
S.F. tech companies' civic image at stake as backlash grows - timr
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-tech-companies-civic-image-at-stake-as-5065669.php
======
lbrandy
Say what you want about tech-workers sense of entitlement, or the local's
misdirected anger, but I think we can all agree that this nonsense is great
for sfgate's page views. And they clearly know it. They just keep publishing
the same two stories over and over.

edit to add: I want a media backlash. That always comes, right? Maybe then we
can get away from this nonsense narrative of tech-workers vs locals and focus
on the actual problems at the root of housing prices.

~~~
csense
The root of the problem is that much of the tech industry is strangely old-
fashioned about doing business face-to-face. This means that places like SF
where the density of tech people is well above-average will attract more tech
migrants, and the price of housing will rise until the market clears -- with
long-time locals priced out by tech companies that pay high salaries.

As long as tech companies are willing to pay the salaries they're paying,
unwilling to open up shop outside SF, and refuse to consider allowing long-
distance remote employees, the problem will continue.

Source: Please consider all the job openings you're aware of, and try to keep
a count of the fraction that would be closed to remote-only candidates.

~~~
wozniacki
_with long-time locals priced out by tech companies that pay high salaries._

I hope and dearly hope that you also meant to include the Germans, Italians
and Irish who constituted the major demographic of the Mission once, when you
say "long time locals" and not just the recent Hispanic arrivals.

I am appalled by everyone, from the New York Times [1] to Al Jazeera [2],
white-washing the facts to make it seem like what is going on in the Mission
and the rest of the city is somehow a Noah's Flood-like grand sweep of
gentrification that the city had never seen before.

People were displaced before. At least a casual mention of it by the media,
would be nice.

[1]
[http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2013/11/20/us/20131122_TECH...](http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2013/11/20/us/20131122_TECH-9.html)
[2] [http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/the-stream/the-
late...](http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/the-stream/the-
latest/2013/11/1/gentrification-insanfrancisco.html)

------
zmanji
As a visitor to SF I'm having a hard time trying to understand why there is so
much anger directed towards 'techies' and not towards the city/mayor. Isn't it
the mayor's responsibility to ensure that housing supply can meet demand and
low income earners are not pushed out of the city entirely?

~~~
ams6110
No, that is not the mayor's job at all. Well it shouldn't be. If a mayor tries
to make it his job, he'll fail because things like "housing supply" cannot be
managed by government.

~~~
zmanji
Doesn't the city effectively control housing supply by issuing permits for new
buildings and controlling zoning boundaries? I can see how the city cannot
produce new housing but it seems they can definitely restrict housing supply.

~~~
hindsightbias
There is no more acreage in the Mission. I'm all for bulldozing it and
building 900 foot towers as soon as downtown Palo Alto does.

------
objclxt
I think - and this is only based on my own experiences, so please do correct
me - is that a lot of the problems discussed here are exacerbated by the
effective geographical segregation of tech workers with families and those
without.

One of the complaints here is that in the Mission tech workers aren't engaging
with the local community - schools, playgrounds, and the like. But this isn't
a general problem with tech, because if you walk 10 minutes to Noe Valley
you'll find many tech workers actively involved in their communities _because
they have families that live there_.

This is compounded by the fact that many people in tech who decide to start a
family will often move out to the valley to take advantage of better schools,
and more appropriate housing.

~~~
timr
_" One of the complaints here is that in the Mission tech workers aren't
engaging with the local community - schools, playgrounds, and the like. But
this isn't a general problem with tech, because if you walk 10 minutes to Noe
Valley you'll find many tech workers actively involved in their communities
because they have families that live there."_

I'm not really sure about that. SF hasn't exactly been a family-friendly place
for the time that I've lived here, and I wouldn't describe the giant packs of
20-something, nerdy men who have come with this latest gold rush as engaged
members of their community. But Noe is definitely a different neighborhood
than SOMA, so you probably see more civic engagement there than elsewhere in
the city.

