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The Graver Threat of the Growing Tech Backlash

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Re: The Graver Threat of the Growing Tech Backlash

#41

Post by drhayes9 »

andyl wrote: post #25

The tech industry isn't perfect - not by a long shot. But tech companies aren't putting the climate at risk. Tech companies didn't crash the economy. Over the past decades there isn't another industry that has delivered more growth and value. The grave threat is to non-credible Media who deal in link-bait and manufactured controversy.

I think an important distinction here is that the greatest value the tech industry creates is monetary value. There are others measures of value that it doesn't exceed at.

I'm not one to say that all tech innovation has ceased, but I would love to see more startups addressing the rest of the world's real problems: starvation, poverty, water, oppressive governments. Otherwise we are playing our part in ensuring a grim meathook future: http://zenarchery.com/full-text-of-the-grim-meathook-future-...

Besides, the tech industry didn't crash the economy -- but we sure had a lot of fun benefiting from large-scale economic speculation that came from it the first time.

Re: The Graver Threat of the Growing Tech Backlash

#42

Post by gum_ina_package »

swalsh wrote: post #12
gum_ina_package wrote: post #7

Everyone sees the success, but no one sees what it took to get there. They don't see the intense, competitive interviews tech workers go through. They don't see the grueling comp sci/engineering coursework they do leading up to said interviews. And they definitely don't see the thousands of hours programmers put into teaching themselves new skills and technologies.

Don't overwhelm your ego here, the guy who prepared my lunch today is working harder than me. And since that job doesn't pay enough to survive, he has two of them. You get paid more, not because you "worked hard" or "studied harder"... its because you have a line of work that both creates a shit ton of value, and the supply and demand for people with our skill sets works out in our favor.

You're correct in that how hard someone works doesn't result in how much they earn. However, I got into the industry I'm in through hard work. Going back to my main point, people don't want to see that - they just want to see the success which fits into their narrative where anyone with any success got it because they exploited someone else.

Re: The Graver Threat of the Growing Tech Backlash

#43

Post by schiffern »

quanticle wrote: post #9

Everything in this article comes back to housing. That's not the tech. industry's fault. The tech. industry would love to have more housing in San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area. Housing prices have increased so quickly, and are currently at such a high level that even highly paid tech. workers are thinking twice about moving to SF. We see it often enough in the comment threads right here. The problem is that…

>In every other growing city, swathes of older, low-density housing are torn down and replaced with higher density apartment and condominium blocks.

…which generally means going from bad design to worse when it comes to human health. Mental illness, social isolation, physical inactivity, and poor performance in school are all correlated with living in high-rise buildings (even after accounting for socioeconomic factors).[1]

This isn't to say that healthy high-density living can't be done, just that it generally isn't what's done. Singapore is a good counter-example.[2]

[1] http://web.uvic.ca/psyc/gifford/pdf/ASR%20High%20Rises%20pro...

[2] http://www.livablecities.org/articles/high-density-livabilit...

Re: The Graver Threat of the Growing Tech Backlash

#44

Post by SheepSlapper »

api wrote: post #11
quanticle wrote: post #9

Everything in this article comes back to housing. That's not the tech. industry's fault. The tech. industry would love to have more housing in San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area. Housing prices have increased so quickly, and are currently at such a high level that even highly paid tech. workers are thinking twice about moving to SF. We see it often enough in the comment threads right here. The problem is that…

I turned down a really great salary offer in the Bay Area recently because it was not that great given the housing prices. Basically you'd have to offer me over $175k to even consider coming there... and even then I'd be concerned about continued real estate inflation pricing me out of any chance of getting desirable housing and paying it off in a decent amount of time. The other thing is that in Silicon Valley you'r…

I found that out the hard way. Six months ago I got a job in SF that paid me 50% more, and moved to the East Bay where I pay almost 3x the rent (for the same square footage, in a much crappier neighborhood). I could buy a nice house where I'm from (WA) for what I'm paying in rent now, and that stings a bit.

It's definitely been a fun experience (there're TONS of cool things to do here), but had I known 6 months ago what I know now... I'm not sure that I would have made the transition.

