Seeing the Real Faces of Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

Seeing the Real Faces of Silicon Valley

nytimes.com

40 pointsjbredeche32 comments

For me, the blank space around this kind of article is the most interesting part. When you profile a handful of people, the defining feature of the piece is journalistic discretion. Which of the several million Bay Area residents do they choose to speak with? Of those, which end up published in the final piece? The degrees of freedom are such that a piece like this can tell almost any story the author wants to tell. The individual experiences and visual representation of the subjects are still true in a literal sense, but the narrative arc is wholly constructed by the author. A painter is constrained by the physical properties of paint and canvas, but the selection of materials and subject are discretionary. Articles like this are closer to art than anything else.

A place that attracted people from all over the world for high paying jobs that is beautiful geographically with limited housing costs a lot.

Locals are priced out who were here before the high paying jobs, new people need to be in the top percentile to afford it. It’s families who want the same thing but some have more money.

The only thing that will change housing in the Bay Area is a large earthquake.

> The only thing that will change housing in the Bay Area is a large earthquake.

I think the '89 earthquake demonstrated this was insufficient. But I suppose the Richter scale technically has no upper bound.

Not necessarily. Migration of jobs is real - for example, Seattle offers the same FAANG pay and opportunities with beautiful geography, with at least 30% cheaper housing. Migration that is already taking place will continue until housing reaches an equilibrium.

I’m a local who would have been priced out. After college, I learned to code and now I’m apparently part of the problem :/

The only reason this is a story is because the media (and social media) love using Silicon Valley caricatures and stereotypes when it suits them. Which is frustrating when you don’t live in the tiny bubbles where those stereotypes are grounded.

It’s simultaneously great to see an article like this and frustrating that it’s a story at all. Of course, it’s still a biased story pushing a message, but you can’t expect everything.

Why is this story flagged? Admittedly, it's not good faith journalism, but still, shouldn't there be a discussion about it?

Some of the assertively self-valorising SV VC types should respond by funding a lengthy feature article about the food-truck workers and cleaning staff working in and around the NYT building. It can be the second-time-farce recurrence of the Peloponnesian War.

Point taken.

As I think about it more, this is an article that could be written about anyplace in the US.

NYC

Boston

Austin

Seattle

Charlotte

Madison

Portland

Raleigh

Minneapolis

Asheville

Atlanta

And so on and so on.

Same characters and all. Only differences would be small differences in industries.

My favorite part of this incredibly bad piece of “journalism” is this one:

“At the time of the announcement, Facebook said the money would be used over the next decade. Construction on the teacher housing has yet to be completed.”

They end the section with that sentence clearly trying to build up some kind of “Facebook cares so little they still haven’t finished it 2 years later” impression which is pretty a pretty scummy way to present a company building a bunch of low income housing in one of the most expensive parts of the world. Two years in the best of times wouldn’t raise eyebrows for a real estate project and the last two years have been some of the worst of times.

(Disclaimer I hate Facebook but hate what journalism has become more).

I like this piece, even though it’s pushing a message.

I think about this a lot. Every day I go to work. The men and women I work with don’t look like the sleek 23-year-old product managers that adorn the promotional material, or the immaculately groomed Real Business Leaders, or the space alien Zuckerberg types. Far from being a monoculture of bro-y white men, there is a vast diversity of backgrounds - national, cultural, and person. I wish the media would show it more. The people who work at these companies are just people, with all their good and bad. They are not The Enemy; they are just white collar professionals struggling to get by like all the dentists and accountants and process engineers. Sure, some of them get lucky and rich, and some of them leverage themselves to the hilt to buy property here. But for most of them, a decent house is out of reach too. The real enemy is the gerontocracy.

I'm not quite sure how true this is corresponding to the whole situation in the Silicon Valley but a few things I observed make it hard for me to give credit to the journalism.

There's no real data. It's all just individual stories. It's easy to just hand-pick people from any region and revolve the whole idea around them causing distortion with the reality. I agree that's true with the Silicon Valley being portrayed everywhere as just money flying around with a lot more aspects to it simply ignored. So maybe, this piece tries to balance that general attitude but either way, that's not a good practice and I don't feel confident reading something like this.

>Although the couple have worked hard to get here, and they make good money — their starting salaries were about $90,000 each — they feel that a future in Silicon Valley eludes them. Their apartment, for example, costs almost $3,000 a month. They could move somewhere less expensive, but, with the traffic, they’d spend hours each day commuting. They would like to stay, but they don’t feel confident that they can save, invest, start a family. They’re not sure what to do next.

Let's see..3x12=36,000

2x90,000 (probably a lot more given it is a starting salary) =$180,000

even after accounting for taxes and other expenses, that is still a lot left over.

Stopped reading after that. They literally just refuted their own thesis.

Presumably when they talk about starting a family, they’re thinking about moving out of their apartment. Most couples I know need to upgrade when their family gets larger than two adults.

They are probably in a one bedroom. While I grew up in a soviet 355sqft (33sq.m) box of a studio apartment, is that really what you think of as a good place to raise a family? They will need to rent something bigger and that costs even more.

They talk about investing, so 401k is a likely factor. Let’s break this down assuming you are right and the make $200k now: $200k total comp Less $19.5k x2 401k Less 30% taxes $112.7 take home $9.4k per month Less 3k apartment Less $1k cars Less $300 car ins Less $500 health ins Less $300 utilities/internet/etc Leaves ~$4.3k per month before food and other expenses.

