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Comment by bm1362 | Hacker News Reader

As an employee, it was pretty apparent people didn't want you there. The Stranger would post inflammatory articles about tech bros and unflattering caricatures.

My girlfriend and I moved up from Texas completely unaware of the stigma. She worked in bars and restaurants, where the staff would disparage customers suspected of being tech yuppies. I even remember being a guest at a BBQ once, I told someone I worked at Amazon (timidly) and the response was "Oh, you're one of those assholes."

Coming from small town Texas and being lower income, it was a weird time for me. I was newly middle class and when I would go back home I felt weird about my income, but then being in Seattle I felt unwelcome.

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> and the response was "Oh, you're one of those assholes."

Frankly, and I mean this with all sincerity, fuck those people. They're what happens when empathy dies and envy takes its place. Ask any one of them if they'd have liked to immediately be vaulted into a six-figure salary with a stable company and a benefits package that would make a Congressperson blush and I bet you six shares of AMZN (that I've never own, full disclosure) that they'd take that deal in a hot minute.

The bulk of the animosity about the "asshole tech-bros" seems like simple envy to me. To wit, lots of people are moaning about all of the wealthy people moving into the Central District and decrying that others are being "pushed out." Something like 72% of the CD was, four years ago, owner-occupied, so the people who are leaving (and, presumably, making bank on those properties they've owned for two decades) are doing so of their own free will and profiting from the sale.

Yes, housing costs are a beating here but the bleating coming out of Wallingford and Magnolia and Roosevelt can just shut the hell up because the bulk of those voters ARE THE REASON that new housing doesn't get built at the rate it needs to be built.

/end rant

//sorry about that

One consolation, as a tech worker in Seattle, aren't you (okay I confess, "we") in the vast majority?

>> They're what happens when empathy dies and envy takes its place.

Well, forgive me for pointing this out, but what you wrote contains a fairly shocking lack of empathy.

Feeling bad or angry about being driven out of a neighborhood by an enormous wave of outsiders isn't about envy. The change hasn't even been incremental; the bulk of the changes have taken place in the last five years!

In the central district, entire communities that existed for decades are being destroyed. They are bulldozing people's communities to make room for people with more money.

How can you expect people to not feel angry?

> How can you expect people to not feel angry?

Being angry at the macro effects is one thing. Calling someone an asshole to his face simply because he did what everyone else on the planet wants to do (earn an income) is entirely another.

> In the central district, entire communities that existed for decades are being destroyed. They are bulldozing people's communities to make room for people with more money.

First, which community? Do you mean the Jewish community that existed there before the folks from middle-Africa moved in? Or do you mean the Catholics before that? Or the Native American tribes before that? Yes, the people who were redlined into the CD had little choice but to move there. That they're cashing out is a good result, in my opinion.

Second, if someone sells his or her property and leaves, that's not destruction, that's exactly what everyone who owns property wants to have happen. You can't decry the loss of community on one hand while taking the check from the closing table to the bank with the other.

(For what it's worth, I've no property interest in the CD. I live in Greenwood.)

Your problem is ignoring the renters getting creamed.

I'm continually baffled as to why gentrification is the new renters' fault but not the landlords'.

No, I'll second the OP. Fuck anyone who chooses to hate you just because you work for Amazon. Go ahead and be angry, absolutely, but anyone who treats another person like that deserves to have their drink poured out on the floor.

Correct. It's wrong to be angry towards their fellow residents who just want a place to live and work, like them. They should be angry at themselves and the representatives they elected for the governance that has gotten the city into its current mess.

For the sake of argument, let's say that Amazon "destroys communities" (I'm more inclined to believe the posts that blame Seattle itself, also "rent increase" sounds to me like a natural phenomenon that one company or the next will drive). I'd still rate being an Amazon worker above being a marketer or most kinds of paid writer.

Amazon has a reputation of being a bad company, plenty warranted. Having worked there, every thing the NYTimes reported on, rang true. As for most Aamzonians, they would stare at their phone while walking the street and walk into me. A combination of ego and awkwardness, one of the worst combinations of attributes to populate an entire city with. Just my 2c.

Funny, the bulk of the changes in property values nationwide have also been in the past 5 years. Seems like a great way to cherry-pick data.

Before everyone was whining about the recent increase in property values, they were bitching about the increase from 02-7, and then before that....

The local "Almost Live" show in the 90's would regularly lampoon Microsoft employees. (Their other regular target was, of course, Boeing employees.)

Relevant video links:

"OK guys let me see your Boeing employee IDs!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i21XcyMG4cU

"You know the rules in Redmond. You're not allowed to play any kind of sports within FIVE MILES of the Microsoft campus except for hackey-sack." - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pxGDSucCEI

"Whadda ya mean you don't want to practice the accordion?!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGlDVmBLibg

"You're entitled to have a crystal present at any interrogation..." - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJZplI5L_Fs

Not the same theme, but...

"Did you have to dial a '1' before?" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9jlo4Ht2YA

Every one of those links was quality entertainment and a nostalgic insight into the Seattle area of yesteryear. Thank you for sharing!!

Yeah, but that's more about The Stranger than it is about you. Or Amazon. That all vastly predates Amazon.

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