
Real story of “Yelp Girl” who called out CEO for low pay - steven
https://backchannel.com/yelp-raises-wages-after-talia-janes-viral-open-letter-673ac01bf7cb#.t92c6xh8o
======
yuzi
I really don't understand why companies that know they are paying poverty like
wages for an area don't just move the company or segment of the company to a
more affordable area. It seems obvious to me they really just don't care about
their employees.

~~~
hnal943
Why is it the company's responsibility to determine if you can afford to work
for them or not? They would adjust their practices if the market demanded it.

~~~
cjcenizal
The comment you replied to, and Talia's original post, is representative of
the market demanding it.

~~~
whatok
The market demanding it would be Yelp being unable to hire CSRs in SF at their
current wages and being forced to raise wages to attract talent.

~~~
actsasbuffoon
That's one scenario, but there are others.

If enough consumers decide to stop doing business with a company because of
the company's behavior, then that's also a kind of market demand. The article
gives one example of such a customer, though it's unwise to extrapolate too
much from a single data point.

~~~
whatok
Yes, but ultimately it goes back to being unable to hire at current wages.
Let's say that consumers stopped doing business with Yelp and they did not
raise wages as a result. Yelp does not have a monopoly and someone would
create a competing business and hire away their employees. Yelp would either
be forced to raise wages or do without customer service/go out of business.

------
minimaxir
> “I feel you can’t be internet famous unless you’re verified and making money
> off your tweets,” Talia Jane says. “I was internet ‘Temporarily Recognized,
> Slightly.’ People were like ‘oh!’ and that’s it.”

Interesting quote for Backchannel to highlight since they did a feature on
Greg Gopman, whose internet "fame" was definitely not temporary.

~~~
justizin
Infamy is different from fame.

Greg Gopman is a trash fire and continues to pour accelerants on himself.

------
michael_h
I'm having a hard time understanding why people are latching onto the Bulleit
Bourbon - it's $15.

~~~
imroot
It's not a bad "base" bourbon, and for the longest time, it was distilled and
aged at Four Roses. It also pairs really well with citrus (for use in an old
fashioned).

The pricing of Bulleit is sometimes weird: I was in Vegas last year and a 750
of Bulleit was $60, but, a 750 of Woodford Reserve was $35.

------
andrewfromx
i would pay money to watch
[http://www.daveramsey.com/](http://www.daveramsey.com/) interview Talia Jane.

~~~
justizin
Because he would advise her to save more when she can't afford rent or food?
lol.

Assuming this is a joke, I would pay to watch your stand-up comedy.

~~~
whatok
He might advise her to not spend money to move to somewhere for a job that
cannot pay her rent.

------
ndesaulniers
"social media driven outrage culture"

------
mrbill
So she can't afford SF.. now she's moving to NYC?

I can't understand that logic at all.

~~~
Nrsolis
I feel like a lot of people are missing the larger point of this story: BE
KIND. Because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle you know nothing
about.

I'm not going to excuse her rant or her poor decision making skills as she
navigates her way through life. What I _am_ going to sympathize with is the
fact that she had a rough start in life and precious few examples around her
to show her how to make good vs. bad decisions. I meet plenty of people like
this; people who are unprepared for the rush of responsibility they carry when
thrust out in the world to care for themselves. Most of us at least know what
we _should_ be doing even if we don't always do it. We had an example. I don't
think this young woman had that benefit and now she is learning the hard way
all of the lessons she should have been learning long ago.

So may very well be a spoiled-brat entitled millennial, but I'm more inclined
to suggest that her story is a lot more complicated than we've been led to
believe, even given what we've learned about her upbringing from this article.

(Side note: one of my buddies is now retiring from the US Marine Corps; I
didn't find out until I heard from someone planning his retirement party that
before he joined the Marines he'd been homeless. When I tell you that he's one
of the most inspiring and intelligent people I know, I'm not exaggerating. BE
KIND.)

~~~
whatok
> precious few examples around her to show her how to make good vs. bad
> decisions.

I don't need examples to conduct basic arithmetic to show that I cannot afford
somewhere to live. There are millions of people with similar or worse
upbringing who actually learn something from that upbringing and decide to not
do dumb shit that has a high chance of introducing financial ruin.

~~~
Nrsolis
And here we have another example of someone who doesn't get it.

You're saying that you wouldn't make the mistakes she has made because you'd
know better, right? You'd use math or logic or any of your abilities to make
the CORRECT choice, right?

