7 ms·

Robber Barons Would Have Loved Facebook’s Employee Housing

55 points by carlchenet 12y ago

jasonlotito 12y ago
I find it interesting that in creating this mimic of real life, they are effectively removing any chance of real innovation coming out of these companies. And I'm not talking about innovation coming from these companies, but from the people working there. Their perception of what life is like on a daily basis will skew it toward the people they surround themselves with. Essentially, as an outsider, it seems like going to work there is asking to be sheltered from the real world. I cannot imagine it fosters much creativity.
- vkjv 12y ago
  I completely agree with this. It is often said that, "constraint drives creativity." Therefore, if everyone is bound by the same set of constraints, you limit the possible set of creativity.
  - spiritplumber 12y ago
    And so the cycle continues. AOL was an innovative place to work at some point, I'm sure.
    - yuhong 12y ago
      Facebook is not likely to end up as bad as AOL did.
      - dijit 12y ago
        I'd like to think you're joking. but you're likely not- it's very, very possible to be worse than AOL.
        _delirium 12y ago
        AOL has had perhaps the softest landing of any obsolete tech company, because their dialup revenue has been declining very, very slowly, less than 10% per year. And that is partly offset by profit margins increasing every year. People seem to just not cancel. Some are still dialing up, but plenty of people have kept paying $10/mo for dialup service they don't even use. Perhaps they just forgot. Or they use the @aol.com email through the web interface, and don't realize that you can keep your email address after cancelling the ISP service (to be fair, that didn't used to be the case, and many people missed the change). So AOL's had many billions of dollars of basically "free" revenue to cushion their decline. Even in 2014, they had roughly $600m of ISP revenue, of which about 2/3 was profit.
        amyjess 12y ago
        Also, before Wi-Fi became as ubiquitous as it is today, the only reliable way to get an Internet connection in a motel room was to dial into an AOL POP, so anybody who would expect to take a road trip would keep their AOL accounts active. I think by 2006, almost every motel had free Wi-Fi though... and that wasn't the case in 2003 (at least, that's what I remember from road trips in those years). Edit: Actually, I remember now that Earthlink POPs were as reliable as AOL POPs, but AOL had better name recognition.
        _delirium 12y ago
        Ah right! Yes, that's definitely true, I remember using AOL dial-up a few times in the early/mid-2000s. My parents had kept their account because of the @aol.com email issue (AOL webmail only became free in 2005), so I used their account to connect from motels.
      - beat 12y ago
        Why not? Microsoft did. Lots of once-innovative companies lose their edge, stop attracting top talent, and just become body shops shuffling to the graveyard.
        yuhong 12y ago
        AOL's fate ended up being worse than even Microsoft, as far as I know.
        learc83 12y ago
        I don't think Microsoft is a good example here. They're doing some pretty innovative stuff. Open sourcing much of the .NET stack, F#, and Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi. Even at their worst they never really stopped acquiring top talent, and their revenue hasn't stopped growing [1](it's also about 7 times what Facebook's is). [1] http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/FY2002-20131.png http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/FY2002...
        oldmanjay 12y ago
        I'm not going to address whether or not Microsoft innovates, but open sourcing existing projects is possibly the loosest application of the term I've ever seen
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Well, the basic problem is that the city councils of Valley "cities" (ie: overgrown, egotistical suburbs) keep refusing to build the kind of dense housing, mixed-price developments, and mixed-usage buildings that make real cities function. In fact, they often explicitly refuse to build any new housing at all, insisting that transplanted tech employees just find somewhere else. So the companies have to build their own damn housing. Welcome to the outcome of NIMBYism.
- pconner 12y ago
  As someone who will have to relocate to the bay area soon, all of this is incredibly worrying. I thought it was just SF that had major opposition to new development. I didn't realize that issue extended to the south bay as well.
  - khuey 12y ago
    It's much worse in parts of the peninsula (e.g. Palo Alto) than it is in SF proper. Mountain View just got a pro-development city council though, so there is hope.
  - davidw 12y ago
    That whole area has some pretty screwy politics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit#/media/File:BARTMapDay.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit#/media/F... - see how their rapid transit system excludes most of "silicon valley"? But on the positive side... I think it's worth spending a few years there. It's a very interesting experience in many ways, that I don't regret.
    - martinald 12y ago
      There is an extension of BART to silicon valley underway currently, though.
      - davidw 12y ago
        Taking 40 years to build an extremely useful bit of public transportation is kind of 'exhibit A' for screwy politics in my book - and I know something about it, living in Italy!
outsidetheparty 12y ago
What a ridiculously overblown article. "The robber barons built entire greenfield company towns with a paternalistic controlling agenda! Facebook plans to build less than 400 housing units and obviously won't be able to do any of the controlling things we just described, but WHAT IF THEY DID?!" "What if every single Facebook employee lived here, which they don't, and what if they all voted as a single bloc, which they wouldn't?! CRAY CRAY TIME AMIRITE?"
- aros 12y ago
  Facetious quotes and meme-spouting doesn't count as refutation.
tomjen3 12y ago
That headline really needs to be toned down. Yeah company cities have been tried before, but this isn't anything Pullman would have liked. For one Facebook can't afford to turn cannons on its own workers and without cannons attacking your own workers, you just can't be a real robber baron.
- beat 12y ago
  Employee mobility matters. Most people working at Facebook could take their skills and easily get a job somewhere else. The story was different for the company town workers of a century ago.
  - msandford 12y ago
    The only way this turns Facebook into robber barons is if they're able to drive developer's salaries down as a result. But the only way to do that would be to build many thousands of units. The housing situation in SF isn't just a little bit short, it's a lot short on supply. And even that would probably just bring developers salaries down from the heavens to more normal levels rather than somehow magically making them all indentured servants.
    - beat 12y ago
      That really only applies to staff not already living in the Bay area (who can presumably afford wherever it is they live), and staff willing to live in whatever kinds of apartments they're providing. That way lies the army of H1B mediocrity.
TheBeardKing 12y ago
Is this any different from living on a military base? Government employees get cheap shopping, entertainment, restaurants, social services, and decent neighborhoods with playgrounds and pools. It does seem more noble to be patriotic than loyal to a company, but is it really any different? I rarely hear service men and women complain about base conditions, they're usually fairly nice.
- kyllo 12y ago
  Is the military trying to make a profit off servicemen and women?
  - beachstartup 12y ago
    that depends on who you ask.
  - TheBeardKing 12y ago
    Are you implying that private corporations are more motivated to take advantage of their employees for profit, rather than just trying to keep them happy and productive? I doubt tech companies care much about the profits from these endeavors to risk losing employees through shenanigans. The motivation for both private and military seems to me to just keep happy, committed employees who will be productive for the cause.
    - kyllo 12y ago
      The article mentions those old timey company towns cutting pay but keeping rent and food prices the same. What's to stop a company like Facebook from doing the same? Sure, they have no reason to do that now while the cash is rolling in and everything is gravy. But what about when the market turns and profits start to shrink? I think it's very dangerous for the same for-profit company to control both people's pay and their rent and other living expenses.
      - icebraining 12y ago
        What's to stop a company like Facebook from doing the same? The fact that people would leave? Same as what stops them from lowering salaries, which they can already do and would end up the same result.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
blt 12y ago
I need to visit the Bay Area tech scene and see what's going on. From the outside, via media and this site, it seems like it's drifting away from the real world into its own cultural bubble... but maybe I'm just hatin'

