
The Weird Redemption of SF’s Most Reviled Tech Bro - rmason
https://backchannel.com/the-weird-redemption-of-sf-s-most-reviled-tech-bro-ce8dd1bfb705#.orgs4v304
======
tyre
The most thought-provoking sentence comes near the end:

> Even if Gopman was in it for Gopman, self interest — no matter how imbued
> with hubris — isn’t mutually exclusive with doing good.

Absolutely true. The consequences of action are what matters.

That said, Gopman never stops sounding like a shithead.

There is a reason people care about motives. Once he achieves "redemption",
how much will his future actions and motives align with doing good. In fact,
the only reason he appears to continue to work on homelessness is to win back
his reputation.

So is it great that he is working with the homeless? Yes.

Would I trust a "redeemed" Greg Gopman. Nope.

That isn't to say that he cannot change, but this article shows that he is not
there yet. Until the reason for the work shifts, there is no reason to believe
that any company or cause he joins is for the cause and not selfish motives.

Sometimes good things come of selfishness, but in the long term it is good to
know where someone's priorities lie.

~~~
thebiglebrewski
Can I ask you something - do you work in a homeless shelter or spend all of
your time being selfless for other people? Or do you spend more than 50% of
your time on personal gain like most of us?

Because otherwise, I really don't think you have a right to say that you
question Gopman's future intentions. When someone says something bad against
someone else and then works tirelessly for a year or two to actually do
something to fix it like Gopman has, I think they deserve at least their shot
at redemption. You seem to basically agree with that I think?

This makes me think though. Humanity is really good at holding grudges. But
did the government of SF move ahead by just outright rejecting Gopman's later
proposals instead of considering them completely, seeing if they would maybe
potentially work, _then_ rejecting them? Instead this is a binary, either
someone and their ideas are 100% bad or 100% good according to their viewpoint
based on track record. A few of them heard him out but then gossip and human
nature got the best of us once again. And so he says fuck it and goes to South
East Asia because even when you recognize you've done something wrong and try
a few different ways to make it better, apparently nobody wants to hear it.
Good works are good works if you ask me, regardless of intention.

If our race vilifies someone or claims that they are absolutely bad for the
rest of their life/have bad intentions for something they said when they seem
to be trying in earnest to make up for it as best they can in the now, that
just sucks. Then nobody has a shot at redemption and more importantly, the
good works that could be done based on that shot are lost.

I wanted to close by saying that I am also skeptical of Gopman and I think the
initial words he said were pretty gross and definitely messed up. But I also
think it's upsetting that we can't recognize the things he's done are a net
positive, even if we can never 100% forgive him. And I also think holding
grudges just isn't very positive, it just doesn't help much overall except
make us like we're somehow 100x morally better than the other person.

Honestly you and I probably see eye to eye on most of this but I just thought
your comment half matched my thoughts and half didn't! Peace

~~~
tyre
I work about 90 hours a week building software for local governments
([http://seneca.systems](http://seneca.systems)). If I only cared about
personal gain, I would have either a) stayed at Gusto (where the stock I left
on the table is now worth ~$2m) or b) started an ad-network. You won't here
about us in TechCrunch because what we do is not sexy or about our personal
brands. I have never had so much fun as I do now, empowering public
servants.[1]

I agree he deserves a shot at redemption, but my point is that he doesn't seem
to have gotten there yet.

I'm not saying he is a bad person forever because of his original comments.
Those do not really bother me—he fucked up, said some stupid things, and got
vilified on the internet. But the why and how he goes about his future work
absolutely matters to me because it indicates where he is going in the future.

Let's say you're interviewing two candidates for a marketing position, both of
whom have identical backgrounds, skills, etc. (impossible, but this is a
hypothetical.) One says they want to do marketing for you because they love
your customers, believe in your mission, and care about the impact they can
have by spreading the word. The other one says they want to do marketing for
you because they think you are attacking a huge market opportunity and can
make a lot of money.

Which do you hire? Would you say it doesn't matter because outcomes are the
only important thing? I wouldn't, because part of trusting someone to act
independently is understanding their motivations. If either of these
candidates fuck up, they will do so in very different ways. Candidate 1 will
err too much on the side of the customer and the mission, while Candidate 2
will err on the side of making money.

I would take Candidate 1 11/10 times.

[1]: Which, by the way, is probably irrelevant. You brought up good points
regardless of who you are or what you do. Challenging the pedigree or
credentials of the commentors only serves to distract. Unless I was making the
point that I was better than him (which is not what I was trying to imply, so
forgive me if it came off that way), then who I am is not relevant.

------
caseysoftware
> They met on the roof of Soma Grand while Parker explained the web of
> nonprofits and city departments that spends $241 million a year on the
> city’s more than 6,000 homeless residents, a population count that has
> stayed nearly unchanged for 25 years.

