Slashdot Mirror
Protesters Block Apple and Google Buses In California
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Business Insider reports that protesters have stopped a bus filled with Apple employees in San Francisco and a Google bus in Oakland. Tech companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook provide free buses that take their employees from San Francisco to their headquarters in the suburbs. Protesters are mad at the tech companies because the wealthy tech employees have driven up the price of housing in San Francisco, which is pricing out some people. The buses also use public transit stops, and some protesters think that's wrong. Between 70 and 100 protesters gathered for the blockade of Apple private tech shuttle to protest evictions in the city of San Francisco. The activists in San Francisco were from Eviction Free San Francisco, Our Mission No Eviction, Causa Justa /Just Cause. Protesters stood in front of a white shuttle bus holding banners and signs. Some peeked through cardboard signs fashioned in the shape of place markers on Google maps, with "Evicted" written across the front. Meanwhile violence occurred in Oakland, according to reports from IndyBay, as protesters unfurled two giant banners reading "TECHIES: Your World Is Not Welcome Here" and "Fuck off Google" and "a person appeared from behind the bus and quickly smashed the whole of the rear window, making glass rain down on the street. Cold air blew inside the bus and the blockaders with their banners departed." Two weeks ago, protesters stopped a Google bus."
This just in: The homeless and unemployed mobbed a bus full of people perceived to be rich, perhaps unaware of the 60-80 hour work weeks endured by software engineers, that once you take that into consideration, many in the industry make at, or less, than minimum wage.
-_- Guys... if you're gonna have a protest against the rich, go pitch a tent on the CEO's lawn, not in the middle of the street where a bunch of people only doing slightly better than you are take the bus to work every day. Not only will you win an Irony award from me, but you'll get arrested for obstructing traffic too -- and rightfully so. Time and place. First two things you learn in activism. Time. Place. Learn it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I hate to make it sound like I'm pissing on the protesters, but how is it the fault of techies that house pricing is going up?
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
this could just strengthen the theory of the Golden Girls and the fact that they were cosmonauts.
California.
"...a person appeared from behind the bus and quickly smashed the whole of the rear window, making glass rain down on the street."
Smile, you are on Candid Camera.
or even our moms. that would apply to the 'civil' servants (our employees?) as well
I don't quite understand what these protesters want to happen. Do they want the companies to pay their workers less or otherwise not treat them as well? Or are they just trying to scare successful people away?
The tech industry is not responsible for driving up housing prices. The greed of people who set housing prices is responsible for driving up housing prices. However, it is much harder to visibly protest the upscale equivalent of a slumlord (I guess still a slumlord), especially when such highly visible symptoms as environmentally friendly commuter buses are within easy reach.
Restricting someones freedom to travel is kidnapping not a protest.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
bad.
I don't respond to AC's.
That these protests were organized using the technology of the companies they were protesting against.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
There is an ever widen inequality gap in America. Gaps in wealth, income, education, access to healthcare, life expectancy, etc. Much attention has been paid to the life of the top 1% but not so much to the bottom 20%. Real incomes for them have stagnated or gone down over the last decade. The urine poor public education system gives little opportunity for upward mobility. Hunger, cold, and loss of housing are constant worries.
Meanwhile in congress, politicians want to cut social welfare programs, keep taxes on the wealthy at record low rates, give tax breaks for corporate jets, cut unemployment benefits, send the poor to fight stupid wars (how many of the Apple and Google employees have friends and family serving in the Middle East?). The list goes on and on. I am fighting the urge to blame this all on the Republicans because the Democrats don't really seem to want to fix the problem.
So the situation has devolved into this-- where the poor, disaffected, resentful masses with little hope of improving their lot see the gleaming buses give free rides to the Apple and Google employees with their free lunches. To be fair to the employees in the buses, they are probably not the really rich because they have onsite parking. First the spray cans. Next the torches, rocks and sickles. Meanwhile the politicians in Washington cry "Let them eat cake."
Well fuck me, anti-intellectualism has reached a new peak. I knew I should never have bothered to learn to read. A lifetime of study, wasted! Is it too late to become ignorant and therefore blissful?
