The Graver Threat of the Growing Tech Backlash
recode.net
recode.net
If the tech companies all move to San Francisco, then it's their fault for changing the fabric of local communities. But if they leave San Francisco, why, it's their fault for crashing the local economy.
If the tech companies try to establish a libertarian utopia, this shows they don't care about average people. But if they stay in SF and try to work within the current system, well, that's the nefarious influence of money in politics.
If the tech companies send buses to pick up their workers, this is terrible because it drives up housing costs. But if they don't send buses, why, traffic would be so bad that 280 and 101 would grind to a halt, and clearly that's the tech companies' fault.
"Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, a priest who heard the confessions of condemned witches, wrote in 1631 the Cautio Criminalis ('prudence in criminal cases') in which he bitingly described the decision tree for condemning accused witches: If the witch had led an evil and improper life, she was guilty; if she had led a good and proper life, this too was a proof, for witches dissemble and try to appear especially virtuous. After the woman was put in prison: if she was afraid, this proved her guilt; if she was not afraid, this proved her guilt, for witches characteristically pretend innocence and wear a bold front. Or on hearing of a denunciation of witchcraft against her, she might seek flight or remain; if she ran, that proved her guilt; if she remained, the devil had detained her so she could not get away." - http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence...
In London a group of businesses got together and lobbied government for better bus service among other things: http://www.londonriversidebid.co.uk/our-achievements/
For that matter England has http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/about_us which lobbies for improved transport all over the country.
You want to disrupt the old way of doing things? Setting up a private bus service is not disruption. The initiatives linked above are true disruption. They are all about doing government differently.
Everyone hates how Caltrain is run. But if you change anything - any one thing - to make it better, you'll get a particular noisy group screaming "You can't change that!"
That's why Caltrain is so badly run. It has too many competing interests pulling at it, and it listens too much to too many of them. Fixing it is going to involve making people mad.
Disclaimer: I don't live in California. I don't actually know anything about Caltrain. I just have an idea of how government works, and why it goes bad.
Techies are free to engage in activism to help their fellow humans.
The problem is that the existing residents of San Francisco would like to preserve their relatively low density city, and simultaneously cram several million more people into it. In every other growing city, swathes of older, low-density housing are torn down and replaced with higher density apartment and condominium blocks. These high-density urban high-rises relieve the pressure on the remaining, cheaper, low density residential properties, while simultaneously adding additional economic growth and neighborhood vitality. It just seems that the residents of San Francisco have made a collective choice that they'd rather have the "charm" of their "historic" (like you can call anything less than 200 years old historic) city, rather having a city that people can move into and live in on less than programmer wages.
The other thing is that in Silicon Valley you're paying for RE like it's New York but you don't live in New York. You live in a boring and IMHO rather ugly suburb. I was shocked at how bad it was... I was driving around and thinking "I cannot think of anywhere else in the USA where so much gets you so little."
It's definitely been a fun experience (there're TONS of cool things to do here), but had I known 6 months ago what I know now... I'm not sure that I would have made the transition.
Not anymore.
It's too damned crowded now. So I predict it will just get more crowded and there will be no changes to the zoning to improve mass transit and housing to embrace and handle that crowding. Even a small change like repealing rent control would work wonders for new residents by increasing housing supply and reducing opening rents at the expense of existing residents having to come to grips with market rates. Not gonna happen: the inmates are solidly in charge of this asylum.
So instead the overflow will continue early adopting Oakland and eventually gentrify the place. Not my cup of tea at this point in my life, but I'm happy to jump off the appropriate BART stops and enjoy their restaurants and coffee shops on the weekends as they appear.
That said, attacking the tech shuttles makes as much sense to me as shooting up an unemployment office when one loses one's job. All you're doing is venting your anger on people slightly less unlucky than you are. The people they truly hate are safely ensconced in Pacific Heights, Tiburon, Palo Alto, and Atherton with excellent security.
For the record, here's a description of what an Ellis eviction entails:
You could say the residents of SF are using city regulations a certain way, but that doesn't imply big government to me.
This is the democratic reaction of a lot of city residents (many of whom are blue collar) to the new economic realities within their hometown. That leads to many more paths of resolution than just saying "big government".
In other words, government isn't the problem here. The SF housing crisis, the coming class war, the inequities of late-era capitalism -- these are the real problems.
