
Are The Techno Riche Really Ruining San Francisco? Yes, Says Rebecca Solnit - gjenkin
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-31/are-the-techno-riche-really-ruining-san-francisco-yes-says-rebecca-solnit
======
raldi
_> And it feels most like a mining town, in that it’s disproportionately young
men coming in, and they’re transient. They’re not committed to the place, and
they’re displacing a lot of people who are._

They're transient because screw-the-newcomer policies like Prop 13 and rent
control make it unaffordable for many of them to settle down here. And it's
disproportionately young men because these same policies, in conjunction with
anti-development measures like 40-foot height restrictions across the street
from BART stations, make it nearly impossible to live here without a tech
worker's salary.

~~~
BashiBazouk
That quote is hilarious. So San Francisco is returning to it's roots? When the
city was built, it was a mining town (well mining support town) and it was
disproportionately young men coming in...

Are we sure this isn't how it's supposed to be?

------
noamsml
"I met a guy who lives at 24th and Valencia [Street]. He says the Wi-Fi signal
on the buses is so powerful that when the Google bus pulls up in front of his
house, it uses all the broadband and his Wi-Fi signal crashes."

That's not really how WiFi works. Chances are his router is on the same
frequency as the buses and he can fix this by changing to a different
frequency. Even more likely (since one SSID shouldn't make too much of a
difference) is that his WiFi router crashes at random and there's some amount
of false causation there.

I know this isn't the beef of the article, but this sort of magical thinking
that insists on forcing every little thing into a framework of a class war
between the upper middle class and the lower/lower middle class is.

~~~
gaius
But why should he have to fix it? Who was there first?

~~~
Crito
Michael Bolton? Is that you?

His setup is defective. He can either complain and live with it, or he can fix
it.

~~~
gaius
Or Google could tune down the wifi on their bus? How powerful does it have to
be?

~~~
Crito
They could, but realistically that isn't going to happen. Hence the Office
Space reference:

    
    
      Michael Bolton: Yeah, well, at least your name isn't Michael Bolton.
      Samir: You know, there's nothing wrong with that name.
      Michael Bolton: There *was* nothing wrong with it... until I was
                      about twelve years old and that no-talent ass clown
                      became famous and started winning Grammys.
      Samir: Hmm... well, why don't you just go by Mike instead of Michael?
      Michael Bolton: No way! Why should I change? He's the one who sucks.
    

Michael Bolton, the character in the movie, laments that he shares his name
with a (real life) signer. He could go by another name, but refuses to because
he thinks that the singer is at fault. Realistically Michael Bolton, the song
singer, will never change his name, so Michael Bolton, the office worker, is
choosing to instead complain and live with it. The humor comes from the
ridiculous nature of the office worker's stance.

(Also, assuming the wifi on these buses is not in violation of FCC
regulations, this _really is_ this guys problem, not Google's.)

------
bparsons
The people that gentrified the neighborhood 20 years ago, are upset that
younger, richer people are moving in on their territory.

The NIMBYs are responsible for the complete lack of new market housing in SF,
and have hilariously priced themselves out of the market.

~~~
tmp755
There are actually a lot of new units coming on the market soon. This article
from August claims there are twice as many units "in the pipeline" as the
number that made it to market in the past decade:

[http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2013/08/all_48000_san_fra...](http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2013/08/all_48000_san_francisco_units_in_the_works_by_neighborh.html)

I'd guess that there are NIMBY building costs that prevented housing
construction until the rent got so high, but it does look like an end is in
sight.

------
raldi
The author writes about how corporate shuttles insulate tech workers from
transit problems, and how if this weren't the case, there'd be powerful forces
pushing to make public transit better.

She misses an opportunity to make a similar point about antidevelopment San
Franciscans being insulated by their rent control, but she comes close to it
when talking about the Ellis Act. What makes this law so terrifying to
longtime, usually antidensity, residents is that it puts them on equal footing
with all the new arrivals. It forces them to lie in the bed they've made.

