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I'm sorry but this is so f*cking stupid. As a Bay Area resident my priorities are the cost of housing, cleaning our dirty streets and alleviating traffic conge

I'm sorry but this is so f*cking stupid. As a Bay Area resident my priorities are the cost of housing, cleaning our dirty streets and alleviating traffic congestion. This is an example of progressivism gone awry. Solving the basics is incredibly important. Our quality of life is in decline (in the bay area) and this is the best our politicians can do? I'm enraged.

DeepYogurt 8y ago
If all tech workers went out for lunch every day that would be a huge boon to the local low skill labor market.
- Vordax 8y ago
  What about all the employees that work in the cafeterias at Facebook?
  - tidon12 8y ago
    This is the real point. The idea that somehow the catering business serving startups or the kitchen workers in cafes are somehow less worthy of support than owners of restaurants
    - dunpeal 8y ago
      To be fair, there are a lot of efficiency gains and economies of scale involved. Google pays a lot less to provide an employee with a nutritious, healthy meal than the same employee would be paying for a less healthy meal in your typical local restaurant. So this law will create more local jobs in the short term... except the next Techplex will not be built in MTV, which will lose it far more local jobs than it gained.
      - extradego 8y ago
        Great points. If only the public could elect the officials in charge at Google so these kinds of efficiencies could benefit the whole of society... Wait... I think that’s called democratic socialism. Oh and hey I found a website for it. Check it out: https://dsausa.org https://dsausa.org Awesome! Don’t confuse this restaurant nonsense for a leftist progressive agenda. This is moderate hype designed to appease small business owners without affecting corporate profits or contending with systematic income inequality. Broadly speaking, those cafeteria workers have nothing to lose either way. A real left agenda would seek to change that.
    - rtkwe 8y ago
      Restaurants do have some added benefits over just a catering business though and those are mentioned in the article. Restaurants bring foot traffic to areas that other shops can benefit from where a catering business doesn't.
    - repsilat 8y ago
      No, this is not the real point. Employment isn't an upside, that's the broken window fallacy. Employees should be allowed to bring food from home to eat at their desks if they want, and that is obviously terrible for jobs in local cafes and restaurants.
  - danjoc 8y ago
    Suddenly everyone cares about their dear Facebook cafeteria workers? https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Facebook-cafeteria-workers-live-garage-Guardian-11390368.php https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Facebook-cafeteria-worke... People cheating on their income taxes to the tune of thousands of dollars a year each in free lunches are now more likely to comply with the law. This seems like a step in the right direction.
    - Bramble 8y ago
      It's a shame that bay area housing prices, which higher paid tech workers already struggle with, are even more of a burden for Facebook cafeteria workers, who make less money than many of those they serve every day. Thankfully, since your year-old article, Facebook cafeteria workers have unionized. I hope it's helped. Still, it's unlikely that food service and retail workers in these cities are having an easier time making ends meet. The article you linked acknowledged that the cafeteria workers were making well above CA minimum wage - do you think the same can be said for all the restaurant/shop employees in the bay? Is there a reason we should be more concerned about some service industry employees over others? Do you have a source for your claim that people are cheating on their income taxes to the tune of thousands of dollars a year?
      - dunpeal 8y ago
        > Still, it's unlikely that food service and retail workers in these cities are having an easier time making ends meet. The article you linked acknowledged that the cafeteria workers were making well above CA minimum wage - do you think the same can be said for all the restaurant/shop employees in the bay? Hit the nail on the head. All this concern for a relatively tiny number of tech cafeteria workers who are actually in much better shape than the vast majority of food industry employees. McDonalds pays the absolute minimum to its legions employees, and has to give them booklets that try (and fail) to do the math of how they can survive on their meager income. Meanwhile, bit tech pays their workers much better, but let's pick on them since they're evil!
  - briandear 8y ago
    Those employees don’t contribute to the campaigns of the relevant politicians while local business owners are highly involved.
- banachtarski 8y ago
  Not everyone who works at a tech company is an engineer. In fact, engineers probably do not even constitute the majority of the workforce for many large bay area "tech" companies.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  So over 20,000 employees would leave the Googleplex every day at noon to get lunch? This just means the next massive campus complex will not open in Mountain View. Big profitable companies and their hordes of tax paying employees will go elsewhere, and definitely will not be supporting MTV's local businesses. Welcome to the wonderful world of unintended consequences!
  - megy 8y ago
    No, maybe they would come to the Googleplex. A huge boon in food trucks.
    - dunpeal 8y ago
      The Googleplex has over 20,000 employees, and food trucks are among the least efficient ways to feed them. You'd have huge convoys of food trucks entering and leaving the Googleplex for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Access control is vital in a location like a tech company's headquarters. With hundreds of random food trucks coming and going every day, such control will become impossible. Finally, food trucks are notorious for cutting corners when it comes to food quality, especially any health concerns. I would now want myself or my employees eating from food trucks all day, every day.
      - nostrademons 8y ago