55 points by carlchenet 12y ago

I find it interesting that in creating this mimic of real life, they are effectively removing any chance of real innovation coming out of these companies. And I'm not talking about innovation coming from these companies, but from the people working there. Their perception of what life is like on a daily basis will skew it toward the people they surround themselves with. Essentially, as an outsider, it seems like going to work there is asking to be sheltered from the real world. I cannot imagine it fosters much creativity.

vkjv 12y ago
I completely agree with this. It is often said that, "constraint drives creativity." Therefore, if everyone is bound by the same set of constraints, you limit the possible set of creativity.
- spiritplumber 12y ago
  And so the cycle continues. AOL was an innovative place to work at some point, I'm sure.
  - yuhong 12y ago
    Facebook is not likely to end up as bad as AOL did.
    - dijit 12y ago
      I'd like to think you're joking. but you're likely not- it's very, very possible to be worse than AOL.
      - _delirium 12y ago
        AOL has had perhaps the softest landing of any obsolete tech company, because their dialup revenue has been declining very, very slowly, less than 10% per year. And that is partly offset by profit margins increasing every year. People seem to just not cancel. Some are still dialing up, but plenty of people have kept paying $10/mo for dialup service they don't even use. Perhaps they just forgot. Or they use the @aol.com email through the web interface, and don't realize that you can keep your email address after cancelling the ISP service (to be fair, that didn't used to be the case, and many people missed the change). So AOL's had many billions of dollars of basically "free" revenue to cushion their decline. Even in 2014, they had roughly $600m of ISP revenue, of which about 2/3 was profit.
        amyjess 12y ago
        Also, before Wi-Fi became as ubiquitous as it is today, the only reliable way to get an Internet connection in a motel room was to dial into an AOL POP, so anybody who would expect to take a road trip would keep their AOL accounts active. I think by 2006, almost every motel had free Wi-Fi though... and that wasn't the case in 2003 (at least, that's what I remember from road trips in those years). Edit: Actually, I remember now that Earthlink POPs were as reliable as AOL POPs, but AOL had better name recognition.
        _delirium 12y ago
        Ah right! Yes, that's definitely true, I remember using AOL dial-up a few times in the early/mid-2000s. My parents had kept their account because of the @aol.com email issue (AOL webmail only became free in 2005), so I used their account to connect from motels.
    - beat 12y ago
      Why not? Microsoft did. Lots of once-innovative companies lose their edge, stop attracting top talent, and just become body shops shuffling to the graveyard.
      - yuhong 12y ago
        AOL's fate ended up being worse than even Microsoft, as far as I know.
      - learc83 12y ago
        I don't think Microsoft is a good example here. They're doing some pretty innovative stuff. Open sourcing much of the .NET stack, F#, and Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi. Even at their worst they never really stopped acquiring top talent, and their revenue hasn't stopped growing [1](it's also about 7 times what Facebook's is). [1] http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/FY2002-20131.png http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/FY2002...
        oldmanjay 12y ago
        I'm not going to address whether or not Microsoft innovates, but open sourcing existing projects is possibly the loosest application of the term I've ever seen

