Silicon Valley Assholes

I posit that it isn't class tension, rather cultural tension. I moved to San Francisco in 2000 (during the dot com boom and subsequent bust) when the first wave of anti-tech worker sentiment start to brew.

Since then it's completely normal and reasonable to tote around a Macbook Pro with you around town; people who understand and use tech aren't the problem.

JWZ alluded to this cultural tension in his 1996 "San Jose is hell on earth" rant.

What people don't want is dilution of San Francisco culture; I personally love how there are so many neat, quirky people in San Francisco. In my time here, I've run into and had interesting conversations with artists, musicians, teachers, coffee roasters, hipsters, students, bicyclists, ... yes, even homeless people. But I cringe when I'm sitting down at Tartine and overhear some tech worker talking about Quartz Compositing, unrolling a loop and adding SIMD, or Javascript -- I'm a tech guy, but come on, that's really boring to discuss in public. I look around and think, "no, wait, we're not all that boring and narrow!"

It's one thing to have an employer in Silicon Valley, but it's another thing when your employer drives a bunch of shuttle busses to San Francisco that wait at and hog up Muni bus stops. Every time I ride the Muni and a Google shuttle is blocking the stop, forcing Muni riders to get off the bus further down the street (sometimes in unsafe conditions), I can't help but understand why some people want those Google/Apple/Facebook people to "give back to their community" and view them as outsiders, as if they were rude tourists. As for my (tech) employer, they give us nearly unlimited Clipper eCash to use on any and all transit systems -- pumping money into the transit system to make improvements instead of privatizing transit as we know it.

No, you don't need to give lots of money to the homeless or get involved in local politics, but if you're going to live in San Francisco, it helps to have skin in the game, instead of being a permanent tourist. For example, I ride my bicycle around San Francisco as my primary means of transportation; I donate to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition because their interests align with mine. I volunteer time at GLIDE, because it's important to me to do something like that.

If you're going to live in San Francisco, then try to enjoy living there for what it is. You could always move to San Jose if you want the big city + tech worker thing, or Mountain View if you just want the tech thing.

If you dislike San Francisco but choose to live there anyways, consider this quote from Lao Tzu: "Fail to honor people, they fail to honor you."