        The Village at San Antonio is not North Bayshore. This wouldn't work at Google's current campus because there are literally not enough restaurants to feed everyone - there were 4 when I worked there (Sports Page + the Sunnybowl/Falafel/Sushi complex), and since then Sports Page has closed and there are apparently a few new ones by the Computer History Museum. Perhaps the new zoning plans for North Bayshore include more, but it'll be years before that's done. But when The Village was zoned, it was explicitly done with street-level retail for a wide variety of restaurants. There are over a dozen restaurants within a 5-minute walk of Facebook's offices, plus a Walmart, Safeway, Whole Foods, and produce market, all of which have ready-to-eat meals. Something that's left out of a lot of the news coverage of this: it's not a law but a development condition attached to the particular property that Facebook is occupying. When a real-estate developer wants to develop a piece of property, there's a complex negotiation with the local municipality (or county, if it's in unincorporated land) that includes things like contracting for water/sewer/garbage services, how to ensure there's adequate police & fire coverage, how the town will build new roads to handle traffic generated from the property, what's the impact on schools & community services, and what types of dwellings & permitted uses are available for the property (you can't build a skyscraper in the path of SJC airport, for example, nor can you build a chip fab on residential land). Written into that contract is the cafeteria clause under discussion here. While I have some doubts about whether this is a good thing (I've got another comment here where I expressed mixed feelings), it's a contract and not a law, and obviously Facebook has felt that the restriction is not too onerous for the building to be worth occupying.
- deathanatos 8y ago
  I skip breakfast, because the commute is so terrible that by the time I get to the office, it is too late, and I am unwilling to wake up any earlier in the morning for it. (Though, if I really did force myself to have breakfast, I would be waking up for it, not eating out.) As for lunch, my company only provides it once per week. On the one day we do provide it, it is catered, and thus requires local labor. On the other days, I go out to get it. My favorite sandwich shop just closed; my coworker's favorite Korean place closed with them. If I had to guess, I would suspect they simply couldn't sustain themselves with the rents as they are. Their prices were decent. Other nearby eateries with more of a, for want of a better word, hipster feel to them charge significantly more for less food; I avoid eating there because over the course of the entire year, it represents a non-trivial amount of money. But if it comes to it that they're the only ones that can survive, I'll probably just abandon eating out altogether. As it is, I'm making plans to abandon SV altogether primarily due to the issues mentioned by your parent: the ever declining quality of life in the Bay Area. Will that be a boon to the local market?
- pascalxus 8y ago
  are you kidding me? There's already enormous demand for unskilled labor. Every single cafe and restaurant i encounter here in the bay area has positions open in the kitchen, dishwasher and waiters. One restaurant had 9+ positions open!
  - deadmetheny 8y ago
    And getting one of those jobs means fuck-all when tech workers have you priced out of living withing any sort of reasonable commute to your low-wage service industry job.
- tmh79 8y ago
  how are the existing cafeterias in mountain view not part of the "local low skill labor market" they pay well, better than restaurants, and they have better hours and benefits
- mrep 8y ago
  Except not everyone would. I ate out like once a month at my old company that didn't provide food and now eat breakfast and lunch everyday at my new office that does. If free food is banned, a lot of people will be like me would prepare their own food decreasing the overall demand for workers to make food.
dunpeal 8y ago
> Solving the basics is incredibly important. Ah, but you see, it is also difficult! "Dirty streets" and "traffic congestion" are big, messy problems, requiring careful planning, managing projects and contractors, adversarial factors, etc. By contrast, passing laws that apply to corporations is so easy! They are generally law abiding, so you just tell them "no more free food for you!", and they obey. Until, you know, they skip town and you are left with nothing. But that will likely happen after my tenure in the local legislative body, so my utility horizon is rather shorter term...
- JimboOmega 8y ago
  I really wonder what it will take to kill this Golden Goose. Bay area employees are already a big premium over employees in other areas, but companies still really want to be here. No free food is almost asinine... but it's not a big thing compared to the extra cost in salaries.
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    I'm wondering the same. Two growing trends that I'm observing: 1. Businesses moving out of California, especially NorCal. Sergey Brin already said two years ago that he would not have started Google in NorCal today. He was right. There's a lot more interest in other locations, such as Austin. 2. Remote work, and fully remote virtual offices. Personally I know a bunch of people who declined offers in the SFBay to avoid the pincer squeeze of impossible housing costs + highest tax rate in the nation. A friend of mine did the math and realized that downtown Manhattan (!) was more affordable for him than the Bay. This stupid rule will not be the last straw. I do think it will deter companies from starting large complexes in MTV specifically, and SF if it passes this same rule. It is however a sign of the arrogance and greed of municipalities, and their mistaken belief that they can just keep squeezing big tech indefinitely.
    - AceJohnny2 8y ago
      > There's a lot more interest in other locations, such as Austin. Which, I hear, is quickly catching up to Bay Area in terms of cost of living.
sampo 8y ago
> As a Bay Area resident my priorities are the cost of housing, cleaning our dirty streets and alleviating traffic congestion. As far as I understand, the prevailing policy is doing the exact opposite on all those three.
- JimboOmega 8y ago
  Yup. Prevent construction of new housing. Forcing prices up, putting more people on the streets or commuting from an Exurb.