This news comes as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the steadily growing popular disdain for IT ever since the dot-com crash. IT guys have lower status than dirt these days.
Exactly what is wrong with "gentrification"? One commenter on the linked article on IndyBay points out the City of Detroit as an example of what happens when the middle class leaves. Is that what they want for Oakland?
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Move your companies to a state not full of freeloading nut jobs.
As I recall, housing prices in SF and environs were going astronomical long before Google existed. And seeing as Apple's been there since the 70's, it seems rather odd that "just recently" Apple is responsible for a price rise in housing.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
We are starting to see the social unrest caused by the wealth disparity in the US - a disparity of Third World proportions. You have people being left begind in the economic prosperity and to add insult to injury, they are then told it's because of their character: unwillingness to work hard, poor money skills, getting the wrong education or degree. (It's funny, back in the 90s, all those tech people were saying "follow you passions! That's how you make it big!" and "We only hire people who are passionate about what they do!")
The techies were just the first targets. Don't worry, the CEOs will come next - if they can get through shareholder paid for armed security. Security for big shots is a BOOMING business, btw.
This is what happens when people feel like there's no hope for them to better their lives. They see that "work hard" means nothing when you have assholes who know the right people become billionaires with little or no effort - they just had the contacts to folks who knew how to set it up to sucker investors with an IPO.
It's starting to happen folks! Social issues like this were solved in the 30s but we went BACKWARDs in the last couple of decades.
We need 1950s income tax rates back; which was the most prosperous times in US history. Back then working hard and having "good" character got you some where.
"I'd rather have to give half away than have all if it taken away!"
-Joseph P. Kennedy.
> Typically, if the value of your house skyrockets, so do your taxes. Taxes go up, so does your mortgage...and then you can't
afford to live there.
Not in California. By law, property tax bills can only increase by inflation, not to exceed two percent per year:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978)
In England, Microsoft and Oracle have a similar free bus service for their employees - http://www.tvptravel.co.uk/tvp-buses , http://www.somph.co.uk/tvp.html
It too uses public bus stops, and the local council helpfully puts the route and the stops on their bus maps - http://www.reading-buses.co.uk/maps/
and lists the coach hire company that operates these services as one of the local public transport operators.
If anyone here were to protest against this bus service, people would think they were mad.
In an unrelated story a horde of pale greasy nerds descended on the popular internet forums shutting them down, "Go away! You've ruined the whole town" one said before unleashing the full fury his home OC3 connection on a popular forum for trading cat pictures.
We don't know who these people are, or their backgrounds - so it seems rather trite to sneer at their protest.The earning power of Google's brilliant tech professionals has swept them aside. Is it surprising they have something to say about it? And they are only the first small drops from the stormclouds. Robotics and automation constitute a rising tide that will engulf more and more low-skill jobs - and not just those either. What will most people do when there is no prospect of them getting any employment?
The disparity in the US is huge, yes, but being poor in the US is a picnic compared to the third world. No one in the US needs to starve. You have a roof over your head. You have at least some money for luxuries like a mobile phone and a TV. Comparing this to third world poverty shows that you've never been to the third world.
That is false and you have absoutely no clue. See the chart. We are on the level of some African countries - and some of those Third World shitholes are actually better than we are.
The rest of that statement show someone who has a very very cloistered life.
Taking too many company buses and living on the company "campus" are we?
They are idiots, pure and simple.
That's what I think of all the SF tech companies. They are all just advertising companies with a delusion of being innovative.
Despite all the complaints about a lack of housing, SV hasn't become more urbanized. Is there any reason for that other than zoning and other government imposed limits? If SV companies really wanted more housing in the area, they'd pressure the local governments to change that. It's absurd to complain about lack of housing when you don't see 10 story apartment buildings everywhere.
Would they rather the tech employees clog the streets with BMWs and SUVs? Or move out of the city and stop spending money in local restaurants, stores, gyms, etc?
Unlawful restraint and intimidation are forms of violence. Or are you of the opinion that violence only involves physical injury?
