17 ms·
Real story of “Yelp Girl” who called out CEO for low pay
- minimaxir 10y ago> “I feel you can’t be internet famous unless you’re verified and making money off your tweets,” Talia Jane says. “I was internet ‘Temporarily Recognized, Slightly.’ People were like ‘oh!’ and that’s it.” Interesting quote for Backchannel to highlight since they did a feature on Greg Gopman, whose internet "fame" was definitely not temporary.
- justizin 10y agoInfamy is different from fame. Greg Gopman is a trash fire and continues to pour accelerants on himself.
- snug 10y agoYelp office is in concord yet she lived in the city? With her wages, why did she move 30 miles away where rent is significantly higher. You could probably get away with $500 rent in concord with a roommate situation. Edit: Whoops, read that wrong. She actually lives in Concord and worked in SF.
- m00x 10y agoShe lived in Concord. Yelp's office is in SF.
- oarsinsync 10y ago> The only place she could find that cost less than the $1,466 she’d be making in a month at Yelp was 30 miles east of San Francisco, in Concord. You've got that the wrong way round, she was living in Concord, and without a roommate because... > Her only lead on a roommate had fallen through, and she wanted to take time to find someone who she “wasn’t afraid would murder me, because I don’t really know anyone.”
- seattle_spring 10y ago> she wanted to take time to find someone who she “wasn’t afraid would murder me, because I don’t really know anyone.” I'm sorry, but her insecurities are 100% her fault. Are we supposed to feel sorry for her because she moved to SF on her own? Almost everyone I know did that!
- autotune 10y agoTook me about a week to find some roommates through reddit.com/r/sfbayareahousing when I first moved out here, then about a day to find some new roommates and a decent place to live on craigslist outside of that. Before that I used airbnb.com to find a place and there are a good number that are under $1000 a month outside downtown SF. She could've done something similar.
- timr 10y ago"Before that I used airbnb.com to find a place and there are a good number that are under $1000 a month outside downtown SF. She could've done something similar." OK...I just did. I found nothing less than $1500 a month, even expanding my search radius to include Marin, the entire east bay, and all of South San Francisco. The average nightly is $179. Of all the things in her post that you could choose be self-righteous about, her rent is the one that makes the least sense. Her budget was realistic. She wasn't living in luxury. People blow my mind. Stand up for something better than poverty, and you get attacked not just from the top, but from the bottom as well.
- 10y ago
- justizin 10y agoConcord, for the record, is REALLY far from SF. A person who lives in Concord and works in SF would spend almost all of their life commuting and working.
- dominotw 10y agosounds like SFO landlords are partly to blame for approving leases without doing any checks as to weather the tenant is actually capable of paying their high rents .
- e40 10y agoI seriously doubt this is the norm. I know a few landlords of properties in the East Bay and they always do these checks.
- mr_tristan 10y agoUmmm... SFO landlords have huge demands for their apartments. It's pretty common for them to demand you pay for them to do a credit check just to apply to rent their apartment. So I seriously doubt there are many that decide "you're cool, I'll rent to you". Of course, you can always find an idiot, but I've never heard of anyone who rents without a credit check.
- justizin 10y agoShe had a roommate, the roommate situation failed. This is a common crisis for people in the SF Bay. You're a damned fool if you think they don't run credit and income verification in the most competitive rental market in the world. Apartments go off the market in a day here fairly often.
- prodigal_erik 10y agoDon't they require each tenant to be able to afford the apartment in case the other disappears?
- wdmeldon 10y agoGenerally that means that the roommate would still be on the lease. Which is generally incentive enough for someone not to bail on a lease.
- kelukelugames 10y ago>People ransacked Talia’s social media for clues to her lifestyle, seizing upon anything that hinted at extravagance, or concocting back stories. >Everywhere, people questioned just how poor Talia was. She defended the prosciutto-and-brie biscuits in her Twitter feed to a Quartz reporter after critics interpreted it as a sign of secret wealth; she said the ingredients were a gift from a date. Vice wanted to know why she had a bottle of Bulleit bourbon — she explained she needed it for mint julep cupcakes for work. Yeesh. Poor people can't have nice things in more ways than one.
