11 ms·

Why we hate the new tech boom

15 points by r0h1n 13y ago

dreamdu5t 13y ago
> Income inequality is growing ever worse, and it is increasingly clear that one of the forces fueling this trend is the technological innovation flowing out of the Bay Area. This claim is unsubstantiated. By what mechanism is Facebook causing income inequality?
- sp332 13y ago
  For example: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-bus-is-a-sign-of-silicon-valleys-excesses-2013-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-bus-is-a-sign-of-silic... or more succinctly http://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Why-we-re-invisible-to-Google-bus-riders-4467574.php http://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Why-we-re-invisible-to-...
  - dreamdu5t 13y ago
    Private buses don't cause income inequality. Your income is not the result of other people driving private buses to work. If it is a result of that, you need to show how... not link to articles bitching about how people drive private buses.
    - j_baker 13y ago
      I beg to differ. Do you think a single mother of 4 can easily afford to commute to somewhere in the South Bay to get a better paying job?
      - mwfunk 13y ago
        No, but neither is a Facebook employee commuting on the company bus causing that single mother of 4's poverty, if that's what you're suggesting? Because that's the point of the post you're begging to differ with.
    - Apocryphon 13y ago
      No, but private buses are indicative of how people in the tech economy are effectively shielded from dealing with the same issues of other people- the private buses are a symbol of the bubble they live in, and the callous behavior of that Googler is a symbolic example of someone stuck in that bubble. I suppose one takeaway is that it shows that the Google doesn't do more to encourage its employees to patronize public transportation. And a more speculative idea- maybe large tech corporations should use their influence and power to encourage the cities that host them to reform. The Bay Area has a notoriously shoddy and inefficient public transportation system relative to a metropolis of its size and wealth. Maybe giving back to the communities through ways such as that, they could engage with the Bay, not just create bubbles within it.
      - dreamdu5t 13y ago
        > I suppose one takeaway is that it shows that the Google doesn't do more to encourage its employees to patronize public transportation. Google and its employees have no obligation to patronize public transportation, nor do you. > The Bay Area has a notoriously shoddy and inefficient public transportation system relative to a metropolis of its size and wealth. That would be nice, but the shitty public transportation system built, operated, managed, and owned by the government is not the fault or responsibility of Google and friends. Google is not the reason it's a piece of shit either. > Maybe giving back to the communities through ways such as that, they could engage with the Bay, not just create bubbles within it. Google is the top philanthropist in the Bay Area giving $27.6 million to charities here in 2010. http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2011/07/22/google-is-top-bay-area-philanthropist.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2011/07/22/goog...
        volume 13y ago
        What solution, if any, do you propose?
        dreamdu5t 13y ago
        I'm not. I'm proposing that Google is not the cause of other people's personal income and transportation problems.
- evanlivingston 13y ago
  http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Facebook-Salaries-E40772.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Facebook-Salaries-E40772.htm
  - dreamdu5t 13y ago
    Linking to an average of Facebook salaries is not an explanation for why people being paid to work at Facebook is determinate of other people's income.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- tartle 13y ago
  by amount of employees compared to market valuation. kodak vs instagram.
- graeme 13y ago
  Income inequality is, by definition, the gap between those with lower and higher earnings. So if Facebook et al. pay higher salaries, and other salaries don't increase, then income inequality increases. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it seems obvious that soaring tech salaries will increase inequality.
  - dreamdu5t 13y ago
    By that logic, the other industries are causing income inequality by not increasing their salaries.
  - aetherson 13y ago
    Certainly true. I note that this is causing the "good" half of income inequality, though: the "some people are getting richer" part, not the "other people are getting poorer or staying the same" part. (I digress, but: we all agree that given three different possible worlds, A, B, and C, where in A, everyone's poor, in B, most people are poor and some are rich, and in C, everyone's rich, C is the best, and A is the worst, right? Nobody's here to argue that A is better than B?) To the extent that you can draw a causal line from "tech boom" to the bad half of income inequality (the "lots of people are getting poorer or stagnating" part), it's more about "wealth gets tied up in companies that just intrinsically employ fewer people than the labor-intensive manufacturing companies of the mid 20th Century."
7Figures2Commas 13y ago
It's astonishing how virtually all of the debate around "the new tech bubble" completely ignores the influence of monetary policy. There are lots of bubbles that have been inflated by QE-Infinity. The tech bubble is nowhere near the biggest, but that doesn't mean it isn't a bubble. > The current freneticism is a very different animal from the original dot-com boom. For one thing, the companies racing to go public this September actually have revenues and what passes for real business models, something that was very often simply not the case in 1999 and early 2000. Revenue? Great. But at $50+/share, FB has a PE ratio of well over 200. Being able to calculate a PE ratio is nice though. Salesforce, for instance, which has a market cap of $31 billion, doesn't even have a PE ratio because it has no earnings. Are Facebook, Salesforce, et al. worthless? Of course not. But if the entire stock market wasn't being propped up by the Fed, you wouldn't see these types of valuations, and that would have a cascading effect on the entire tech ecosystem for a variety of reasons. > The current boom isn’t a flash in the pan, doomed to disappoint arriviste gold miners. It’s here to stay. A mature Internet economy is generating huge riches, and it is remaking the face of San Francisco and the larger Bay Area in the process. The internet is here to stay, and there will continue to be riches generated by it, but it's extremely foolish to believe that the internet economy is disconnected from the real economy, which is precisely what so many, the author of this article included, seem to be doing.
- NTDF9 13y ago
  > Salesforce, for instance, which has a market cap of $31 billion, doesn't even have a PE ratio because it has no earnings. And yet they flaunt opulence with a Green Day concert http://www.greendayauthority.com/news/4473/ http://www.greendayauthority.com/news/4473/
Apocryphon 13y ago
Such serendipity for this article to also be published today: http://www.theonion.com/articles/google-employees-disappointed-15th-anniversary-par,34023/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/google-employees-disappoint...
tenpoundhammer 13y ago
This is just a bad article. The causal linkages provided by the piece are laughable and infantile. "First, there is unsettling realization that the middle is losing economic ground while Silicon Valley execs babble on about “changing the world” for the better. Income inequality is growing ever worse, and it is increasingly clear that one of the forces fueling this trend is the technological innovation flowing out of the Bay Area. " One of the forces fueling inequality are the some of the best employers in the world? New companies creating jobs, and paying living wages? I could go after many more examples but I have other things to do.
- NTDF9 13y ago
  It is not about living wages. The anguish is that a smaller share of the boom-profit reaches the bottom. While a select few people become multi-millionaires, the rest cannot be expected to be happy about the effect of such wealth on everyone else. Even regular programmers are not becoming "rich" per se. Yes, we have high-paying jobs but we are essentially making someone else beyond-your-wildest-dreams rich. PS: I agree this is a bad article though.
  - Apocryphon 13y ago
    High-paying jobs don't mean much when rent and cost of living are incredibly high, anyway.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

