

Photos of San Francisco Before the Silicon Valley Bros Invaded - pessimizer
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/12/photos-san-francisco-janet-delaney-south-market

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k-mcgrady
I think it's easy to come down on either side of the argument around this (I
have no stake in it as I don't live in the US). Things progress and move
forward and if rents are high and you can't afford them you need to move. A
small number of apartments with lots of people wanting them drives the price
high.

On the other hand it does suck for people who have lived there their entire
lives and now can't afford it anymore. It also seems quite unfair.

One thing I find strange is why tech companies set up in an area which is
limited in growth opportunities because of it's location. It's not like SF can
grow out in all directions. It seems like this is only going to get worse. It
means that if you setup a company in SF you'll have to pay your employees more
so they can afford to live there. You'll also have to raise their salaries
more every year to combat growing rent prices. It seems in the interest of
companies to start moving out of SF. Once they do engineers will hopefully
follow. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem though. If you setup outside
SF now talent will be difficult to get and until some companies start setting
up outside SF talent will stay in SF.

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bmelton
> It means that if you setup a company in SF you'll have to pay your employees
> more so they can afford to live there.

According to the detractors, that's exactly the problem. The engineers at
Google can afford to live, roughly, wherever they want, while the waiters,
waitresses, security guards, janitors, etc., that have lived in San Francisco
all their life are being "driven out" by those Google employees, which are the
ones driving up rent prices for the rest.

Note, Google is a placeholder for 'tech company' in this scenario. Clearly,
Google isn't the only high-paying company in the area.

~~~
k-mcgrady
True, it's also interesting to note that for the city to function "the
waiters, waitresses, security guards, janitors, etc" are required. The tech
employees aren't. We could end up in a situation where 'aspiring
entrepreneurs' work those jobs while they try to get their startup off the
ground (a bit like people trying to get into acting in Hollywood).

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bmelton
Agreed. Another irony is that what has happened to SF is basically what every
city would like to happen. Just like every startup, they've met their goal --
they're hip, and have traction, and now, basically, they're having problems
scaling their success.

If you squint hard enough, you could draw parallels to Twitter's early success
-- lots of users, and not enough infrastructure to support it. San Francisco
is now looking at a number of fail whales, but, at the same time, housing
regulations prevent them from scaling. They've made that as a deliberate
choice, and a pretty baffling one.

As I stated elsewhere (so won't bother repeating at length), I believe the
market would ultimately correct for this except for the artificially
constrained supply being imposed by the building regulations. As an east-coast
dweller that only works in SF, it's interesting to watch from afar. I mean,
the idea of a class war ensuing as a result is obviously not a great one --
I'd hate to have to navigate SF like I would some war-torn country when I'm
there for work, but one assumes the issue will resolve itself, some way or
another, well before it ever gets to that.

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walshemj
Most of the nerds that work at Google where probably bullied at high school by
the jocks so now your doing this now and labeling them "bro" with the label of
the group that bullied them.

I though MJ was supposed to be a proper Union Mag and not a front for the
hobbyists IWW (which is how one DGS I know described the IWW)

~~~
clin_
This is the single worst comment I've read on HN.

~~~
walshemj
What the one about trust fund hippies labeling nerds with the name of the
group that bullied them at school .

Or the snarky remark about the IWW comrade :-)

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RyanZAG
Got to admit, SF looks a whole lot better now than it did then. There's a
reason rent is high now and low then: SF is now an incredible place that
everyone wants to be.

Back then, clearly not so much. Looks like that convention center was an
incredibly good idea.