You're completely missing the fact that it's not YOU that's got the burden of
making those correct choices, but HER. And she is having a hard time doing it
despite her best efforts.

Somewhere in the world, there is a guy judging you for screwing up because HE
knew better than you did when you made that last mistake you made. And
boy....THAT one was a WHOPPER. What were you THINKING?!?!

~~~
whatok
> You're saying that you wouldn't make the mistakes she has made because you'd
> know better, right? You'd use math or logic or any of your abilities to make
> the CORRECT choice, right?

No, I'm saying that was red flag number one. She then made a series of
mistakes that led to her current situation. All of the facts were available to
her when she signed up for the job and instead of accepting personal
responsibility, she pointed the finger at her employer. She would have a leg
to stand on had she been a long-term employee that got caught up in rising
rents or something similar but that was not the case.

I have empathy for everyone who gets caught up in bad situations that are out
of their control. I do not have any for someone who willfully enters into a
situation and blames someone else for the outcome. If I'm unable to sustain my
current state of living with a job I voluntarily chose, how is it anyone
else's fault but my own?

> Somewhere in the world, there is a guy judging you for screwing up because
> HE knew better than you did when you made that last mistake you made. And
> boy....THAT one was a WHOPPER. What were you THINKING?!?!

When I make mistakes, I accept responsibility, learn from them, and try not to
make them again. I do not try to publicly shame someone else who could at best
be described as indirectly contributing to my situation. I'm quite okay with
anyone judging me because I only have control over what I do in a situation
and if I let something like that affect me, I could potentially miss out on
gaining experience that can only be learned through failure.

~~~
Nrsolis
That's YOU bub. That's not HER.

YOU learned to accept responsibility. SHE didn't. YOU learned to acknowledge
your mistakes. SHE didn't.

Now she IS learning and she's learning it the HARD way instead of the EASY
way, namely, by haranguing from the Internet Mob.

Buddy, you need to really think about this. Are you so callous that you can't
see that there wasn't a single person in this girl's life that showed her how
to stand on her own two feet? She'll either learn or she won't. It's going to
be hard for her either way. Are you so indifferent to someone's struggle that
you can't at a minimum think about how hard it must be to live their life and
be thankful you're not similarly burdened?

~~~
hsod
She brought her situation to the world. This is a discussion forum. People are
discussing it.

You seem to be arguing that we should only discuss things that are positive
and supportive, and that in seeking the truth of the situation we should
ignore anything that is not "kind"

Please try to avoid sarcastic terms of endearment in your response, if you
choose to make one.

~~~
Nrsolis
No.

What I'm suggesting is that we all keep in mind that ANY of us could have
started from where she started. I reject the premise that "The Internet"
somehow gives us license to judge someone through the narrowest of lenses. You
and I (nor anyone reading these words) aren't even remotely qualified to pass
judgement on this person.

And please refrain from instructing me on what terms I can use in the ordinary
course of discussing something I'm passionate about. I don't speak to anyone
in any way online that I wouldn't when directly in their company.

------
pnathan
my big question is why Talia is having hit pieces written on her...

------
dominotw
sounds like SFO landlords are partly to blame for approving leases without
doing any checks as to weather the tenant is actually capable of paying their
high rents .

~~~
justizin
She had a roommate, the roommate situation failed. This is a common crisis for
people in the SF Bay.

You're a damned fool if you think they don't run credit and income
verification in the most competitive rental market in the world. Apartments go
off the market in a day here fairly often.

~~~
wdmeldon
Generally that means that the roommate would still be on the lease. Which is
generally incentive enough for someone not to bail on a lease.

------
kelukelugames
>People ransacked Talia’s social media for clues to her lifestyle, seizing
upon anything that hinted at extravagance, or concocting back stories.

>Everywhere, people questioned just how poor Talia was. She defended the
prosciutto-and-brie biscuits in her Twitter feed to a Quartz reporter after
critics interpreted it as a sign of secret wealth; she said the ingredients
were a gift from a date. Vice wanted to know why she had a bottle of Bulleit
bourbon — she explained she needed it for mint julep cupcakes for work.

Yeesh. Poor people can't have nice things in more ways than one.

~~~
bane
File under the "it's expensive to be poor".

One observation from growing up poor, around lots of other poor people (but
not something I noticed in people who I'd classify as falling into "true"
poverty) is the crazy amount of money that gets spent on absolute bullshit in
some desperate attempt to make the life-suck less awful.

I could list some examples, but the stereotype of poor people with expensive
shoes or lots of cheap jewelry or whatever is often partially true.

