
Yelp CEO responds to employee's open letter about low wages - randycupertino
http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/20/technology/yelp-eat24-ceo-employee-san-francisco/
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greenyoda
_" He [Yelp CEO] continued by noting that he's 'been focused' on the high cost
of living in San Francisco and has backed a group trying to bring awareness to
the issue.

He also noted that he's often spoken out about the importance of making
housing more affordable."_

The CEO of Yelp has no control over the cost of housing in SF, but he _does_
have control over what Yelp pays its employees. If he was really concerned
about housing prices being too high for his employees to afford, he could give
them all raises tomorrow.

Original discussion of this story:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11138086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11138086)

~~~
Dolores12
moving to less expensive neighborhood is not an option anymore?

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zackelan
From the original Medium post:

 _" I have to save as much of that as possible to pay my rent ($1245) for my
apartment that’s 30 miles away from work because it was the cheapest place I
could find that had access to the train, which costs me $5.65 one way to get
to work."_

~~~
argonaut
Yes, that's Dolores' point. Living in the easy bay, I pay 2/3 her rent, and
<$4 for the BART one way. And I don't have a roommate. If I had a roommate,
I'd pay 1/3 her rent.

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joshuaellinger
"I was not directly involved with firing her" => "I have someone else to do my
dirty work".

I don't know why this one person's story bothers me so much personally. I
think that it was her 50 lb bag of rice comment reminded me so much of old
Charlie Chaplin bits.

I actually went and found my old Paypal account, gave her $50 bucks, and
deleted my Yelp app.

~~~
randycupertino
"We didn't fire her because of the letter" ... yet the same night she wrote
the letter she is suddenly fired?? C'mon...

~~~
corkill
That was my initial reaction though looks like a bit more info coming out that
there may be other reasons and the letter may have been written in response to
a pending firing. This made the front page of reddit which seems to have
turned up some deleted posts.

[https://archive.is/AR4XX/image](https://archive.is/AR4XX/image) < bourbon
delivered to work [http://imgur.com/5WJFUAF](http://imgur.com/5WJFUAF) <
"watch me get fired for this"

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ziszis
This tweet by Jeremy (Yelp CEO) speaks to the broader issue: "5/5 entry level
jobs migrate to where costs of living are lower. Have already announced we are
growing EAT24 support in AZ for this reason."

[https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremys/status/701094909072150528](https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremys/status/701094909072150528)

~~~
randycupertino
Not my company, but our very similar competitor in SF is moving their call
center operations to Reno. I saw they were hiring for my specific job in Reno,
at a 20% salary cut. I was tempted, very tempted... I'm sure the COL is so
much cheaper there I would come out ahead, and those ski seasons...

Anyway, I thought it was a smart move of them to move their call center
operations to Reno, we pay our reps $20 an hour, I bet they can get away with
paying their reps $10 or $13 up there, not to mention how much they'll be
saving on rent. Also the exec team etc can easily drive or fly up to Reno if
needed.

Wonder if they'll have any problems staffing up there?

~~~
DrScump
Did you factor in NV's lack of income tax, too?

~~~
randycupertino
Nope, but very good point! Hmm... maybe I'll chew on it a bit more and see if
they're still hiring.

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ksec
Housing Market again. While Tech has ALL the disruption like Uber, where is
the one for property market?

3D Printing that print GREAT quality houses in cheap and fast way?

I really would invest, or donate if there is one.

~~~
mkhpalm
It wouldn't matter since land is a commodity vs something like uber which is a
service. No matter how cheap you make the structures, the land prices will
skyrocket to anything a bank will give a loan for under demand.

The only solution is what some execs are already doing. Taking fiscally
impossible problems out of the equation and moving operations elsewhere.

~~~
ksec
So may be instead Hyperloop is the solution, quickly transport people from one
place to another in a cheap way. People can live out of the city and 10 min
within the Hyperloop traveling time. ( Not sure how far away that is but just
a sample time )

~~~
mkhpalm
True, but doesn't it seem simpler to just move operations to places your
workers can afford?