phyzome 8y ago
I sure wouldn't call this progressivism of any sort, for that matter.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> This is an example of progressivism gone awry. Except it's actually an example of crony capitalism gone...well, perfectly according to design, actually. There's nothing even remotely progressive about restricting all other businesses just to boost business for a particular industry.
- justinzollars 8y ago
  The progressives of the Board of Supervisors introduced this. To my knowledge it isn't the moderate members. Perhaps its crony capitalism, perhaps its something more sinister - this plays into the local anti-tech narrative. Whatever it is, it isn't addressing the important basics to improve our quality of life.
everdev 8y ago
It would be nice if politicians had to disclose conflicts of interest when proposing legislation. I'm sure this shot to the top of the priority list not out of some moral imperative, but because someone somewhere was losing a buck, or could make a buck if this passed.
- Shivetya 8y ago
  disclose a conflict? this is what politicians do here, the place one group against another to profit off of it come election time. this to them is a freebie because they believe they can only get good will from the populace as a whole by exploiting both wealth and privilege envy. This is just skimming low hanging fruit and a free distraction from real problems they either cannot fix or don't consider worth their time. plus they win if the "elitist" complain about having to give up their free lunch I can understand why some are outraged but this is the old adage of, I didn't speak up when they came for the .....
- djcapelis 8y ago
  ... Peskin is many things, but he's not someone who proposed legislation because someone bought him off.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Does he accept no campaign donations? Does he never meet with lobbyists? What do you think that is?
  - everdev 8y ago
    Reputations are good until they're not. People are fallible and there plenty of examples of politicians who have a public image and a backroom one. I don't know Peskin and there are many honest hard working politicians, but safeguards like disclosing conflicts of interest aren't terribly burdensome for good politicians but can help generate legal consequences for the bad ones.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Having a direct financial interest is not the only reason someone can propose bad legislation. Politics run on favors and negotiations. I might not be bought off by an outside interest, but I might owe one to my friend, who might owe one to his friend, who turns out to have a deal with the outside interest...
Camillo 8y ago
Yes, but are you going to do anything about it? If you work at one of the big tech companies in the bay area, chances are you either cannot vote or you're only ever going to vote for the incumbent party, so what does it matter to them if they piss you off?
- patejam 8y ago
  For the SF locals, it's usually democrats vs democrats, so party affiliation doesn't really matter. Because of this, inucumbents are much more easily voted out of office on the supervisor level (which is where this is coming from). So... vote when you can!
  - justinzollars 8y ago
    True. But there are moderates to consider.
  - almost_usual 8y ago
    This is true but the Bay Area local democrats will be the majority. Hell, you're pretty much a republican in their eyes as a tech worker. This will continue to be a thing as long as the upper-middle class isolates themselves through Uber / Lyft, fancy restaurants, and private shuttles. What's ironic is there are lot of upper-middle class people who live this lifestyle who aren't in tech but still shit on tech. Tech gets the bad wrap because it's the narrative. We have to start proving people wrong.
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      Part of the problem with tech's rep is the free dinners...the tech community is notoriously insular in the Bay Area in ways it is not in other tech hubs like LA, Boston, NYC, or Austin. It doesn't help that the most visible techies, like Peter Thiel and Vinod Khosla, abuse their tech-derived riches in blatant attempts to remake California into their own fantasy playlands. (This is a problem unique to tech--non-tech billionaires tend to do things like build museums.)
zjaffee 8y ago
I'm not sure if they are directly related, but either way, given that the twitter tax brakes were supposed to bring new life to mid market yet hardly did anything. Is this a way to reconcile the damage that came from those tax breaks?
- jtmcmc 8y ago
  from https://sfcontroller.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/5914-CMPTE%203%20year%20review_final.pdf https://sfcontroller.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Docu... Businesses within the Area paid $7.6 million more in payroll tax in 2013 than they did in 2010. While some increase would be expected because of the economic recovery, the Area generated $7.1 million more in payroll tax than it would have, if it had grown at the same rate as the rest of the city from 2010 to 2013. Also based on payroll tax filings, there were 61 more businesses in the Area in 2013 than there were in 2010. Again, some increase would be expected, but there were 32 more than there would have been if the number of businesses in the Area grew the same rate as the rest of the city from 2010 to 2013 Taxable sales, which reflect the health of neighborhood-serving retail businesses, grew more slowly in the Area than the rest of the city from 2010 to 2013—a 10% increase as opposed to a 25% increase in the rest of the city. Had taxable sales in the Area grown at the same rate as the rest of the city, an additional $90,000 in sales tax would have been generated. An examination of trends in commercial rent, residential asking rents, and housing values in the Area revealed that, while increases have been rapid since the exclusion took effect, similarly rapid increases were seen in the rest of the city, and there was no appreciable difference between the Area and the rest of the city in the growth of commercial and residential rents, and housing prices.
dmode 8y ago