It's like how the draft can turn hawks into doves amongst people who wouldn't
otherwise have children in the military.

~~~
thwarted
Nevermind that the corporate shuttles exist mainly because of the transit
problems. If the companies that provide the shuttles weren't aware of the
transit issues, they never would have provided the shuttles.

~~~
couradical
That's her entire point though - in the past, the transit issues would've been
fixed with the help/money of the companies moving there. Now, her issue is
that companies have invested private money in the shuttles, mitigating the
transit headache exclusively for their employees, rather than by providing a
public good.

It's up to your own personal politics to decide which of those is more
desirable though.

~~~
thwarted
Is that the point? "In the past" there was a massive plan to build BART lines
to all over the Bay Area[0] that never came to fruition. There isn't even
serious talk about doing this. Modern companies, which didn't exist, are
having to deal with the short-sightedness of times past (however, this is a
regular lament of the young). It's not that these companies don't necessarily
not want to provide for the public good (I don't know if they do or not, it's
inconsequential), it's that the public didn't want them to. Even if there were
plans, by the companies, to contribute to "solving" transit issues, it's easy
to have it tied up in frustrating planning stages, a la Geary Bus Rapid
Transit[1].

Meanwhile, people have to get to work.

What we're seeing is the result of a number of strong, independent, competing
systems (transit, property rights, rent control, NIMBY, etc), working in
isolation, resulting in a massive, fustercluck that doesn't have a solid
solution that does anything other than continue to perpetuate it's own
bureaucracy.

And again, saying that the companies are not doing anything to "solve" the
transit problems ignores the fact that busing employees, in fact, are part of
"solving" transit problems, specifically those of highway traffic (and second
order impacts like greenhouse gas emissions and roadwear).

[0] this makes the internet rounds with Bay Area people every few months,
[https://www.google.com/search?q=bart+map+1950s](https://www.google.com/search?q=bart+map+1950s)

[1] [http://sf.streetsblog.org/2013/02/06/geary-brt-advisor-
resig...](http://sf.streetsblog.org/2013/02/06/geary-brt-advisor-resigns-in-
frustration-at-snails-pace-of-sfcta/)

------
raldi
_> Caltrain does run down there. We could have beefed up that system and had a
tremendously efficient train system, with trains leaving every 15 minutes or
so for the peninsula_

The problem is that Caltrain (and BART outside SF proper) has its stations
along the periphery instead of the heart of town. You can't jump on Caltrain
in the Mission or Noe Valley or even Market St, and on the southern end, it's
not going to drop you off anywhere near anything.

This is because California, and the Bay Area in particular, follows a policy
of "The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many", and when previous
generations were deciding where to put stations, they didn't use eminent
domain like most municipalities would; instead, they built them either in the
few parcels of vacant land off on the periphery, or along the freeway land
they already owned, which is perhaps the most pedestrian-hostile arrangement
possible.

~~~
BashiBazouk
Uh...have you actually ridden Caltrain? Outside of SF, Caltrain stops in the
very heart of each down town. San Bruno, Burlingame, San Mateo, Belmont, San
Carlos, Redwood city, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain view, San Jose all have
stations that border the historical main down town (I think Sunnyvale and
Santa Clara as well). In SF proper, it's probably more to do with geography
than land purchases. Trains really don't like hills and tunneling is
expensive.

The problem is really, that the train tracks were built in the 1860's when all
these places were little towns linked by farms and fields. Then the automobile
took over and there was just not seen the need for branch lines. Now it's
solid industrial/suburbia all the way up and eminent domain would be way too
expensive both in terms of money and politics.

~~~
raldi
_> Uh...have you actually ridden Caltrain?_

No, and that's sort of my point. I've lived in SF since the summer of 2008,
and not once in all that time has Caltrain ever been useful to me. It doesn't
pick up anywhere near anything, and it doesn't run to any place I want to go.

Meanwhile, when I lived in New York, I rode the subway, the LIRR, the PATH
train, Metro North, and even Amtrak all over the place, in no small part
because Penn Station and Grand Central are located right in the middle of
everything and thoroughly connected to local transit.