15 points by r0h1n 13y ago

> Income inequality is growing ever worse, and it is increasingly clear that one of the forces fueling this trend is the technological innovation flowing out of the Bay Area. This claim is unsubstantiated. By what mechanism is Facebook causing income inequality?

sp332 13y ago
For example: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-bus-is-a-sign-of-silicon-valleys-excesses-2013-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-bus-is-a-sign-of-silic... or more succinctly http://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Why-we-re-invisible-to-Google-bus-riders-4467574.php http://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Why-we-re-invisible-to-...
- dreamdu5t 13y ago
  Private buses don't cause income inequality. Your income is not the result of other people driving private buses to work. If it is a result of that, you need to show how... not link to articles bitching about how people drive private buses.
  - j_baker 13y ago
    I beg to differ. Do you think a single mother of 4 can easily afford to commute to somewhere in the South Bay to get a better paying job?
    - mwfunk 13y ago
      No, but neither is a Facebook employee commuting on the company bus causing that single mother of 4's poverty, if that's what you're suggesting? Because that's the point of the post you're begging to differ with.
  - Apocryphon 13y ago
    No, but private buses are indicative of how people in the tech economy are effectively shielded from dealing with the same issues of other people- the private buses are a symbol of the bubble they live in, and the callous behavior of that Googler is a symbolic example of someone stuck in that bubble. I suppose one takeaway is that it shows that the Google doesn't do more to encourage its employees to patronize public transportation. And a more speculative idea- maybe large tech corporations should use their influence and power to encourage the cities that host them to reform. The Bay Area has a notoriously shoddy and inefficient public transportation system relative to a metropolis of its size and wealth. Maybe giving back to the communities through ways such as that, they could engage with the Bay, not just create bubbles within it.
    - dreamdu5t 13y ago
      > I suppose one takeaway is that it shows that the Google doesn't do more to encourage its employees to patronize public transportation. Google and its employees have no obligation to patronize public transportation, nor do you. > The Bay Area has a notoriously shoddy and inefficient public transportation system relative to a metropolis of its size and wealth. That would be nice, but the shitty public transportation system built, operated, managed, and owned by the government is not the fault or responsibility of Google and friends. Google is not the reason it's a piece of shit either. > Maybe giving back to the communities through ways such as that, they could engage with the Bay, not just create bubbles within it. Google is the top philanthropist in the Bay Area giving $27.6 million to charities here in 2010. http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2011/07/22/google-is-top-bay-area-philanthropist.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2011/07/22/goog...
      - volume 13y ago
        What solution, if any, do you propose?
        dreamdu5t 13y ago
        I'm not. I'm proposing that Google is not the cause of other people's personal income and transportation problems.
evanlivingston 13y ago
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Facebook-Salaries-E40772.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Facebook-Salaries-E40772.htm
- dreamdu5t 13y ago
  Linking to an average of Facebook salaries is not an explanation for why people being paid to work at Facebook is determinate of other people's income.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
tartle 13y ago
by amount of employees compared to market valuation. kodak vs instagram.
graeme 13y ago
Income inequality is, by definition, the gap between those with lower and higher earnings. So if Facebook et al. pay higher salaries, and other salaries don't increase, then income inequality increases. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it seems obvious that soaring tech salaries will increase inequality.
- dreamdu5t 13y ago
  By that logic, the other industries are causing income inequality by not increasing their salaries.
- aetherson 13y ago
  Certainly true. I note that this is causing the "good" half of income inequality, though: the "some people are getting richer" part, not the "other people are getting poorer or staying the same" part. (I digress, but: we all agree that given three different possible worlds, A, B, and C, where in A, everyone's poor, in B, most people are poor and some are rich, and in C, everyone's rich, C is the best, and A is the worst, right? Nobody's here to argue that A is better than B?) To the extent that you can draw a causal line from "tech boom" to the bad half of income inequality (the "lots of people are getting poorer or stagnating" part), it's more about "wealth gets tied up in companies that just intrinsically employ fewer people than the labor-intensive manufacturing companies of the mid 20th Century."