So the situation has devolved into this-- where the poor, disaffected, resentful masses with little hope of improving their lot see the gleaming buses give free rides to the Apple and Google employees with their free lunches.
You do realize that the protesters live in the most expensive rental market in the US, right? With the possible exception of Manhattan, thy can move anywhere else in the US and pay less. "poor" is relative, and relative to the rest of the US population these people are not poor.
In most parts of the country, cities lament that people LIVE in the suburbs, and only WORK in the city, robbing them of the property taxes they need to support the crumbling social and economic infrastructure, causing a collapse in property values (Detroit is a perfect example, but other large cities have the same issues).
In California, when people make an effort to LIVE in the city, paying all those higher taxes and propping up all that social and economic infrastructure, they're protested for harming the poor by keeping the property values from collapsing.
Face facts, people - you can't have it both ways. If you don't want those middle-income people keeping your neighborhoods from turning into crack houses, you shouldn't complain when the landlords don't have to put up with any deadbeat who feels like squatting in their buildings.
So amusing, I wonder how long until someone tosses a Molotov into the bus.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
line
stupid.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Magic Bus, Magic Bus, Magic Bus ...
I said, now I've got my Magic Bus (Too much, Magic Bus)
I said, now I've got my Magic Bus (Too much, Magic Bus)
I drive my baby every way (Too much, Magic Bus)
Each time I go a different way (Too much, Magic Bus)
I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it ...
What you are seeing is years and years of people planting the seeds of envy sprouting.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
"The buses also use public transit stops, and some protesters think that's wrong."
Some protestors think that's wrong, because it is wrong (in violation of the law). I live in San Francisco and run a small tech company near YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno. The connection between the private buses and the rising cost of housing is weak, and there are several problems with the protestors targeting their housing concerns at buses full of techies.
I am strongly against these private corporations illegal use of public space for their own benefit. The public has, like it or not, designated bus stops, fire lanes, etc. set aside for a public good. Any vehicle other than the Muni buses stopped in SF's bus stops should be ticked and towed. Private vehicles such as my own are ticketed quickly, but the tech buses are not. Both the tech companies and local law enforcement are to blame there, and deserve to draw the ire of the public as they take a public good for their private benefit.
The corner near YouTube is a red fire lane, and daily filled with google's gleaming white buses in the morning and evenings. Often, so the poor techies don't have to walk an extra 20 yards, they will double park, blocking one of two through lanes of traffic, or nose in, leaving the rear of the bus blocking a through lane of traffic. I call the police every time a through lane of traffic is blocked, but I doubt that they have come by. The fire lanes there are set aside by the public though city government for the safety of all in the area, including my business nearby, as well as for the safe flow of traffic at the intersection there. YouTube's daily willingness to put the public at greater risk and great inconvenience by blocking traffic and fire lanes, including blocking my workforce that is trying to get to and from our office, by using a public good for their private gain is the issue, and deserves the public's response.
with modest jobs (think service sector, utility technician, etc.) until recently. The cost of living in SF is rising quite rapidly, correlated with the increase in value of firms like Facebook, Twitter and others. Especially correlated with such companies' appearances on the public stock exchanges, which gives their employees a lot of purchasing power, which escalates the prices of housing, property tax rates, rents and so forth.
"Ordinary" jobs (jobs with compensation not de facto indexed to the rise of technology company valuations) don't keep up with increases in local costs of living in areas like SF or San Jose. This hits pretty hard on somebody, for example, like a service tech at a sewage processing plant. That's a moderately skilled job, one that provides real value to the community. Somebody who has filled that job well for 20 years, and who has been able to live in SF on their earnings, quite suddenly finds themselves being priced out of their community. How? Escalating property taxes (based on escalating home prices driven by demand from ISO-enriched techies); increased rents (same reason + others), increased prices of goods and services, etc. After 20 years, they find they can't keep up. Suddenly, living in SF is a "luxury".