Don't get caught up and be enraged by clickbait BI headlines. Bay Area cities are not cracking down on anything. There is exactly one passed rule so far. And that is by Mountain View that only applies to a single office development. The SF rule is on proposal stages and is unlikely to pass.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  > And that is by Mountain View that only applies to a single office development. That is not true. The rule applies to all new offices in MTV. The Facebook office just happens to be the first new office that was completed with the intention to provide free food, since the law passed. (Applying a rule like that to Facebook alone - on what basis, exactly? - would be discriminatory, unusual, and likely unenforceable.) > The SF rule is on proposal stages and is unlikely to pass. How do you know that? It has some serious backers, and similar rules passed in nearby municipalities. What evidence do you have that it will not pass in SF as well?
  - dmode 8y ago
    Do you have a source for your first assertion ? This link explicitly says that it applies to the Facebook development https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook-Offices-Means-New-Business-for-Mountain-View-Restaurants-488948401.html https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook-Offices-M... They haven't decided whether to expand to cover Google's expansion For the SF rule, it is only proposed by Peskin and Safai. And Peskin himself said on twitter that this is just a proposal.
    - dunpeal 8y ago
      From TFA: > the city prohibits companies from fully subsidizing meals in the Village, and the rule could spread to other Bay Area cities in the future. So no, it doesn't apply "only to Facebook", it applies to new office complexes, in this particular case the complex called "the Village". It would apply to any companies within that office complex, and potentially any new complexes and offices built in MTV going forward. > For the SF rule, it is only proposed by Peskin and Safai. And Peskin himself said on twitter that this is just a proposal. You only need one lawmaker to propose a new law. Plenty of laws in the book were proposed by one or two lawmakers initially. > Peskin himself said on twitter that this is just a proposal. Not sure what tweet you're referring to. The one I've seen seemed very serious and even militant: > Announcing new leg to ensure on-site tech cafeterias don't continue to chip away at our vibrant neighborhood commercial corridors & small businesses. We're not the suburbs, we're an urban city with a vital local economy that corporations say they want their employees to support https://twitter.com/AaronPeskin/status/1021856608417021952 https://twitter.com/AaronPeskin/status/1021856608417021952 He's saying it's even more necessary in SF than in MTV...
macspoofing 8y ago
>As a Bay Area resident As a Bay Area resident this should be par for the course in terms of the stuff coming from the municipal governments in the area.
mc32 8y ago
They're just pandering to special interest groups --groups they believe will like this move, and since there is no alternative party in the Bay Area, they know most tech workers will not break Repub, so they can do what they want. They still get the tech voter and now they will endear some small progressive cause. But, yes, it's utterly incomprehensible. It's reductionist. Like I said before, ban Uber, ban MUNI, they are taking jobs away from Pedicabs and Taxi drivers... Anyway, it's not Robots (yet) prepping food at the company canteen, they have to hire workers to do the cooking, serving, etc. So it's more or less a wash. Only diff is probably company cafeterias mostly try to ensure workers have a legal right to work in the US.
- necubi 8y ago
  > They're just pandering to special interest groups --groups they believe will like this move, and since there is no alternative party in the Bay Area, they know most tech workers will not break Repub, so they can do what they want. It's true that basically all elected officials in SF are Democrats, but in practice there are two semi-official parties: "progressives" and "moderates." The supervisors pushing this, Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safaí belong to the progressive wing, which recently got a majority on BoS with Rafael Mandelman taking Scott Wiener's old seat. While pretty much united on national political issues, the two groups differ on housing policy (generally, moderates want to build more, progressives less), homelessness, and the proper attitude toward the tech industry (the progressive wing tends to blame it for many of SF's problems).
  - sampo 8y ago
    > "progressives" and "moderates." How did the people who oppose pretty much all progress, came to be named "progressives"?
    - shub 8y ago
      I guess they got the name back when smelling bad and smoking pot was progressive.
    - gaius 8y ago
jstandard 8y ago
These things aren't mutually exclusive. Local governments have many constituencies they need to support, small business being one of the most important. On the flip side of your rage are people who run local businesses having to shutdown, so local officials of Mountain View saw a way to respond to this.
orky56 8y ago
Traffic is going to increase since people will be leaving en mass to go from their campuses to local eateries. Local eateries benefit from urban areas with a high concentration of businesses. This works when you have multiple high rises and/or tons of smaller startups in an area, both of which are common in SF. Mountain View is not suburban but outside of Castro, you need a car to get anywhere for a bite if you're on one of those campuses. With more traffic caused by people leaving their campus more than start/end of day, people will need to account for more traffic. This may cause people to move further out or pay more of a premium for housing in close proximity. If these companies knew ahead of time that this was not allowed, they may not have built their campuses so sprawling or may have avoided these areas altogether.
mcrad 8y ago
Really enraged? I'm not exactly sure what "progressivism" is but seems like accepting financial responsibility for one's own lunch and/or supporting the local deli is far more akin to conservatism.
njharman 8y ago
You do understand that taxes on strong economic base like restaurants is what pays for street cleaning and infrastructure improvement, right? But, yeah this is stupid.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  Maybe it's the concept of public property financed by taxes that's wrong.

