651–660 of 1001 posts
I lived for about 12 months in telegraph hill (got lucky with a solid apartment). I had my wife and 1 year old son. Despite it being a really nice and affluent neighborhood, there was a weekly mugging outside my house. Any packages or items left outside were basically taken if left out for more than 1 hour. My neighbor’s car parked in front of the house was stolen, taken for a joyride and left in a random part of the…
Crime is a function of inequality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even commuting within sf can be kind of a pain it took our folks 50 minutes from both areas in the mission and Menlo Park to get to an office in South Park. This is not to impunge on your credibility, but it takes me 16 minutes to get from my door in 21st and Valencia to the door at 313 Brandan next to South Park. This touches on some positive trends in San Francisco: of course, I e-bike, so I can get anywhere pret…
Employee in question took Muni + Walked. I biked and did a baby bullet from Menlo Park. My estimates could be off by ~10 or so minutes it was a while ago.
Is this a safe enough space to say that taking the Muni anywhere is kind of foolish?
> I’d bet getting rid of sf tax nexus was a key piece of the reason.
You and I have a lot in common and face many of the same personal and business headwinds in the Bay Area community. Neither of us have really been affected by the business tax, have we? Whereas the far more impactful Prop 13 and Costa-Hawkins: where is the leadership around repealing / amending those laws from tech industry executives? Or from anyone? What to make of how homes are the de-facto savings mechanism for Americans? Or that everyone is driving everywhere, even when they don't have to? Or that our schools, private and public, kind of work like Ponzi schemes, where all the smart kids are concentrated in a few places, making everywhere else worse until those schools close and then, where do those kids go?
Many issues, no leadership, just leavership: solving your problems by changing the community you live in, not by changing your community. This is fine, we have little choice.
In my opinion, in order to show leadership, you have to be able to say, "The Muni is a bad choice for most white collar tech workers." You have to be able to tell people they are doing something wrong, and then also figure out how to tell them without hurting their feelings or violating the totally imaginary idea that your choice of commute is righteous, infallible, subjective self expression, like choosing your hair color or the lift of your Doc Martens. You'd have to write Hacker News comments like, "Well is biking really a death wish? Isn't that a bit hyperbolic?" to high-drama anonymous Internet personalities, whose power to downvote is the same as yours, so how could objectivity ever thrive? That's hard.
That said, most tech workers should be working remotely. But also, most tech companies have bloated payrolls, so we shall see how that all plays out.
The issue is the San Francisco gross receipts tax, which becomes problematic for any payments company because it applies to the payments volume Twitter is planning to become a payments platform
There is a famous paper about the location of company headquarters: they get as close as possible to the residence of company CEOs. If we don't consider the CEO's influence, I'm actually curious if the location of company headquarters has to do with the average age of the employees in the Bay Area. As the employees start to have families, they most likely move to the south bay for better or for worse, and I have a ha…
Had a recruiter call with Twitter a few months ago. Mandatory in office 5 days per week. Among other things, an hour commute both ways to work was not acceptable. Maybe they will have better luck in Santa Clara. I don’t buy any of the flamebait reasons for leaving SF. Reason 1 is money and reason 2 is talent pool.
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cities are far more kid-friendly than suburbs, especially for kids from age ~9–18. Everything is walkable or can be reached by transit, many more amenities and activities are accessible, kids are dramatically less dependent on parents or other caretakers to constantly chaperone them, and there are a wider variety of other kids around with many niche interests. Some kids' parents irrationally believe cities will be ba…
> For the kids themselves, cities are wonderful and suburbs are often a kind of prison I grew up in a mega city and I agree that cities are wonderful for kids, at least they were wonderful for me and my friends. I'd venture to guess that kids don't care. Cities or not, the world is just so much fun and exciting. I don't know if suburbs are prisons for kids, though. My kids love suburbs, and they also love cities when…
Club houses? What are we talking about here? Country clubs? Our society is largely devoid of the fraternal organizations that colored 18th and 19th century social life, and the social isolation of not having any 'third places' to go is in fact one of principal complaints about suburbia.
I lived for about 12 months in telegraph hill (got lucky with a solid apartment). I had my wife and 1 year old son. Despite it being a really nice and affluent neighborhood, there was a weekly mugging outside my house. Any packages or items left outside were basically taken if left out for more than 1 hour. My neighbor’s car parked in front of the house was stolen, taken for a joyride and left in a random part of the…
Crime is a function of inequality.
I lived for about 12 months in telegraph hill (got lucky with a solid apartment). I had my wife and 1 year old son. Despite it being a really nice and affluent neighborhood, there was a weekly mugging outside my house. Any packages or items left outside were basically taken if left out for more than 1 hour. My neighbor’s car parked in front of the house was stolen, taken for a joyride and left in a random part of the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crime is a function of inequality.
Don't blame crime on the poor.
There is compelling evidence crime is correlated with inequality.
I don't know US commutes, or US geography too well. But it seems these two locations are about 45mins-1hr drive from each other. Where do folks actually live in those areas? Is it that a 30min drive north to San Fran becomes a 30min drive south to San Jose?
Caltrain's main issue is that trains run every hour. (with 1 super slow train in the middle). Miss a train, and you're screwed.