The government has tried, many times, to zone and build more dense housing which would have prevented this problem. The people of SF have been organizing and protesting every step of the way against that for the last 15 years.
Hell, even today they are protesting the increase in housing costs while simultaneously protesting against increased housing.
…which generally means going from bad design to worse when it comes to human health. Mental illness, social isolation, physical inactivity, and poor performance in school are all correlated with living in high-rise buildings (even after accounting for socioeconomic factors).[1]
This isn't to say that healthy high-density living can't be done, just that it generally isn't what's done. Singapore is a good counter-example.[2]
[1] http://web.uvic.ca/psyc/gifford/pdf/ASR%20High%20Rises%20pro...
[2] http://www.livablecities.org/articles/high-density-livabilit...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6549063
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6944259
The unfortunate thing right now is that these ideas have no real traction outside of econoblogs, the most popular being Matt Yglesias' MoneyBox. City Halls, historic preservation committees, online comment sections, community boards, and others have endless rants about their grievances, or piles of suggestions that don't touch the problem at all.
In the case of this article, it's mentioned in passing, but dismissed as the equivalent of "it'll be too little, too late." If a place is as important as it seems (like New York has been for a very long time in a number of industries), these problems aren't going anywhere - regardless of bubble pops - and should be dealt with right away. Are there any serious commentators or analysts that believe that the SFBA will disappear if "social" vanishes? I think that's incredibly short-sighted.
Short version: there are solutions, but those who matter aren't really listening.
This statistic is incredibly misleading - the absolute increase was only 73 evictions. [1]
“From Google buses invading the neighborhoods, to the evictions of elders, to the very real effects of speculator-fueled evictions, the tech industry’s reaction has been shameful,” said Tony Robles, an organizer with Senior and Disability Action who joined the Oakland demonstration, in an email.
This can also be read as "Large companies pay employees too much money and provide too many benefits."
[1] http://www.chicagonow.com/getting-real/2014/01/san-francisco...
Shame!
San Francisco should kick the techies out. Then it can aspire to be Detroit. It's not pretty when a formerly vibrant industry fades away over time.
1) trading a few commercials for the keystone oil pipeline for some other political card.
2) Lunching with Inhofe (not sure who that is).
Google, like most Tech giants, contributes to a hell of a lot of political organisations. Surely that's obvious to anyone ? But apparently merely a tiny sliver of contribution to "bad" political organisations is enough to demonize a 40000 person company.
I hate how "tolerant" America works like this. Associate with the wrong political idea, even a tiny little bit when you're actually apolitical and you really just kind of agree with the idea, or you just want/need to get something done, and ... bye-bye tolerance. You've just become public enemy number 1.
I am sorry, but I was raised in an area with lots of merchants, lots of factory workers and lots of small political parties. A place, like most of the countryside in Europe, where neonazi's organize parties with communists, liberals (the European, rightist, kind) and christians, and imagine this : nobody fights (we have soccer matches for that). Nobody loses their job. Nobody gets nailed to the wall in the local newspaper for having a drink with a girl who is somehow associated with an unpopular party.
You see this in practice as well. San Francisco's tech elite is full with people who openly claim to be democrat even when they're obviously not. There's plenty of Tea Partyers on the street in San Francisco, among the "tech elite", but asking them never yields that answer. I used to wonder why.
I'm saying this from a distance, so I may be wrong, but it seems to me America (and in particular the left) is the least tolerant people I've visited. Especially the part of America that's arguing for tolerance.
(The cognitive dissonance of the fortunate techies on HN who refuse to acknowledge that they are no different from self-centered 80's finance yuppies is amusing, but nothing new is happening here.)
The more universal backlash is about the industries arrogant disregard for existing values, regulations, social conventions and traditions. As if anything done by non-techies is inherently inferior, disruption has become an ideology.
Similar to "greed is good", tech promotes the ideology "disruption is good". Millions who see their society mutilated, their rights trampled and their livelihoods disappearing do not agree.
We like to see ourselves as the good guys, and things like the NSA spying or the British censorship filter as the work of the bad guys. As far as the general public is concerned however, they are two sides of the same coin: technology as a means for the elite to take away what once was theirs.
That is the backlash we may soon be facing. And that backlash may not distinguish between the NSA, the mighty Google empire and your plucky little start up.