DeepYogurt 8y ago

If all tech workers went out for lunch every day that would be a huge boon to the local low skill labor market.

Vordax 8y ago
What about all the employees that work in the cafeterias at Facebook?
- tidon12 8y ago
  This is the real point. The idea that somehow the catering business serving startups or the kitchen workers in cafes are somehow less worthy of support than owners of restaurants
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    To be fair, there are a lot of efficiency gains and economies of scale involved. Google pays a lot less to provide an employee with a nutritious, healthy meal than the same employee would be paying for a less healthy meal in your typical local restaurant. So this law will create more local jobs in the short term... except the next Techplex will not be built in MTV, which will lose it far more local jobs than it gained.
    - extradego 8y ago
      Great points. If only the public could elect the officials in charge at Google so these kinds of efficiencies could benefit the whole of society... Wait... I think that’s called democratic socialism. Oh and hey I found a website for it. Check it out: https://dsausa.org https://dsausa.org Awesome! Don’t confuse this restaurant nonsense for a leftist progressive agenda. This is moderate hype designed to appease small business owners without affecting corporate profits or contending with systematic income inequality. Broadly speaking, those cafeteria workers have nothing to lose either way. A real left agenda would seek to change that.
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    Restaurants do have some added benefits over just a catering business though and those are mentioned in the article. Restaurants bring foot traffic to areas that other shops can benefit from where a catering business doesn't.
  - repsilat 8y ago
    No, this is not the real point. Employment isn't an upside, that's the broken window fallacy. Employees should be allowed to bring food from home to eat at their desks if they want, and that is obviously terrible for jobs in local cafes and restaurants.
- danjoc 8y ago
  Suddenly everyone cares about their dear Facebook cafeteria workers? https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Facebook-cafeteria-workers-live-garage-Guardian-11390368.php https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Facebook-cafeteria-worke... People cheating on their income taxes to the tune of thousands of dollars a year each in free lunches are now more likely to comply with the law. This seems like a step in the right direction.
  - Bramble 8y ago
    It's a shame that bay area housing prices, which higher paid tech workers already struggle with, are even more of a burden for Facebook cafeteria workers, who make less money than many of those they serve every day. Thankfully, since your year-old article, Facebook cafeteria workers have unionized. I hope it's helped. Still, it's unlikely that food service and retail workers in these cities are having an easier time making ends meet. The article you linked acknowledged that the cafeteria workers were making well above CA minimum wage - do you think the same can be said for all the restaurant/shop employees in the bay? Is there a reason we should be more concerned about some service industry employees over others? Do you have a source for your claim that people are cheating on their income taxes to the tune of thousands of dollars a year?
    - dunpeal 8y ago
      > Still, it's unlikely that food service and retail workers in these cities are having an easier time making ends meet. The article you linked acknowledged that the cafeteria workers were making well above CA minimum wage - do you think the same can be said for all the restaurant/shop employees in the bay? Hit the nail on the head. All this concern for a relatively tiny number of tech cafeteria workers who are actually in much better shape than the vast majority of food industry employees. McDonalds pays the absolute minimum to its legions employees, and has to give them booklets that try (and fail) to do the math of how they can survive on their meager income. Meanwhile, bit tech pays their workers much better, but let's pick on them since they're evil!
- briandear 8y ago
  Those employees don’t contribute to the campaigns of the relevant politicians while local business owners are highly involved.
banachtarski 8y ago
Not everyone who works at a tech company is an engineer. In fact, engineers probably do not even constitute the majority of the workforce for many large bay area "tech" companies.
dunpeal 8y ago
So over 20,000 employees would leave the Googleplex every day at noon to get lunch? This just means the next massive campus complex will not open in Mountain View. Big profitable companies and their hordes of tax paying employees will go elsewhere, and definitely will not be supporting MTV's local businesses. Welcome to the wonderful world of unintended consequences!
- megy 8y ago
  No, maybe they would come to the Googleplex. A huge boon in food trucks.
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    The Googleplex has over 20,000 employees, and food trucks are among the least efficient ways to feed them. You'd have huge convoys of food trucks entering and leaving the Googleplex for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Access control is vital in a location like a tech company's headquarters. With hundreds of random food trucks coming and going every day, such control will become impossible. Finally, food trucks are notorious for cutting corners when it comes to food quality, especially any health concerns. I would now want myself or my employees eating from food trucks all day, every day.
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      The Village at San Antonio is not North Bayshore. This wouldn't work at Google's current campus because there are literally not enough restaurants to feed everyone - there were 4 when I worked there (Sports Page + the Sunnybowl/Falafel/Sushi complex), and since then Sports Page has closed and there are apparently a few new ones by the Computer History Museum. Perhaps the new zoning plans for North Bayshore include more, but it'll be years before that's done. But when The Village was zoned, it was explicitly done with street-level retail for a wide variety of restaurants. There are over a dozen restaurants within a 5-minute walk of Facebook's offices, plus a Walmart, Safeway, Whole Foods, and produce market, all of which have ready-to-eat meals. Something that's left out of a lot of the news coverage of this: it's not a law but a development condition attached to the particular property that Facebook is occupying. When a real-estate developer wants to develop a piece of property, there's a complex negotiation with the local municipality (or county, if it's in unincorporated land) that includes things like contracting for water/sewer/garbage services, how to ensure there's adequate police & fire coverage, how the town will build new roads to handle traffic generated from the property, what's the impact on schools & community services, and what types of dwellings & permitted uses are available for the property (you can't build a skyscraper in the path of SJC airport, for example, nor can you build a chip fab on residential land). Written into that contract is the cafeteria clause under discussion here. While I have some doubts about whether this is a good thing (I've got another comment here where I expressed mixed feelings), it's a contract and not a law, and obviously Facebook has felt that the restriction is not too onerous for the building to be worth occupying.
deathanatos 8y ago
I skip breakfast, because the commute is so terrible that by the time I get to the office, it is too late, and I am unwilling to wake up any earlier in the morning for it. (Though, if I really did force myself to have breakfast, I would be waking up for it, not eating out.) As for lunch, my company only provides it once per week. On the one day we do provide it, it is catered, and thus requires local labor. On the other days, I go out to get it. My favorite sandwich shop just closed; my coworker's favorite Korean place closed with them. If I had to guess, I would suspect they simply couldn't sustain themselves with the rents as they are. Their prices were decent. Other nearby eateries with more of a, for want of a better word, hipster feel to them charge significantly more for less food; I avoid eating there because over the course of the entire year, it represents a non-trivial amount of money. But if it comes to it that they're the only ones that can survive, I'll probably just abandon eating out altogether. As it is, I'm making plans to abandon SV altogether primarily due to the issues mentioned by your parent: the ever declining quality of life in the Bay Area. Will that be a boon to the local market?
pascalxus 8y ago
are you kidding me? There's already enormous demand for unskilled labor. Every single cafe and restaurant i encounter here in the bay area has positions open in the kitchen, dishwasher and waiters. One restaurant had 9+ positions open!
- deadmetheny 8y ago
  And getting one of those jobs means fuck-all when tech workers have you priced out of living withing any sort of reasonable commute to your low-wage service industry job.
tmh79 8y ago
how are the existing cafeterias in mountain view not part of the "local low skill labor market" they pay well, better than restaurants, and they have better hours and benefits
mrep 8y ago
Except not everyone would. I ate out like once a month at my old company that didn't provide food and now eat breakfast and lunch everyday at my new office that does. If free food is banned, a lot of people will be like me would prepare their own food decreasing the overall demand for workers to make food.

