S.F. tech companies' civic image at stake as backlash grows
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
edit to add: I want a media backlash. That always comes, right? Maybe then we can get away from this nonsense narrative of tech-workers vs locals and focus on the actual problems at the root of housing prices.
The "story about the story" doesn't come until the story is rehashed and played out many many times. Milked until the only thing to talk about is the coverage itself.
(I know nothing about this subject so I am not weighing in with agreement or disagreement - only pointing out how stories play out in the press not what you are actually saying.)
Don't know about that, but I do know this: for every article about the tech backlash, there's a top-rated HN comment dismissing the whole thing as a cheap ploy for page views.
That's not even a little true.
> ...dismissing the whole thing as a cheap ploy for page views.
Strawman. I didn't dismiss anything. It can be both a real issue and sfgate can be milking it for pageviews. The issue with housing prices (and the gentrification that follows) is most certainly a real issue. And sfgate is most certainly milking it for page views.
As long as tech companies are willing to pay the salaries they're paying, unwilling to open up shop outside SF, and refuse to consider allowing long-distance remote employees, the problem will continue.
Source: Please consider all the job openings you're aware of, and try to keep a count of the fraction that would be closed to remote-only candidates.
I hope and dearly hope that you also meant to include the Germans, Italians and Irish who constituted the major demographic of the Mission once, when you say "long time locals" and not just the recent Hispanic arrivals.
I am appalled by everyone, from the New York Times [1] to Al Jazeera [2], white-washing the facts to make it seem like what is going on in the Mission and the rest of the city is somehow a Noah's Flood-like grand sweep of gentrification that the city had never seen before.
People were displaced before. At least a casual mention of it by the media, would be nice.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2013/11/20/us/20131122_TECH... [2] http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/the-stream/the-late...
Actually, no it doesn't. A group most of us identify with (techies) is cast as the villain of the piece. The designated villain doesn't get a reprieve. Ask anyone who identifies with any other group the press latches onto as an oppressor.
Want to bring on more high-density housing? Change zoning rules so it is easier to get permits.
Housing regulations tend to be extremely local and I'm not a SF resident, but it is stunningly naive to claim that "housing supply" cannot be influenced by government. I realize Americans love to hate them, but city planning is one thing that governments are actually really helpful to have manage.
One of the complaints here is that in the Mission tech workers aren't engaging with the local community - schools, playgrounds, and the like. But this isn't a general problem with tech, because if you walk 10 minutes to Noe Valley you'll find many tech workers actively involved in their communities because they have families that live there.
This is compounded by the fact that many people in tech who decide to start a family will often move out to the valley to take advantage of better schools, and more appropriate housing.
I'm not really sure about that. SF hasn't exactly been a family-friendly place for the time that I've lived here, and I wouldn't describe the giant packs of 20-something, nerdy men who have come with this latest gold rush as engaged members of their community. But Noe is definitely a different neighborhood than SOMA, so you probably see more civic engagement there than elsewhere in the city.
However, I can say with 100% confidence that the city has become less interesting and more homogenous since 2008 -- much more white, 20-something and hipstnerd. Many of the things that I found culturally interesting in San Francisco have been pushed out by the skyrocketing costs of living here. Artisan drop coffee and bougie grilled cheese shops aside, Oakland seems like a far more interesting place than San Francisco these days -- nearly all of the art, music and counter-culture that made SF dynamic has moved to the east bay, replaced by a shallow, consumeristic version of the same.
Could you perhaps list a few of these "culturally interesting" things that existed in the pre-2008 period? Because I am left puzzled as to what was so vibrant back then. I have lived on and off in the Bay Are since 2001 and in SF since 2005 (in Potrero ,Lower Nob not Tender-Nob. Hell no! Not Tender-Nob. If you think it is a cesspool now, you should have seen it back then).
Whenever I read "culturally interesting", alarm bells go off because it is usually a couched way of culture peddlers saying, culturally interesting to us - the few dozen scenesters who are so firmly ensconced in this made-up brand of stylized misfitdom. These non-tech scene people whose coolness is threatened by the addition of new recruits (and heaven forbid they be upwardly mobile technology workers) that they actively shun all outsiders, who are trying to be "more involved in city life" and "start participating in city life."