- bane 10y agoFile under the "it's expensive to be poor". One observation from growing up poor, around lots of other poor people (but not something I noticed in people who I'd classify as falling into "true" poverty) is the crazy amount of money that gets spent on absolute bullshit in some desperate attempt to make the life-suck less awful. I could list some examples, but the stereotype of poor people with expensive shoes or lots of cheap jewelry or whatever is often partially true.
- drzaiusapelord 10y agoThis is why so many people can't work their way out of it. $300 sneakers to look cool in the ghetto or a community college class? A $600 iphone or a laptop for your kids? A new tat or new clothes for your kids? When I lived in a 'up and coming' urban neighborhood, my unemployed/welfare neighbors had nicer shoes and phones than I did. But they partied until 2 or 3 while I had to go to bed early for work. Part of the problem of being poor is lack of self-control and lack of planning and how that all culminates into a endless party/bling lifestyle. This is why education is seen as the solution to being poor, not necessarily a lifetime of handouts. Income distribution hits the laws of diminishing returns pretty fast. Some people, unfortunately, can't accept this for political reasons, hence all my drive-by downvotes.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoThat and family planning. Poor kids have babies that are guaranteed poverty from birth and likelier to deal with the same situation as (very young) adults. More unwanted children means more strain on the system that could otherwise more readily help the poor person trying to get a leg up and doesn't party till 2 in the morning. And that means double for people who have it hard as it is without having to be a parent as well. I can't imagine making birth control pills OTC and free of charge would be more expensive in the long run than a steadily increasing line for welfare checks and SNAP benefits. Edit: if one person can explain why they are downvoting me, I would love to listen. Otherwise I assume you all think I'm shitty because I think birth control should be available to everyone, especially people who aren't ready to have kids.
- mrbill 10y agoSo she can't afford SF.. now she's moving to NYC? I can't understand that logic at all.
- dkopi 10y agoShe'll have her entire life to live in the suburbs. Some people love big cities and want the experience of living in a big city. Even if difficult to afford. Also - very few places in the US where you can manage without a car and driving.
- refurb 10y agoEven if difficult to afford. So she's making a deliberate choice to live in an expensive area because she wants to vs. needs to? Should she be complaining then?
- blackguardx 10y agoI've lived in both places. It is easier to live cheaply in NYC. I think this is because of increased competition. There are a lot more restaurants and little food stores in NYC than SF. Many more poor people live in NYC than SF and there are more businesses that cater to them.
- steveklabnik 10y agoI moved from SF to Brooklyn. Brooklyn is cheaper, or at least, was for me. It's a big place.
- eumoria 10y agoI'm in Brooklyn as well some parts are very inexpensive if you're willing to not live in the gentrified fantasyland that most of northern Brooklyn is.
- danso 10y agoI moved from a downtown Manhattan apartment to a Menlo Park converted garage. I pay substantially more for rent and I had to buy a car.
- ndesaulniers 10y ago"social media driven outrage culture"
- andrewfromx 10y agoi would pay money to watch http://www.daveramsey.com/ http://www.daveramsey.com/ interview Talia Jane.
- justizin 10y agoBecause he would advise her to save more when she can't afford rent or food? lol. Assuming this is a joke, I would pay to watch your stand-up comedy.
- whatok 10y agoHe might advise her to not spend money to move to somewhere for a job that cannot pay her rent.
- andrewfromx 10y agono joke. he would advise her to babysit for $20 an hour on the side. Mow lawns. Move away from SF. She's the classic victim and dave screams "YOU ARE NOT A VICTIM"
- hnal943 10y agoThat's immediately who I thought of when I read her story. If only she had been through Financial Peace University she would have saved herself years of heartache.