dunpeal 8y ago

> Solving the basics is incredibly important. Ah, but you see, it is also difficult! "Dirty streets" and "traffic congestion" are big, messy problems, requiring careful planning, managing projects and contractors, adversarial factors, etc. By contrast, passing laws that apply to corporations is so easy! They are generally law abiding, so you just tell them "no more free food for you!", and they obey. Until, you know, they skip town and you are left with nothing. But that will likely happen after my tenure in the local legislative body, so my utility horizon is rather shorter term...

JimboOmega 8y ago
I really wonder what it will take to kill this Golden Goose. Bay area employees are already a big premium over employees in other areas, but companies still really want to be here. No free food is almost asinine... but it's not a big thing compared to the extra cost in salaries.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  I'm wondering the same. Two growing trends that I'm observing: 1. Businesses moving out of California, especially NorCal. Sergey Brin already said two years ago that he would not have started Google in NorCal today. He was right. There's a lot more interest in other locations, such as Austin. 2. Remote work, and fully remote virtual offices. Personally I know a bunch of people who declined offers in the SFBay to avoid the pincer squeeze of impossible housing costs + highest tax rate in the nation. A friend of mine did the math and realized that downtown Manhattan (!) was more affordable for him than the Bay. This stupid rule will not be the last straw. I do think it will deter companies from starting large complexes in MTV specifically, and SF if it passes this same rule. It is however a sign of the arrogance and greed of municipalities, and their mistaken belief that they can just keep squeezing big tech indefinitely.
  - AceJohnny2 8y ago
    > There's a lot more interest in other locations, such as Austin. Which, I hear, is quickly catching up to Bay Area in terms of cost of living.

sampo 8y ago

> As a Bay Area resident my priorities are the cost of housing, cleaning our dirty streets and alleviating traffic congestion. As far as I understand, the prevailing policy is doing the exact opposite on all those three.