~~~
BashiBazouk
But your argument as to why has little to do with the actual reasons to two
public transportation systems differ and you make assumptions about the
history of California that are flatly just wrong. Not to mention ignore the
differences in geography. California has a certain flavor of liberal politics
but remember that this is recent and has not always been so, and to this day
varies quite a bit depending where you are in the state. Hell, it varies
depending on where you are in the bay area...

During the time New York was building some of it's latter public
transportation infrastructure, my father and his brother, as teenagers, were
wandering around what is now Xerox Parc and surrounding tech campuses and what
would become 280 with their 30-06 rifles shooting anything they pleased. No
one cared because there was no one around. It was just unused hill country.
Much of the explosion of building in the Bay Area has been recent and during a
period that no one wanted public transportation, they wanted a car. New York
built up much of it's rail infrastructure before the car became commonplace
and people really wanted to use it.

Consider this: how late in the history of New York were those grand stations
built? Compare that to how far in to San Francisco's history they are building
the Transbay Transit Center...

~~~
raldi
_> Much of the explosion of building in the Bay Area has been recent and
during a period that no one wanted public transportation, they wanted a car._

You're saying that the region's transit was built up during a time when people
didn't care about public transit. I think that's mostly true, and it led to a
milquetoast "well, let's just sort of put some train stations around the edge
but not do anything that might upset anyone" plan that, today, serves the
region a lot less well than New York's strategy of "let's cut-and-cover tracks
right down all our major avenues".

 _> Consider this: how late in the history of New York were those grand
stations built? Compare that to how far in to San Francisco's history_

If you think you can't build good transit late in a city's history, how do you
explain London or Paris?

~~~
BashiBazouk
"well, let's just sort of put some train stations around the edge but not do
anything that might upset anyone"

And this is the crux of my point. Those CalTrain stations, when they were
built, were EXACTLY where people wanted to go. The center of each down town.
Look on a map. Caltrain is a very direct route to San Jose. The opposite of
your argument that it is in any way "milquetoast". Even BART served where
people wanted to commute to when it was planned out. The Bay Area has exploded
with building since then.

"If you think you can't build good transit late in a city's history, how do
you explain London or Paris?"

Uh...train technology not existing for most of those two cities histories?

------
zach
Honestly, I'm surprised Jason Fried and DHH haven't picked up on this news
trend to point out how bizarre it is that these companies still bus people
around at 40 MPH instead of their communication at the speed of light.

Isn't this just another argument for the innovative promise of remote work?
That both the old centralized model of the company town, and the hub-and-spoke
suburban campus model, impose all kinds of costs and limitations on employees
and the community as well as the company? It's surely impressive that certain
companies have become cultural forces in their region, but it's not always
eventually a good thing (see the Great Lakes area), and the inevitable
cultural conflicts are bloody and never-ending.

Also, I wonder if other parts of the continent (whom would probably _buy_
Google the buses to transport people _in or out_ of their city) laugh or cry
when they read about these first-world-economy problems.

~~~
thwarted
It seems that it is currently more efficient to bus people around, using
(abusing, some might say) the infrastructure that already exists than to
battle municipalities and telcos to provide/get/allow-you-to-install higher
speed network connectivity.

~~~
zach
Good point, and it is a long game, although Google doesn't yet seem to be
incentivizing people to move to Kansas City. And the buses are a good testbed
for an autonomous vehicle fleet, like how Uber dispatches human-driven cars
today in order to grow the market for 3-7 years from now.