7Figures2Commas 13y ago

It's astonishing how virtually all of the debate around "the new tech bubble" completely ignores the influence of monetary policy. There are lots of bubbles that have been inflated by QE-Infinity. The tech bubble is nowhere near the biggest, but that doesn't mean it isn't a bubble. > The current freneticism is a very different animal from the original dot-com boom. For one thing, the companies racing to go public this September actually have revenues and what passes for real business models, something that was very often simply not the case in 1999 and early 2000. Revenue? Great. But at $50+/share, FB has a PE ratio of well over 200. Being able to calculate a PE ratio is nice though. Salesforce, for instance, which has a market cap of $31 billion, doesn't even have a PE ratio because it has no earnings. Are Facebook, Salesforce, et al. worthless? Of course not. But if the entire stock market wasn't being propped up by the Fed, you wouldn't see these types of valuations, and that would have a cascading effect on the entire tech ecosystem for a variety of reasons. > The current boom isn’t a flash in the pan, doomed to disappoint arriviste gold miners. It’s here to stay. A mature Internet economy is generating huge riches, and it is remaking the face of San Francisco and the larger Bay Area in the process. The internet is here to stay, and there will continue to be riches generated by it, but it's extremely foolish to believe that the internet economy is disconnected from the real economy, which is precisely what so many, the author of this article included, seem to be doing.

NTDF9 13y ago
> Salesforce, for instance, which has a market cap of $31 billion, doesn't even have a PE ratio because it has no earnings. And yet they flaunt opulence with a Green Day concert http://www.greendayauthority.com/news/4473/ http://www.greendayauthority.com/news/4473/

Apocryphon 13y ago

Such serendipity for this article to also be published today: http://www.theonion.com/articles/google-employees-disappointed-15th-anniversary-par,34023/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/google-employees-disappoint...

tenpoundhammer 13y ago

This is just a bad article. The causal linkages provided by the piece are laughable and infantile. "First, there is unsettling realization that the middle is losing economic ground while Silicon Valley execs babble on about “changing the world” for the better. Income inequality is growing ever worse, and it is increasingly clear that one of the forces fueling this trend is the technological innovation flowing out of the Bay Area. " One of the forces fueling inequality are the some of the best employers in the world? New companies creating jobs, and paying living wages? I could go after many more examples but I have other things to do.

NTDF9 13y ago
It is not about living wages. The anguish is that a smaller share of the boom-profit reaches the bottom. While a select few people become multi-millionaires, the rest cannot be expected to be happy about the effect of such wealth on everyone else. Even regular programmers are not becoming "rich" per se. Yes, we have high-paying jobs but we are essentially making someone else beyond-your-wildest-dreams rich. PS: I agree this is a bad article though.
- Apocryphon 13y ago
  High-paying jobs don't mean much when rent and cost of living are incredibly high, anyway.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]