I agree with you. The First Estate (landlords, investors and executives, paid enough to own houses) has been dicking over the Second Estate (engineers, able to live in SF but not save or buy houses) through no-poach agreements, collusive arrangements (note-sharing among VCs) blocking them from starting new businesses, and increasingly mean-spirited HR policies (stack ranking). The Third Estate (everyone else) is being evicted and abused by the rent-seeking First Estate.
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. I'm not so out-of-touch that I'd call $120,000 per year, in any city, "poor" because it's not; but neither is it "rich" and these tech workers are not responsible for this NIMBY nonsense.
A similar situation is behind the Economist existing, as about 200 years ago in the UK they had a strange setup with land owning aristocrats, free market industrialists, and proto-communist "Chartists". The aristocrats found unlikely allies in the Chartists, though it didn't help in the long run.
The free market types were concerned about the Corn Laws, and formed the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Corn_Law_League , and their journal ended up becoming the Economist. The Corn Laws effectively subsidised the aristocracy, and prevented free labour movement, first by keeping cost of living too high (through cost of food) secondly by keeping people working on otherwise unviable farms to produce corn. The Chartists were so preoccupied with the idea that the industrialists wanted to drive wages down they missed the bigger picture.
This seems to always be the case - people turn on neighboring socioeconomic classes, not the ones at the extreme top of the pyramid. During the Jim Crow era, the worst discrimination against blacks came not from the elite (many of whom had been abolitionists during slavery and equality-minded liberals afterwards), but from poor white sharecroppers who were one degree removed from slavery themselves. Nowadays, the conservative movement within the U.S. is composed of the ultra-wealthy plus the lower-middle-class and working-class Religious Right. The targets of the LA race riots were not rich white people, but Korean shopkeepers in minority neighborhoods.
I suspect it's because it's generally impossible to "skip" social classes and jump directly from the bottom to the top. Even rags-to-riches stories usually involved a period of a few decades where the person enters and assimilates into the intervening classes. Jan Koum went from immigrant to middle-class tech worker to aspiring entrepreneur to multi-billionaire. Henry Ford went from farmer to machinist to engineer to captain of industry. Andrew Carnegie went from immigrant to bobbin boy to telegraph operator to bookkeeper & investor to steel magnate.
As a result, each class views the class directly above them as their impediment to upwards mobility, and they're not wrong in that belief. In times of scarcity, resentment usually flows upwards to their immediate neighbors. The more distant causes of the socioeconomic structures that hold people down are effectively invisible to the rioting classes; all they see is people who are not very different from themselves doing better than them.
All salaries should just be spoken of with respect to their purchasing power, not qty of dollars per year.
A 120k salary in sf has the same purchasing power of a 50k salary in other states (according to some studies from a few years ago, and id suspect it has gotten worse)
The annual income required just to afford a monthly rent in SF is insane. Assuming that many 1bed apts are ~3,000 per month, youd need to make north of 50k just to cover the rent - let alone all other living expenses...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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).
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.
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.
Comments
I agree with you. The First Estate (landlords, investors and executives, paid enough to own houses) has been dicking over the Second Estate (engineers, able to live in SF but not save or buy houses) through no-poach agreements, collusive arrangements (note-sharing among VCs) blocking them from starting new businesses, and increasingly mean-spirited HR policies (stack ranking). The Third Estate (everyone else) is being evicted and abused by the rent-seeking First Estate.
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. I'm not so out-of-touch that I'd call $120,000 per year, in any city, "poor" because it's not; but neither is it "rich" and these tech workers are not responsible for this NIMBY nonsense.
A similar situation is behind the Economist existing, as about 200 years ago in the UK they had a strange setup with land owning aristocrats, free market industrialists, and proto-communist "Chartists". The aristocrats found unlikely allies in the Chartists, though it didn't help in the long run.
The free market types were concerned about the Corn Laws, and formed the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Corn_Law_League , and their journal ended up becoming the Economist. The Corn Laws effectively subsidised the aristocracy, and prevented free labour movement, first by keeping cost of living too high (through cost of food) secondly by keeping people working on otherwise unviable farms to produce corn. The Chartists were so preoccupied with the idea that the industrialists wanted to drive wages down they missed the bigger picture.
This seems to always be the case - people turn on neighboring socioeconomic classes, not the ones at the extreme top of the pyramid. During the Jim Crow era, the worst discrimination against blacks came not from the elite (many of whom had been abolitionists during slavery and equality-minded liberals afterwards), but from poor white sharecroppers who were one degree removed from slavery themselves. Nowadays, the conservative movement within the U.S. is composed of the ultra-wealthy plus the lower-middle-class and working-class Religious Right. The targets of the LA race riots were not rich white people, but Korean shopkeepers in minority neighborhoods.
I suspect it's because it's generally impossible to "skip" social classes and jump directly from the bottom to the top. Even rags-to-riches stories usually involved a period of a few decades where the person enters and assimilates into the intervening classes. Jan Koum went from immigrant to middle-class tech worker to aspiring entrepreneur to multi-billionaire. Henry Ford went from farmer to machinist to engineer to captain of industry. Andrew Carnegie went from immigrant to bobbin boy to telegraph operator to bookkeeper & investor to steel magnate.
As a result, each class views the class directly above them as their impediment to upwards mobility, and they're not wrong in that belief. In times of scarcity, resentment usually flows upwards to their immediate neighbors. The more distant causes of the socioeconomic structures that hold people down are effectively invisible to the rioting classes; all they see is people who are not very different from themselves doing better than them.
All salaries should just be spoken of with respect to their purchasing power, not qty of dollars per year.
A 120k salary in sf has the same purchasing power of a 50k salary in other states (according to some studies from a few years ago, and id suspect it has gotten worse)
The annual income required just to afford a monthly rent in SF is insane. Assuming that many 1bed apts are ~3,000 per month, youd need to make north of 50k just to cover the rent - let alone all other living expenses...
yeh i am loking at a well paid job in london uk and I will still end up geting paid a lot less than a tube driver does and a much worse pension.
Btw I am not saying that tube divers dont deserve thier sallary just pointing out how poorly techies are treated in the UK
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.