Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons • Hacker News Board

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#51

Post by eropple » Sat, Nov 07, 2015, 7:29 PM UTC

sotojuan wrote: post #46

stevoski wrote: post #7

The more I read such articles, the more I think you'd have to be nuts to choose to live in San Francisco. And yet, clearly, plenty of people do choose to live in San Francisco.

As someone who does not want to live there either, I can see why people move there. It's simply where the most opportunities are. The idea is to move there and live uncomfortably until you network your way to an awesome, high paying job. Alternatively, the tech companies there usually do more interesting stuff than in other area. Here in NYC most are related to advertising or media—stuff not easy to get exited about.…

Plenty of places outside of SF are doing interesting things. Boston has plenty, as does Austin.

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#52

Post by douche » Sat, Nov 07, 2015, 7:31 PM UTC

JabavuAdams wrote: post #47

Artistry121 wrote: post #12

In another city a place this cheap would be less than $400 / month. Meaning someone could choose this lifestyle simply in a different city working for minimum wage and meet the requirements for housing costs of less than 1/3 income.

The problem is who you're living next to, at that price point, in another city. Basically, if you live where all of the minimum-wage people live, you're going to get spill-over from all the typical problems in such a neighbourhood.

In other parts of the country, the kind of money the author is paying in rent on a studio will pay the mortgage on a 2500 sqft house, in an upper-middle class neighborhood.

In an age of high-speed internet, it's ridiculous that we insist software engineers be jammed into dense, expensive globs. Working remotely with Skype calls/IM/screensharing is a better experience, all around, than trying to collaborate in the same office, at least in my experience. You do have to have employees that will actually work, though.

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#53

Post by douche » Sat, Nov 07, 2015, 7:36 PM UTC

goodJobWalrus wrote: post #23

serge2k wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is over 10 times larger than the UK. Guess what, tons of land leads to different expectations. I don't understand why Europeans seem to like acting condescending about this stuff?

> The US is over 10 times larger than the UK. Guess what, tons of land leads to different expectations. I'm not sure it's just that, it's also I think, that Americans find it acceptable to live in suburbs. If everyone tried to live in the city centers (like they do in nyc or SF), small places would also be the norm.

Why would you want to live in a city center, when you could have 40 acres of good land in the country for the same money, or less?

Suburbs are a compromise, where you get a little of column A (room enough for decent living) and a little column B (urban wages and access to capital), which equals a lot of column C (long, shitty commutes).

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#54

Post by BrainInAJar » Sat, Nov 07, 2015, 7:41 PM UTC

kzhahou wrote: post #41

balls187 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question is why do we have the most talented people in a certain industry having to live in confined spaces while paying through the roof for it. Because it's their choice. Right now the housing market in San Fran is redic. However, there are other major tech areas that don't nearly have the same problems.

It's obviously their choice. OP didn't mean anyone is forced against their will. The question is: why does the vast majority of new tech continue to A) establish themselves in such an uncomfortable location B) not embrace distributed teams It's a terrible cycle at this point.

> why does the vast majority of new tech continue to > A) establish themselves in such an uncomfortable location > B) not embrace distributed teams

Hiring networks. You want to hire people based on referrals and not experience or qualifications, you need to hire through your extended friend network, which if you're raised in the SF startup scene, is all in SF.

It's also a state of affairs that ends up being unintentionally racist, since probably most of your friends look like you, and probably most of their friends that they'll refer to you when you're hiring look like them

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#55

Post by greg-kroleski » Sat, Nov 07, 2015, 7:42 PM UTC

tinbad wrote: post #14

Growing up in communist Russia, 400sq. feet apartment would be the luxury option for 2 or 3 families with multiple children each. No joke, my parents lived with their siblings and parents (and sometimes grandparents) in the same apartment even after everyone had children of their own. Somehow we still managed to occasionally have 20 more people over for birthday celebrations and cook all the accompanying excessive am…

Author here. As we lived in that apartment I constantly reminded myself that compared to all families from around the world and across time, we had a luxurious life. Clean water, climate control, safety, food 3 times a day, etc.

We definitely had company over, often gatherings of 10-12 people and one time we had 5 overnight guests (that was a bit crazy but fun).

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#56

Post by sotojuan » Sat, Nov 07, 2015, 7:43 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #51

sotojuan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who does not want to live there either, I can see why people move there. It's simply where the most opportunities are. The idea is to move there and live uncomfortably until you network your way to an awesome, high paying job. Alternatively, the tech companies there usually do more interesting stuff than in other area. Here in NYC most are related to advertising or media—stuff not easy to get exited about.…

Plenty of places outside of SF are doing interesting things. Boston has plenty, as does Austin.

Yes, but San Franciso has the most. Plenty of other cities have theaters, ballet, and opera—but people move to New York.

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#57

Post by greg-kroleski » Sat, Nov 07, 2015, 7:44 PM UTC

lazyant wrote: post #39

I'll be that guy: affect != effect

Thanks, I fixed it. If only there was a way I could let people open up PRs to my blog posts to fix typos and grammatical errors :)

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#58

Post by greg-kroleski » Sat, Nov 07, 2015, 7:45 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #38

I really like the insight about density. I temporarily changed my living situation from a 4 bedroom house where my kids had moved out, to a 2 br apartment and I recognized the density issue but had not conceptualized it so clearly as the author did.

One of my favorite parts about living in constraints is it forces me to build new mental models.

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#59

Post by 7Figures2Commas » Sat, Nov 07, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

sawthat wrote: post #50

alkonaut wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren't SF tech companies hiring more remote workers? They could pay people who work remotely a lot less, save a lot on office space etc. Tech companies are the ones that should be able to pull that off. Even if I lived in SF I'd be reluctant to commute an hour to work if I could just as well work from home.

Everyone keeps asking this question. The answer: they are hiring remote workers. But my question: where is the evidence that tech companies are not able to be profitable with their high payroll costs?

> But my question: where is the evidence that tech companies are not able to be profitable with their high payroll costs?

You could look at the growing number of layoffs at post-seed stage companies[1].

Or you could look at startups that voluntarily publish financial information. Take, for example, this one[2], which, as of June, was spending $525,000/month on payroll (equating to an all-in cost of $146,000/year per employee) when it had less than $300,000 of monthly bookings revenue.

A lot (perhaps the majority) of venture-backed Bay Area startups are entirely dependent on investor money to sustain their workforces at their current sizes. Even some of the tech companies in the area that have gone public aren't profitable. FireEye and Marketo are two that come to mind.

Everybody has been trading profitability for growth, and that's a game most will eventually lose.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10517445

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10049808

Re: Life in a Studio Apartment with My Wife and Two Sons

#60

Post by SmallBets » Sat, Nov 07, 2015, 7:52 PM UTC

It's interesting that most reactions here are either a)"this is nothing compared to country x" or b)this is an example of extremely negative hardship.

I thought the direct lessons he laid out were excellent, about being ruthlessly honest on what you truly need to be happy, and the freedom that you get from the resulting wealth when combining that with a SF tech salary.

It is a reasoning from first principles on living conditions that not enough people do imo. I think we tend to subconsciously accept the default of more space/stuff=better without making a direct choice on what is the specific right amount for ourselves. Coming to a definition of what "enough" is for ourselves keeps the goalposts from moving as income rises.

Also the point about gaining empathy for the poor based on experiencing a lower margin for error and high cost when things went wrong in this lifestyle was another good observation.