~~~
steveklabnik
I grew up "we don't have money for Christmas presents" poor, but not "we don't
have money for food" poor.

It's not even about that. It's that being poor is expensive. So, here's an
example: when I would buy shoes, which were usually boots (I lived on a farm),
you could get a pair at a place like Sears. They were maybe, I dunno, $20-$30
at the time. They would fall apart within a year. Every year, let's say,
$30-$60, just on replacing my shoes. Then, one year, I decided to save up
_all_ of my money, including gifts, and bought a pair of Doc Martens for $120.
Those shoes lasted me for almost a decade, because they were significantly
higher quality. $12/year, actually cheaper than the poorer quality boots. But
that wouldn't help if I couldn't put the $120 together to actually buy them,
which was true most of the time.

A lot of being poor is like this. You can only afford cheap stuff, and cheap
stuff breaks a lot and needs to be replaced often. It's expensive to be poor.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>They were maybe, I dunno, $20-$30 at the time. They would fall apart within a
year.

This is fairly bullshitty and something I question as to being real. My
immigrant family has always bought cheap shit. $30 shoes from DSW or wherever
lasted a long time. Our clothes from Sears lasted forever. The expensive stuff
wasn't for quality, it was for brand and social signaling. That $800 Gucci
purse isn't bought because its durable. There's simply not a price/durability
relationship in fashion.

>and bought a pair of Doc Martens

Of course leather boots last longer, that's a serious edge case that has no
bearing on the norm. I don't know anyone who regularly wears boots on a daily
basis and its unrealistic to pretend its a normal footwear for most people.
Heck, most people can't wear shoes that like long term as its uncomfortable
and can cause foot issues. Middle class people don't sigh in relief about
being able to afford hipster boots, they just buy the same sneakers they
always did.

In fact, its pisses me off that at my wealth level how easily shit breaks. My
fancier clothing wears out faster, my more complex lifestyle means more
handymen and repairs, etc.

>It's expensive to be poor.

Its really not. When we were poor we just didn't buy into the consumerist
lifestyle. We just kept stuff forever. The problem is some of the poor people
in my neighborhood would buy into it and bought all the blingy shit with their
money instead of saving or trying to work their way out of the poor
neighborhoods.

~~~
creshal
> This is fairly bullshitty and something I question as to being real. My
> immigrant family has always bought cheap shit. $30 shoes from DSW or
> wherever lasted a long time.

Lasted a long time doing what? Doing farm work every day will wear out shoes a
lot faster than just walking around in the streets.

> There's simply not a price/durability relationship in fashion.

You need a certain minimum price to get a certain minimum quality, simply for
materials expenses. Stuff can't get cheaper than that, even if there's nothing
stopping you from slapping a "premium!" sticker on it and selling it for ten
times as much as it's worth.

> Of course leather boots last longer

Leather boots _can_ last longer. You can have crappy worksmanship with leather
boots too – sure, the leather will last forever, but if it's poorly done,
it'll fall apart after a year or five anyway.

It's not just boots, anyway. Computers (Thinkpads and Macbooks last forever,
you don't hear anyone saying that about the $200 notebooks off Walmart),
appliances (a good washing machine can survive their owner while a cheap won't
last 10 years), …

~~~
odonnellryan
Also, regarding this point:

>and bought a pair of Doc Martens Of course leather boots last longer,

Look at this: [http://drmartensforlife.com/](http://drmartensforlife.com/)

Coach (bought my GF a wallet for her birthday once, ~$250) and Gucci have
similar policies.

------
snug
Yelp office is in concord yet she lived in the city? With her wages, why did
she move 30 miles away where rent is significantly higher. You could probably
get away with $500 rent in concord with a roommate situation.

Edit: Whoops, read that wrong. She actually lives in Concord and worked in SF.

~~~
oarsinsync
> The only place she could find that cost less than the $1,466 she’d be making
> in a month at Yelp was 30 miles east of San Francisco, in Concord.

You've got that the wrong way round, she was living in Concord, and without a
roommate because...

> Her only lead on a roommate had fallen through, and she wanted to take time
> to find someone who she “wasn’t afraid would murder me, because I don’t
> really know anyone.”

