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San Francisco is one of the most mismanaged major cities in the world and it's on such a negative trajectory. It's blessed with an incredibly successful homegro
by kenneth 7y ago
San Francisco is one of the most mismanaged major cities in the world and it's on such a negative trajectory. It's blessed with an incredibly successful homegrown tech industry, but there's only so much that can do to hide the underlying disfunction and the cracks are starting to show.
As a VC in San Francisco, I've recently given up my residence here, and am increasingly looking outward for tech and culture. I see many of my peers doing the same, moving east, south, or out of the country entirely.
It's bittersweet. I used to love San Francisco, but have recently entirely lost faith in it ever getting better. I've given up. And honestly, I feel a weight lifted from not having to care and constantly deal with the frustration anymore. There's so much tech & entrepreneurship worth promoting outside of SF, and it's so often overlooked.
- Waterluvian 7y agoWith the University of Waterloo and Conestoga College, Kitchener-Waterloo is a hot bed of engineering and CS talent. And the whole area is quite underpaid and pretty affordable despite a massive shoot up in housing prices. I think my point, other than boosting my hometown, is that there's a lot of really affordable talent out there if startups and VCs would just dare to look elsewhere a little harder.
- thenewwazoo 7y agoContrariwise, I see San Francisco as a city that is struggling with some of the worst demographic issues in the nation, mostly stemming from having an absolutely absurd amount of wealth inequality for various structural and temporal reasons, and doing an admirable job of it. The "homegrown tech industry" was intentionally fostered in response to the valley turning the city into its bedroom community, so the idea that the city is somehow corrupting your vision of what SF could be is disingenuous. I suspect the SF in your recollection is the SF you yourself had a hand in changing into what it is today.
- bamboozled 7y agoAgree entirely, maybe if some of the billions of dollars available went to providing the homeless with good, free mental healthcare they would be a good start to making San Fran a better place. I’ve never seen anything so sad as the streets of San Fran on a cold night, disgusting. Edit: Go for the downvote button, most of the world thinks the state of the valley , San Francisco and the living conditions and poor infrastructure are a joke given the insane amount of wealth housed there. You can take ownership of it or blame someone else (which it seems many of you are doing a great job of).
- drstewart 7y agoToo bad most of the world doesn't realize you can't solve national problems at a local level
- bamboozled 7y agoThere you go again, it’s someone else’s problem right ? For example, what if some of the money used by Google et al, went to lobbying the government to change its stance on healthcare ?
- drstewart 7y agoProbably the same reason Volkswagen doesn't spend its billions lobbying the German government to change its stance on refugees?
- Apocryphon 7y agoVW does a huge amount of lobbying: https://lobbyfacts.eu/articles/29-10-2015/volkswagen-top-10-list-biggest-companies-lobbying-eu https://lobbyfacts.eu/articles/29-10-2015/volkswagen-top-10-... https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2019/03/12/volkswagen-adds-a-lobbying-firm-408026 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2019...
- drstewart 7y agoI'm going to guess they lobby for their benefit, not to solve social ills.
- Apocryphon 7y agohttps://www.volkswagenag.com/en/sustainability/refugee-aid.html https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/sustainability/refugee-aid.h...
- maehwasu 7y ago
- chrisdhoover 7y ago30 year San Francisco resident. The issues San Francisco faces today are not from wealth inequality. That’s horse shit. It is in fact dysfunctional government. Also, you are mistaken about the genesis of San Francisco based tech versus the Valley. And you are wrong about the history of workers living in San Francisco and commuting to the Valley.
- Apocryphon 7y agoActually, everyone is to blame- San Jose Mercury News: "Who caused the Bay Area’s housing shortage?" http://archive.is/UAGhq http://archive.is/UAGhq original HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16799107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16799107
- eanzenberg 7y agoSure! Lets all leave to make room for the homeless inbound and let the city figure our how to fund their failing experiments.
- whynotkeithberg 7y agoMost of the homeless aren't inbound. They're being priced out of the market that they've lived in their whole life. You're just illustrating the lack of awareness tech people have in the city.
- ada1981 7y agoIn many cases the homeless have a better net impact on the world than tech people. Consider carbon footprint, accelerating “progress” toward ecological collapse, building tech used by authoritarian governments, etc. People of all classes come to SF for similar reasons, the resources. Instead of being afraid of solving the homeless problem for fear of attracting more homeless, SF Ought to focus its creativity on solving the problem in a way that works for everyone. The best solution is, give the homeless free housing. Since SF industry is extracting / creating wealth (depending on your political slant) from all over the world, then it should be ok with people from all over the world coming in to have basic needs met. Create shipping container / tiny home villages; provide robotic grown organic foods; deploy scalable mental health and community building tech; etc. Deploy that tech to other surrounding cities which would alleviate some of the pressure for folks to move to SF if they are homeless. Repeat the process across the USA. Repeat the process around the world and alleviate the resource gradient. You want to take a dent out of the universe? Solve homelessness and resource scarcity.