In the post-WW2 era, suburbs like Irvine here in the LA area built up a large
economy by providing growing industries with land use they couldn't find in
the metropolis. And the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System provided an
infrastructure that citizens appreciated and trucking companies were able to
use to diversify goods movement. Maybe forward-looking municipalities or
larger government entities have an opportunity to enable further economic
progress by providing superior access to high-speed connectivity.

------
logfromblammo
In nature, when a single-celled organism grows large, it divides. Silicon
Valley--or more accurately the tech companies located there--needs to
diversify geographically. It has gone beyond a critical mass and is starting
to hurt itself and the surrounding communities from the excess.

The problem is that there are few other nucleation sites that a viable tech
community can condense around. The major tech employers are not spreading out
to lower their impact. There's no reason why 2000 employees all need to be on
the same campus. There is no way in Hades you are cross-pollinating your
divisions to that extent.

Spread out and invest in connectivity technologies that make talking across
the continent as easy as over a cubicle wall.

~~~
wf
>>The problem is that there are few other nucleation sites that a viable tech
community can condense around.

What? There are lots of places that could fill this role.

~~~
logfromblammo
30 is not "lots", in my opinion. I don't have the same freedom to choose my
hometown that nurses or auto mechanics or plumbers enjoy. I'm stuck with a few
metropolises and a handful of other areas. And some of those areas are
predominantly government contract work, which are almost universally terrible.

------
logical42
Is it just me or does it make less sense to blame a group of people for having
jobs well-paying enough for them to afford living in San Francisco than to
blame city zoning laws which have rather unreasonably constrained the supply
of rented units and driven prices to what they are now?

------
bronbron
> In another era, the captains of industry would have said, “OK, our workers
> live here, our factory is there; let’s encourage, enforce, and subsidize the
> improvement of public transit.”

Uh, what?

This is kind of a silly point, but I think it exemplifies how misplaced all
this tension is.

For example, mayor LaGuardia put a TON of work into forcing the privately
owned transit lines to become a public good in NYC. The "captains of industry"
didn't improve public transportation - they just started their own
transportation companies. It took a lot of hard work by a lot of great
government officials for the NYC subway to become the awesome service that it
is today (incoming jokes about the L train).

The city of San Francisco's biggest enemy in this whole "nouveau riche"
problem is the city of San Francisco. But everyone's too busy cuttin' each
other's throats to realize that.

~~~
aetherson
No, you're right. She just randomly makes stuff up in that article as presents
it as fact. Like, she tries to claim that the minimum monthly rent in San
Francisco is $4,000. No. No, it's not.

------
tmp755
There is a lot of focus on Ellis Act evictions, but the fact is that there
just aren't very many of them. This article claims only 116 in the last year,
which is significantly less than the numbers 5 or 10 years ago:

[http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-
eviction...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-evictions-
surge-report-finds-4955020.php)

The solution to the rising price to rent is to increase supply. Anybody in SF
should be able to drive up Market and see evidence of the massive number of
units just opening up.

~~~
orph
Ellis Act is tricky. It's threatened far more than it's executed. That's
because it bad for renter credit (supposedly) to have an eviction and it
imposes a bunch of random restrictions on the owner. So it gets threatened and
then occupants take a payout and move out quietly.

------
mistakoala
"Anti-everything activist writer in opposition to everything shocker"

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The busses make San Francisco into Silicon Valley's bedroom community. So
what? Is it too good for that? This article is arrogant SF-resident bull.

------
ChrisNorstrom
"Are Job Creators and Tax Paying Workers Really Ruining San Francisco? Yes,
Says Rebecca Solnit", fixed that for you.

The idiocy of this article is disturbing:

 _" Twitter got this tax break to stay in San Francisco that they blackmailed
out of the mayor"_ (They "blackmailed" him? Really?)

 _" young men coming in, and they’re transient. They’re not committed to the
place"_ (which is why they bought a house in a dump neighborhood to fix up and
keep for the rest of their lives. Jesus give them time, they're not going to
settle down, get married, and have kids right after college.)

