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> Somehow, the First Estate managed to convince the Third Estate that it's the Second Estate's fault, hence the bus attacks. It's not. Tech workers most certai

> Somehow, the First Estate managed to convince the Third Estate that it's the Second Estate's fault, hence the bus attacks. It's not. Tech workers most certainly share some blame. When you accept work with those companies and move out to the valley, you are contributing to the culture of evictions and hyper gentrification that affect that area. You don't get to wash your hands clean.

michaelochurch 12y ago
You seem to think they have a choice. Most tech workers don't want to live in the Bay Area. They're forced to live there because their careers require it. VC is a feudalistic, oligarchic reputation economy, concentrated in a tiny (now congested and overpriced) geographic area. Since they're not content to be passive investors (although their portfolios would perform better than they were) but want to actively manage, they only fund companies within 30 miles of them. Tech workers don't have much of a choice. If you want to have a career in this game, you have to live where the jobs are.
- king_jester 12y ago
  While agree about VC being feudalistic and oligarchic, that doesn't mean tech workers don't have choice in where the work to some degree. There are many kinds of software development for many different companies in different locations, not to mention remote work. If you choose to pursue an opportunity in the valley, that has very real consequences and realities and that should be fully examined, and that includes knowing that you may be contributing to displacement and gentrification. EDIT: For the record, I've been a tech worker for a while and have never lived in California (except when I was a wee child).
  - michaelochurch 12y ago
    I worked for 7 years in NYC, considered the #2 tech hub. (Obviously, there's a huge gap between #1 and #2.) I'd almost certainly be an angel investor by now if I spent that time in SV. People about as talented as I am (and, some, significantly less) are now EIRs and partners at reputable VC firms, or even able to found. Place matters. I'm not poor, but I'm not where I should be, and probably not where I would be if I'd started in SF. (Why I chose NYC would take too long to explain. It's not relevant.) Once you have a national reputation and can get $250+ per hour consulting rates, you can live whereever you want. It takes a while to get there. Most people have to put in their decade in a congested, expensive, and not very pleasant region of the country before getting there (and some never do). As for remote work, it has the same issues. If you have a national reputation already, you can get away with it. Most places, remote workers don't really advance their careers and are the first ones axed.
    - king_jester 12y ago
      If your goal is to assimilate into certain wealth classes, then it probably doesn't matter to you about the socioeconomic conditions of people you displace or how a city changes as people like yourself pursue that wealth. I those things do matter to you, I would expect that you'd be highly critical of VCs and investing culture. > Once you have a national reputation and can get $250+ per hour consulting rates, you can live whereever you want. It takes a while to get there. Most people have to put in their decade in a congested, expensive, and not very pleasant region of the country before getting there (and some never do). > As for remote work, it has the same issues. If you have a national reputation already, you can get away with it. Most places, remote workers don't really advance their careers and are the first ones axed. For what it's worth, I started my career in NYC in a really depressed market and made peanuts for my work as a software dev. I command nowhere near that kind of money now nor do I want to, but I'm paid very well compared to many friends and people in NYC and I have no trouble surviving gentrification effects on rent. But that survival is a privileged, I've seen tons of people driven out of the city because their skills and credentials are not valued by business. To that end, I am highly privileged, I don't have to flee because I'm part of a career class that is riding high right now.
UweSchmidt 12y ago
I don't think I can be held accountable for the higher order consequences of my normal, everyday decisions. Researching the complex interactions of a local economy and deciding to disincentivize things by not moving there? Not buying the yoghurt from a food corporation that's 'evil' in one category, yet trying to be exemplary in another? I that doesn't work morally, nor practically.
- king_jester 12y ago
  Whether you want to be accountable or not, you are to a certain degree complicit in those things if you choose to pursue them. Obviously systemic issues are hard to deal with as an individual, but nobody should have blinders on about what exactly is going on when they move, when they take a new job, or when they consume a product.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    The question is the size of the degree of complicity. That degree, for a salaried tech-worker, is really fucking tiny. There is no alternative choice he could make that would have visibly better consequences, nor would there be any power in an attempt to have tech-workers in general boycott living in overly-expensive metros (since there are no nongentrifying metros with tech jobs). On a bit of additional thought, the best move anyone could make in that position would be to seek a tech job in a metro area or municipality that has pro-proletarian housing/development policies, and to try to effect such policies in general.
LanceH 12y ago
Paying more for something than someone else isn't a moral dilemma, even when it is housing. A renter just doesn't have ownership rights when it comes to rising prices.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
If you got a job driving the Bart and moved there you would be getting about the same as an engineering start wage at google. Are Bart drivers also to blame, given the wages are similar? And if not, why not?
- geebee 12y ago
  I wouldn't say "blame", because blame carries a whiff of malfeasance that just isn't there. But "cause"? I do see a different cause, mainly because of scale. Dental Hygienists earn about as much as software developers in SF (about 106k vs 110k a year, according to use news best jobs). But do Dental Hygienists displace people to the same extent? Of course not. Dental practices, which draw most of their business from the local population, just can't create enough six figure DH jobs to displace the population they serve. Tech, on the other hand, sells outside the region. Not sure what Facebook's SF-based revenue is as a percentage of total, but it's got to be minuscule compared to a dental practice. Tech workers may not earn much more (median) than nurses or DH's, but they can exist in vastly, vastly larger numbers in a particular region. This can cause large scale displacement that other low six figure jobs can't cause.
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    Where should the companies relocate then? And why should other cities act differently to San-Francisco? And if other cities do act differently to San-Francisco and expand and take on these new people, then why isn't San-Francisco also able to do this in the first place?