All they did was do a good, useful job, maybe raise a family, contribute to making a good community - in short, all the stuff we'd like Americans to do - and they're priced out through no fault of theirs. It's a problem for them, and it's a problem for all of us. It doesn't seem like a problem to those who are on the techie compensation skyrocket, but it is. They just won't notice the damage as soon as others around them.
I am someone who actually lived half his life in a third world country. I sacrificed a lot, took loans, made educated bets (higher education; master's), and now it's paying off. I moved to where the jobs were. I moved to places that were reasonable to my skill set. I moved where the university's program aligned with my interests. I am married now but I predict more moves in the future. It's not fun at all, but necessary to climb up the career ladder, because some people and places won't always give you a promotion or raise when you deserve it. Other places will recognize my value more readily.
But my point is: I didn't have an easy life. I did manual labor in high school. If you're going to bitch about hard work, IT folks have the most merit-based attitude and outlook in life. If you're going to bitch about being priviledged or a trust-fund baby, then boycott Hollywood, newspaper empires, wineries, and financial institutions. In IT, you earn your title. Sure, you may know someone who knows someone, but in the end you'll have to be able to prove you can do basic coding. I don't find it hard, but it requires you to pass algebra and trig.
And if you were one of those people who gave me a hard time in math class, caused disruptions because you were bored, or slept because it was beyond your comprehension, then I don't feel sorry for you at all. I'd take your argument and say *you* were lazy and priviledged thinking you'd never need math again. You were lazy for not trying harder. And before you bitch to me about being a math geek - I have an undergrad degree in fine arts - probably one of the most "useless" degrees one could ever attain. But you know what? While it made my hill steeper to climb, I keep on moving.
Move out of one of the most expensive places to live int he Nation and then you'll have a point.
I have little sympathy for folks who are struggling in places like that. They are CHOOSING to live there. You can't tell me they have unique skills that can't be used in some other state or city where their cost of living would be 75% lower ( yes, I said 75% look it up )
Hell, even if you just move to near Sacramento, your cost of living would drop by almost half.
This just in: The homeless and unemployed mobbed a bus full of people perceived to be rich, perhaps unaware of the 60-80 hour work weeks endured by software engineers, that once you take that into consideration, many in the industry make at, or less, than minimum wage.
The *entry level* salaries for Google and Apple engineers in Silicon Valley is $105K. That's over fifty bucks an hour assuming a 40-hour work week.
Now assume an 80-hour work week, so it's still over 25 bucks an hour. And these engineers get *lots* of perks, including high end health care plans and free transportation to work. Bear in mind that a substantial chunk of a working class salary is spent taking care of these kinds of expenses, and there are lots of non-monetary hassles associated with maintaining a car in a big city.
Aside from perhaps breaking some obscure city ordinance about using public bus stops, this Google/Apple bussing plan is EXACTLY what left-leaners should loudly support. It saves on energy, pollution, and traffic - and adds a wealthier, local tax base to support the liberal programs that require significant tax revenue and generally reduce crime. A win, win - except that the protesters are trying to violently stop it.
Talk about cognitive dissonance for the left-leaning ./ers. You can see it in the, "I hate to make it sound like.." like starts to posts, as if people don't want to attack the type of people they would've gladly jumped behind in most other cases... The 1% the past "occupy" movements have gone after is now THEM (developers), and the shoe is on the other foot? It shows just how dangerous and philosophically ignorant these protesters can be.
Instead of saying, "hey, hey - not US, dummies.. go get the RICH people!", maybe an open discussion and a little more political balance from people on both sides is in order?
60-80 hour work weeks endured by software engineers
You know, that might be part of the problem, too. With a 60-80 hour work week, how much time do you think software engineers have to participate in the community itself? A neighborhood isn't just a set of nice buildings you drive past in-between work/sleep cycles.
Seriously, cry me a river. I had to learn English when I moved to this country. My parents? 2 other languages before we moved here.
The one thing I noticed about Americans, is that once they're settled into a way of life, they don't want change. I guess that's why they say that young people start out as liberals, change to conservatives when they get old. Or maybe that's just people in general - change is scary.
It's a lot more mundane than that: supply and demand.
