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> It means that if you setup a company in SF you'll have to pay your employees more so they can afford to live there. According to the detractors, that's exac

by bmelton 13y ago

> It means that if you setup a company in SF you'll have to pay your employees more so they can afford to live there. According to the detractors, that's exactly the problem. The engineers at Google can afford to live, roughly, wherever they want, while the waiters, waitresses, security guards, janitors, etc., that have lived in San Francisco all their life are being "driven out" by those Google employees, which are the ones driving up rent prices for the rest. Note, Google is a placeholder for 'tech company' in this scenario. Clearly, Google isn't the only high-paying company in the area.

k-mcgrady 13y ago
True, it's also interesting to note that for the city to function "the waiters, waitresses, security guards, janitors, etc" are required. The tech employees aren't. We could end up in a situation where 'aspiring entrepreneurs' work those jobs while they try to get their startup off the ground (a bit like people trying to get into acting in Hollywood).
- bmelton 13y ago
  Agreed. Another irony is that what has happened to SF is basically what every city would like to happen. Just like every startup, they've met their goal -- they're hip, and have traction, and now, basically, they're having problems scaling their success. If you squint hard enough, you could draw parallels to Twitter's early success -- lots of users, and not enough infrastructure to support it. San Francisco is now looking at a number of fail whales, but, at the same time, housing regulations prevent them from scaling. They've made that as a deliberate choice, and a pretty baffling one. As I stated elsewhere (so won't bother repeating at length), I believe the market would ultimately correct for this except for the artificially constrained supply being imposed by the building regulations. As an east-coast dweller that only works in SF, it's interesting to watch from afar. I mean, the idea of a class war ensuing as a result is obviously not a great one -- I'd hate to have to navigate SF like I would some war-torn country when I'm there for work, but one assumes the issue will resolve itself, some way or another, well before it ever gets to that.

by bmelton 13y ago

k-mcgrady 13y ago

True, it's also interesting to note that for the city to function "the waiters, waitresses, security guards, janitors, etc" are required. The tech employees aren't. We could end up in a situation where 'aspiring entrepreneurs' work those jobs while they try to get their startup off the ground (a bit like people trying to get into acting in Hollywood).

bmelton 13y ago
Agreed. Another irony is that what has happened to SF is basically what every city would like to happen. Just like every startup, they've met their goal -- they're hip, and have traction, and now, basically, they're having problems scaling their success. If you squint hard enough, you could draw parallels to Twitter's early success -- lots of users, and not enough infrastructure to support it. San Francisco is now looking at a number of fail whales, but, at the same time, housing regulations prevent them from scaling. They've made that as a deliberate choice, and a pretty baffling one. As I stated elsewhere (so won't bother repeating at length), I believe the market would ultimately correct for this except for the artificially constrained supply being imposed by the building regulations. As an east-coast dweller that only works in SF, it's interesting to watch from afar. I mean, the idea of a class war ensuing as a result is obviously not a great one -- I'd hate to have to navigate SF like I would some war-torn country when I'm there for work, but one assumes the issue will resolve itself, some way or another, well before it ever gets to that.