
What if the critics win, and tech sector flees S.F.?  - jamesbritt
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nevius/article/What-if-the-critics-win-and-tech-sector-flees-5257201.php?cmpid=twitter-mobile
======
wavesounds
The way "techies" are being talked about and treated right now is straight up
Xenophobia and it's fucked up.

We can't just be "nerds" that are easy targets to be scapegoated and picked
on. If someone tries to blame you for the low supply of housing (instead of
restrictive building codes) or for "changing the culture" of the city in a way
that they don't like (who died and made them the arbiter of good taste). Call
them out on it, its bullshit.

Technology has improved a lot of peoples lives and supplied this state a ton
of money in tax revenue and for every one technology job 4-5 other jobs are
created [1]. The companies in the bay area are the envy of the world, don't
let peoples jealousy bring you down.

1\. [http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Tech-hiring-creates-
other...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Tech-hiring-creates-other-
jobs-4098510.php)

~~~
objclxt
You are replacing one scapegoat - techies - with another - restrictive
building codes. You're complaining about people adopting one-sided, myopic
viewpoints whilst putting forward one of your own - that the tech industry is
great, and wonderful, and has no downsides whatsoever.

You talk about how tech gets vilified, but at the same time label people who
object to tech as "jealous". I think we would get a lot further if people
would acknowledge things like the housing situation in San Francisco are not
the fault of _either_ techies or building codes, but the result of a complex
melting pot.

For the record, I work in tech, and I live in SF. I would like to think I'm
able to see that tech has brought many benefits to SF, but at the same time
has indirectly contributed to various pressures that any financially
successful city will eventually encounter. London and New York both have
equally crappy housing situations - different causes, different symptoms. I
do, however, see how people living in SF could come to the conclusion that
tech is causing these issues.

I think rather than simply turning their argument around ("you're jealous") it
would be better to engage in rational discourse about how best to solve these
problems in a way that leaves everyone better off. Sadly, people on both sides
seem to be entrenched to the point where this is very difficult.

~~~
impendia
Restrictive building codes are not a scapegoat. They are a public policy
decision which directly explains why the price of housing is so high.

~~~
objclxt
Building codes contribute to the problem. So does tech. Building codes are a
scapegoat in the sense that SF would still have housing problems even
_without_ the building codes.

------
guyzmo
Well, those tech critics just need to wait for the current "social web" bubble
to implode, and then we'll see people showing cardboards saying stuff like:

"will do community management for food!"

[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070820063441/uncyclo...](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070820063441/uncyclopedia/images/1/15/Will_code_html_for_food.jpg)

and then as the shares of Facebook, Twitter and even the almighty google
drops, the tech unemployment raises in the valley and SF, engineers get
evicted and then prices will lower!

They just need to stop complaining, be patient for a few years and that will
happen…

…until the next tech bubble gets the valley crazy again ;-)

~~~
hindsightbias
It's like both communities have zero memory the dotcom boom era.

I guess ranting tech-n00bs can't be asked to know their own history and the
locals can be forgiven for the smokey-mj haze.

But when your wait staff is having to move to Oakland, there might be a point
where it can't make a come back.

------
caitp
It would be a net benefit for everyone if people stopped believing San
Francisco was some kind of "technology/business mecca" or something.

We need budding tech sectors all over the world, and we don't need everyone
trying to move to California (and a lot of us frankly don't want to move to
California, to begin with).

California doesn't offer anything which can't be found elsewhere.

~~~
lutusp
> California doesn't offer anything which [sic] can't be found elsewhere.

Except a self-referential belief that California is where it's happening.

Also: s/which/that/

~~~
hdevalence
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the quoted sentence -- this which-
hunting is a ridiculous exercise in 'gotcha grammar' completely divorced from
the facts about how the language is spoken.

See, for instance,
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5479](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5479)
.

~~~
lutusp
> There's absolutely nothing with the quoted sentence

Well, you're consistent, and let me adopt your style: the above sentence
missing word.

~~~
Goladus
This grammar policing is not necessary or helpful to the discussion.

~~~
lutusp
I'm amazed by programmers who welcome the discovery of a misplaced semicolon
but who object to the report of an egregious grammatical error, especially
given the fact that both traits affect their employability.

~~~
djur
which/that is not even an error, much less an egregious one.

~~~
lutusp
> which/that is not even an error, much less an egregious one.

On the contrary:

[http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/which-vs-
that](http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/which-vs-that)

~~~
djur
I don't think that outweighs the evidence from Language Log clearly showing
that "which" has been commonly used interchangeably with "that" in good
English for centuries. This was linked earlier in the thread. Personally, I'm
going to go with Dickens and Melville and Orwell (and statistical evidence)
over a blog I've never heard of.

------
spiralpolitik
One of the memes of the Bay area is that people want it to remain the same as
it was the day they arrived and that anybody who arrived after them is "the
problem".

But seriously I find it amusing that the author thinks that Berkeley and
Oakland will attract people away from SF. Berkeley is even more hostile to
change than SF. Witness the nasty campaign against Measure T in 2012 where
Berkeley voted to keep a cesspool over a nice new business park and kept parts
of the city zoned for manufacturing that is never coming back instead of
startups. Berkeley should have a thriving startup culture with the university,
but everybody drives across the bridge rather than dealing with the NIMBYs.

