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Comment by feelin_googley | Hacker News Reader

"The guy who was showing me around pointed out where they were building "apartments for our people to live".

"So they'll work on campus, they'll eat on campus, they'll socialise on campus and now they'll sleep on campus?" I asked. I wondered whether maybe that was kind of unhealthy. Creepy, even.

My guide looked right at me, and for a moment, his megawatt smile faltered. When he first worked there, it reminded him of the Dave Eggers book, The Circle, he said. Then he started talking about the opportunity to connect the world's people, and I stopped listening."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(2017_film)

Source:

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/jennifer-o-...

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While this may sound creepy for a foreigner, getting a decent apartment in the SF Bay Area is really expensive and the commutes are horrible. So in this context, that could be a good thing.

I think the opposite is more likely to be true. This sounds creepy because it is creepy and the only place it seems reasonable is in the increasingly disconnected culture of Silicon Valley.

Many undergraduate, graduate and postgrads live on campus in housing provided by the university, and get paid by the same university. Soldiers in the military live in barracks, even some who would otherwise have the option to live off base. Even expats working for private energy companies abroad sometimes live in corporate housing campuses.

Yes, and socializing students into broader society is a core topic for "campus life" divisions at universities, and transitioning back to civilian life is a significant challenge for many when discharged from the military. These are closed and walled off ecosystems of human engagement, each with their own challenges and failure modes for human psychology.

Universities are not top-down controlled institutions - profs have tenure (i.e. independence) and run their labs at a relatively micro scale, so whatever the criticism of tech mega-corps, it probably doesn't transfer because of those differences.

Soldiers in military often have a hard time adjusting to the freedom of civilian life, and it seems that structure is there out of institutional necessity (i.e. society could not exist without a military to protect it), not for the benefit of the individual soldier. Creating corporations that are both single-leader authoritarian and control more aspects of their employee's lives may not be how we want more of in our society. A lot of successful corporations seem relatively all-consuming for their employees (both small and big corps), so it seems like a subject without a solid path toward consensus.

> Many undergraduate, graduate and postgrads live on campus in housing provided by the university

Last I checked, universities weren’t busy papering the world in surveillance, pretending that’s a moral prerogative, refusing summons to the House of Commons, characterising whistleblowers with contempt, and then lying when they get caught acting unethically.

Universities have their own police forces, surveillance systems (they know every time you badge in or out somewhere, along with video footage and who knows what else) and when I was in college there was talk of installing metal detectors (thankfully the powers that be realized how idiotic this would have been). I'm not arguing that this makes surveillance OK, but from a perspective of housing, this feels overblown.

No, I'm pretty sure this is creepy to non-foreigners as well.

Why does it sound creepy? What percentage of the population, historically, have been "free" in a sense that they don't belong to an organization that exerts some sort of control over their social world? It seems there are many shades and dimensions here...

Actually I think in some ways the lower classes have more psychological freedom here.

I've worked a bunch of minimum wage retail jobs and all the grunts mock the daily "walmart chant." At high status jobs people apparently really buy the "my employer is who I am" thing.

"At the same time, the proles are freer and less intimidated than the middle-class Outer Party: they are subject to certain levels of monitoring but are not expected to be particularly patriotic. They lack telescreens in their own homes and often jeer at the telescreens that they see. "The Book" indicates that is because the middle class, not the lower class, traditionally starts revolutions. The model demands tight control of the middle class, with ambitious Outer-Party members neutralised via promotion to the Inner Party or "reintegration" by the Ministry of Love, and proles can be allowed intellectual freedom because they lack intellect."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four :)

I don’t know. It makes rents higher since companies pay more and it takes units off the market and they can deduct the expense unlike traditional renters.

Isn't this just a 21st century company town? What's old is new again.

A bit like university.

Except at least at university there's a built in time limit, and the focus of all university time is implicitly "planning for what you do when it's over". There's usually even staff whose roles include helping students transition and adjust out of it, into broader society. The company town, however, is an end unto itself.

Everything's sound in the company town. Next thing you know it'll be really convenient to introduce a system, similar to colleges where you have FBucks on your company ID. You need never venture outside, in fact you can fill your fbucks straight from your paycheck!

Eventually, you forget how much the conversation rate between fbucks and usd is, but dismiss any wierdness as a convenience fee, you're well paid right?

Next thing you know, you can't leave because there's no reasonable housing elsewhere in the city. And so on.

Edit: Even if it doesn't become even more dystopic for the worker, who now lives every moment inside the company and is alienated from their fellow humans, including increasingly the ability to think dissent thoughts (no where is safe even home) the company has succeeded in capturing back most of the money they paid to their workforce. It puts the lie to the notion that the presence of profits filters out to the rest of the city and increases inequality.

Well tbh Asian companies have done this to great success.

I guess that depends on your definition of success.

In my 20's I worked at a megacorp, lived in a corporate dorm and ate at the corporate cafeteria. It's a welcome option and you're perfectly allowed to opt out.

I opted out of the corporate dorm eventually, and so did a handful of others, especially the ones who were from the local area. But it definitely made life simpler for me to transition to a new job and living environment.

I disagree that onsite housing at company HQs is always bad depending on how it's used. Tons of companies are already directly renting housing for interns, newly relocated employees, and then also for shorter terms for people interviewing or on short term business trips.

I imagine doing such is in the long term cheaper than the amount currently spent on hotel services for the above population. But yes, long term on campus housing is a bit weird in this day and age (but many rural communities were built by companies needing to house their employees near the factor).

I always hear criticism of the Japanese model where the employer provides assistance and coordination for employees’ personal affairs. I am spending too much time at work and don’t have time to tend to errands, cleaning, life admin, etc. with the demands placed on professionals these days why shouldn’t the employer bear some responsibility for my personal home life rather than leave us to figure it out like in the West?

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