- perseusmandate 7y agoHow has such a shitty local government not gotten voted out? I understand the NIMBYism driving it and perverse incentives for housing owners but the approval rate has to be crazy low
- dmode 7y agoA "shitty local government" that delivers the biggest economic miracle in the world while at the same time advancing progressive values. Surely we must vote it out.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoIt's not just SF. The whole state of CA is woefully mismanaged. They just have enough money to smooth over much of the stupid stuff. When the money runs out (next recession?) they are gonna get hit really really hard (and they deserve it, stupid should hurt).
- sneak 7y agoSadly, pain and suffering does not fix stupid.
- logicx24 7y agoIndeed, it usually makes it worse.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- verylongaccount 7y agoWhile I agree with you that stupid should hurt, I think one of the reasons the situation is so bad is that a lot of the stupid decisions haven't been hurting the people who make the make them and the people who cause them to be made. This isn't just a problem in CA, just look at the Boeing debacle. Tons of bad decisions, the people who made the decisions made 10s - 100s millions of dollars and laughing all the way to the bank. Same think with California's politicians and elite class ... public workers, on the hand, are probably screwed ...
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoPeople have been saying that about California for more than 150 years (when the gold runs out, SF will turn into a ghost town, you’ll see!).
- gamblor956 7y agoCA is actually quite well-managed. One of the reasons we pay so much in taxes is precisely because CA legislators have a better grasp of financial realities than their counterparts in red states: if you want to spend more, you need to collect more money to pay for it. And CA voters like to pay for things. Red-state voters do not; they like to pretend that people will do things for free (i.e., teachers) until things break and they accept the reality that nice things cost money.
- idlewords 7y agoIt's interesting that you see yourself and your industry as a blessing, when it's people like you (and me) who have done the most to destroy a quirky, always poorly managed, but interesting and beautiful American city. My condolences to whatever city the tech swarm of locusts decides is the next SF.
- nobleach 7y agoSadly we have several cities chomping at the bit to BECOME the next Silicon Valley. There's little regard to exactly what that means.
- caprese 7y agoThe fun part of the "I'm mad at those wealthy people over there" movement is that the industry the disdain is directed at is hotswappable. I travel a lot. Pointing at "tech" is a red herring that ensures the most vulnerable people won't figure it out. I would say "tech" is the most inclusive of all the wealthy gentrifiers. There is no specific university you have to go to, there is no specific fraternity you need to be part of, there is no degree you actually need, very different than high finance or upper class Chinese estate planners.
- eanzenberg 7y agoYeah! Let’s turn this (and other cities) back to the crime ridden shitholes they were in prior glory!
- ImprovedSilence 7y agoAustin. And it’s already having tons of growing pains.
- lettergram 7y agoHaving moved from San Francisco to Champaign, IL myself. There’s something to be said for a 5 min commute, lower taxes, a yard. There’s still a fairly large tech community here. Wolfram has its headquarters here, and there’s tons of tech companies, albeit mostly remote offices. Honestly, I’d have trouble moving back to a large city. It doesn’t have much more to offer, and what I’d have to give up is significant.
- stephenhess 7y agoBye!
- dmode 7y agoLOL at this hilarious post. SF is in a negative trajectory ? SF has absolutely destroyed every city in the last decade when it comes to job creation, economic engine, value creation, startup creation etc. SF is in such a positive trajectory that has very few historical precedence.
- remarkEon 7y agoThat almost no one can afford to live there is surely the best of evidence that San Francisco has "crushed it".
- dmode 7y agoIt is like that adage "Nobody goes there anymore. It is so crowded"
- remarkEon 7y agoI guess I should've added the /s on that. It's kind of insane to me that we all think that because it's super expensive to live in SF that that's some sort of measure of success.
- kofejnik 7y agoyes, it actually is
- burtonator 7y agoI did and am continuing to do the same thing. I ran a company in downtown SF. Employed about 25 people when I was there. They pulled eminent domain no us to put up the new transbay terminal and infrastructure down town. We tried to find a decent replacement but couldn't. Eventually we gave up working and converted the entire company to remote work. Everyone preferred working from home. Some even bailed (like myself) and left SF. Some even went to Europe. SF is dead.. it's bittersweet like you said of course... but it's died and has been reborn many times. At least I don't have to smell shit and piss on the walk to work every day.