
Calm Down, Hippies: What San Francisco needs to Learn from the Valley - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/24/calm-down-hippies-what-san-francisco-needs-to-learn-from-the-valley/
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geebee
"Similarly, I know self-made Internet millionaires who’ve bought old
properties in transitional neighborhoods in San Francisco, only to give up on
restoring them because they met so much neighborhood opposition to anyone
“wealthy” coming in and rehabbing a historic property."

San Francisco can be too preservation minded, this is true, and neighborhood
associations regularly go too far. For instance, I had to pay $150 for a
permit to replace my windows with energy efficient windows, and the city
turned down my initial plan because they wanted wood that was consistent with
the historical look and feel of the house (irritating because 1) city leaders
make a bit display of "going green" and then charge people for a permit to
improve energy efficiency, and 2) city leaders rarely enforce the permits,
since about half of my neighbors obviously didn't bother getting permits to do
the same.

Still, I'd like to hear a bit more about this "restoration" before I'm
completely ready to believe that the neighbors opposed as part of a knee jerk
opposition to "anyone “wealthy” coming in and rehabbing a historic property".
Preservationists would almost certainly welcome a true "restoration" of a
dilapidated house. Something tells me there the different parties in this
dispute have different interpretations of the word "restore", and the author's
friends may be just as excessively loose in their use of this word as the
neighbors are excessively restrictive...

I'm not saying it didn't happen, I'm just saying something seems a little off
here.

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twillerelator
It is axiomatic around here that large corporations cannot change, except by
acquiring start-ups.

Why? Because any organisation with more than N employees starts to behave
unconsciously, evolving according to profit and logic-of-the-situation. (I
don't know what N is. Somewhere between 8 and 200?)

That's what those people are (unconsciously, angrily) reacting too.

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neilc
_large corporations cannot change, except by acquiring start-ups_

I'd be curious to see examples of large corporations that _have_ changed by
acquiring startups.

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philwelch
Apple (NeXT), possibly Intuit (Mint).

~~~
neilc
Well, NeXT had ~540 employees according to Wikipedia, so I'm not sure it would
really qualify as a startup. Plus one of those employees was Jobs, who was
borderline recruited to come back and takeover Apple, so that is definitely an
exceptional case.

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cemregr
Whenever somebody uses 'hipster' as derogatory I think they feel they aren't
cool enough.