However, I can say with 100% confidence that the city has become less
interesting and more homogenous since 2008 -- much more white, 20-something
and hipstnerd. Many of the things that I found culturally interesting in San
Francisco have been pushed out by the skyrocketing costs of living here.
Artisan drop coffee and bougie grilled cheese shops aside, Oakland seems like
a far more interesting place than San Francisco these days -- nearly all of
the art, music and counter-culture that made SF dynamic has moved to the east
bay, replaced by a shallow, consumeristic version of the same.

~~~
wozniacki
_However, I can say with 100% confidence that the city has become less
interesting and more homogenous since 2008. Many of the things that I found
culturally interesting in San Francisco have been pushed out by the
skyrocketing costs of living here._

Could you perhaps list a few of these "culturally interesting" things that
existed in the pre-2008 period? Because I am left puzzled as to what was so
vibrant back then. I have lived on and off in the Bay Are since 2001 and in SF
since 2005 (in Potrero ,Lower Nob not Tender-Nob. Hell no! Not Tender-Nob. If
you think it is a cesspool now, you should have seen it back then).

Whenever I read "culturally interesting", alarm bells go off because it is
usually a couched way of culture peddlers saying, culturally interesting to us
- the few dozen scenesters who are so firmly ensconced in this made-up brand
of stylized misfitdom. These non-tech scene people whose coolness is
threatened by the addition of new recruits (and heaven forbid they be upwardly
mobile technology workers) that they actively shun all outsiders, who are
trying to be "more involved in city life" and "start participating in city
life."

When they say that we should be "more involved in city life", what they really
mean is that you should fork over more of your hard earned dollars to preserve
the culturally attractive blight and color of the city, so that they could
continue to make merry, uninterrupted while we sit on the outside, looking in,
but never really welcomed or accepted.

------
redwood
It's not just yuppie hatred, nor does the article really address the big
issues. Obviously inequality of money and opportunity is a big part of this.
But that can be mitigated if society's fabric isn't threatened.

There are elephants in the room: 1) lack of women in the industry <\--- means
an increasingly out of whack male:female ratio in the city which has many
problematic pile-on effects.

2) simple feelings of being left out...that's what people don't like about
Google shuttles. They're mysterious. Let people in them, see what they are,
see how they're really not that amazing or great: but then that would hurt
recruiting.

3) Arrogance of many tech workers: anti-social intercommunication skills etc.
We all know this is undeniably true. Sure we may be nicer than most finance
types. But are we more out-going? Do we try to connect with our community on
an emotional level? Certainly not more than most, and I'd argue a heck of a
lot less than most.

~~~
eshvk
> 2) simple feelings of being left out...that's what people don't like about
> Google shuttles. They're mysterious. Let people in them, see what they are,
> see how they're really not that amazing or great: but then that would hurt
> recruiting.

So your proposal is that people who don't work in tech, say someone who spend
upwards of $100000 on an expensive liberal arts education and has a good sense
for making good soundbites but not enough money should be allowed to enter the
Google bus and drive down to the South Bay and back? It is a fucking bus that
moves from point A to point B. There will be people who will hate you for
anything you do. Always.

~~~
redwood
I'm saying show people the interior on a "google bus open house day in the
mission" so the google bus isn't like a red velvet rope and bouncer protected
nightclub --- looks pretty fancy from the outside, but not much really going
on inside.

Disambiguify it and say "we're not trying to be a bunch of nightclub
bouncers... we just have a large car pool"

~~~
eshvk
Yes, but who are the "people" that you show things to? There is no clear split
between "tech people" on one side and "locals" on the other side. Just like
there are people who have been living in the Mission for 30+ years, there are
people who moved in at the same time as I did (two years ago) but are getting
priced out. Why am I less of a real "San Franciscan" than they are? This is as
another commenter pointed, half parts bigotry too. This has always been
happening too. Hell, the Mission was once occupied by poor German and Italian
families. They fled with white flight when the Latinas moved here. Then, now
the Mission is gentrifying. This is a process that will keep happening
throughout the years in every neighborhood. A Google open house day will not
help people who want to manufacture outrage for their pet causes.

~~~
redwood
Simply the people who aren't taking the shuttles. People like all my friends
in SF who aren't in tech.

------
md224
Another commenter here notes that "People have been hating yuppies since as
long as the concept has existed" but as a yuppie myself, this misses something
more crucial to me: the disconnect between the techno-utopian ideology of the
bay area and the (apparently?) increasing divide between haves/have-nots.
Something about the juxtaposition just really troubles me.

Of course, there are larger social trends happening here that complicate the
picture, such as a shift in the distribution of poverty between urban and
suburban areas:

[http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2013/confrontingsubu...](http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2013/confrontingsuburbanpovertyinamerica)

There are people who say that it's okay because these technologies of
convenience will eventually become affordable for everyone, essentially a
trickle-down theory of technological progress. Maybe that's true.

I just want to avoid an _Elysium_ -like scenario of futuristic enclaves
surrounded by poverty-stricken shantytowns. As long as we can avoid that, I'll
be much happier about building the future.