When they say that we should be "more involved in city life", what they really mean is that you should fork over more of your hard earned dollars to preserve the culturally attractive blight and color of the city, so that they could continue to make merry, uninterrupted while we sit on the outside, looking in, but never really welcomed or accepted.
Noe Valley isn't a solution to the problem, it's just a NIMBY way of papering over the problem.
There are elephants in the room: 1) lack of women in the industry <--- means an increasingly out of whack male:female ratio in the city which has many problematic pile-on effects.
2) simple feelings of being left out...that's what people don't like about Google shuttles. They're mysterious. Let people in them, see what they are, see how they're really not that amazing or great: but then that would hurt recruiting.
3) Arrogance of many tech workers: anti-social intercommunication skills etc. We all know this is undeniably true. Sure we may be nicer than most finance types. But are we more out-going? Do we try to connect with our community on an emotional level? Certainly not more than most, and I'd argue a heck of a lot less than most.
Ultimately this ties back to (1). We're essentially an autistic male industry.
So your proposal is that people who don't work in tech, say someone who spend upwards of $100000 on an expensive liberal arts education and has a good sense for making good soundbites but not enough money should be allowed to enter the Google bus and drive down to the South Bay and back? It is a fucking bus that moves from point A to point B. There will be people who will hate you for anything you do. Always.
Disambiguify it and say "we're not trying to be a bunch of nightclub bouncers... we just have a large car pool"
I think there are people who would complain about a car pool too. Really, they just want the tech people to stay out, and anything that enables them to move in (like carpools or buses) is going to get complaints. The buses are a visible symbol, but not the root cause.
These children are paid above median income, espouse libertarian ideals, refuse to participate or share, and require their own shuttle service separate from 'the natives'.
It says something that to draw 'talent', you have to implement a separate transportation system to appease their fragile sensibilities.
If Caltrain or BART made the same trip and was even a tiny bit faster or more reliable most would switch in a heartbeat.
The problem isn't Google buses. It's that these tech companies don't pay any fucking taxes. The right way to solve this problem is to make them pay their damn taxes like normal people, and to use that money to build housing until it becomes affordable again (and then everyone can leave the buses alone). And if a corporation is bussing people in from San Francisco, it should pay SF taxes as well instead of being a fucking tax-evading suburbanite.
What's funny is that the skewed gender ratio in the south bay is probably what propelled a lot of male techies into the city in the first place.
As a young guy living in the Bay Area, I'm beginning to think I'll have to move to the east coast at some point just to find a wife.
Those buses are private, and paid for by Google, they're not public buses. Should I let anyone from SF ride in my personal car, just so they don't feel left out? Private means private, Google&co are allowed to let in (or keep out) anyone they want on buses they pay for.
Of course, there are larger social trends happening here that complicate the picture, such as a shift in the distribution of poverty between urban and suburban areas:
http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2013/confrontingsubu...
There are people who say that it's okay because these technologies of convenience will eventually become affordable for everyone, essentially a trickle-down theory of technological progress. Maybe that's true.
I just want to avoid an Elysium-like scenario of futuristic enclaves surrounded by poverty-stricken shantytowns. As long as we can avoid that, I'll be much happier about building the future.
Jokes on you. Like most dystopian works, Elysium was about the present day. Those enclaves are already in almost every country.
gotta love these generalizations...
That sentence really confused me. Like, what does it even mean, to be participating in city life?
Step 1: Cherry-pick most extreme comments possible and imply that they represent the average opinion.
Step 2: Make numerous anecdotal assertions without any effort to back them in statistics.
Step 3: Instigate mudslinging by displaying cherry-pickings to other side.
Step 4: Feedback into Step 1.
"Since we don't understand the macroeconomic system that is causing these issues, let's just blame a random group of people who are doing well in said system."
There exists a certain segment of the population that will always consider newcomers (less charitably called 'outsiders') as an intrinsically bad thing. These people should be ignored; they cannot be satisfied by doing anything but giving in to them.
(I don't live in SF, but I hear the same complaints about "techies" in my city, particularly in my neighborhood.)
You're right, though, that it's not new at all. This happens in most major urban cities.
It is unreasonable to expect your community to never grow in population or wealth.
Also, I think you are underplaying the degree to which "disliking people with Macbooks at coffee houses" plays into it. There is a lot of wordage in that article dedicated to describing things other than rising rent that is bothering the "natives".