That line stuns me. How can you spend $40k+ per homeless person _each year_
and have the absolute number unchanged? How much is actually going to help the
people versus going into line items that don't?

Are they helping people move up and out of homelessness and more people keep
coming?

Or are the efforts relatively fruitless and they just keep throwing money at
it?

~~~
GeneralMayhem
I can think of three reasons other than outright waste and poor organization:

* It's not the same 6000 every year. The number of people who are homeless in SF for any part of any given year could easily be several times that.

* There are a few individuals who cost way, way more than that. The ones that SFFD refers to as their "regulars". The drug addicts and mentally ill who go on ambulance rides every week or more. I'm not saying they're the majority, but they certainly exist, and like any industry it only takes a few whales to add up.

* Land to put shelters on is really, really expensive.

~~~
wtbob
> The drug addicts and mentally ill who go on ambulance rides every week or
> more.

These people are abusing their freedom and abusing free services. At what
point do we either restrict their freedom or retract their free services? 'You
get to do whatever you like, with no consequences' isn't a long-term plan for
social success.

~~~
contrast
Bottom line is, you don't. A modern society can bear the small burden this
tiny slice of humanity represents; it's just immoral ones that decide they
don't want to.

If you're determined that there must be consequences for individuals abusing
their - then prioritize the weak after you've dealt with the corruption of
rich, powerful individuals, whose cost to society is far greater.

Of course, the weakest are utterly powerless to prevent YOU from trying to
ensure they suffer whatever meets your desire for "consequences", while
there's little YOU can do about the truly powerful. This is why so many prefer
to turn a blind eye to abuse of power, and focus instead on letting the
powerless suffer. It doesn't make anybody's life better in the slightest. But
some people seem to take comfort in it.

~~~
emp_zealoth
Im not the author of above post. Whether I agree with that post is irrelevant.
Ive been reding HN since at least 2010. This is what ive got to say: Wow, the
fucking downvotes are out of hand lately Ive seen so many inoffensive posts
grayed out lately Don't downvote just because you disagree

Please, make downvoting cost at least 10 karma (The downvoter pays, obviously)

Please

------
1024core
To paraphrase a quote I read a long time ago: you can't make a man understand
something, if his paycheck depends on him _not_ understanding it.

The City spends $240M/year on homelessness (and that doesn't include the money
hospitals spend on ER visits by the homeless). There's a whole bureaucracy
built around "solving" the homelessness problem; and this bureaucracy would be
out of a job if the number of homeless people shrank dramatically. And that is
why this problem may never be solved.

The "solutions" proposed involve so much money that it makes you question the
sanity of the proposer. Example: building 6,000 housing units for the
homeless. Really?!? How have the dense urban housing projects turned out in
other cities? And where will the billions of dollars come from? And who will
maintain these units? etc. etc. Of course, these proposals are outrageous
simply because the more outrageous the proposal, the more money your non-
profit gets, it seems.

~~~
Animats
SF does have a moderate number of city-funded "supportive housing" units.[1]
These are typically old SRO hotels now run by nonprofits, paid by the city.
This sort of works. In addition to the visible homeless, there are even more
"near homeless" in such facilities. It costs the city $20K - $40K per person
per year in such facilities. This is called "Care Not Cash" in SF. Most of
those facilities are pretty bad to live in, mostly because of the other
tenants. Some people prefer living in a tent over living with crazies and
druggies. "Hell is other people" applies.

Until forty years ago, states ran big mental hospitals which warehoused the
bewildered. The "Agnews Developmental Center", once called "The Great Asylum
for the Insane", in Santa Clara was such a place. It's now an Oracle facility.
In 1975, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in O'Connor v. Donaldson, that the
Government does not have the power to confine people who are not dangerous,
even if they are not sane. This began the shutdown of the big mental
institutions. This is why homeless people can no longer be forcibly shipped to
some big institution in the country and hidden away.

This change, plus the decline of low-skill jobs and the rise in the cost of
housing, created homelessness as a problem. Cuts in welfare didn't help.

Estimates are that about half of SF's homeless are on drugs. Others are just
broke. Some have skills, but the wrong ones. Printers, longshoremen - SF once
had many of those. Not any more. There's no easy answer.

[1] [http://dishsf.org/](http://dishsf.org/) [http://www.ecs-
sf.org/programs/housing.html](http://www.ecs-sf.org/programs/housing.html) [2]
[http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/152/notsosupportive.html](http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/152/notsosupportive.html)

~~~
nowthatsamatt
> Estimates are that about half of SF's homeless are on drugs. Others are just
> broke. Some have skills, but the wrong ones. Printers, longshoremen - SF
> once had many of those. Not any more. There's no easy answer.

Hahahahahahah

"There’s no easy answer!" I guess arresting people breaking federal drug laws
is right out the window.