~~~
mynameishere
_Elysium-like scenario of futuristic_

Jokes on you. Like most dystopian works, Elysium was about the present day.
Those enclaves are already in almost every country.

------
eshvk
I think the most hilarious backlash is the one from folks who moved here
barely three years ago. Apparently, if you don't work in tech, you are somehow
more of a real person and keeping it real. Bull fucking shit.

~~~
smtddr
The issue is tech-salaries are so high these days, that the once decently
priced apartments of SF are now increasing beyond what their non-tech jobs can
support. So even the Starbucks employee who moved into SF 2 months ago is
always wondering how long he can afford to be there.

~~~
stefan_kendall
I'm not sure a starbucks employee could have afforded to live in SF for the
past several years.

------
curtis
One really serious problem with this particular topic of discussion is that
people keep conflating "homeless" and "poor". Homeless people may be almost
universally poor, but most of the poor are not homeless. I will go further and
venture that most of the homeless are not homeless because they are poor but
rather because they are either suffering from either serious mental disorders
or substance abuse or both. As a consequence, the ways you solve the "poor"
problem and the ways you solve the "homeless" problem are different. So it
really makes sense to figure out which particular problem you are talking
about.

------
yresnob
I am an avid volunteer in the community..i am In the tech industry..live near
the mission....my wife works for a non profit..

gotta love these generalizations...

------
10098
> ...and she wants them to "start participating in city life".

That sentence really confused me. Like, what does it even mean, to be
participating in city life?

~~~
eshvk
No idea really. I know quite a bunch of people who live in SF and do the South
Bay trip. Enough of them spend money in the city, walk dogs for the elderly
and so on. I think we are getting into "No true scotsman" territory with all
this misplaced outrage.

------
kenster07
Is SFGate a tabloid?

Step 1: Cherry-pick most extreme comments possible and imply that they
represent the average opinion.

Step 2: Make numerous anecdotal assertions without any effort to back them in
statistics.

Step 3: Instigate mudslinging by displaying cherry-pickings to other side.

Step 4: Feedback into Step 1.

"Since we don't understand the macroeconomic system that is causing these
issues, let's just blame a random group of people who are doing well in said
system."

------
Crito
People have been hating yuppies since as long as the concept has existed. This
is nothing new at all; it is standard distrust, fear, or dislike of people who
are perceived as different.

There exists a certain segment of the population that will always consider
newcomers _(less charitably called 'outsiders')_ as an intrinsically bad
thing. These people should be ignored; they cannot be satisfied by doing
anything but giving in to them.

 _(I don 't live in SF, but I hear the same complaints about "techies" in my
city, particularly in my neighborhood.)_

~~~
objclxt
This is true, and many of the problems I see in SF had like-for-like
counterparts when I was living in London (replace 'tech' with 'finance', etc).

That said, I think SF has some unique circumstances that make gentrification
challenging. These cause genuine problems that aren't related to simple fear
of change. A few of those circumstances:

* SF has a very poor public transport system that severely limits where people can choose to live in relation to their workplace

* SF has problems with homelessness and poverty that are more visible and proportionally higher than its peers (SF has one of the highest rates of homeless people who actively refuse shelter)

* Tech workers often flee the city to have families, meaning they aren't as engaged with the community as others (this exodus also has detrimental effects on the school system in SF)

~~~
redwood
It's sad though, to think that tech could ever be considered the new finance.
We're supposed to the LSD experimenting, sandal wearing, authority deriding
rebels. That's why we're rooted in San Francisco to begin with.

We're threatening our own existence.

~~~
eshvk
> We're supposed to the LSD experimenting, sandal wearing, authority deriding
> rebels.