One example:
""Your whole social world is tech," Garcia, 37, said as he finished a bagel sandwich at the Creamery, a cafe at Fourth and Townsend that's a hotbed of tech deal making.
"The reality is that there are real people in San Francisco, but they're usually in neighborhoods like the Richmond or Sunset," he continued. "The wall between them and us, so to speak - not to get too postcolonial about it here - is pretty high.""
Here the "native" has decided that "tech people" are somehow less "real" because they are unlike him. People like Garcia might try to dress up their issue with "tech people" as merely a matter of rent and economics, but what it really boils down to is bigotry.
If I have to put it into words, there's been a tangible shift from "let's do something interesting together with this cool new thing" to "how can I get rich with this thing?", and that transition makes everyone else feel like a tool for your personal advancement.
Yes, exactly. You're hitting it right on the head in this thread.
That said, I think SF has some unique circumstances that make gentrification challenging. These cause genuine problems that aren't related to simple fear of change. A few of those circumstances:
* SF has a very poor public transport system that severely limits where people can choose to live in relation to their workplace
* SF has problems with homelessness and poverty that are more visible and proportionally higher than its peers (SF has one of the highest rates of homeless people who actively refuse shelter)
* Tech workers often flee the city to have families, meaning they aren't as engaged with the community as others (this exodus also has detrimental effects on the school system in SF)
We're threatening our own existence.
> We're threatening our own existence.
Erm...no. You are choosing to define tech as either " LSD experimenting, sandal wearing, authority deriding rebels." or in another post as "autistic male industry.". This is a definition that works for you. I choose not to be associated with any of these definitions. I have no interest in either craft beer or comicon or any of those typical American nerd past times. Hell, I studied high school in a sub culture where girls were automatically supposed to be good at Math or CS.
My point is that it ultimately is just a job. Go do the job. There will be people who will stereotype you and make you part of some club whether you choose to be part of that club or not. Ignore them, help the world if you choose to.
There will be many benefits if we do, for our society, for our industry, and for us too. In the meantime, you and I will be in the minority.
I was speaking a bit tongue in cheek about the lsd and sandals, but nevertheless believe we need to work hard to encourage a quilt of diversity: in style and scenes, approaches to the world and epistemology of learning, academic pursuit, politics, local business etc. I aimed to identify the low hanging fruit, where we're most of out to lunch. And the lack of women in our midst is certainly #1 on the list, imo.
I should add that your attitude towards what financial workers are or should be is pretty close minded as well...
They're carpet-baggers, here for the perceived easy money, because Wall Street gorged itself to bail-out destruction.
We program the machines that affect society in ways that go completely against the ideals of counter-culture.
We are right-hand enablers of the man. Until we aren't needed, that is.
This is why I disagree with Crito and think the fundamental issue here is economic, not bigotry. The bigotry is just a concentration of vitriol against the offending party, and it morphs to reflect whatever that offending party might look like. There's a lot of emotional pain in being displaced. It's going to create resentment against those who are perceived as doing the displacing.
Those are superficial differences. You know what actually matters? Whether he will defend the reputation of a whistleblower in the face of power. Whether he will fight when he finds out that women are getting paid 15% less in his company. Whether he'll push hard for an environment that prevents managerial abuses. That's the shit that matters, not whether he wears a hoodie vs. a suit.
On the serious moral stuff, the modern incarnation of Silicon Valley is just so fucking conventional and submissive to authority that, as far as I'm concerned, it has forfeit its right to live.
Tech people who can afford commutes are not the cause of poor public transit, they just serve to highlight it. Upper-middle class tech workers are not the reason that there are so many homeless in SF, they just provide start contrast that makes the homeless problem highly visible.
Getting rid of tech people so that these problems are not as apparent is not a well considered solution.
It's pretty obvious by now San Francisco is one of the worst places for a fast growing tech industry. They don't want change, it's a tiny peninsula (I've walked from one end to the other), there's not enough land, taxes are high, traffic is awful, transportation is apparently awful, they're overly bureaucratic, their politics are broken (all things I've heard directly from SF natives and expats), prices and living expenses are the highest in the USA, the community is volatile towards the businesses there (compare SF to St. Louis & other cities who are passing incentive packages worth $1+ Billion just to get Boeing to bring 8,000 jobs to their city). The city looks unique, hip and trendy, and just like Vogue has more issues than anyone can count.