- jeremyt 10y agoThis girl is so obnoxious. When I did a startup in San Francisco in 2008, I stayed in a shared house in South San Francisco with immigrants. I was informed after the day I moved in that I wouldn't have access to the kitchen. My rent was $500 per month. I know things are more expensive now than they used to be, but I just clicked over to Craigslist and found hundreds of listings for less than $1000 per month for a room in a shared house. Here's one: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/roo/5557466505.html https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/roo/5557466505.html And that's in the middle of the city. Here's the search...they're all over the place: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/roo?max_price=1000 https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/roo?max_price=1000 I'm sorry, but I was over 30 years old before I lived by myself without a roommate. This is just plain entitlement and whining.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoShe had a plan to start: find a place to live, get a job, find roommates that wouldn't get her involved in a murder conspiracy. Then the stress of life wore her down. She should have moved into a shared apartment earlier. Also later. But when you're poor and stressed, everything is hard. Maybe she's entitled. Maybe you lack empathy. I suspect both.
- jeremyt 10y agoI don't need to have empathy, I have memory. I've been easily as poor as she was. I lived a year and a half in Washington DC on $1000 per month. My living budget for working on the startup in SF was barely more than that. I don't really care to be lectured about stress either. Living in SF and trying to do a startup was the most stressful part of my life, and at one point my doctor told me if I didn't get out I was going to die at 30. I was the sole technical founder of a startup, and I happened to have severe tendinitis in my forearms, which I had to work through. I didn't have enough money to actually get treatment or go to physical therapy, either.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoYou were poor, like Talia. But were you ever Talia? Your experiences were not hers. Similar, maybe. But not the same. Drawing on your experiences without empathy means you are making decisions from the wrong data set. And that is why memory without empathy serves no one but yourself.
- yuzi 10y agoI really don't understand why companies that know they are paying poverty like wages for an area don't just move the company or segment of the company to a more affordable area. It seems obvious to me they really just don't care about their employees.
- kelukelugames 10y agoThe founder of Zappos had this problem. He realized there was no way he could do shipping or call centers in the Bay Area. So he moved shipping to Kentucky and call centers to Nevada.
- beat 10y agoCompanies start by not having a low-skill, low-wage support staff at all. Then they add it, but they add it locally - in the Bay area, if they're a Bay area company. Eventually, cost wins out and the call center gets moved somewhere cheaper, like a dying Midwest industrial city, or India. But that sort of move requires a great deal of corporate maturity. It's okay to overspend in the name of short-term convenience when you're still kind of a startup.
- phamilton 10y agoWhat I don't get is why they don't have the call center in Concord instead of SF. Office space is cheaper, and there is plenty of labor available out there.
- hnal943 10y agoWhy is it the company's responsibility to determine if you can afford to work for them or not? They would adjust their practices if the market demanded it.
- tn13 10y agoThat is right and I see most of startups and small business feeling the heat already. I left my last company for the only reason that with the salary they were giving me I could not even qualify for most of the apartments in bay area. Fixing real-estate prices by deregulating land usage is number 1 thing government can do to help poor people in bay area but they wont.
- michael_h 10y agoI'm having a hard time understanding why people are latching onto the Bulleit Bourbon - it's $15.
- odonnellryan 10y agoIt's like $60 for a huge bottle.
- jahewson 10y agoMore like $23 in California. But yes, hardly expensive.
- imroot 10y agoIt's not a bad "base" bourbon, and for the longest time, it was distilled and aged at Four Roses. It also pairs really well with citrus (for use in an old fashioned). The pricing of Bulleit is sometimes weird: I was in Vegas last year and a 750 of Bulleit was $60, but, a 750 of Woodford Reserve was $35.
- wdmeldon 10y agoWhere is this magical place you live?
- whatok 10y agoI find it hard to take someone seriously if they are complaining about having to eat rice for every meal (hey welcome to whatok's childhood) and then somehow has money for non-plastic bottle whiskey.
- pnathan 10y agomy big question is why Talia is having hit pieces written on her...