JimboOmega 8y ago
Yup. Prevent construction of new housing. Forcing prices up, putting more people on the streets or commuting from an Exurb.

phyzome 8y ago

I sure wouldn't call this progressivism of any sort, for that matter.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> This is an example of progressivism gone awry. Except it's actually an example of crony capitalism gone...well, perfectly according to design, actually. There's nothing even remotely progressive about restricting all other businesses just to boost business for a particular industry.

justinzollars 8y ago
The progressives of the Board of Supervisors introduced this. To my knowledge it isn't the moderate members. Perhaps its crony capitalism, perhaps its something more sinister - this plays into the local anti-tech narrative. Whatever it is, it isn't addressing the important basics to improve our quality of life.

everdev 8y ago

It would be nice if politicians had to disclose conflicts of interest when proposing legislation. I'm sure this shot to the top of the priority list not out of some moral imperative, but because someone somewhere was losing a buck, or could make a buck if this passed.

Shivetya 8y ago
disclose a conflict? this is what politicians do here, the place one group against another to profit off of it come election time. this to them is a freebie because they believe they can only get good will from the populace as a whole by exploiting both wealth and privilege envy. This is just skimming low hanging fruit and a free distraction from real problems they either cannot fix or don't consider worth their time. plus they win if the "elitist" complain about having to give up their free lunch I can understand why some are outraged but this is the old adage of, I didn't speak up when they came for the .....
djcapelis 8y ago
... Peskin is many things, but he's not someone who proposed legislation because someone bought him off.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Does he accept no campaign donations? Does he never meet with lobbyists? What do you think that is?
- everdev 8y ago
  Reputations are good until they're not. People are fallible and there plenty of examples of politicians who have a public image and a backroom one. I don't know Peskin and there are many honest hard working politicians, but safeguards like disclosing conflicts of interest aren't terribly burdensome for good politicians but can help generate legal consequences for the bad ones.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Having a direct financial interest is not the only reason someone can propose bad legislation. Politics run on favors and negotiations. I might not be bought off by an outside interest, but I might owe one to my friend, who might owe one to his friend, who turns out to have a deal with the outside interest...

Camillo 8y ago

Yes, but are you going to do anything about it? If you work at one of the big tech companies in the bay area, chances are you either cannot vote or you're only ever going to vote for the incumbent party, so what does it matter to them if they piss you off?

patejam 8y ago
For the SF locals, it's usually democrats vs democrats, so party affiliation doesn't really matter. Because of this, inucumbents are much more easily voted out of office on the supervisor level (which is where this is coming from). So... vote when you can!
- justinzollars 8y ago
  True. But there are moderates to consider.
- almost_usual 8y ago
  This is true but the Bay Area local democrats will be the majority. Hell, you're pretty much a republican in their eyes as a tech worker. This will continue to be a thing as long as the upper-middle class isolates themselves through Uber / Lyft, fancy restaurants, and private shuttles. What's ironic is there are lot of upper-middle class people who live this lifestyle who aren't in tech but still shit on tech. Tech gets the bad wrap because it's the narrative. We have to start proving people wrong.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    Part of the problem with tech's rep is the free dinners...the tech community is notoriously insular in the Bay Area in ways it is not in other tech hubs like LA, Boston, NYC, or Austin. It doesn't help that the most visible techies, like Peter Thiel and Vinod Khosla, abuse their tech-derived riches in blatant attempts to remake California into their own fantasy playlands. (This is a problem unique to tech--non-tech billionaires tend to do things like build museums.)

zjaffee 8y ago

I'm not sure if they are directly related, but either way, given that the twitter tax brakes were supposed to bring new life to mid market yet hardly did anything. Is this a way to reconcile the damage that came from those tax breaks?

jtmcmc 8y ago
from https://sfcontroller.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/5914-CMPTE%203%20year%20review_final.pdf https://sfcontroller.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Docu... Businesses within the Area paid $7.6 million more in payroll tax in 2013 than they did in 2010. While some increase would be expected because of the economic recovery, the Area generated $7.1 million more in payroll tax than it would have, if it had grown at the same rate as the rest of the city from 2010 to 2013. Also based on payroll tax filings, there were 61 more businesses in the Area in 2013 than there were in 2010. Again, some increase would be expected, but there were 32 more than there would have been if the number of businesses in the Area grew the same rate as the rest of the city from 2010 to 2013 Taxable sales, which reflect the health of neighborhood-serving retail businesses, grew more slowly in the Area than the rest of the city from 2010 to 2013—a 10% increase as opposed to a 25% increase in the rest of the city. Had taxable sales in the Area grown at the same rate as the rest of the city, an additional $90,000 in sales tax would have been generated. An examination of trends in commercial rent, residential asking rents, and housing values in the Area revealed that, while increases have been rapid since the exclusion took effect, similarly rapid increases were seen in the rest of the city, and there was no appreciable difference between the Area and the rest of the city in the growth of commercial and residential rents, and housing prices.

dmode 8y ago

Don't get caught up and be enraged by clickbait BI headlines. Bay Area cities are not cracking down on anything. There is exactly one passed rule so far. And that is by Mountain View that only applies to a single office development. The SF rule is on proposal stages and is unlikely to pass.

