
Salesforce CEO Benioff on How to Fix San Francisco - _pius
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/01/30/salesforce-ceo-benioff-on-how-to-fix-san-francisco/
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refurb
_I think these buses — which if you hang out in the Mission, [they come] every
five minutes — they’ve got to be massively regulated, we have to get them off
our streets._

Really? He thinks that's the solution? And what? Have all those employees
drive?

I can understand why people target the shuttle buses, they are a highly
visible indicator of the kind of wealth moving into the the area, but I think
there are better solutions than just getting rid of them.

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rayiner
Many people see the busses as a distraction issue, but they're a lot more
important than they seem at face value. They're basically a microcosm of how
the social fabric of a city is structured. New York City can be justly
criticized for its wealth inequality, but you have to give it one thing: it's
a place where a managing director at JPM and a guy who works at the Starbucks
in the building ride the same midtown subway or bus to work in the morning.
And that's a start. Public infrastructure works best when everyone has a stake
in it. It's bad to have the rich ride around in their own private shuttles,
but it's also bad for the rich to bankroll public busses they never use.
Neither is a path to building a sustainable, functioning city.

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dthal
I'm pretty sure most managing directors at downtown banks aren't taking the
subway or the bus too often. They get driven around, just not in shuttle
buses.

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infinotize
This is like how Bloomberg would take the subway* once in a while.

*Get driven in his convoy from his house to the subway station.

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rayiner
Bloomberg would take the subway 10 stops about three days a week. He got
driven to 59 street, skipping 2 stops, which is the nearest station that has
express service on the 4. That's pretty legit.

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pyrrhotech
I don't understand this "tech elite" nonsense. I make nearly 200k a year, and
can't afford a house in San Francisco nor the Peninsula. I actually live in
Hayward. Even though I suppose I could spend half my take-home on rent in
those places, I'd rather not be doing this shit till the day I die... I do not
feel elite by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, Benioff with his billions
is elite... but us workers, we are middle class. I would argue not even upper
middle class for this area.

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nilkn
If you feel that way with $200k/year, how would you feel with $50k? You _are_
somewhat wealthy in comparison. A rule of thumb I've heard is that most people
can't understand or identify with the financial concerns of anybody with an
income in excess of three times their own. You're definitely in that "3x
higher" class compared to a ton of people in the Bay Area.

~~~
pyrrhotech
$50k is lower middle class in this area. I didn't say that wouldn't suck. I
said that I am by no means elite. Nor upper middle class. Upper middle class
people can at least afford to pick a reasonable 3/2 house in an area with good
schools. I can't do that. Elite people can have mansions and multiple homes
and they don't need to work. They aren't the techies riding the WiFi shuttles
to work. No engineer is elite.

~~~
nilkn
I don't agree with most of those statements. You're not in a small rural or
even medium sized town. San Francisco is one of the most popular cities in the
US and the world. Even very wealthy people generally make sacrifices to live
there. What you lose in square feet you make up for in location. That's the
whole point of cities.

It doesn't make sense to treat San Francisco as if it were a town of 100k
people where everybody lives in houses, because it's not. The traditional
metrics (middle class = 3/2 house with a yard) do not apply to cities like
Manhattan and San Francisco.

I also don't think it's right to ignore your buying power relative to the rest
of the US. Maybe you only have a downpayment for a San Francisco condo, but
that might suffice for you to pay cash for a house in many somewhat affluent
suburban communities throughout the country. Social classes are nationwide
strata--you can't lose focus by literally looking at a single city and
deciding that you're middle class or lower just because you're not a
multimillionaire.

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fizx
My gym runs shuttle busses, Levi's runs shuttle busses, UCSF runs shuttle
busses, and on and on...

You want real disruption? Start with homemade wifi jammers.

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jaggederest
This sort of thing always makes me think of the classical class warfare
context of charity from business.

People _know_ that the business they're conducting is damaging society at
large, so they build charity in so that they can feel like they're absolved.

1% is pretty trivial, particularly since it's of profit, not revenue. Sure,
it's a lot of money, but by comparison with the possible impact of a larger
commitment of time and resources it looks cheap. Makes you sad to think most
companies don't even do that much.

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theorique
_People know that the business they 're conducting is damaging society at
large, so they build charity in so that they can feel like they're absolved._

Google (or Apple, or Oracle) is damaging society? Must have missed that memo.

Because from where a lot of people stand, the ability to access the world's
knowledge and information, communicate with loved ones, and many other tasks,
from a handheld device that costs a day's pay for the average worker ...
that's not really "damaging society at large" so much as it is giving people
an amazing gift.

~~~
username223
You could use this amazing gift to read up on "externalities," then engage
your mind-blowing intelligence to think about how that is relevant to this
discussion.

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robd003
What an asshole. I'd take Tom Perkins over Benioff any day of the week.

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jpwright
I hope this is sarcasm.

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AnimalMuppet
To both of you: Why? Can you give us more than a dogmatically-stated position?
Can you give us a reason for it?

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jpwright
I don't believe I stated a position, and I didn't want to elaborate more
without knowing the context of the previous comment. I would be pretty
appalled if s/he seriously thinks Benioff is an asshole (over the one bus
comment perhaps?) despite this being 95% about some totally reasonable views
on philanthropy (especially relative to the stuff Perkins said)

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bherms
How is 1% of an employees time 4 hours/month? A month is typically 4
weeks(ish) at 40 hrs per week = 160 hours * .01 = 1.6 hrs?

Am I missing something?

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b0b0b0b
Salesforce runs buses too.

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mattschmulen
does benioff live in SF? I always figured him for mor of a woodside kind of
guy ?

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mattschmulen
does benioff live in SF? I always figured him for mor of a woodside kind of
guy