When a place becomes desirable over a long period of time, lots of people want to move there. How cities manage this relatively good problem to have is very telling about the character of their politics.
San Francisco decided a long time ago that it didn't want very much new construction. Their land-use restrictions are among the most restrictive in the country, and even if you can get past them, the amount of red tape to either build something or renovate something (particularly if anybody thinks it has historical character, which is not a high bar in SF) combined with the frequency and ease of anti-development lawsuits means that the city has been encouraging people to come to town while adamantly refusing to find anywhere to put them.
This is the inevitable result of a certain kind of liberal mindset: the same people who are in the streets and protesting the lack of affordable housing are the ones who will file lawsuits and protest development that provides housing. It may not be the housing they like, but the thing about the housing market is that you have to have somewhere to put everybody. SF is like New York in this respect: the high end is fine, even if it costs a lot more to be rich in SF than most anywhere else in the United States. The low end, while hardly fine, is served through affordable housing: if you are willing to survive the Waiting Lists of Housing Limbo, you can qualify for a place to live, so long as you never make too much money. Politicians love this stuff because it lets them point at families that could never live in a place like that and take credit for solving the problem that they are making a lot worse, because there is no longer a middle to the housing market.
This problem isn't inherent to government-subsidized housing - you could figure out how to build and/or subsidize low-cost housing without completely distorting the market. But combine it with land-use restrictions and your average San Francsican's general unwillingness to tolerate tract homes and voila, nobody can afford to live there. Blaming Google and Facebook for this is not only ignorant, it's the worst kind of envy: you have what we want, so you must be responsible for the fact that we haven't got it.
Austin has experienced a similar boom to SF and some of the same problems, but even though we've failed on the infrastructure side, we didn't limit development to anywhere near the extent that SF has. Consequently, Austin is still the most expensive place to live in Texas, but the average cost per square foot is between 1/3 and 1/4 of what it is in San Francisco.
TL;DR: If you want everyone to have a place to live, you have to be OK with the fact that they won't all live in charming bungalows or 19th century restoration hardware displays. Anyone who thinks that getting rid of the tech sector in San Francisco is a solution should go visit Detroit to see what a city looks like when business leaves. Just don't call the cops or the fire department unless you have an hour to kill.
then protest where at buses' destination; block the car parking entrance instead of the bus. I'd assume the higher-ups would drive their own vehicles to work, instead of embarking on buses - such a plebian mode of transportation.
... I mean seriously, have these protesters been living in some isolation chamber in someone's basement? Have they been not keeping track of California's real estate prices in GENERAL for the last few DECADES? Absurd California real estate prices have been going on since the last few decades because of Prop 13. So once again capitalism is being blamed for government intervention side effects and unintended consequences.
I have lived in the SF Bay Area almost my entire life. In this area, every single time anyone tries to build new urban housing, the left shows up and protests. Are you trying to build a new condo building? PROTEST. Trying to build new apartments? PROTEST. The political left has fought, tooth and nail, for decades, to restrict severely, or even to reduce the supply of housing in the SF Bay Area, and ESPECIALLY urban housing like high-rise apartment buildings. Then, the consequences of their actions occurred: the price of real estate went up, especially for renters.
When the price of real estate started going up, because of absolutely restricted supply, the left started rebelling against the consequences of its own actions. They started protesting again--not against themselves who actually caused the phenomenon, but against Google, who had nothing to do with it. Now the left has people holding banners saying "FUCK GOOGLE" and "Techies not welcome here".
Of course, if the protestors really succeeded in "fucking Google" etc, and tech companies were really not welcome here, then silicon valley would have to move somewhere else. Then the tech industry which supports this entire area (like GM used to support Detroit) would vacate, and the tax base would implode, and San Francisco would increasingly resemble Detroit--not at first, of course, but gradually over decades. Then the left would protest the consequences of their own actions, once again. "FUCK GOOGLE FOR LEAVING", "FUCK TAX RECEIPTS FOR GOING DOWN" and so on. Perhaps they would demand that tech companies and workers continue to pay local taxes despite not working or living here anymore.