dunpeal 8y ago
> And that is by Mountain View that only applies to a single office development. That is not true. The rule applies to all new offices in MTV. The Facebook office just happens to be the first new office that was completed with the intention to provide free food, since the law passed. (Applying a rule like that to Facebook alone - on what basis, exactly? - would be discriminatory, unusual, and likely unenforceable.) > The SF rule is on proposal stages and is unlikely to pass. How do you know that? It has some serious backers, and similar rules passed in nearby municipalities. What evidence do you have that it will not pass in SF as well?
- dmode 8y ago
  Do you have a source for your first assertion ? This link explicitly says that it applies to the Facebook development https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook-Offices-Means-New-Business-for-Mountain-View-Restaurants-488948401.html https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook-Offices-M... They haven't decided whether to expand to cover Google's expansion For the SF rule, it is only proposed by Peskin and Safai. And Peskin himself said on twitter that this is just a proposal.
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    From TFA: > the city prohibits companies from fully subsidizing meals in the Village, and the rule could spread to other Bay Area cities in the future. So no, it doesn't apply "only to Facebook", it applies to new office complexes, in this particular case the complex called "the Village". It would apply to any companies within that office complex, and potentially any new complexes and offices built in MTV going forward. > For the SF rule, it is only proposed by Peskin and Safai. And Peskin himself said on twitter that this is just a proposal. You only need one lawmaker to propose a new law. Plenty of laws in the book were proposed by one or two lawmakers initially. > Peskin himself said on twitter that this is just a proposal. Not sure what tweet you're referring to. The one I've seen seemed very serious and even militant: > Announcing new leg to ensure on-site tech cafeterias don't continue to chip away at our vibrant neighborhood commercial corridors & small businesses. We're not the suburbs, we're an urban city with a vital local economy that corporations say they want their employees to support https://twitter.com/AaronPeskin/status/1021856608417021952 https://twitter.com/AaronPeskin/status/1021856608417021952 He's saying it's even more necessary in SF than in MTV...

macspoofing 8y ago

>As a Bay Area resident As a Bay Area resident this should be par for the course in terms of the stuff coming from the municipal governments in the area.

mc32 8y ago

They're just pandering to special interest groups --groups they believe will like this move, and since there is no alternative party in the Bay Area, they know most tech workers will not break Repub, so they can do what they want. They still get the tech voter and now they will endear some small progressive cause. But, yes, it's utterly incomprehensible. It's reductionist. Like I said before, ban Uber, ban MUNI, they are taking jobs away from Pedicabs and Taxi drivers... Anyway, it's not Robots (yet) prepping food at the company canteen, they have to hire workers to do the cooking, serving, etc. So it's more or less a wash. Only diff is probably company cafeterias mostly try to ensure workers have a legal right to work in the US.

necubi 8y ago
> They're just pandering to special interest groups --groups they believe will like this move, and since there is no alternative party in the Bay Area, they know most tech workers will not break Repub, so they can do what they want. It's true that basically all elected officials in SF are Democrats, but in practice there are two semi-official parties: "progressives" and "moderates." The supervisors pushing this, Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safaí belong to the progressive wing, which recently got a majority on BoS with Rafael Mandelman taking Scott Wiener's old seat. While pretty much united on national political issues, the two groups differ on housing policy (generally, moderates want to build more, progressives less), homelessness, and the proper attitude toward the tech industry (the progressive wing tends to blame it for many of SF's problems).
- sampo 8y ago
  > "progressives" and "moderates." How did the people who oppose pretty much all progress, came to be named "progressives"?
  - shub 8y ago
    I guess they got the name back when smelling bad and smoking pot was progressive.
  - gaius 8y ago

jstandard 8y ago

These things aren't mutually exclusive. Local governments have many constituencies they need to support, small business being one of the most important. On the flip side of your rage are people who run local businesses having to shutdown, so local officials of Mountain View saw a way to respond to this.

orky56 8y ago

Traffic is going to increase since people will be leaving en mass to go from their campuses to local eateries. Local eateries benefit from urban areas with a high concentration of businesses. This works when you have multiple high rises and/or tons of smaller startups in an area, both of which are common in SF. Mountain View is not suburban but outside of Castro, you need a car to get anywhere for a bite if you're on one of those campuses. With more traffic caused by people leaving their campus more than start/end of day, people will need to account for more traffic. This may cause people to move further out or pay more of a premium for housing in close proximity. If these companies knew ahead of time that this was not allowed, they may not have built their campuses so sprawling or may have avoided these areas altogether.

mcrad 8y ago

Really enraged? I'm not exactly sure what "progressivism" is but seems like accepting financial responsibility for one's own lunch and/or supporting the local deli is far more akin to conservatism.

njharman 8y ago

You do understand that taxes on strong economic base like restaurants is what pays for street cleaning and infrastructure improvement, right? But, yeah this is stupid.

TomMarius 8y ago
Maybe it's the concept of public property financed by taxes that's wrong.