Re: The Graver Threat of the Growing Tech Backlash

#45

Post by kllrnohj »

gum_ina_package wrote: post #10
quanticle wrote: post #9

Everything in this article comes back to housing. That's not the tech. industry's fault. The tech. industry would love to have more housing in San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area. Housing prices have increased so quickly, and are currently at such a high level that even highly paid tech. workers are thinking twice about moving to SF. We see it often enough in the comment threads right here. The problem is that…

Spot on. Not trying to be cliche, but big government is what's causing these problems. If they would allow high rises to be built, we wouldn't be seeing these issues.

Big government has nothing to do with this. The protesters themselves are the problem. Not because of their current protests, but because of their previous protests against more housing.

The government has tried, many times, to zone and build more dense housing which would have prevented this problem. The people of SF have been organizing and protesting every step of the way against that for the last 15 years.

Hell, even today they are protesting the increase in housing costs while simultaneously protesting against increased housing.

Re: The Graver Threat of the Growing Tech Backlash

#46

Post by rodrodrod »

kevingadd wrote: post #36
rodrodrod wrote: post #19

> Ellis Act evictions, used to eject all tenants from a building to clear the way for a sale, soared 170 percent in the last three years. For some context, that's an increase of 73 evictions per year (from 43 in 2010 to 116 in 2013[0]). Of course, 73 in the absolute doesn't have the same ring to it as 170%, so it's clear to see why the data is presented the way it is. I think it's rather disingenuous and makes that p…

what is the math that leads you to say 116 entire-building evictions impacts 0.014% of the population? are numbers provided that describe the total number of tenants affected? A large apartment building/complex can be home to hundreds of tenants, many of them families.

Ah, good catch! I mistakenly assumed there was a 1:1 eviction to tenant correlation. I can't seem to find any data indicating the total number of tenants evicted (or, at least, an average count of tenants evicted per eviction on average), so I can't really estimate the % of population impacted anymore, so I've edited that bit out.

Re: The Graver Threat of the Growing Tech Backlash

#47

Post by LanceH »

drhayes9 wrote: post #13
gum_ina_package wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. Not trying to be cliche, but big government is what's causing these problems. If they would allow high rises to be built, we wouldn't be seeing these issues.

I don't see the big government argument here. If the residents of San Francisco are voting to keep the city a certain way, how does that align with traditional "big government" narratives of over-regulation, bloated spending, etc? You could say the residents of SF are using city regulations a certain way, but that doesn't imply big government to me.

Government dictating what may and may not be done with private property. Not in the spending sense as it is normally used, but definitely in the invasive sense.

Re: The Graver Threat of the Growing Tech Backlash

#49

Post by rictic »

calibraxis wrote: post #38
apsec112 wrote: post #14

If tech companies pay their workers generously, then it's their fault for rising rents. But if they are misers and pay little, then it's their fault for mistreating working people (see: Apple and Foxconn). If the tech companies all move to San Francisco, then it's their fault for changing the fabric of local communities. But if they leave San Francisco, why, it's their fault for crashing the local economy. If the tec…

False dichotomy to set up "damned if I do, damned if I don't". Then conclusion likens SF's privileged techies to women facing literal witchhunts, a form of terrorism. Techies are free to engage in activism to help their fellow humans.

And we do. My coworkers both give generously to charity and volunteer for local organizations and my maligned techie employer actively encourages this (by putting up fliers around the office for local charities to volunteer for, holding volunteering drives, and matching charitable gift donations).

Re: The Graver Threat of the Growing Tech Backlash

#50

Post by xacaxulu »

gum_ina_package wrote: post #7

Everyone sees the success, but no one sees what it took to get there. They don't see the intense, competitive interviews tech workers go through. They don't see the grueling comp sci/engineering coursework they do leading up to said interviews. And they definitely don't see the thousands of hours programmers put into teaching themselves new skills and technologies.

This is a great counterpoint. And as someone who has done incredibly difficult physical labor (former US Marine with multiple deployments) I can tell you that what has been much harder for me has been the CompSci courses I've taken, thousands of hours of pouring over API documentation, and countless late nights coding. Just because we aren't sweating in some warehouse somewhere doesn't mean that the work isn't incredibly complex and difficult. I'd argue that we work quite harder than guys who makes sandwiches, and we are paid for it accordingly. Working in tech takes a lot of sacrifices early on.
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