They clearly do not have enough for a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment, child care, extended parental leave (or one spouse not working temporarily) or much of anything else. Remember, it’s not just housing that’s expensive in the Bay Area, but also food and many other basic services.

$15K/month of income only goes so far, that's the point of the article.

The math without a child isn't so bad. Take out $5K for taxes, $3K for rent, $3K for food/utilities/car/etc. If they're lucky to not have other non-discretionary expenses hanging over their heads and are frugal, then yeah, that's $4K/month leftover for spending, savings, etc.

How far does $4K/month go with a child? Well, first, the mom is very likely to face a disruption in income and/or income growth. Second, childcare will be necessary in order to continue bringing in dual income. That could easily run $2K/month. Third, they will have to either remain packed into an "affordable" 1BR apartment, or find more housing at some cost (either money or commute time). Fourth, for many people, the notion of starting a family is an expectation of multiple children.

People can and do make it work, but it's not easy, and at these tight margins any sort of disruption can spell disaster. That's why people who are doing ok without children can still feel like their financial position is too weak to support a family.

it probably much more than $15k given it was just a starting salary and probably other perks too. Also a lot of financial aid and other govt. programs for parents.

In my own case, having a single toddler is about a 20% increase in expenses, and that's not even accounting for saving for college, or how much it would cost if we wanted more space. It's easy to imagine being relatively comfortable in the Bay Area but not feeling financially comfortable about having kids.

Anybody else feel like that first Indian couple is really underpaid?

Seriously Diane?

Anyone who isn't a white male has a real face, I suppose.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. We're trying to avoid internet hell here. It's agitating and even exciting, but it's not interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please don't post flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN. If something in an article is provocative, the thing to do is leave it there and fine something more interesting to comment about; or, alternatively, not to comment.

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> Together, the couple earn about $350,000 a year — more than six times the national household average. Virginia works in the finance department of Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, and Gee was an early employee of a start-up that developed an online auctioning app.

> They have wanted to buy nice furniture for the house, but between their mortgage and child care expenses, they don’t think they can afford to buy it all at once. Some of their rooms now sit empty. Gee said that Silicon Valley salaries like theirs sounded like real wealth to the rest of the country, but that here it didn’t always feel that way.

I think this does sound like insane money to the rest of the country, and clearly this couple is doing _okay_ if the main money issue is not buying furniture all at once. BUT, with the new talk of raising taxes on $400k/$200k annual income (depending on whether Biden means family or personal income) treats this couple like they're filthy rich.

Even adjusting for living expenses, SV engineers have more disposable income than almost everyone else. $200-300k is a lot of money. I have run the numbers and there is almost no way you can not have anything left over unless you have a lot of dependents or are very reckless with money.

It’s not just about what money you have left in the short term. Financial insecurity can come from all over. If you’re on the hook for a $2M mortgage but easily paying it, and then suddenly there’s dot com bust or financial collapse or (a pandemic leading to a shift in how we work), then there’s a scary possibility that you’re laid off and won’t find another extremely high paying job, while your house is worth a ton less. You’re left underwater on your fancy house. All those events are highly correlated, making it a real scare. My place is worth a ton less than pre pandemic and I’m very thankful that it’s still worth more than I owe and that my job is secure.

Thirty years is a long time for a mortgage, and that leads to a lot of anxiety about long term risks.

> BUT, with the new talk of raising taxes on $400k/$200k annual income (depending on whether Biden means family or personal income) treats this couple like they're filthy rich

97th percentile household income is filthy rich.

Now, its true, they are still outside of the capitalist elite — because their cash income comes from work, though they can expect annual gains more than quite a lot of household incomes on their real estate, which will get the same favorable tax treatment when realized as the capitalist elite get on most of their income, so they don't completely miss out on the favors granted to the top.

“I traded short term comfort and affordability off to get a shorter commute and higher expected real estate gains over time, so I have to defer a bit of my ability to live like royalty compared to the vast majority of the country on my stratospheric income” is a pretty weird cry for sympathy; on about half that household income in a slightly less expensive part of suburban California, and also very house-heavy, I'd be ashamed to make that cry myself. That ks some serious entitlement and lack of perspective.

Honestly, we are very well off. Like house poor is a thing but I don't think they pay people who are _bad_ with money 350k a year to work in the finance department.

    350k per year ->  29k per month
    taxes (~30%)  -> - 9k per month
    mortgage pmt  -> -10k per month

This still leaves 10k per month for living expenses. You might not be able to max out two mega backdoors, depending on corporate match, but it seems like not furnishing the home you bought is more of an optimization choice than a budget constraint.

$350k household income, after making 401k's and federal/state taxes, is $217k. That's $18k/month. A $2m home at current rates is about $9k mortgage payment. Leaves another $9k for food, utilities, transportation. If either of them loses their job, and it's part of a mass tech layoff, they're hosed.

If they had a $600k household income they'd have a more expensive house and exactly the same problem.

Anyone who works for a living either has to save a large chunk of their income or risk everything going to pot if they lose their jobs. I can't feel too bad for this couple because – unlike many Americans – they literally could save half their take home income and still live comfortable lives by most people's standards.

They don't need a five bedroom house. They've chosen to take on a certain degree of financial risk by taking on a large mortgage rather than saving.

A lot of this is just rich people not realising that they're rich. E.g., if you can buy a 5 bedroom house anywhere (Gee and Virginia) then you are rich, regardless of whether you're too snobby to put some cheap furniture in a couple of the rooms.

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