> We're threatening our own existence.

Erm...no. You are choosing to define tech as either " LSD experimenting,
sandal wearing, authority deriding rebels." or in another post as "autistic
male industry.". This is a definition that works for you. I choose not to be
associated with any of these definitions. I have no interest in either craft
beer or comicon or any of those typical American nerd past times. Hell, I
studied high school in a sub culture where girls were automatically supposed
to be good at Math or CS.

My point is that it ultimately is just a job. Go do the job. There will be
people who will stereotype you and make you part of some club whether you
choose to be part of that club or not. Ignore them, help the world if you
choose to.

~~~
redwood
I couldn't agree with you more. We need to step up and change the averages of
this industry.

There will be many benefits if we do, for our society, for our industry, and
for us too. In the meantime, you and I will be in the minority.

I was speaking a bit tongue in cheek about the lsd and sandals, but
nevertheless believe we need to work hard to encourage a quilt of diversity:
in style and scenes, approaches to the world and epistemology of learning,
academic pursuit, politics, local business etc. I aimed to identify the low
hanging fruit, where we're most of out to lunch. And the lack of women in our
midst is certainly #1 on the list, imo.

------
ChrisNorstrom
I feel like Tech is the scapegoat for San Francisco's pre-existing problems.

It's pretty obvious by now San Francisco is one of the worst places for a fast
growing tech industry. They don't want change, it's a tiny peninsula (I've
walked from one end to the other), there's not enough land, taxes are high,
traffic is awful, transportation is apparently awful, they're overly
bureaucratic, their politics are broken (all things I've heard directly from
SF natives and expats), prices and living expenses are the highest in the USA,
the community is volatile towards the businesses there (compare SF to St.
Louis & other cities who are passing incentive packages worth $1+ Billion just
to get Boeing to bring 8,000 jobs to their city). The city looks unique, hip
and trendy, and just like Vogue has more issues than anyone can count.

They're complaining about gentrification as if it's the worst thing in the
world. Meanwhile in St. Louis, we're all praying for gentrification. When
neighborhoods become run down and violent no one says anything, everyone just
moves away. When those same people move back to fix everything up suddenly
they're the villain. In St. Louis, the poor just move to a cheaper place in a
nicer house using the money they got from their fixer-upper home. That's
something SF natives can't really do because of SF's land size problem. I've
spoken to African Americans and minorities who took part in gentrification
just above Martin Luther King street and bought homes to fix them up. The
world operates in much more rational, logical ways outside of the hipster-
bubble. If silicon valley moves, who will SF blame their problems on then?

Pretend that Silicon Valley never existed in the bay area. Would A-N-Y of San
Francisco's major problems be solved? They'd still have busted transportation,
still have high rent, the politics would still be the same, they'd still
ignore Oakland residents, still have a lack of housing, still have the
homeless problem, and everything else. This is just another re-occurring
pattern in human nature: "Blame your problems on those who have nice things."

------
rmrfrmrf
The problem is a climate that is conducive to the homeless. Here's my modest
proposal: move tech companies to the rust belt. From Detroit to Utica, we have
the pleasure of watching the homeless die of hypothermia every winter. Every
time I see some begging scumbag on the street, I just think to myself, "thank
FSM that piece of shit will have a shallow grave in 6 months." You know,
because he can't _afford_ to get put 6 feet under. Natural selection is a
beautiful thing.

~~~
sharemywin
when you troll please at least put a little effort into the craft.

------
rhizome
Since when do tech companies, SF or otherwise, even _have_ a "civic image?"
This seems like a bald-faced strawman by SFGate.

"Future of SFGate-funded action-sports TV sitcom in doubt."

------
michaelochurch
I don't think most people realize how bad this is. It's not just a rash of bad
blood. This is a turning point. The last bubble was much more unreasonable in
terms of raw numbers, but it didn't have the mean-spirited aura of this one.

Even after 2001, people liked tech and Silicon Valley and wanted to see these
ecosystems succeed. That was the respectable way to get rich: to move to the
Valley and start a company. No more. Average people _hate_ tech now.

