4 ms·

I have a wide variety of reactions to this. Some positive, some negative. On the whole, I think it is approaching the problem from the wrong direction. In orde

I have a wide variety of reactions to this. Some positive, some negative. On the whole, I think it is approaching the problem from the wrong direction. In order of appearance in my brain: 1. So the infantilization (or at least very long childhood) of tech workers, that began with ball pits and video games and three meals a day served in the office, is complete. Tech workers may never become autonomous, functioning, adults at this rate. 2. This sounds kinda nice, actually. But, only for like a week. Then I would hate everyone I share a bathroom and kitchen with. I'm too old for room mates. 3. Oh! That's what's bugging me. Subtle age discrimination. People with families cannot possibly live in these things. People with families cannot possibly afford to live in actual housing in SF. So, older folks are pushed out of valley tech companies, without ever having to make ugly hiring decisions based on age. Younger workers are cheaper and will stay at the office longer hours (probably not more productive by doing so, but that's more difficult to measure). So, yeah, this fits with what I know of the way a lot of VCs think about the problem of tech workers, as cogs in a money printing machine. This is a more efficient cog storage unit that happens to provide additional features, like filtering out older workers and people who want lives outside of work. And, back to why this is approaching the wrong side of the problem: NIMBYs in SF and surrounding high rent areas keep housing prices astronomically high, by preventing construction of dense new housing. All of the valley has single family homes everywhere. Very tall buildings for housing are practically unheard of.