They're complaining about gentrification as if it's the worst thing in the world. Meanwhile in St. Louis, we're all praying for gentrification. When neighborhoods become run down and violent no one says anything, everyone just moves away. When those same people move back to fix everything up suddenly they're the villain. In St. Louis, the poor just move to a cheaper place in a nicer house using the money they got from their fixer-upper home. That's something SF natives can't really do because of SF's land size problem. I've spoken to African Americans and minorities who took part in gentrification just above Martin Luther King street and bought homes to fix them up. The world operates in much more rational, logical ways outside of the hipster-bubble. If silicon valley moves, who will SF blame their problems on then?
Pretend that Silicon Valley never existed in the bay area. Would A-N-Y of San Francisco's major problems be solved? They'd still have busted transportation, still have high rent, the politics would still be the same, they'd still ignore Oakland residents, still have a lack of housing, still have the homeless problem, and everything else. This is just another re-occurring pattern in human nature: "Blame your problems on those who have nice things."
"Future of SFGate-funded action-sports TV sitcom in doubt."
Even after 2001, people liked tech and Silicon Valley and wanted to see these ecosystems succeed. That was the respectable way to get rich: to move to the Valley and start a company. No more. Average people hate tech now.
The problem is that, as often happens, the wrong targets are being attacked. People are lumping the $140k/year programmers (who'll never be able to afford a house in San Francisco) in with the $250k product executives and useless scene kids working 11-to-3, much less the $2M/year lawyers who figure out how tech companies can never pay a dime in taxes, which means they're not seeing the source of the real problem.
People were upset about different things—instead of Google buses, lofts being converted into luxury condos and so on—but the emotions and the discourse were much the same. I remember a startup called Bigstep that got into hot water because they took over office space from a community org or something that couldn't afford the rent any more [2]. There was a lot of talk about the Latino community being displaced by dotcom types, about Marina yuppies taking over the nightlife—at places like Blowfish Sushi, plus a somehow slightly creepy experiment called Circadia [3] that Starbucks ran at Bryant and Mariposa, which was an emblem of dotcom excess. It's just an ordinary Starbucks now.
I haven't noticed any change in how "average" people feel about tech, except perhaps that its status has gone up.
One thing that actually has changed from the dotcom bubble to now is the massive shift of power away from VCs and MBAs towards founders and engineers. (Which is kind of ironic since it contradicts almost everything you say about the industry.) Investors have lost power relative to founders and managers have lost power relative to programmers. Both of those trends have been going on for a long time, but have been accelerating. They seem to me to be good trends, arguably even for the investors and managers.
Curiously, this shift is visible in the cultural ripples around the dotcoms then vs. the startups now. The dotcom bubble produced a lot of ersatz culture that matched its mostly ersatz startups. The parts of it that I saw were douchey and suity; a place like Circadia, which I mentioned above, was an expression of that. It was full of people who weren't actually working on anything. The decor was lavish, but the coffee and food (not that I could afford the food) were mediocre. Compare that to a place like Sightglass now, where the coffee is excellent and most people are working on stuff. Sure they're hipsters, but it's still a crowd I'd rather be around than the one that used to make me squirm back then; and I'm a dyed-in-the-wool programmer type who hasn't much changed.
[1] http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Mission_Yuppie_Eradicatio.... Also http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/macchron.htm and http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/03/35154, and there's lots more where those came from.
[2] Googling this turned up http://blog.doubledutch.me/2012/03/the-rise-of-the-mission-s... which includes some details about anti-dotcom protests in from 1999-2000.
[3] https://www.salon.com/1999/01/21/feature_238/. I sometimes worked on my thesis there because they had internet. Most of their tech-oriented image was silly, though. The place was all pretense.
San Francisco's problem is that it is mismanaged. That's not just a message board opinion; it appears to be the consensus of all observers, including that of journalists who cover the city. The city's services are poorly run, its growth is haphazard and pointlessly retarded, and it's hamstrung by its geography. But it also seems to be more livable today that it was in 1999, when the market was crazy enough that I had to pay my year's rent in advance to secure an apartment.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/what-the-hell-are-we-doing-he...
I wouldn't mind having the job title of “thinking about what the hell we are doing here.” Perhaps Hired is holding an auction for this very position.