The real story is how a certain section of the media loves to blow up anything anti-Google, no matter how trivial or insignificant (a few dozen people staging a rally? two months ago?), into The Biggest Problem Ever. One imagines that they make big advertising dollars from spreading their ideology of hate, just as William Randolph Hearst did a few generations back. Or maybe Bill Gates ran over their puppy back in 1982 and now they've dedicated their lives to petty revenge.
"Look Who’s Gawking: Inside Nick Denton’s phony, hypocritical class war against tech workers": http://pando.com/2013/12/26/look-whos-gawking-inside-nick-de...
It's not a contest, we can all be douchebags. The point isn't that we're the worst, it's that supposedly we're up there.
This is not a comparison group you should aspire to be in at all.
Wall Streeters are greedy, but they don't go out of their way to ruin peoples' careers (except in the movies). They'll do a lot of things to get that $10 million bonus, but they don't hold long-term grudges and wreck careers of people who've since flown away from them. A trader will get you fired if it suits his career goals, because he is ruthless, but once you're out of his way, he'll take an active interest in making sure you get a better job afterward. Valley people, when they separate, tend to make it really ugly: lots of gossip, negative references, long-term grudges and other nonsense that wouldn't exist among people who cared more about themselves winning than about other people losing.
Silicon Valley attracts people who want power, and those tend to be worse than those who want money. It also attracts, more than nerds, people who come on specifically to take advantage of nerds. The latter set tend to be horrible, and to rise fast.
Finally, there's the false poverty effect. If you make $10 million in a year, you're rich. If you're a trust-fund kid, but you're only paying yourself a $25,000 salary because that's all your investors will let you take out, you feel more entitled to fuck people over because you're "the little guy" and because, being "scrappy" (or "lean"), you "can't afford" the costs of being ethical.
I'm a nobody who came to Silicon Valley and has done relatively well for himself as a founder. I've seen many, many other founders with similar stories. We raised a significant amount of money and can spend it however we want. The worst I can say about my experience with investors is sometimes they can be arrogant. The ones that did invest in us have been nothing but incredibly humble and helpful. But going out of their way to screw someone over? I just haven't ever seen anything close to that happen to anyone in the 3 years I've been here.
I used to work in finance where they're much more ruthless. I have a classmate from undergrad who recently was arrested for "stealing trade secrets" from a hedge fund: http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2014/02/19/analyst-c.... Who knows what actually happened but that sort of stuff would never fly in Silicon Valley.
That's not to say I have the correct perspective but I always see these generalizations coming from you that seem so far off from my reality that I wonder what's going on. What happened to you?
How confident are you about this claim?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2013/07/22/carl-icah...
people in every industry hold long term grudges and wreck each others careers. They simply just exist in whatever industry you choose.
Regular Facebook employees aren't Mark Zuckerberg, and certainly aren't paid like it. Most tech workers make less than twice the median family income in the Bay Area—good pay, but not obscene.
If people have a problem with income inequality, they should be siding with tech workers—we're way closer to barista wages than being in the 1%.
So why are tech workers the ones getting attacked? You can bet Larry Page isn't taking the bus, but he's the one making the money.
Not even, the protestors manage to direct their wrath at the employees low enough level to be riding the shuttles.
It's pretty ironic seeing the ostensible radical leftists following the lead of the Valley Wag's middle brow demagoguery.
Yes, SF's banking-class and politicians are loving this. The middle-class is distracted fighting their middle-class peers.
(I thought the plural "bricks through the window" in the subheadline was particularly indicative, when as far as I know that was brick singular)
The world, meanwhile, follows a bit of news about tech companies, they have opinions about some of the bigger ones, and they like taking sides over their favorite phone brand, but they continue to steadfastly not care about Silicon Valley. Seriously. Go on vacation, get out of the bubble, talk to people. They don't even have an opinion on the place.
These protesters are either misinformed or being deliberately malicious if they are targeting the ordinary tech employee. At $39000 average spending per year ($3250/month according to the article), how much do they exactly think SV engineers get paid? At say, 100k, which would be considered pretty decent by an SV engineer, the 28% tax bracket, leaves 72k actual income. Minus the $39000 housing expenses mentioned, that's $33000/year, or $2750/month for food, clothing, paying for your kids' education. etc. If your spouse doesn't work, you will be living a pretty Spartan life. Hardly the kind of money you imagine rich assholes throwing around, is it?
A) income tax is progressive and continuous, you can't say $28k in taxes for the 28% bracket (however, FICA and CA income taxes mean that number is in the right ball park)
B) a couple living on one income in a 2-bedroom isn't considered a birthright in dense cities like SF
C) $100k would be an unusually low salary even for someone just out of school taking the megacorp buses, and this is before bonuses and RSUs
So I disagree with the thesis that Bay Area tech workers are by any measure living a spartan life.
I'm not so sure that low six figures is considered low for someone straight out of school, remembering that not all hires are superstars, and there are a lot of less technical positions being filled as well.
And in the Bay Area, childcare and/or education expenses are likely to add up unless you've got a very good local public school.
The tech workers are just showing up with buying power. The decision of whether or not to pursue ellis act evictions is not carried out by tech workers, but the San Francisco landlords who are trying to free up their rent controlled units to be able to jack up the price.