The problem is that, as often happens, the wrong targets are being attacked.
People are lumping the $140k/year programmers (who'll never be able to afford
a house in San Francisco) in with the $250k product executives and useless
scene kids working 11-to-3, much less the $2M/year lawyers who figure out how
tech companies can never pay a dime in taxes, which means they're not seeing
the source of the real problem.

~~~
gruseom
I lived in the Mission (24th and Potrero) for years during the dotcom bubble,
when I was a grad student. Gentrification was just as controversial then as it
is now. As for mean-spirited auras, look at the "Mission Yuppie Eradication
Project" poster in [1] that begins "Over the past several years the Mission
has been colonized by pigs with money" (sounds like a michaelochurch post to
me!) and ends by calling for vandalizing their cars.

People were upset about different things—instead of Google buses, lofts being
converted into luxury condos and so on—but the emotions and the discourse were
much the same. I remember a startup called Bigstep that got into hot water
because they took over office space from a community org or something that
couldn't afford the rent any more [2]. There was a lot of talk about the
Latino community being displaced by dotcom types, about Marina yuppies taking
over the nightlife—at places like Blowfish Sushi, plus a somehow slightly
creepy experiment called Circadia [3] that Starbucks ran at Bryant and
Mariposa, which was an emblem of dotcom excess. It's just an ordinary
Starbucks now.

I haven't noticed any change in how "average" people feel about tech, except
perhaps that its status has gone up.

One thing that actually has changed from the dotcom bubble to now is the
massive shift of power away from VCs and MBAs towards founders and engineers.
(Which is kind of ironic since it contradicts almost everything you say about
the industry.) Investors have lost power relative to founders and managers
have lost power relative to programmers. Both of those trends have been going
on for a long time, but have been accelerating. They seem to me to be good
trends, arguably even for the investors and managers.

Curiously, this shift is visible in the cultural ripples around the dotcoms
then vs. the startups now. The dotcom bubble produced a lot of ersatz culture
that matched its mostly ersatz startups. The parts of it that I saw were
douchey and suity; a place like Circadia, which I mentioned above, was an
expression of that. It was full of people who weren't actually working on
anything. The decor was lavish, but the coffee and food (not that I could
afford the food) were mediocre. Compare that to a place like Sightglass now,
where the coffee is excellent and most people are working on stuff. Sure
they're hipsters, but it's still a crowd I'd rather be around than the one
that used to make me squirm back then; and I'm a dyed-in-the-wool programmer
type who hasn't much changed.

[1]
[http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Mission_Yuppie_Eradicatio...](http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Mission_Yuppie_Eradication_Project).
Also
[http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/macchron.htm](http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/macchron.htm)
and
[http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/03/35154](http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/03/35154),
and there's lots more where those came from.

[2] Googling this turned up [http://blog.doubledutch.me/2012/03/the-rise-of-
the-mission-s...](http://blog.doubledutch.me/2012/03/the-rise-of-the-mission-
startup/) which includes some details about anti-dotcom protests in from
1999-2000.

[3]
[https://www.salon.com/1999/01/21/feature_238/](https://www.salon.com/1999/01/21/feature_238/).
I sometimes worked on my thesis there because they had internet. Most of their
tech-oriented image was silly, though. The place was all pretense.

~~~
tptacek
I had a VC-funded startup during the first dotcom bubble, when I lived in SOMA
and Noe Valley, and have a bootstrapped startup (well, a company that we sold
last year) now that takes me into SF pretty regularly, and this squares up
with what I've seen as well. Nobody who takes our field seriously could
reasonably prefer the dotcom bubble to today.

San Francisco's problem is that it is mismanaged. That's not just a message
board opinion; it appears to be the consensus of all observers, including that
of journalists who cover the city. The city's services are poorly run, its
growth is haphazard and pointlessly retarded, and it's hamstrung by its
geography. But it also seems to be more livable today that it was in 1999,
when the market was crazy enough that I had to pay my year's rent in advance
to secure an apartment.

------
ChristianMarks
There is something to this apparent lack of reflection around technology. See
the 3AM Magazine interview with Peter Ludlow:

[http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/what-the-hell-are-we-doing-
he...](http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/what-the-hell-are-we-doing-here/)

I wouldn't mind having the job title of “thinking about what the hell we are
doing here.” Perhaps Hired is holding an auction for this very position.