I find it ironic that one of the protesting organizations is called "just cause". Because "just cause" is what was already happening. People are getting what they DESERVE--unaffordable real estate--which is what they caused by their own actions. That is what "just" means, or used to mean.
Frankly, I think it should be easier to evict renters. If they do not allow the construction of new housing units, and they have never bought a house, then they should have nowhere to live. They have only themselves to blame.
Dear Google and Apple,
I saw on the news that local residents hate you now and are preventing your workers from arriving to work on time. Please move your operations to our state and we will show how much we appreciate all your paid employees spending their money in our neighborhoods.
Sincerely,
The 49 other saner states.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
what exactly would the protesters like done about it? Should the government force Google and the like to put caps on salaries so that their engineers don't make so much money? Should the government enforce some arbitrary ceiling on the price of housing? Raise the minimum wage perhaps?
I'm not trying to be a smart ass...I'm just wondering what the end game is. Sure it's a problem but how do you fix it?
"Hey Dave, wanna go protest those high tech bastards on their buses?"
"Ya man! DOWN WITH THE YUPPIES!"
"Do you know how to get there?"
"No Brah, shoot me a text with the gmap?"
"Okie dokie! I'm totally going to tweet/instagram/facebook our righteous endeavour on my smartphone..."
A bus is bigger than a human so why would it stop?
Why? What right do you have to keep living there? No human has any more natural interest in any parcel of land than any other. Perhaps you are confused as to what exactly your interest in your home is, because if that is not an arrangement subject primarily to the laws of commercial supply and demand, I would be surprised to hear of it.
No one cares that you are harmed by gentrification any more than any one cares about the loss of buggy whip manufacturers' incomes. Sometimes change is destructive, and becoming angry and destructive in turn is very easy. That does not mean that doing so will be effective, and in this case, it is highly unlikely that vandalism will have any effect whatsoever on the cause of the issue. Turn back the clock, if you can. Use whatever political demagoguery you may, to tax those you dislike and subsidize your friends, but let's not paint the breaking of a god-damned window as a productive activity. I think your cause is hopeless and deluded, even as supportive of social justice as I am, but if you are to realize any aims, you must first rise above "sound and fury".
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Rent controls were and are a reaction to the perception that rental costs are rising too quickly; the government decides to prevent the property owners from charging market rates. This reduces the supply of rental housing available (most everyone stays put), any available rentals are then priced at a much higher rate since demand is so much greater than supply. Great solution!
San Fran has had forms of rent control since the mid 1970's.
The Ellis act was setup to give landlords a way of selling or converting their property (remember property rights, everyone) in order to realize the gains in property value; this results in low-cost rentals being converted into condo's. There are restrictions in the Ellis act to prevent the new owners from just re-renting the property at a higher price, but the issue is that rent-control in general is almost a form of property taking, an Ellis act or similar law is a required outlet that keeps the government from being sued for property taking.
Rent controls almost always result in properties being converted to owner-owned. When a long time renter can't pay the actual property value, he has to move.
Isn't this why there's rent control in N.Y? They should be protesting the property and business owners for raising prices to gouge the higher paid newcomers. It's not the tech companies fault their employes are being charged more, nor is it the tech employes fault your landlord raised your rent in order to get you to move out so he could gouge said tech employee for even more.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
there is a central planning sky fairy that's responsible for restrictive Silicon Valley zoning regulations
So why don't 51 percent of people vote in a different "central planning sky fairy"?
While most protests involve public disruption, this is targeted at a specific vehicle; a specific group of people. How is it not some form of unlawful detention?
This is very simple. They are protesting SV tech buses that are utilizing SF's public transit infrastructure.
SV is leeching off of SF tax payers *and* creating a housing boom. SV techs should live in SV. If they insist on living in SF, they should do it not on the dime of the SF taxpayer.
I guess the rent is too damn high...
Google and Facebook both have offices outside of the Bay Area, try again.
+5
Exactly.