NOTHING WE CAN DO, GUYS. TEE HEE.

------
throwaway_exer
"I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, and despair of homeless people to
and from my way to work every day."

That sentence is 100% correct - we shouldn't have to see that around us.

The tragic thing about the blog post that was so reviled, is that it should
have been a call to action for the community.

The thousands of homeless people in major urban centers and the lack of
progress in doing anything about it is an indictment of our society.

And what has been the response of local government in the Bay Area?

Nearly every city on the peninsula has passed laws against sleeping in your
car, making the homeless even more miserable.

The reality is that we haven't even started to address the problem, and most
people are just fine with that - as long as the homeless are not in their
neighborhood.

------
mc32
When you want to cast someone in technology as an antagonist up front with
prejudice you use the epithet "tech bro" (or, tech sis, some day). The article
made some good points but the exhausting insistence on using the overwrought
tech bro takes away from some insight.

Two people, a homeless person and a person of means. Both people, both can be
equally mean but we insist the person of means is more "civilized" and thus we
implicitly demand more from them while simultaneously demanding less from
those who have achieved less. Take those two people and imagine both going off
on incoherent booze induced bigoted rants, who do we "expect to know better".
They are both people under "the influence" yet we presume one should be able
to be "more human" than the other, to be less grotesque.

~~~
1stop
It's not that we expect more, it's that we have more empathy for those
without. With good reason, hardship is easier for those with means to fix it.

------
wallflower
> If Gopman has any hope of winning you over, it’s IRL. Watching him work a
> room is witnessing a guy who’s put in his 10,000 hours of mastery; every
> person — man or woman, nerd or preppie — usually comes away beaming. “You
> could drop him off in a desert and he’ll find friends somehow,” his friend
> tells me. He approached Mark Cuban cold in a cafe — and finagled a coffee
> date later that week. When he spotted Mayor Lee out on a mid-Market
> walkabout months after The Rant, Gopman talked his way into an impromptu
> meet-and-greet with the mayor.

To me, this was the most interesting part of the article. That Gopman has
charisma. I'm curious why they talk about the "10,000 hours of mastery". When
I see my very few friends who can work the room do this (e.g. go up to
complete strangers and make friends, go away, make more friends elsewhere,
come back and continue), it's quite like magic to me.

Who do you know is like this? Have they always been that way?

When the pitch forks were burning in Valleywag, there was no indication about
this part of Gopman. So much of gossip is just echo chamber stuff, even in
niche areas like technology.

~~~
mc32
The 10000 hrs is something put out by Gladwell. Lots of people take it as
gospel.

------
lsiebert
It's hard for some people to have empathy for those who are less advantaged
then them. People don't see all the things that went right for them, and so
they imagine that everyone is equally fortunate, and thus anyone who isn't
doing as well is the victim of their own mistakes. The truth is we are a
product of our opportunities and circumstances in ways that are scary to
contemplate.

I don't know that this guy will ever be redeemed in the public's eye, but at
least he looks at homeless people as individuals and people worth talking to,
instead of as human garbage to be hidden away, unworthy of kindness and
decency, as some do. And he helped get some wifi into homeless shelters. It
makes me think about what I can do.

------
kneel
[http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/nevius/article/Sidewalk-t...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/nevius/article/Sidewalk-
tent-dwellers-aren-t-flocking-to-6788812.php)

>“I could have a job, be living in an apartment and all that crap,” he said
cheerfully, “but I’m not ready. Right now I just like getting high.”

>Fikes, who says he moved here last month because he heard San Francisco had
excellent homeless services, said a church group comes by from time to time
with free tents

There is no solution here. City leaders are pressing for solutions while many
homeless are just waiting for another handout.

~~~
cooper12
Great job reducing a whole population to two people in order to perpetuate
your biases. I bet people love living on the streets and begging for handouts.
I don't understand why they can't get jobs like normal people?

~~~
kneel
My point was that there is currently no viable solutions to homelessness in
SF. The city and the homeless are trapped in a cycle of enabling and being
enabled, it's been this way for decades.

