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Silicon Valley Tech Entrepreneurs: Behind the Stereotype

63 points by applecore 12y ago

gleenn 12y ago
As one of the 20-something's making cell phone apps, I have to laugh a little bit about how much we get bashed. I feel bad when people get kicked out of their houses, and I wonder how terrible we really are. But I'm not walking around trying to hurt anybody. And I'm reading this article right after the one about the school teacher who showed up drunk and pants-less on her first day of school, but I doubt countless people are going to show up to her house (straw-man, I know). I feel like this is a classic problem of economic conservatism/liberalism: how should money be allocated to people. It's just really exacerbated by a lot of young people making a lot of money and pulling the divide apart.
- alwaysdoit 12y ago
  I don't even really think it's about money allocation. Sure there are a lot of 20-somethings making 6-figures, but the thing about young people is they tend to spend their money. There are really a lot of things going well for not just tech in the bay area: bar tips are up, sketch comedy shows are sold out on Monday nights, unemployment is down across the board. Really the only problem we have is a housing shortage. Granted there to some extent a fixed amount of land (although Treasure Island and Foster City testify somewhat to the contrary). But we could definitely build higher. Maybe it would change the aesthetics of the City some. But I'm more concerned about losing the character of the City of welcoming all types of people, no matter where you came from or what you like to do than I am about the way our buildings look.
- curun1r 12y ago
  All the hubbub about tech workers gentrifying the bay area is just misguided and ignorant. It's not your fault that the Government has given homeowners significant incentives to try to block the construction of new housing. It's not your fault that the government has manipulated the rental market to keep people in their homes far longer than they should have been there. It's not your fault that local governments can't figure out a way to ensure that every city in the bay area has roughly the same capacity for housing as it does for jobs. And it's not your fault that there's high demand for your skills. Rather than protesting in front of Google buses (which would have been significantly smaller if they had limited participation to only people who've never used a Google product or service), they should be protesting in front of City Hall to allow the building of new housing. The only thing that will keep them in the city is to lower the cost of housing to a level where they can afford to live there and that can't happen if there's no new development.
- fred_durst 12y ago
  Let's try to see it from another human perspective. You've been living in Oakland for the last 10 years. You work at a local place making $15/hr. You have built up a lot of friends and enjoy your life. Suddenly the tech boom hits. A year later your landlord decides to sell the house. You go out and try to find a new place but its twice what your last place was and over half your income. But that doesn't matter because the market is so competitive the new landlord wouldn't rent to you anyway. So now you go into a desperate struggle to save the life you've built for the last 10 years. Calling and emailing everywhere trying to find a place. You have 20 days left. 10 days left. You have an old friend in Oklahoma City. He says you can crash for a couple weeks and that there's plenty of jobs and cheap rent. You know you have to go and leave behind your life. You know that if the tech boom didn't show up none of that would have happened. Sure you're not going to die on the streets. But I would probably be pretty pissed.
  - 7Figures2Commas 12y ago
    > You've been living in Oakland for the last 10 years. You work at a local place making $15/hr. You have built up a lot of friends and enjoy your life. Suddenly the tech boom hits. A year later your landlord decides to sell the house. You go out and try to find a new place but its twice what your last place was and over half your income. > You know that if the tech boom didn't show up none of that would have happened. The tech boom has obviously not hurt the real estate market in the Bay Area, but it's a common misconception that the tech boom is the primary driver. There is a substantial amount of money coming into the Bay Area real estate market from overseas and a significant amount (perhaps most) of the domestic home buyers are not newly-minted tech millionaires. The truth of the matter is that a lot of the well-paid tech workers cannot afford to buy in the Bay Area. This has impacted the rental market more than it has the home market, but the rental trend is one seen nationally.
    - fred_durst 12y ago
      The really important part of my quote you missed was > But that doesn't matter because the market is so competitive the new landlord wouldn't rent to you anyway.
- QuantumChaos 12y ago
  I think most people have an intuitive understanding of free market principals. If a person can pay more for an apartment, they not only have the legal right, but the moral right, to outbid someone else. In order to deal with inequality, we have progressive income tax and welfare. These mechanisms are the fairest, because they don't favor people based on their individual preferences. Now a poor person who lived their whole life in SF doesn't really have an inherent preference for living in SF. And they probably are made worse off by the tech industry. But it is still the government, if anyone, who should compensate such people for their changed circumstance, and it's also practically impossible to figure out if that person is really worse off than, say, a person with the same income who lived in Detroit their whole life. So there is no valid principal by which people should hate people in tech, and I think most people actually understand this. However, people dislike nerds, and they like to rationalize their beliefs. I remember people called me arrogant in school, not because I was, but because that way they could enjoy the moral indignation. I think something similar is happening here.
applecore 12y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8149162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8149162
pnathan 12y ago
There's tremendous value in having the mental freedom to break off your roots and just go. That's something very precious and rare. Feeling the freedom to build and create something wonderful is, in and of itself, wonderful.