It seems no journalist is willing to see this from the other point of view.
Which is blaming San Francisco's politics. 1 of 4 things is happening here:

● Politics have bought out journalism to such a degree that a serious
conversation criticizing San Fran cannot take place.

● Journalists today really are that one sided.

● The media is trying to fuel a class war, they just got done fueling a race
war with the Trayvon Martin trial.

● Somebody has a serious hatred for Google in particular because all of this
anger is directed towards them.

~~~
mistakoala
"young men coming in, and they’re transient."

Isn't that similar rhetoric that was employed in the 20s and 30s? That comment
conjures up memories of reading Of Mice and Men.

She should just have the balls to say she's anti-immigrant, wherever they're
from.

------
bichiliad
I feel like, as far as this topic goes, everything that needs to be said has
already been said. There's been a lot of talk about "class warfare" in San
Francisco, and nothing new has developed. Until then, we're stuck with
speculation from a handful of writers that (in my opinion) are dredging up
news where none exists.

~~~
AmVess
That, and the term 'Techno Riche' is hipster jerkfood and needs to die today.

------
chasing
There's a related conversation happening in the neighborhood I live in,
Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Not about techies specifically, but about the general
wave of wealthier young folks moving in and driving up rents. Displacing
existing residents. Gentrifying. Etc.

Now, I can afford to continue living there, so maybe it's easy to hold this
view, but I never felt I could get too upset about this situation.

First: It's a great sign that the neighborhood's so desirable that people will
spend to move there. It's bringing in business (and helping existing
businesses). It's making things safer. Making things more interesting.

Second: I've been around for longer than many people, but I transplanted there
at some point, as well.

Third: Neighborhoods and cities change. No way around it. Much rather they
grow and become popular with smart, upwardly-mobile young people (with a
creative streak) than grow stale or decay.

Fourth: If something is a limited resource but in high demand, the price goes
up! While I don't believe people should be kicked out their homes willy-nilly,
I also believe that if a ton of people want something, then it's fair for the
market to respond by raising prices (with some constraints, of course, which
I'm not going to get into here). To me, this is one of the downsides of
renting. You run that risk. If that's not appealing, then one should try to
own (which could be a nice investment if your area is booming).

Am I being a douchebag gentrification-sympathizer? Maybe I'm just one of the
people the "real residents" get to hate on -- a white male with a bit of extra
disposable income.