TTPrograms 11y ago
If younger workers live there then there's less demand for apartments, which should reduce costs for families too. Not that I'd want to live there, but older workers might still stand to benefit.
- Aeolos 11y ago
  The demand for apartments would not lessen, given that almost everyone would prefer to live in a real apartment rather than a Nerd Storage Facility.
- e40 11y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. For the just-out-of-college, it might be a nice thing. For a short while. Save up for a house while you're there and have the benefits of the high density of young people.
jordanb 11y ago
The VCs are also NIMBYs: they're in those $4 million bungalows in Palo Alto and they're loving the appreciation, so you could say they're working both ends. I propose these dorms be called Nerd Storage Units (NSUs).
- yarou 11y ago
  Gibson was already alluding to these in Neuromancer. > Now he slept in the cheapest coffins, the ones nearest the port, beneath the quartz-halogen floods that lit the docks all night like vast stages; where you couldn’t see the lights of Tokyo for the glare of the television sky, not even the towering hologram logo of the Fuji Electric Company, and Tokyo Bay was a black expanse where gulls wheeled above drifting shoals of white styrofoam.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
  Apropos of not a whole hell of a lot: I remember my wife laughing at the neighbor who had his 11,000 sq ft house on 30 acres of land (fantastic view!) for sale at $4M because it would never sell for that much. I really, really hope the $4M bungalow is an exaggeration, but I suspect if so, it's not by much.
  - shas3 11y ago
    Unlikely to be an exaggeration! I know engineers with 5-10 yrs experience having little choice but to buy homes that cost $1-1.5e6. Can they afford it? Probably so, but certainly at the cost of lesser savings.
mahyarm 11y ago
Nobody really uses the ball pits or the video games at these companies. Maybe some companies have foosball lunch tradition at most. Meals at the company although are a real time and money saver for everyone. What most people do when the company doesn't provide lunch is walk (or drive) as a group to some local restaurant and have lunch out, every work day. What people with families is commute from the cheaper SFH suburbs into work. It means shitty 30-1hr commutes, but that is life for many americans already.
- untog 11y ago
  > What most people do when the company doesn't provide lunch is walk (or drive) as a group to some local restaurant and have lunch out, every work day. I feel like you're describing this as a negative when it sounds like a huge positive to me.
  - mahyarm 11y ago
    Typical SV let's go for lunch: 1. get car / gather people in 5m 2. wait in traffic for 15m 3. look for parking for 10m 4. wait in restaurant & eat for 1hr or get sandwich and eat in 30m. 5. get back to car in 5m 6. wait in traffic for another 15m And 1.5-2 hrs later you're back at work. Nice to do for special occasions, not so good every day. If SV companies didn't provide lunch by default, the entire south bay would be in gridlock during lunch time. If you're close to restaurants then this is far more practical since you just need to walk for 10m. But if your office parks at least a 15m drive from the restaurants, it isn't. What I do is go out for lunch with coworkers at the company cafe.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  Lunch at work is a great idea, for both company and employees, especially if the company is kinda far from food options. I'd probably rather work at a company that pays slightly more and is located near lots of good food in a downtown/walkable area than one that feeds me, unless their kitchens are as good as Google, but it's kind of a toss up. I'm always excited to get invited to Google for lunch, but I doubt most companies do it anywhere near as well as Google. But, breakfast and dinner, too? I begin to question the motives of the company. If it is to enable/encourage a flexible schedule so that employees can make their commute at low-traffic times, awesome! If it is so that employees feel compelled to be in the office 12 hours a day, it's much less awesome. I think Google is a decent example of the former (while still having some traits of the latter). Again, it's easy for it to be used to enable age discrimination and discrimination against people with children and lives outside of work, without ever explicitly doing so. Anyway, I'm not actually trying to say a company feeding their employees is a bad thing. I'm trying to say that there's been a trend of taking tech workers right out of college and sort of continuing their dorm life well into their late 20s and even 30s, and I don't know that it is particularly healthy (for the workers or society in these areas). It's easy to lack empathy when every interaction is with people just like you, which is why I think there's been a recent clash against Google and other tech behemoths in SF communities. There's a lack of engagement in the rest of civil society when you live and breathe work, and live surrounded by people who do exactly the same kind of work, and are living exactly the same kind of life.
mc32 11y ago
I agree with a lot you say and also disagree. Yes it's infantilization (and then we complain about 'bro/frat maybe soon sis/soro culture?) but something has to give. It's not that different from the factory housing of old, but with a modern twist emphasizing fraternity and sorority aspects as well as new modern, post consumer society. In the end, if it takes off, the test will be better off. The new workforce will have their parties and music and other "entertainment" in their corner while those with families may be able to afford normal housing --again ic sufficient numbers take the pressure off housing stock... I don't think they'll take off as a solution, people may see them as "transitional" housing you inhabit while single, but move on and into regular housing once coupled or reproductive.
- e12e 11y ago
  What kind of factory housing are you thinking of? The brick houses that are sectioned into smaller apartments around the world (eg: London) because our modern society says that they're "too big" (implication being that while worker productivity has skyrocketed, that gain is for the business owners, not for the workers)... The "factory housing" of old, found the factory worker to be so productive, that his spouse could dedicate herself to house work -- and the single salary would be enough to provide for the whole family. Now with more equal opportunity, even with both people in a household being "factory workers" -- suddenly giving people a flat suitable to raise children in isn't financially sustainable any more? Or were you thinking about the Chinese factory "dorms" of the modern age?

TTPrograms 11y ago

If younger workers live there then there's less demand for apartments, which should reduce costs for families too. Not that I'd want to live there, but older workers might still stand to benefit.

Aeolos 11y ago
The demand for apartments would not lessen, given that almost everyone would prefer to live in a real apartment rather than a Nerd Storage Facility.
e40 11y ago
I was thinking the same thing. For the just-out-of-college, it might be a nice thing. For a short while. Save up for a house while you're there and have the benefits of the high density of young people.

jordanb 11y ago

The VCs are also NIMBYs: they're in those $4 million bungalows in Palo Alto and they're loving the appreciation, so you could say they're working both ends. I propose these dorms be called Nerd Storage Units (NSUs).

yarou 11y ago
Gibson was already alluding to these in Neuromancer. > Now he slept in the cheapest coffins, the ones nearest the port, beneath the quartz-halogen floods that lit the docks all night like vast stages; where you couldn’t see the lights of Tokyo for the glare of the television sky, not even the towering hologram logo of the Fuji Electric Company, and Tokyo Bay was a black expanse where gulls wheeled above drifting shoals of white styrofoam.
HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
Apropos of not a whole hell of a lot: I remember my wife laughing at the neighbor who had his 11,000 sq ft house on 30 acres of land (fantastic view!) for sale at $4M because it would never sell for that much. I really, really hope the $4M bungalow is an exaggeration, but I suspect if so, it's not by much.
- shas3 11y ago
  Unlikely to be an exaggeration! I know engineers with 5-10 yrs experience having little choice but to buy homes that cost $1-1.5e6. Can they afford it? Probably so, but certainly at the cost of lesser savings.