Best place to start a new company is where you are right now. That is what Atlassian did and when it made sense for them to be in a different place, they just moved. Second best place is any city where there is a concentration of tech industry but that could be in Vancouver, Berlin, Moscow (Skolkovo) or London (Old Street). You have a choice.
And if your business is growing and beginning to have a local impact, and you are senior management there, then you really should start thinking about how you can improve the local area for everyone, which is a traditional activity of larger successful companies. Spend money on civic projects. If you need better bus service, lobby for it rather than sidestepping the competition. Politics is a different game from business and if you fail to recognize that and act appropriately, then you deserve the brickbats that will be thrown at you.
I'm reminded of when IBM was the big bad boy, and Microsoft was the cool new upstart. Then Microsoft became the bad boy and Google was the cool new upstart. From the sound of things, Google is now sliding into bad boy territory.
Also, tech has the Damaso Effect. The best of our world answer to the worst of theirs, because we've been colonized by the MBA culture, and most colonial soldiers and officers are people who failed in their own countries. The good businessmen stay in New York and start hedge funds. The leftovers in their set are the ones who end up in VC or as VC-funded founders-- and they're bitter about it, too.
Much of the tension in tech comes from the fact that tech's best end up, due to the extreme power of the VCs and moneymen, answering to the rejects of the business world-- the ones who weren't able to get themselves into hedge funds.
Thank you. This is why I love Hacker News. :) That is remarkably clear and concise and from my experience absolutely true. In one of my worst examples of a total sleazenugget from high-tech, it is literally true. I know for a fact that the guy tried and failed to become a high-finance type and was indeed incredibly bitter about it, so he entered high-tech and tried to hustle nerds (like me) out of technologies he could (fail to) flip.
For some context, that's an increase of 73 evictions per year (from 43 in 2010 to 116 in 2013[0]). Of course, 73 in the absolute doesn't have the same ring to it as 170%, so it's clear to see why the data is presented the way it is. I think it's rather disingenuous and makes that particular problem seem much dire than it might really be.
[0] http://www.sfbos.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=47...
Seriously, I read things like this:
"Cohen said one concrete way the tech industry could ease the affordability crisis would be to cut big checks. He notes that San Francisco’s hotel tax produces about $5 million a year that goes into subsidized housing, and said it’s appropriate to call on the tech sector for similar contributions since their workforce is primarily responsible for driving up housing costs."
And then I read the "suggestions" in an article[1] linked to this one immediately following that quote, and one word comes to mind: shakedown.
Instead of cooperating with the moral equivalent of a mugging, perhaps companies should move to places where they're appreciated, rather than reviled.
1. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57615006-93/fake-google-emp...
2. http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2013/12/09/protesters-block-goog...
That was a terrible play. It cost the good guys a lot of credibility and anyone with half a brain would realize that people would find out almost immediately that he wasn't a Googler.
A much better, if also significantly longer, exposition.
Time and again that faith has been demonstrated to be severely misplaced. If a "backlash" against the tech sector leads to fewer people thoughtlessly handing over their most private lives to giant, amoral entities, then so much the better.
The Bay Area has pretty intense class issues, that is true, but the relation of those class issues to the tech industry is purely local.
opera 12.16 on Linux
You get paid more, not because you "worked hard" or "studied harder"... its because you have a line of work that both creates a shit ton of value, and the supply and demand for people with our skill sets works out in our favor.
But maybe, that's just my impression...
But that is a fantasy. We are paid according to how much the market has decided we are worth. We are rare and therefore, in demand. That is it. I could say that I got here on hard work alone, but that's not the whole truth. How I got here is a mixture of one part hard work, one part privilege, and one part fortune.
But tech companies aren't putting the climate at risk. Tech companies didn't crash the economy. Over the past decades there isn't another industry that has delivered more growth and value.
The grave threat is to non-credible Media who deal in link-bait and manufactured controversy.
I'm not one to say that all tech innovation has ceased, but I would love to see more startups addressing the rest of the world's real problems: starvation, poverty, water, oppressive governments. Otherwise we are playing our part in ensuring a grim meathook future: http://zenarchery.com/full-text-of-the-grim-meathook-future-...
Besides, the tech industry didn't crash the economy -- but we sure had a lot of fun benefiting from large-scale economic speculation that came from it the first time.