Anyway: Not SF-specific. But certainly other parts of the country are having
similar issues. (I lived in Austin for 27 years, and though I don't keep up
with local politics there, I bet they're also going through a light-weight
version of this in areas.)

~~~
Crito
> _" Maybe I'm just one of the people the "real residents" get to hate on"_

I think here you have touched on the root of all of these sort of "issues":
the notion that people how have lived in a neighborhood longer than others are
somehow "better", "more deserving", or "'real' citizens".

------
300bps
_She skipped high school altogether, enrolling in an alternative junior high
in the public school system that took her through tenth grade, when she passed
the GED._

This is from Rebecca Solnit's Wikipedia page. This is the longest way of
saying, "Dropped Out of High School" I have ever heard.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Solnit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Solnit)

------
vikas5678
Someone really need to write about all the side-effects of the technology and
finance workers leaving San Francisco. What will the real estate prices be
like? How will it affect local businesses? City taxes? Crime? How about we see
the truth from all angles?

------
jpao79
"And I have other friends who are homeowners, but the majority of people I
know are renters, and I keep teasing my friends who are economically
vulnerable that maybe they should go to Vallejo or Stockton, which are in
economic crisis, and create a great, thriving bohemia there."

I think she's on to something here... A smart community activist in
conjunction with a pro-active real estate developer with a really long term
vision could 'organically' help create neighborhoods ready for gentrification
(and profit handsomely) and help create great places for artists, writers and
activists to live at the same time.

All that's needed is a website that organizes groups of artists, writers and
activists to tell them where to go live next, flash mob style. Once the
artists, writers and activists have sown the seeds of gentrification, the
developer can then provide the members some financial (or non-financial)
reward to move on to the next neighborhood and start the process anew.

Basically it'd be comp'ing the group for all the work they have done to create
a live-able, dynamic neighborhood which is not happening today.

------
erikpukinskis
I don't know about San Francisco because I live in Oakand, but I know there
are lots of wealthier (like people who can afford $600+/mo in rent) people
moving in who are hurting my neighborhood. I try to mitigate the harm I'm
doing, but know I'm one of them too.

We don't acknowledge other people in the street. We draw arbitrary lines
between "scary" people and "less scary" people, but in reality are using race
and class markers to make those decisions. And we treat somewhere between "the
scary few" and "everyone not white" as if they don't exist. We don't shop at
local shops and restaurants, we leave the area to go to restaurants that
either appeal to their class background or their racial comfort zone.

I'm not trying to place blame, or say we are "classists" or "racists". As
someone who tries and often fails to do the opposite, I can see how hard it
is. There are real dangers to be afraid of. It's not easy to walk into a
barbeque place where you're the only white person and have that be your Date
Night go-to spot.

That said, I think a lot of people moving out here aren't even trying to
understand what it's like having a different class of people move into your
neighborhood and "walk among you" as if you don't even exist, terraforming the
space you struggled in your whole life with a snap of the fingers.

I know San Francisco is a different place, and it's more white, which changes
some of this stuff. But in the Mission I know there are similar things
happening in Latin@ neighborhoods. People who have been living in those
neighborhoods for _decades_ who were central contributors to that place are
being pushed out to the East Bay and elsewhere because they can't afford rent.

Maybe it's inevitable, and maybe it's no one's fault. But I don't see how
anyone can deny that important cultural institutions are being destroyed so
that rich tech folks can have nice apartments to live in in "funky"
neighborhoods.

------
300bps
_Like there’s a $3 million prize that some of the Facebook and Google
billionaires have put up for medical breakthroughs. They seem to misunderstand
how medical research takes place._

This lady is out of her gourd. She appears to be talking about this:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/science/new-3-million-
priz...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/science/new-3-million-prizes-
awarded-to-11-in-life-sciences.html?_r=0)

This alone makes it obvious what her real problem is. She wants people to give
their money to causes that she supports. She does that by stating that they
aren't civicly minded but she's just belittling what civic-minded tasks
they're doing because she thinks other ones are important.

Entire article was a waste of time to read.

------
peterwwillis
In general, the argument here is "Fucking rich people!! They're ruining it for
the rest of us!", which I don't think has ever been a successful way to get
anything you want. Moreover, they're missing half of why this is happening:
their beloved shitty neighborhoods are being cleaned up by new business and
new housing.

If they got enough political control over the zoning board or the city council
they could make it impossible for new businesses to be approved, make it
harder for the ones there now, and generally make it difficult to impossible
to create new condos. Either they suck at local politics or they're being too
anti-authoritarian to accomplish their goals in a meaningful way.

------
AstroChimpHam
I wonder how she feels about hispanic immigrants to the USA? Does she think we
should keep them out because they're "ruining" American culture? This whole
thing smacks of this weird anti-immigration mentality that I wouldn't have
expected from the left-leaning groups leading the protests. I'm going to make
a side-by-side of Texans upset about Latinos and San Franciscan hipsters upset
about techies.

------
mattsfrey
Anyone else burst out laughing after reading this?:

"I met a guy who lives at 24th and Valencia [Street]. He says the Wi-Fi signal
on the buses is so powerful that when the Google bus pulls up in front of his
house, it uses all the broadband and his Wi-Fi signal crashes. And that’s like
a tiny thing that happens to one guy, but it signifies, “We are so mighty, we
are crushing your reality.”"

~~~
Xeroday
This is where I stopped reading.