mahyarm 11y ago

Nobody really uses the ball pits or the video games at these companies. Maybe some companies have foosball lunch tradition at most. Meals at the company although are a real time and money saver for everyone. What most people do when the company doesn't provide lunch is walk (or drive) as a group to some local restaurant and have lunch out, every work day. What people with families is commute from the cheaper SFH suburbs into work. It means shitty 30-1hr commutes, but that is life for many americans already.

untog 11y ago
> What most people do when the company doesn't provide lunch is walk (or drive) as a group to some local restaurant and have lunch out, every work day. I feel like you're describing this as a negative when it sounds like a huge positive to me.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  Typical SV let's go for lunch: 1. get car / gather people in 5m 2. wait in traffic for 15m 3. look for parking for 10m 4. wait in restaurant & eat for 1hr or get sandwich and eat in 30m. 5. get back to car in 5m 6. wait in traffic for another 15m And 1.5-2 hrs later you're back at work. Nice to do for special occasions, not so good every day. If SV companies didn't provide lunch by default, the entire south bay would be in gridlock during lunch time. If you're close to restaurants then this is far more practical since you just need to walk for 10m. But if your office parks at least a 15m drive from the restaurants, it isn't. What I do is go out for lunch with coworkers at the company cafe.
SwellJoe 11y ago
Lunch at work is a great idea, for both company and employees, especially if the company is kinda far from food options. I'd probably rather work at a company that pays slightly more and is located near lots of good food in a downtown/walkable area than one that feeds me, unless their kitchens are as good as Google, but it's kind of a toss up. I'm always excited to get invited to Google for lunch, but I doubt most companies do it anywhere near as well as Google. But, breakfast and dinner, too? I begin to question the motives of the company. If it is to enable/encourage a flexible schedule so that employees can make their commute at low-traffic times, awesome! If it is so that employees feel compelled to be in the office 12 hours a day, it's much less awesome. I think Google is a decent example of the former (while still having some traits of the latter). Again, it's easy for it to be used to enable age discrimination and discrimination against people with children and lives outside of work, without ever explicitly doing so. Anyway, I'm not actually trying to say a company feeding their employees is a bad thing. I'm trying to say that there's been a trend of taking tech workers right out of college and sort of continuing their dorm life well into their late 20s and even 30s, and I don't know that it is particularly healthy (for the workers or society in these areas). It's easy to lack empathy when every interaction is with people just like you, which is why I think there's been a recent clash against Google and other tech behemoths in SF communities. There's a lack of engagement in the rest of civil society when you live and breathe work, and live surrounded by people who do exactly the same kind of work, and are living exactly the same kind of life.

mc32 11y ago

I agree with a lot you say and also disagree. Yes it's infantilization (and then we complain about 'bro/frat maybe soon sis/soro culture?) but something has to give. It's not that different from the factory housing of old, but with a modern twist emphasizing fraternity and sorority aspects as well as new modern, post consumer society. In the end, if it takes off, the test will be better off. The new workforce will have their parties and music and other "entertainment" in their corner while those with families may be able to afford normal housing --again ic sufficient numbers take the pressure off housing stock... I don't think they'll take off as a solution, people may see them as "transitional" housing you inhabit while single, but move on and into regular housing once coupled or reproductive.

e12e 11y ago
What kind of factory housing are you thinking of? The brick houses that are sectioned into smaller apartments around the world (eg: London) because our modern society says that they're "too big" (implication being that while worker productivity has skyrocketed, that gain is for the business owners, not for the workers)... The "factory housing" of old, found the factory worker to be so productive, that his spouse could dedicate herself to house work -- and the single salary would be enough to provide for the whole family. Now with more equal opportunity, even with both people in a household being "factory workers" -- suddenly giving people a flat suitable to raise children in isn't financially sustainable any more? Or were you thinking about the Chinese factory "dorms" of the modern age?