63 points by applecore 12y ago

As one of the 20-something's making cell phone apps, I have to laugh a little bit about how much we get bashed. I feel bad when people get kicked out of their houses, and I wonder how terrible we really are. But I'm not walking around trying to hurt anybody. And I'm reading this article right after the one about the school teacher who showed up drunk and pants-less on her first day of school, but I doubt countless people are going to show up to her house (straw-man, I know). I feel like this is a classic problem of economic conservatism/liberalism: how should money be allocated to people. It's just really exacerbated by a lot of young people making a lot of money and pulling the divide apart.

alwaysdoit 12y ago
I don't even really think it's about money allocation. Sure there are a lot of 20-somethings making 6-figures, but the thing about young people is they tend to spend their money. There are really a lot of things going well for not just tech in the bay area: bar tips are up, sketch comedy shows are sold out on Monday nights, unemployment is down across the board. Really the only problem we have is a housing shortage. Granted there to some extent a fixed amount of land (although Treasure Island and Foster City testify somewhat to the contrary). But we could definitely build higher. Maybe it would change the aesthetics of the City some. But I'm more concerned about losing the character of the City of welcoming all types of people, no matter where you came from or what you like to do than I am about the way our buildings look.
curun1r 12y ago
All the hubbub about tech workers gentrifying the bay area is just misguided and ignorant. It's not your fault that the Government has given homeowners significant incentives to try to block the construction of new housing. It's not your fault that the government has manipulated the rental market to keep people in their homes far longer than they should have been there. It's not your fault that local governments can't figure out a way to ensure that every city in the bay area has roughly the same capacity for housing as it does for jobs. And it's not your fault that there's high demand for your skills. Rather than protesting in front of Google buses (which would have been significantly smaller if they had limited participation to only people who've never used a Google product or service), they should be protesting in front of City Hall to allow the building of new housing. The only thing that will keep them in the city is to lower the cost of housing to a level where they can afford to live there and that can't happen if there's no new development.
fred_durst 12y ago
Let's try to see it from another human perspective. You've been living in Oakland for the last 10 years. You work at a local place making $15/hr. You have built up a lot of friends and enjoy your life. Suddenly the tech boom hits. A year later your landlord decides to sell the house. You go out and try to find a new place but its twice what your last place was and over half your income. But that doesn't matter because the market is so competitive the new landlord wouldn't rent to you anyway. So now you go into a desperate struggle to save the life you've built for the last 10 years. Calling and emailing everywhere trying to find a place. You have 20 days left. 10 days left. You have an old friend in Oklahoma City. He says you can crash for a couple weeks and that there's plenty of jobs and cheap rent. You know you have to go and leave behind your life. You know that if the tech boom didn't show up none of that would have happened. Sure you're not going to die on the streets. But I would probably be pretty pissed.
- 7Figures2Commas 12y ago
  > You've been living in Oakland for the last 10 years. You work at a local place making $15/hr. You have built up a lot of friends and enjoy your life. Suddenly the tech boom hits. A year later your landlord decides to sell the house. You go out and try to find a new place but its twice what your last place was and over half your income. > You know that if the tech boom didn't show up none of that would have happened. The tech boom has obviously not hurt the real estate market in the Bay Area, but it's a common misconception that the tech boom is the primary driver. There is a substantial amount of money coming into the Bay Area real estate market from overseas and a significant amount (perhaps most) of the domestic home buyers are not newly-minted tech millionaires. The truth of the matter is that a lot of the well-paid tech workers cannot afford to buy in the Bay Area. This has impacted the rental market more than it has the home market, but the rental trend is one seen nationally.
  - fred_durst 12y ago
    The really important part of my quote you missed was > But that doesn't matter because the market is so competitive the new landlord wouldn't rent to you anyway.
QuantumChaos 12y ago
I think most people have an intuitive understanding of free market principals. If a person can pay more for an apartment, they not only have the legal right, but the moral right, to outbid someone else. In order to deal with inequality, we have progressive income tax and welfare. These mechanisms are the fairest, because they don't favor people based on their individual preferences. Now a poor person who lived their whole life in SF doesn't really have an inherent preference for living in SF. And they probably are made worse off by the tech industry. But it is still the government, if anyone, who should compensate such people for their changed circumstance, and it's also practically impossible to figure out if that person is really worse off than, say, a person with the same income who lived in Detroit their whole life. So there is no valid principal by which people should hate people in tech, and I think most people actually understand this. However, people dislike nerds, and they like to rationalize their beliefs. I remember people called me arrogant in school, not because I was, but because that way they could enjoy the moral indignation. I think something similar is happening here.

applecore 12y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8149162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8149162

pnathan 12y ago

There's tremendous value in having the mental freedom to break off your roots and just go. That's something very precious and rare. Feeling the freedom to build and create something wonderful is, in and of itself, wonderful.