I say this in a general sense. The majority of homeless are on the streets due
to mental illness and/or addiction.

~~~
cooper12
Okay that's a much more reasonable thread of thought and I actually do agree
that there isn't a viable solution present, especially because current
solutions aren't effective at solving the issue. You choice of quotes just
made it sound like you were putting all the blame on homeless people who want
"handouts" and portraying it as some sort of glamorous lifestyle where they
are tended to.

------
chris_wot
Whilst every fibre of my being is revolted by the comments this guy made, the
fact that Valleywag made it so controversial is just as bad.

The Valleywags of this world are ridiculous and a blight on any society.

------
cooper12
Honestly, I don't see any redemption here. Rather than looking inward and
questioning his beliefs and place in everything, it just seems like he was
desperate to do anything to salvage his image—which was all his doing in the
first place. (He even says " _apparently_ , this wrong I’ve done to the
city.") So not only does this show him to be a hypocrite, it also shows a
complete lack of introspection or change. His advice to Keller is "Don’t
apologize" and "instead, put your words in context". While I can respect his
attempts—it does show that he put effort in—I disagree that "self-interest ...
isn’t mutually exclusive with doing good". This is a guy who wanted to make a
profit off of homeless people. His solutions include making them work for
Uber, which requires a drivers license and a car (I doubt they'll be able to
finance), or as a last resort, rent out their domes on airbnb, putting them in
potential legal trouble even if they had any takers. Maybe I'm one of those
haters, but I think he should keep his "disruption" and NIH-syndrome in tech
startups.

~~~
ant6n
The rationale for having a for-profit organization that helps people is that
it is not economically sustainable, it wouldn't depend on continuous outside
finding.

Re cars, consider that the homeless person mentioned in the article had his
rent increases to 4200$ - it seems in San Francisco lower middle class can
become homeless. And even lower class people have cars. In San Francisco, you
don't have to be on poverty to become homeless, although it will probably make
you poor once you are.

~~~
ryandamm
I think it's funny we're saying someone who can't afford $50k/year in rent is
'lower middle class.' If you keep your housing costs below 25% of gross income
(a common recommendation), then anyone earning less than $200k annually is
lower middle class.

To be fair, the article says Darcel Jackson had also lost his job due to a
medical condition; so it's not just the rent increase... but a professional
welder (his profession before a stroke) should pay high five figures to low
six figures.

So yeah... a city where welders, teachers [1], and other professionals and
tradeworkers can't afford to live is doing something wrong.

[1]from Redfin research: [https://www.redfin.com/blog/2014/02/california-home-
affordab...](https://www.redfin.com/blog/2014/02/california-home-
affordability-for-teachers.html)

------
Rotten194
This guy is still a jerk. The whole article is written as a gross sympathy
piece for him. He worked for _a year_ on homelessness and didn't solve it?
Very smart, passionate (I.e., don't care about homelessness only because they
got caught saying something horrible) have spent decades on it. This guy
seriously thought he could solve the whole issue and make everything go away
in a year? Really?

Also, I _love_ how the author non-chalantly mentions that homeless people with
mental illnesses would be banned from his planned camps. That's absolutely
ridiculous, horrible, and blatantly illegal.

~~~
ant6n
Most people will never in their life spend a year on fixing homelessness.

~~~
Rotten194
Most people, therefore, have a basically neutral effect on homelessness. I'd
argue this guy had a completely negative effect.

------
seibelj
I like to push the boundaries of what is acceptable to say in public, both
online with accounts tied to my real identity and with friends, coworkers,
etc. This is a dangerous game and I'm sure someday it will get me in more
serious trouble than the occasional hurt feeling. If someone is motivated
enough, they can take offense with every little thing you say. I'm not
commenting on any aspect of what Greg said or did. But kudos to anyone
anywhere who says something that isn't 100% politically correct.

~~~
ipsin
_If someone is motivated enough, they can take offense with every little thing
you say._

You seem to understand that you're actually hurting people's feelings, but the
problem is supposedly other people who are "motivated" to take offense? Please
examine your own motivations (beyond "I like to do this").

~~~
chris_wot
Also, the phrase "push the boundaries" means he knows that what he is saying
is potentially offensive.

------
nowthatsamatt
Guys if you haven’t read a study about homelessness you are constitutionally
obligated to be delighted by their presence and you can’t be annoyed that you
live in the highest taxed area of the United States and no one has fucking
fixed the God damned problem or is even trying.

In fact we should all team up and go around the city bronzing all the turds
they leave on the fucking sidewalk.

~~~
ryandamm
I think it's okay to be disgusted by the outcomes of homelessness -- that's a
natural reaction, and I imagine it takes a lot of empathy for those who work
with the homeless to be able to see past it, to the people they're trying to
help.

But I don't think it's okay to make halfway thought through, vaguely
libertarian, unhelpful statements that fail to engage with the actual problem,
then act like you've delivered some brilliant nugget of wisdom.

Look, this is a hard problem (something the article sort of glosses over).
Smart, caring, _good_ people work hard on this, and have for a long time. It's
maybe not amenable to easy answers. And you know what? It's part of San
Francisco. So you can either engage with the reality, acknowledge it's complex
and difficult, or you can maybe defer to those who have done the reading.

Option three, I think, is moving to a lower-taxed area with fewer homeless
people. Based on your comment, I vote for option 3.

------
samirillian
Ewww. This guy. This author could put a positive spin on Donald Trump.

~~~
pcardh0
But could he do it for Hillary? That would be a real challenge.