michaelochurch 12y ago

You seem to think they have a choice. Most tech workers don't want to live in the Bay Area. They're forced to live there because their careers require it. VC is a feudalistic, oligarchic reputation economy, concentrated in a tiny (now congested and overpriced) geographic area. Since they're not content to be passive investors (although their portfolios would perform better than they were) but want to actively manage, they only fund companies within 30 miles of them. Tech workers don't have much of a choice. If you want to have a career in this game, you have to live where the jobs are.

king_jester 12y ago
While agree about VC being feudalistic and oligarchic, that doesn't mean tech workers don't have choice in where the work to some degree. There are many kinds of software development for many different companies in different locations, not to mention remote work. If you choose to pursue an opportunity in the valley, that has very real consequences and realities and that should be fully examined, and that includes knowing that you may be contributing to displacement and gentrification. EDIT: For the record, I've been a tech worker for a while and have never lived in California (except when I was a wee child).
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  I worked for 7 years in NYC, considered the #2 tech hub. (Obviously, there's a huge gap between #1 and #2.) I'd almost certainly be an angel investor by now if I spent that time in SV. People about as talented as I am (and, some, significantly less) are now EIRs and partners at reputable VC firms, or even able to found. Place matters. I'm not poor, but I'm not where I should be, and probably not where I would be if I'd started in SF. (Why I chose NYC would take too long to explain. It's not relevant.) Once you have a national reputation and can get $250+ per hour consulting rates, you can live whereever you want. It takes a while to get there. Most people have to put in their decade in a congested, expensive, and not very pleasant region of the country before getting there (and some never do). As for remote work, it has the same issues. If you have a national reputation already, you can get away with it. Most places, remote workers don't really advance their careers and are the first ones axed.
  - king_jester 12y ago
    If your goal is to assimilate into certain wealth classes, then it probably doesn't matter to you about the socioeconomic conditions of people you displace or how a city changes as people like yourself pursue that wealth. I those things do matter to you, I would expect that you'd be highly critical of VCs and investing culture. > Once you have a national reputation and can get $250+ per hour consulting rates, you can live whereever you want. It takes a while to get there. Most people have to put in their decade in a congested, expensive, and not very pleasant region of the country before getting there (and some never do). > As for remote work, it has the same issues. If you have a national reputation already, you can get away with it. Most places, remote workers don't really advance their careers and are the first ones axed. For what it's worth, I started my career in NYC in a really depressed market and made peanuts for my work as a software dev. I command nowhere near that kind of money now nor do I want to, but I'm paid very well compared to many friends and people in NYC and I have no trouble surviving gentrification effects on rent. But that survival is a privileged, I've seen tons of people driven out of the city because their skills and credentials are not valued by business. To that end, I am highly privileged, I don't have to flee because I'm part of a career class that is riding high right now.

UweSchmidt 12y ago

I don't think I can be held accountable for the higher order consequences of my normal, everyday decisions. Researching the complex interactions of a local economy and deciding to disincentivize things by not moving there? Not buying the yoghurt from a food corporation that's 'evil' in one category, yet trying to be exemplary in another? I that doesn't work morally, nor practically.

king_jester 12y ago
Whether you want to be accountable or not, you are to a certain degree complicit in those things if you choose to pursue them. Obviously systemic issues are hard to deal with as an individual, but nobody should have blinders on about what exactly is going on when they move, when they take a new job, or when they consume a product.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  The question is the size of the degree of complicity. That degree, for a salaried tech-worker, is really fucking tiny. There is no alternative choice he could make that would have visibly better consequences, nor would there be any power in an attempt to have tech-workers in general boycott living in overly-expensive metros (since there are no nongentrifying metros with tech jobs). On a bit of additional thought, the best move anyone could make in that position would be to seek a tech job in a metro area or municipality that has pro-proletarian housing/development policies, and to try to effect such policies in general.

LanceH 12y ago

Paying more for something than someone else isn't a moral dilemma, even when it is housing. A renter just doesn't have ownership rights when it comes to rising prices.

lotsofmangos 12y ago

If you got a job driving the Bart and moved there you would be getting about the same as an engineering start wage at google. Are Bart drivers also to blame, given the wages are similar? And if not, why not?

geebee 12y ago
I wouldn't say "blame", because blame carries a whiff of malfeasance that just isn't there. But "cause"? I do see a different cause, mainly because of scale. Dental Hygienists earn about as much as software developers in SF (about 106k vs 110k a year, according to use news best jobs). But do Dental Hygienists displace people to the same extent? Of course not. Dental practices, which draw most of their business from the local population, just can't create enough six figure DH jobs to displace the population they serve. Tech, on the other hand, sells outside the region. Not sure what Facebook's SF-based revenue is as a percentage of total, but it's got to be minuscule compared to a dental practice. Tech workers may not earn much more (median) than nurses or DH's, but they can exist in vastly, vastly larger numbers in a particular region. This can cause large scale displacement that other low six figure jobs can't cause.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  Where should the companies relocate then? And why should other cities act differently to San-Francisco? And if other cities do act differently to San-Francisco and expand and take on these new people, then why isn't San-Francisco also able to do this in the first place?