------
wonderzombie
Man, I am 100% sympathetic to the issues Solnit is talking about --
gentrification, the plight of the poor, public transit -- but I find this
approach & framing completely off-putting. It's hard to articulate why. Maybe
the whiff of entitlement to SF the way Solnit believes it ought to be, as if
that's somehow purer SF than prior waves of change.

The upshot is that I'm way more conflicted than I might have been otherwise.
And while it's not like I, as an individual, have some great sway over this
debate, I can't imagine I'm the only leftie who feels sympathetic but
alienated.

Maybe that's that cost of doing business here, so to speak. It's no secret
there's a huge libertarian streak running through tech. And it's not difficult
to imagine how unpopular a lot of obnoxious young white men in tech might
already be in some areas.

And finally: big name tech companies = big headlines.

Disclosure: I work for one of the big companies discussed in this piece.

------
rwhitman
On the flip side its kind of amazing that such a beautiful city with a mild
climate and massive protected harbor has maintained being so affordable for so
long prior to today. Its kind of a fluke that some really awful urban planning
disasters happened to blight the city enough in the 50's to open a window for
activists and artists to affordably settle down there in the 60's and 70's.
Otherwise it would probably never have been a counter culture mecca to begin
with

------
negamax
I really hope there won't be any financial industry like cold response to
these issues. It be good for all involved if tech companies and people (who
are definitely capable of this) to reach out and allay these concerns.

------
JackFr
I'm sympathetic to these arguments, largely until the people making them open
their mouths.

------
michaelochurch
Yes, but the anger at the Google buses and the people who ride them is
misplaced. These people really _don 't_ want to be paying $3000 per month for
housing, and they have no power. In fact, many would be happy to live in low-
COL regions (instead of cramming into SF) if it weren't for the career-
limiting effects (at least at Google, you _have_ to work in MTV if you want a
decent shot at getting a real project; there are good projects elsewhere, but
far fewer of them.)

Google's rank and file are not the bad guys. Irritating them does no good to
anyone. When poor proletariat fight somewhat richer proletariat over their
rides in "luxury buses", the real bad guys win. Divide and conquer.

The real bad guys aren't "techno riche". They invest in and manage software
companies, but they don't know (or care) about technology. They couldn't write
a line of code to save their lives. Those software execs making $250k++ per
year while working 11-to-3 are MBA-culture colonists (Damaso Effect) who came
in because we, as technologists, failed to prevent them from conquering us and
drawing off almost all of the wealth we produce. We're very good at busting
our balls (and ovaries) to solve hard technical problems, but we're terrible
at protecting our own interests, especially as a group.

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
Any company with $250k++ execs working 11:00-3:00 is not going to be around
very long. Among the execs in those ranks I've known, if you're a corporate
exec making $500k+, the company owns you. When the CEO calls at 2:00 AM Sunday
and says, "We've got a problem is Shenzhen", you're on a plane a 6:00 AM, too
bad if your daughter's senior recital is 2:00 PM that day.

~~~
michaelochurch
_Any company with $250k++ execs working 11:00-3:00 is not going to be around
very long._

Actually, there's something worse for a typical company than a typical exec
making $250k++ while working 11-3: that same exec working a full day.

 _if you 're a corporate exec making $500k+, the company owns you. When the
CEO calls at 2:00 AM Sunday and says, "We've got a problem is Shenzhen",
you're on a plane a 6:00 AM, too bad if your daughter's senior recital is 2:00
PM that day._

That's what they want you to think, so you don't hate them or covet their
jobs. Ever hear of the complain-brag? It's not true. The politicking involved
in getting those jobs is quite competitive, but once you're in the club, it's
a pretty easy life if you want it to be. [ETA: being a CEO of a small or mid-
sized company, on the other hand, is usually quite demanding.]

~~~
yuhong
Note the words _typical_ company though, it depends a lot on the culture I
think. Reminds me of this BTW:
[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2011013](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2011013)

