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New Tech Money, Same Old Problems
An anonymous reader writes "Following the publication in May of George Packer's alarming article in the New Yorker revealing the state of the communities surrounding California's tech boom, the LA Times reports that despite the wake-up call, things are getting even worse in the Bay Area as tech companies seek to completely insulate their employees from ever having to interact with the real world. Quoting: 'Every weekday starting at dawn and continuing late into the evening, a shiny fleet of unmarked buses rolls through the streets of San Francisco, picking up thousands of young technology workers at dozens of stops and depositing them an hour's drive south. It's an exclusive perk offered by Apple, Facebook, Google and other major Silicon Valley companies: luxury coaches equipped with air conditioning, plush seats and wireless Internet access that ease the stress of navigating congested Bay Area roadways. The private mass transit system has become the most visible symbol of the digital gold rush sweeping this city, and of the sharpening division between those who are riding the high-tech industry's good fortunes and those who are not.'"
I want to agree with you but I it is getting more difficult to ignore the ways in which people are disengaging from the real world.
When my former college hired crossing guards to help adults cross a minor city street because they couldn't take their eyes off their gadgets I became convinced something significant has changed. When I see a lack of pick-up games and activity in the parks on beautiful days but see the organized indoor summer camps bustling with kids and tight supervision I wonder if we've become unable to live in the real world.
We live in a world that is safer than ever - whether we're talking about world politics or safety in our neighborhoods but we're also acting more fearful than ever.
Sounds like the beginnings of "The Company Store" coal miners suffered in the 1800s. i wonder when Google will start paying their employees in Google dollars that can only be spent at Google stores. Of course Apple and others will have their equivalent money.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Really. So companies provide employees with a free benefit, thereby reducing pollution, and relieving traffic congestion, and this means that things are "getting worse"? This is the stupidest article I have read so far today.
I think the problem is that it's turning SF into a "bedroom community" for employers far to the south rather than having the workers live *and* work in the city (thus they are spending less time and money in the city. When I worked in SF during the first dot-com boom, my coworkers and I all went out to lunch at local restaurants and met after work at local bars. The worker that leaves the city at 7am on a bus, and them comes home at 7pm to be dropped off in his neighborhood is probably not spending as much time going out and supporting local businesses. Further, the added influx of SF residents are driving up rents, so even those that *do* work in SF find it difficult and expensive to find a place to live. Oh, and the city receives no payroll tax for those employees, so not only does the city earn less tax revenue due to reduced spending by these workers, but they receive no payroll tax either.
Rather than subsidizing bus travel to make it more attractive to live in SF and work 40 miles south, it would be nice to see the Peninsula cities and tech companies work on making it more attractive for their employees to live closer to work. It's no fun to live next to an office park that becomes a big unwalkable, bike unfriendly concrete wasteland after working hours.
The picture in the article was taken 100 feet from my house, and the rental units in our building have gone up from $1800/mo to $2800/mo within just two years. I'm not complaining, but the article is dead-on that this huge influx of intelligence and money has thus far failed to actually lead to any benefit for the large majority of people who actually live here. It's a bit of a disappointment so far, and possibly a prelude to what's to come for the rest of the country (?).
I actually left Silicon Valley 14 years ago in order to escape the slit-your-wrists boredom of Silicon Valley. San Jose is loaded to the gills with money, but they never seem to prioritize perks for those who are not directly working for those companies. To give just one example, I distinctly recall having to drive quite a distance to get to the nearest bar, even when I was working for a great company. San Jose's idea of a solution to that sort of problem is to vigorously go after drunk drivers (as opposed to just creating more and better mass transit). Those who have lived in the Bay Area might have noticed the incredible difference between San Jose and San Francisco police officers.
I think many people are legitimately concerned about what this culture brings with it. The human aspects of San Francisco which set San Francisco apart from the rest of the world -- the electronic music, burning man artists, etc -- have already mostly crossed the bridge to Oakland.
In reviewing the comments here, I'm honestly not completely surprised that the people here would take a clinical view of the article. This is not exactly a reflective community. You guys probably won't get it until your tech company throws you away at age 45 or 50, as tends to happen when your pay gets too high. Will you know enough to start up your own company at that point? Those who have put everything they had into their work tend not to have the time to think about such things. The same things that make the Silicon Valley culture lacking in empathy also sporadically appear here too.