Many of these landlords are either San Franciscans who still live in the city or those that grew up here, but moved out to the supports and now just manage rentals in the city. So at the end of the day its fellow San Franciscans to whom these protestors should direct their anger.
Sure conjecture and conspiracy-theoryish but why the fuck else would any part of the media be paying attention to 10 protesters and a staged, crass fake "nerd" pretending to be a Google employee?
[1] http://www.marinij.com/novato/ci_25251868/lib-at-large-novat...
Many people have concerns, but a) even most of them don't all the time, and b) as a proportion of world adult population, not many.
The First Estate of Silicon Valley (here, including San Francisco) are the highly influential angels, VCs, and corporate executives who can force acquisitions. The Second Estate are the engineers, mid-level product managers, and data scientists. The Third Estate is everyone else. Naturally, the First Estate is trying to prevent any chance of alliance between the Second and Third Estate, and actively encourages tension between the those two groups. It's also clear, however, that the First Estate screws the Second (all of the collusion/anti-poach agreements that have been uncovered). In fact, the Second and Third Estates have a common enemy in the First. They've just been prevented from realizing it, in large part, by all the obfuscation that's going on.
To people in poverty, $120,000 per year is a large amount of money, but it's not nearly enough to bribe city councils into enacting the NIMBY policies that make San Francisco unaffordable.
The real bad guys don't ride Google buses. They have private drivers, and the Google buses don't stop on Sand Hill Road.
It's sortof like high school. Popular people treat the unpopular badly. Type A's are revered, have lots of friends, and get lots of sex.
Nerds are treated badly because they are "different". There isn't much compassion for people who are "different". You better be funny and Type A or you got some serious character flaws ;-)
Nonetheless, it's still a game. It's also a cold world. Some people transcend and live a more meaningful life, some don't.
Trust me, I know - I was born and raised in Australia, and because of the country's heavy Socialist/British background and identity, we were taught to hate everything about America. My wife and I lived in Melbourne from 2009-2012, and she suffered horrible discrimination for being from the US.
Silicon Valley is one of the great monuments to American individualism and entrepreneurial spirit, and it sickens most Aussies to see the success and fortune that has come of it.
The Age is ensuring that the anti-American sentiment is kept at a poisonous and noxious level.
Firstly, this Melbourne Age piece is syndicated from The Telegraph, a British newspaper from my home country. As a regular visitor to Australia, with relatives living there, I had presumed that the article was syndicated even before I reached the byline. This due to a clarity of language unusual in locally written newspaper articles.
It sounds atrocious, the treatment of your wife, and if her treatment was as widespread as I'm inclined to take on trust from what you say, then I'll need to reassess a thing or two.
Australians know virtually nothing about Americans as people, and that's a pity. Their television is acutely americanised, and their culture inculcated with American influence, but I've noticed that hardly any Australians have actually met an American. It's hardly polite or even civil to blame the rare American they meet for the perceived wrongs of the US body politic. And I can empathise with your experience somewhat.
It can be parochial. I watched Grease the movie on Australian TV recently, and it reminded me that Australians love John Travolta because he loved Olivia Newton John, who's really a Brit anyway. He's in if he can say g'day. On the other hand Mel Gibson was Aussie and became American. He's not claimed anymore.
But I haven't found hate as you appear to have. Australia is a lot bigger than the left wing inner city self styled intellectuals you apparently met too many of.
Go to country NSW and they all dress and sing like Chet Atkins.
According to Wikipedia, Mel Gibson was born in the US to American parents and moved to Australia when he was 12. Somehow I remembered that factoid when I read your comment :)
Wow, how unbelievably arrogant. Spending his money however the fuck he wants? Paying people to render him services of their own free will? What an asshole. He must've forgot signing that social contract with angry poor radicals that once you hit $(whatever today's immoral amount of money is) you no longer have the right to spend it... oh wait.
Whatever. Give me a break. This article is really about the worst side of SF - not the successful businessmen, but the unsuccessful, jealous, negative, unproductive "radicals" whose politics boils down to "I hate everything that I don't understand, and I'm not going to bother to try and understand it because I hate it."
an arrogant and often tone-deaf industry
The only arrogant people here are these fucking losers who think they deserve to live in the one of the world's most expensive and desirable cities, and think they deserve to dictate how other people can and should behave, despite providing absolutely nothing of value to anyone.
Perkins is right. The closest parallel to the mindless, hate-drenched opprobrium of these people is Nazi Germany turning on the Jews (a similar group of successful, largely innocuous businesspeople.)
This perverse non-analogy is an embarrassment. It reads like absurd satire. Please stop repeating it.
I am amazed. Wait ... no I'm not. I'm even inclined to call those claims justified.
Nobody signed a contract with these people promising to let them live there forever. They were rentors, and if they didn't understand that they could be asked to leave at any time by the true owners of the property, that's their fault. And if they were so concerned about their ability to continue living there indefinitely, maybe they should have worked harder to ensure their position? Maybe they should have striven to provide more economic value, so they could have purchased this apparently extremely important good?
These people have no excuse. They knew the rules. The rules were clear to everyone. They were happy as long as they got what they wanted. Now the situation no longer favours them, they want the rules to be changed - so that they get everything exactly how they want it.