There is already public transit for these developers. If the route is too long, they can petition through legal channels. No one would be bitching if there was not this apparent exempt for corporate buses, because the physical and financial constraints to transit would prevent most SV techs from living in SF neighborhoods.
Posting AC because I am a mod.
"The buses also use public transit stops, and some protesters think that's wrong." -- Really? They object to service Providers providing a service? To transit companies actually going to where the Customers are? Gimme a break.
Frankly, it's highly unlikely that they're getting the better end of the deal here. These companies operate private buses at their own expense, which both improves their employee's commute and reduces vehicle volume on public roadways. I'd be willing to bet that they also provide employees with passes for the local transit system, as that's pretty standard in the industry.
So the net effect is this:
I don't see any realistic scenario where the public is WORSE off for this arrangement. Sure, it might be nice if Google bought space for their own stops... but then you'd have 70 feet of street space taken up JUST for them, with no benefit to parking, street use, or public transit. Surely that would be a worse arrangement.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
They should be putting the workplaces where tech people want to live - that is, cities, not in acres of shithole suburbia, like Silicon Valley.
You know how some people feel about highly paid CEO's of companies?
Well guess what, lots of people feel the same way about highly paid tech workers.
Think on that the next time you go for the casual CEO hater joke.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The landlords/property owners are the ones raising the rents. And the reason its being raised is for pure greed. Not by the companies the people are working for, but by the owners of the homes/apartments. The owners see an influx of people moving into an area due to low rents, and raise the prices trying to grab as much money as possible. Evicting as many people paying lower rents as possible to make way for the "new" people so they can charge more.
I have seen this happen Everywhere. From Northwest Territories in Canada, all the way down to Panama. Its the property owners greed pure and simple. Just some areas is more prevalent then others. Personally when I lived in LA, I had to move to Orange County due to the fact landlord didn't renew any of the leases for the entire building I was living at. He emptied the WHOLE building, offering new pricing. Went from $732 or so to over $900. So I packed up moved to Orange County, found a place there for $550 a month, bigger place too, but had to commute into LA to work. Then many other people starting moving to Orange County and as far as Corona in droves to escape high rents (Early 2000's). Again I ended up having to move, this time landed in Moreno Valley. Now my commute was 2 hours each way.
Did I ever once blame the other people (or the companies they worked for) moving into the areas I was in? NO. I blamed the owners of the properties and the local housing and rental boards for allowing the gouging.
This so called "protest" is nothing short of a childish and brainless act. If you want attention, figure out the real cause of your problem. Don't interfere with innocent random peoples lives just for publicity. Those workers on the bus, and the bus itself nor the companies they work for have nothing do do with your problem. Last I knew we are a free people. Can you really blame them for looking for cheap housing? We have the freedom to live anywhere we damn well please, so who are you to condemning them for such a basic right/freedom?
Also personally I would love to have worked for a company that valued its employees enough to set up transportation!
In the end, this group needs to stop and think before they act. They seem to be content on eviction and rent price issues, so go after the people who control that. Contact your local government offices, create a petition, get people to sign it. Change the laws. Fight the greed, don't just keep messing with people that have nothing to do with the problem. They are just trying to work and make a living.
Who the fuck is spending their money in the stores the minimum wage slaves are working at?
Its the people they're fucking protesting.
The money those people are spending is their salary. If they want to protest someone, protest the asshole who isn't increasing their salary along with the cost of living in the area.
And never mind of course that the nerds with the money are working their asses off to get to that position, and most of that work is uncompensated.
Fuck the stupid protesters, let them move to a trailer park in columbus ga if they want a quaint city. I'm certain the laid back life style of people who feel entitled is much more to their disposition.
we don't take kindly to your types around here.
I'm not sure how much the city is charging these companies to let their busses stop on the street, but if they really think this is spinning off significant negative externalities just charge more for the privilege. Either the city will get enough money to ameliorate the negative externality or it will serve as a price signal to google, FB, et. al. and they will start passing on some of the cost to employees who will either pay (and thus pass on money to the city) or move back to SV eliminating the externality.