~~~
autotune
Took me about a week to find some roommates through
reddit.com/r/sfbayareahousing when I first moved out here, then about a day to
find some new roommates and a decent place to live on craigslist outside of
that. Before that I used airbnb.com to find a place and there are a good
number that are under $1000 a month outside downtown SF. She could've done
something similar.

~~~
anon1385
I'm not American so I'm slightly confused by the terminology here. In the
article it says she was renting a one bedroom place and looking for a
roommate. I've frequently assumed that when Americans say 'roommate' they
actually mean somebody they share a house with (what we would call flatmate or
housemate in the uk), rather than somebody they share a bedroom with. But in
this case it sounds like she was trying to find somebody to actually sleep in
the same bedroom, since the place only had one bedroom.

In your comment you say you have 'roommates'. So to be clear, you saying that
you share a bedroom with at least two other people? And you consider this
normal for an adult in a developed country?

Is this really the situation in SV now? People who are "DevOps Consultants"
have to share bedrooms with random strangers just to afford to live?

~~~
outworlder
> Is this really the situation in SV now?

It is in San Francisco. So people commute. Public transportation is awful (the
actual rides are fine, frequency and coverage are the main issues), so traffic
is terrible.

Edit: despite the name, you don't share bedrooms. You share a home.

~~~
odonnellryan
How bad is SF traffic for real?

Let's say you lived 10 miles out of the city. How long would it take you get
get to your job by car?

In NYC, 10 miles can be a ~1hr commute even by public transport.

~~~
snug
By car, it depends. I live 15 miles away in Oakland, and work in SOMA. Without
traffic, it will take 30 minutes. This is with toll pass and HOV lane. Without
it, it would take more than an hour.

By train, it takes me an hour each way, every day.

------
jeremyt
This girl is so obnoxious.

When I did a startup in San Francisco in 2008, I stayed in a shared house in
South San Francisco with immigrants. I was informed after the day I moved in
that I wouldn't have access to the kitchen. My rent was $500 per month.

I know things are more expensive now than they used to be, but I just clicked
over to Craigslist and found hundreds of listings for less than $1000 per
month for a room in a shared house.

Here's one:

[https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/roo/5557466505.html](https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/roo/5557466505.html)

And that's in the middle of the city.

Here's the search...they're all over the place:

[https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/roo?max_price=1000](https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/roo?max_price=1000)

I'm sorry, but I was over 30 years old before I lived by myself without a
roommate. This is just plain entitlement and whining.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
She had a plan to start: find a place to live, get a job, find roommates that
wouldn't get her involved in a murder conspiracy.

Then the stress of life wore her down. She should have moved into a shared
apartment earlier. Also later. But when you're poor and stressed, everything
is hard.

Maybe she's entitled. Maybe you lack empathy. I suspect both.

~~~
jeremyt
I don't need to have empathy, I have memory. I've been easily as poor as she
was.

I lived a year and a half in Washington DC on $1000 per month. My living
budget for working on the startup in SF was barely more than that.

I don't really care to be lectured about stress either. Living in SF and
trying to do a startup was the most stressful part of my life, and at one
point my doctor told me if I didn't get out I was going to die at 30. I was
the sole technical founder of a startup, and I happened to have severe
tendinitis in my forearms, which I had to work through. I didn't have enough
money to actually get treatment or go to physical therapy, either.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
You were poor, like Talia.

But were you ever Talia?

Your experiences were not hers. Similar, maybe. But not the same. Drawing on
your experiences without empathy means you are making decisions from the
_wrong_ data set.

And that is why memory without empathy serves no one but yourself.

~~~
jeremyt
My experiences were not hers, they were worse than hers.

She had a solid full-time job making more than I did, appears to be healthy,
and signed a lease for an apartment on her own. By any measure that I see, her
life was both more luxurious and less stressful than mine at the time.

If you can point out one aspect of her life that wasn't self-imposed and that
ended up being more of a hardship than when I went through, I'm all ears. But
so far it seems like all you're saying is that I can't criticize because I'm
not actually her, which seems silly.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I judge neither you nor her.

I make observations. I then compare those observations to previous
observations to better understand people. This helps me understand others
better, just as it helps me understand myself.

We all have moments where we look back and realize we made bad decisions. It
takes no effort to think "I should not have done that." Ditto for other
people. Does that change anything? No. Does it inspire better decisions in the
future? Maybe, if one is willing to learn. But simply judging what someone
should or shouldn't do instead of listening and learning solves nothing.

We are all human beings. We all have hopes and fears and strengths and flaws.
Just remember that the next time someone is not very nice to you.

