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In San Francisco and Rooting for a Tech Slowdown

nytimes.com

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Re: In San Francisco and Rooting for a Tech Slowdown

#41

Post by equalarrow »

The overall gist of this article to me seems like a similar SF argument: let's keep the city the way it was. Let's not build more housing, let's not build up, let's not move forward into the future.

Obviously, this isn't how a city moves forward and grows.

Peskin is not necessarily a bad guy.. I agree with him on some things, but neighborhood preservation is not one. It's easy to single out tech in all of this, but the prior non-tech landlords have a lot of blame on this. Sure, market dictates pricing and the large tech community has been willing to let the prices go up. (Mind you, this isn't just real estate, but also food.) But, I feel like, as someone in tech not able to afford buying _today_, I'd rather have the city moving forward vs. stagnant just so another group of people can live here.

I appreciate diversity and my wife and I have talked for a few years of where else we should move to. Portland? Seattle? Austin? But, SF seems to have the right mix of diversity (more or less), compact city-ness (like NYC), close to a lot of great outdoors, and a lot of other things. We just keep coming back to SF has pretty much all the boxes checked off for us, even if it's in this crazy inflated market right now.

Nothing lasts forever and we will probably get some kind of housing correction. But look a look back historically will show that you can't buy a house anywhere (at least in the bay area) for $20k, like our parents did. To think that things should stand still and stay fixed is just ignoring how reality works for cities that keep growing..

Maybe this will all go away once we have no need for money like in Star Trek. But today, this isn't the case.

Re: In San Francisco and Rooting for a Tech Slowdown

#42

Post by jonknee »

xur17 wrote: post #37
DannyBee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW: A lot of those rock throwers were probably not in bad shape. That is because the real people being hurt were probably working their first or second job at the time that was happening, and didn't have time to throw rocks at buses because they'd get fired for not showing up to work.

Serious question: Who is getting hurt by Google driving people to work on buses. It seems like this reduces congestion, and helps the environment, which is good for everyone. What am I missing here?

The issue was they're using public bus stops. It's not hard to picture why it's demeaning to be standing at the public infrastructure and see a fancy shuttle come and pick up "Google People" while you're left waiting to ride with the proletariat. Especially demeaning when the shuttle is in the way of the real bus.

Imagine if the NYC subway had a special car for Wall Street workers that was much more comfortable.

Re: In San Francisco and Rooting for a Tech Slowdown

#44

Post by dublinben »

Apocryphon wrote: post #25

Tech workers are not to blame, but tech workers shouldn't blame those angry at getting priced out, either. Instead, both groups should work together to lobby for more housing. So the question is, how can a hacker help?

>how can a hacker help?

Help make remote work more possible and acceptable.

Re: In San Francisco and Rooting for a Tech Slowdown

#45

Post by waterlesscloud »

WalterSear wrote: post #40
waterlesscloud wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strangely enough, San Francisco was thriving 100 years before the computer chip even existed. Don't overestimate your importance. The world will move on without you.

Your condescension is as misplaced as your argument, which is a truism verging on non-sequitar.

Cool. So you'll have no problem proving me wrong.

Do so.

Re: In San Francisco and Rooting for a Tech Slowdown

#46

Post by rco8786 »

thedevil wrote: post #11

When I lived in SF, the categorical hate towards tech workers (I was not a tech worker back then) was nothing like "mainstream". It was just a few extremists, a few protesters I might see in the news. I didn't actually know anyone like that. Journalists made it sound like a bigger thing than it was. It's been over 3 years though. Has the anti-tech-worker hate really gone mainstream or are journalists continuing to in…

I lived there for the last 3 years. When I got there it was a thing but not huge. By the time I left I would definitely consider it mainstream.

Re: In San Francisco and Rooting for a Tech Slowdown

#47

Post by doseofreality »

api wrote: post #14
bishnu wrote: post #4

I think people will be shocked by how little housing prices decrease if the startup economy experiences a downturn.

Absolutely. Housing prices are like wages: very "sticky." Nobody wants to ever sell a house at a loss or drop their rent, so housing will sit idle on the market rather than take a write-down. The only way housing could conceivably fall (without intense depression-level pain) is if the entire rest of the economy inflated such that housing was reasonable. Everyone would be making six figures, a gallon of gas would be $…

Yes, right. Housing can never fall. I've heard that one before.

Re: In San Francisco and Rooting for a Tech Slowdown

#48

Post by rootedbox »

spinlock wrote: post #17

One of the interesting side-effects of Sen. Fienstien's quest to keep high-rises out of San Francisco is that _all_ real estate is more expensive. There are many people here with similarly narrow ideas about how to protect what is "theirs." A great example would be the people who throw rocks at Google busses. Everyone on that buss can afford a car and would drive to work alone (maybe carpool) if they didn't have the…

The city can't support the 30k cars that would be needed for the people taking tech busses (no room to park that many cars).. so if we stopped the tech busses some of those people would move closer to work without busses; others would take Caltrain. Both of those things would reduce congestion, and pollution more than tech busses.

We don't know the exact number that this would reduce because the tech bus legislation passed without the environmental study that is required (hence why there is a lawsuit right now).

Re: In San Francisco and Rooting for a Tech Slowdown

#50

Post by e40 »

DannyBee wrote: post #27
waterlesscloud wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strangely enough, San Francisco was thriving 100 years before the computer chip even existed. Don't overestimate your importance. The world will move on without you.

Thriving? I think reasonable people disagree. The vast majority of people i've talked to think SF was a craphole 25 years ago. I think a lot of people have the golden age fallacy going on :)

The vast majority of people i've talked to think SF was a craphole 25 years ago.

Let's see, I've been in the area for 40 years and your comment couldn't be more wrong or uninformed.

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