pay rent too.

That was my question. $7-8 for 6 pack of beer seems exceptionally good value for a city like SF.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#373

Post by uglysexy »

paulddraper wrote: post #367
shostack wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm making a clear distinction between "startup" (ie. no clear business model or path to profitability yet) vs. "established tech giant." The latter has such massive hiring needs in comparison that even if funding dried up (which they do not need since they have lots of profit and are already oftentimes publicly traded), I don't think it would slow down the market THAT much.

Yahoo and AOL aren't hiring these days. "To big too fail" isn't a thing.

> Yahoo and AOL aren't hiring these days If I may ask..how do you know this? And can you provide some detail?

Bottom line is - hiring (or lack of) is a leading indicator of a company's financial health. A company that doesn't have any open jobs for a sustained length of time (3-6 months to a year) is in belt tightening mode - which comes right before layoffs or worse, closing shop.

Btw - Yahoo is already doing layoffs or 'downsizing'. If Yahoo wasn't hiring during the past 3-6 months, that definitely was an indicator of this.

Yahoo Downsizes In Latin America, Closes Mexico And Argentina Operations http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/28/yahoo-downsizes-in-latin-am...

Here are some news sites that track layoffs. I recommend keeping a close eye on things.

http://techcrunch.com/tag/layoffs/

https://twitter.com/search?q=layoff%20OR%20layoffs%20OR%20%2...

Or better yet, keep an eye on the Dice jobs number which is prominently displayed on the Dice.com home page.

As of today, January 29, 2016 that number is 84,201. My take is that if this number goes below 60,000 then the bubble is bursting.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#374

Post by dawnbreez »

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.

The problem is that they basically habe a nonaggression pact. You'll find either AT&T or T-Mobile in any given area; not both. This means that, if you don't like their prices or their service...well, what are you gonna do? Build your own telco?

This lack of competition leads to a sort of mini-monopoly, meaning that they basically have no reason to not jack up prices.

That is, until Google comes along and kicks them out, as another comment points out.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#375

Post by varelse »

seiji wrote: post #348
varelse wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you like about NYC? I spent a couple weeks there recently, to which I was really looking forward since I had never been there, and after about a week I loathed the noise, the garbage everywhere, and the lines at all the stores. Shortly thereafter, I caught the Norovirus from delivered food and I was knocked out physically and mentally for almost 2 weeks. What did I like? Seeing a few famous landmarks, a coupl…

What I like: not needing a car (no car payment, no car insurance), any event (concert/meetup/parade/show/etc) is only 20-30 minutes away door-to-door and you don't need to park since you have no car, central park is okay (but it's no red rocks or la honda), you'd think having 6 million people within a 6 mile radius would make it easy to meet people but... not so much, housing prices are (supposedly) less than SF but…

I found that there are a lot nice people in NYC that have to put up with a minority of absolute jerks that give the place a undeserved bad rep. This part is not much different from SF IMO.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#376

Post by seiji »

varelse wrote: post #375
seiji wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I like: not needing a car (no car payment, no car insurance), any event (concert/meetup/parade/show/etc) is only 20-30 minutes away door-to-door and you don't need to park since you have no car, central park is okay (but it's no red rocks or la honda), you'd think having 6 million people within a 6 mile radius would make it easy to meet people but... not so much, housing prices are (supposedly) less than SF but…

I found that there are a lot nice people in NYC that have to put up with a minority of absolute jerks that give the place a undeserved bad rep. This part is not much different from SF IMO.

Yeah, the weird thing about NYC is it's more heavily actor/waiter/bartender focused on the youth spectrum so everybody you meet is almost maximally different from everybody else. It causes a strange effect where people form overly homogenous groups when they do find people who are similar (crossfit cults, every actor has slept with every other actor, revolving doors of finance firms, etc).

In some ways it seems all the "regular" people get absorbed into other levels of success/purpose outside of technology here, so technology is left with a larger weirdo population than SF since there are many more non-techonlogy things to make regular people happy around here.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#377

Post by malandrew »

One of the best and most underrated thing about all these crappy startups? It gives a lot of people the opportunity to learn valuable skills on someone else's dime. Those that are good engineers in crappy startups eventually migrate to the unicorns. The shitty startups may not go anywhere, but they allow a lot of young people to accumulate skills that they can take with them to companies that actually need that talent.

Without the shitty startups acting as free training wheels, the unicorns would have a much harder time finding quality talent.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#380

Post by svhoapres »

avitzurel wrote: post #55
philfrasty wrote: post #24

"Engineers are particularly spoiled. They can take an arbitrary sabbatical from work..." (on the about page) "...Currently a principal engineer at AppNexus on sabbatical..." ???

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.

You probably shouldn't be living in SV if the rent is so expensive that if you lose your job then you go homeless in a month.
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