Oakland's current and previous administration couldn't find its arse with both
hands. Witness how much new development has ended up in Emeryville.

So yeah businesses setup in SF because because at the moment its the least
incompetent or hostile of the Bay area cities to have to deal with. And will
most likely remain so.

------
natmaster
I've lived in Texas, Washington, and in Silicon Valley California. There is
way more bigotry here than any of the other places I've lived.

~~~
walshemj
As the old punks used to say "never trust a hippie"

~~~
cfreeman
Probably best not to trust the punks either.

------
anigbrowl
Seeing as the financial sector has failed to do so for decades, I wouldn't
hold my breath. Whatever happens, CW Nevius will still be writing columns
complaining about his neighbors as he has done for the last quarter-century or
so.

~~~
objclxt
I think we may well see a situation similar to what's happened in Los Angeles
and the entertainment industry. The main players are still based there, but
the city has become so expensive to shoot and work in that many films are now
made elsewhere.

------
elangoc
The problem is a structural one. There's more demand and no increasing supply
of housing in SF:

[http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/10/san-
francis...](http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-
exodus/7205/)

The debate about whether ___Group X/Y/Z____ needs to flee is a false one --
just build more housing that will accommodate all types of people who want to
stay.

To do that, the NIMBY laws and once-romanticized ideal in SF that prevent
building up need to change.

~~~
raverbashing
Yes, let's do that. No vertical limit on buildings

In fact, let's concrete the SF bay to have more space for houses, it's better
that way

After all, all those people 100% need to live there, there's no space left in
the USA for them.

------
alexnking
Too bad it's an all or nothing situation, it's not like they could just reduce
the number of employees in the area.

If only there were some way for employees to do digital work without being in
a centralized geographical location...

~~~
walshemj
Pity how that telewoking nirvana the telephone companies keep plugging doesn't
really work for a lot of use cases - I know a lot dont want to hear this but I
am afraid its the truth teleworking is suboptimal for at minimum 80% of TMT
jobs

------
raverbashing
"They will cling to the fantasy that rents will magically drop,"

Oh really? Less demand equals smaller prices. It may take some time, but, yes,
it will happen.

About the issue: the USA is huge and it's sincerely stupid to keep cramming
people into an ever tight space.

There's nothing about it fundamentally that makes it absolutely necessary. The
big companies like Twitter, Google are big enough so they can stand by
themselves and do not need the SF/SV influence.

Companies could go to Stockton, they need the money, and it's not so far away.

~~~
Jare
> The big companies like Twitter, Google are big enough so they can stand by
> themselves and do not need the SF/SV influence

That only works if your employees know they are going (and want) to be with
you for a long time. In tech things change fast, and both companies and people
want to be in a place where they have a good amount of options. This naturally
creates local maxima around a few geographical locations. The only way out is
widespread remote work.

------
pndmnm
As a guy who is moving to SF for geographically-relevant reasons (wife is a
medical resident) and who works tech remotely, I'd be all in favor of this.

------
cmapes
Come down to LA. I don't have enough tech entrepreneur friends down here.
We'll create a young CEO's club, it'll be fun I promise.

------
presidentender
Why should the tech sector be tied to any one place?

~~~
fennecfoxen
It's not tied to any one place. It is tied to a few places, and Silicon Valley
more strongly than most: in no small part because you can hire programmers
there, because programmers live there, because they can get hired there (all
circular-referency-like).

But it's also tied to places like New York, and London, and Seattle, and
Boston, and Austin, heck, Shanghai and Hong Kong and Bangalore -- any place
where there's enough of a critical mass of reasonably well-educated _raw
population_ that "programmers live there" because everyone lives there. Not
tied as strongly, mind you -- the network effect and the venture capital in
the bay area are hard to beat. But tied enough that it works.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Can't programmers work remotely? And can you not work remotely if your
management isn't totally incompetent? "You can't manage what you can't
measure." and all that jazz.

In short, the SFBA crisis is caused by the tech culture not drinking its own
Koolaid about geography not mattering.

~~~
argonaut
The koolaid you speak of is only propogated by the few companies that actually
do hire remote. GitHub and 37signals/Basecamp are two examples that
immediately come to mind.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Github and Basecamp are companies I'd identify as fairly successful. If they
can do it, why are Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Amazon so bad at it?

~~~
argonaut
GitHub only has 240 employees. Google has around 50,000. Bad comparison. It's
like saying "Ruby on Rails works for GitHub; if they can do it, why can't
Google use Ruby on Rails?"

If you read any of their articles on how they make remote work for them, they
do it by and organizing the _entire_ company around remote work, IIRC. And
they still have offices.

~~~
toomuchtodo
So Google isn't broken down into departments? And departments broken down into
projects?

This feels less like decision making based on results and more like hand
waving by bad managers.

~~~
argonaut
And projects don't talk to each other? And departments don't talk to each
other? And departments don't report to inter-department leads/heads? There
aren't Director or VP level managers?

~~~
toomuchtodo
If only there were some sort of text and voice based communications methods we
could use to facilitate the transfer of information between disparate
groups...

