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Comment by GhostVII | Hacker News Reader

> One worker asked why Pichai was paid hundreds of millions of dollars, while some Google employees struggle to afford to live in Silicon Valley

I mean I understand getting upset at the income gap between CEO's and regular people, but it seems kind of strange to be complaining about your salary as a Google employee, where you are almost certainly making well over $100k, and walk past rows of camper trailers and homeless people on the way to work. Saying that you are struggling to afford to live in Silicon Valley seems like a bit of a stretch if you are an engineer at Google. I can sympathize with non-tech workers at Google who are probably making less though.

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Chances are the question was asked by a childcare provider or a cook (some of them are still proper FTEs)...

Edit: for clarity, even if you're a Google FTE, Google will only pay you "nearly top of the market for your job description", which for professions mentioned won't be all that much.

None of those roles are allowed at TGIF. Nor are the cooks FTEs, though I will give you that one of the most inane "digital well being" proponents was a nursery teacher.

I'm pretty sure I remember a childcare provider asking a question in one of the Californian all-hands that reach me in Europe, not sure if it was a TGIF or an event-oriented one. I'm pretty sure not an org-oriented, given her profession.

About the time I joined (I assume you can look that up) there was a bit of a ruckus about too many non-tech folk being contractors. Quite a few of them have been converted to FTEs, I assumed cooks were in that crowd and some are still around. Can be wrong about that. But I'm pretty sure that Charlie was truly a FTE ;)

You haven't looked at housing prices in Mountain View recently. If your goal in life is simply to own your own home (which seems reasonable to me), then even lower-level engineers are struggling.

That wouldn't really be affected by how much Google pays its engineers, though. There's a fixed supply of single-family housing in Mountain View, and >>> available supply seeks to live there. Under those conditions, housing prices adjust upwards until they reach the amount that the Nth bidder (where N = houses for sale <<< Google employees in Mountain View) is willing to pay. Increase salaries and you just increase the amount that everyone is willing to pay, and then you still get outbid by your coworkers.

Assuming that owning a single-family home is non-negotiable, the only ways out of this are a.) get all your coworkers fired or b.) move out of the Bay Area. Mountain View (and the rest of the Bay Area) is basically fully built-out: there simply is no more land for 1/4 acre lots.

(If you're willing to compromise on "single family home", there's another alternative: build up. This is the most realistic solution, but requires that people give up on the idea of a detached house with a yard and settle for condos instead.)

There are many people in Mountain View who don't work for Google though. Most people, even.

But overall, yes, I agree that the primary problem there is restrictions on development of denser housing. Earning more money would help though (it always does).

> There's a fixed supply of single-family housing in Mountain View

Well, that is the whole problem right there. It doesn’t have to be fixed.

Single family housing? That generally refers to a detached home so yes the supply is very much fixed.

Even if we're talking about multi-family housing, there is still a limit on space, resources, traffic capacity, etc.

Then let’s start building vertically.

It is a social choice to limit housing like this.

there's plenty of land just outside the bay area. from those 5 lane jam packed freeways: 680 and 580, you can see nothing but green or yellow for miles on end, for much of the stretch.

There is a big difference between struggling to live, and struggling to afford a detached house in Mountain View. I don't think it is reasonable for every Google employee to be able to afford a house there - there just isn't enough supply, and that isn't Google's fault.

It is Google’s fault if it wants to have most of its engineers in Silicon Valley though.

If only there were somewhere else in the entire United States where software engineers could enjoy a great standard of living and easily be able to afford a nice large house in the burbs....

> your salary as a Google employee, where you are almost certainly making well over $100k ... I can sympathize with non-tech workers at Google who are probably making less though.

Quite a few of these "non-tech workers" are employees, too.

Quite a few of these "non-tech workers" are employees, too

Google (et al) go to considerable, some might say elaborate, lengths to keep their service staff - cleaners, catering, security, etc - off the payroll and partitioned off. It makes no sense really, treating these people with respect would cost barely a rounding error in Google's bottom line. But even so they have a pathological urge to do it, to stratify a caste system almost.

I feel a lot of Google employee’s request would be to not struggle to live.

Whatever the place and salary, if it’s enough that they don’t have to think about it, they would be fine.

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