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

Well, the basic problem is that the city councils of Valley "cities" (ie: overgrown, egotistical suburbs) keep refusing to build the kind of dense housing, mixed-price developments, and mixed-usage buildings that make real cities function. In fact, they often explicitly refuse to build any new housing at all, insisting that transplanted tech employees just find somewhere else. So the companies have to build their own damn housing. Welcome to the outcome of NIMBYism.

pconner 12y ago
As someone who will have to relocate to the bay area soon, all of this is incredibly worrying. I thought it was just SF that had major opposition to new development. I didn't realize that issue extended to the south bay as well.
- khuey 12y ago
  It's much worse in parts of the peninsula (e.g. Palo Alto) than it is in SF proper. Mountain View just got a pro-development city council though, so there is hope.
- davidw 12y ago
  That whole area has some pretty screwy politics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit#/media/File:BARTMapDay.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit#/media/F... - see how their rapid transit system excludes most of "silicon valley"? But on the positive side... I think it's worth spending a few years there. It's a very interesting experience in many ways, that I don't regret.
  - martinald 12y ago
    There is an extension of BART to silicon valley underway currently, though.
    - davidw 12y ago
      Taking 40 years to build an extremely useful bit of public transportation is kind of 'exhibit A' for screwy politics in my book - and I know something about it, living in Italy!

outsidetheparty 12y ago

What a ridiculously overblown article. "The robber barons built entire greenfield company towns with a paternalistic controlling agenda! Facebook plans to build less than 400 housing units and obviously won't be able to do any of the controlling things we just described, but WHAT IF THEY DID?!" "What if every single Facebook employee lived here, which they don't, and what if they all voted as a single bloc, which they wouldn't?! CRAY CRAY TIME AMIRITE?"

aros 12y ago
Facetious quotes and meme-spouting doesn't count as refutation.

tomjen3 12y ago

That headline really needs to be toned down. Yeah company cities have been tried before, but this isn't anything Pullman would have liked. For one Facebook can't afford to turn cannons on its own workers and without cannons attacking your own workers, you just can't be a real robber baron.

beat 12y ago
Employee mobility matters. Most people working at Facebook could take their skills and easily get a job somewhere else. The story was different for the company town workers of a century ago.
- msandford 12y ago
  The only way this turns Facebook into robber barons is if they're able to drive developer's salaries down as a result. But the only way to do that would be to build many thousands of units. The housing situation in SF isn't just a little bit short, it's a lot short on supply. And even that would probably just bring developers salaries down from the heavens to more normal levels rather than somehow magically making them all indentured servants.
  - beat 12y ago
    That really only applies to staff not already living in the Bay area (who can presumably afford wherever it is they live), and staff willing to live in whatever kinds of apartments they're providing. That way lies the army of H1B mediocrity.

TheBeardKing 12y ago

Is this any different from living on a military base? Government employees get cheap shopping, entertainment, restaurants, social services, and decent neighborhoods with playgrounds and pools. It does seem more noble to be patriotic than loyal to a company, but is it really any different? I rarely hear service men and women complain about base conditions, they're usually fairly nice.

kyllo 12y ago
Is the military trying to make a profit off servicemen and women?
- beachstartup 12y ago
  that depends on who you ask.
- TheBeardKing 12y ago
  Are you implying that private corporations are more motivated to take advantage of their employees for profit, rather than just trying to keep them happy and productive? I doubt tech companies care much about the profits from these endeavors to risk losing employees through shenanigans. The motivation for both private and military seems to me to just keep happy, committed employees who will be productive for the cause.
  - kyllo 12y ago
    The article mentions those old timey company towns cutting pay but keeping rent and food prices the same. What's to stop a company like Facebook from doing the same? Sure, they have no reason to do that now while the cash is rolling in and everything is gravy. But what about when the market turns and profits start to shrink? I think it's very dangerous for the same for-profit company to control both people's pay and their rent and other living expenses.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      What's to stop a company like Facebook from doing the same? The fact that people would leave? Same as what stops them from lowering salaries, which they can already do and would end up the same result.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

blt 12y ago

I need to visit the Bay Area tech scene and see what's going on. From the outside, via media and this site, it seems like it's drifting away from the real world into its own cultural bubble... but maybe I'm just hatin'