When people lay down in front of a bus to focus awareness on government misdeeds, disease, crimes against humanity, etc, protesting can be very effective. Through raising awareness, it shocks the complacent and the ignorant into action. In this situation, what can they possibly hope to accomplish? That the employees will leave due to guilt? That 50 employees will be so moved by a brief inconvenience that thousands will flee the city? And furthermore, just how old are these protesters? I ask because I've lived here 35 years and this has always been a ridiculously expensive place. It reminds me of the building of the transcontinental railroad. Occasionally a small group of Indians would damage a section of track. The effect was nil.
How about bitch at the greedy landlords?
Do you think a techie wants to pay 3x the appropriate amount for a crappy place? NO ONE DOES!
Oh wait.. there is this free market economy. thing.... your putting up with it! thus you are letting this happen!
The *entry level* salaries for Google and Apple engineers in Silicon Valley is $105K. That's over fifty bucks an hour assuming a 40-hour work week.
I said software engineers, not software engineers at google. So you can knock about 10 grand off right there. And until you provide a citation about how much Google pays its employees, we're going with the state average. $95k a year comes out to $45.67 an hour. This is actually more than San Fransciso lists for the profession -- $40.66. We'll go with the more generous figure here.
So you're making $45.67 an hour. Woo! Big time money now. But Uncle Sam just showed up, and he wants his cut. Your biweekly was $1,826.80. Now it's $1,376.72 if you take a single deduction and are single. That's $688.36 per week net. As it turns out, taxes in California are a bitch.
MIT has created a Living Wage Calculator. I linked it directly to San Francisco for you.
They estimate that you need to net $1,929 to be above poverty. You're making about a third more than that. Coincidentally, most financial experts will tell you that having about 25-35% of your income as discretionary is the ideal case: Less and you can't really save any money for retirement, etc.
So as you can see, $95k might seem a princely sum to you, but it's not really. Especially when to get it you're working 80 hour weeks so your net per hour is about $8.60.
So no, if we're gonna mod people up or down on the basis of factual statements, you're going to -1 land, bud.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I'm sure lots of folks would be happy to have the opportunity to work two full-time jobs paying $8.60 (plus insurance, 401k, free meals, etc). But don't let that get in the way of continuing to use Slashdot as your personal echo chamber. So many sock puppets......
Actually, telecommuting has caught on big time. Problem is that you don't have high-paid locals telecommuting from Phoenix, AZ. They've been replaced by low-paid serfs Telecommuting from Mumbai.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
If we consider that big tech company use tax optimization to avoid paying for what society offers to them, like for instance the road they use, then the protesters may have a point.
I said software engineers, not software engineers at google.
Earth to girlintraining, earth to girlintraining: the two buses stopped by protesters were filled with Apple and Google employees on their way to their jobs in Silicon Valley. This fact isn't buried in body paragraph 10, it's in the headline of TFS. If you want to talk about lower paid software engineers elsewhere, who still work 80-hour weeks then you shouldn't use this article as the pretext, right?
Here's more on what those poor undercompensated Google employees have to manage with. It's not exactly a secret either. Yes they are under lots of pressure to perform, but in terms of creature comforts they are pampered.
So you're making $45.67 an hour. Woo! Big time money now. But Uncle Sam just showed up, and he wants his cut. Your biweekly was $1,826.80. Now it's $1,376.72 if you take a single deduction and are single. That's $688.36 per week net. As it turns out, taxes in California are a bitch.
Did you fail grade school math? $45.67/hour is $1826.80 per week, so all your figures are off by a factor of two.
So, yes, the poor folk are angry, and want this that and the other thing...old news.
More importantly: San Francisco is pricing out its labor force for menial jobs that nonetheless need to be done. This won't just be a problem for the poor folks.
Either the pay for said menial jobs will need to go up (not a terrible prospect for everyone, but it could potentially get a little ridiculous, OR a solution to provide affordable housing will arise.
My proposed solution? Tokyo style tubes (or, if you like, Neuromancer-style "Coffins"). Pack tons of people in for extremely low rent, with basic factilites available for things like showering (gyms can often suit this purpose fairly well), laundry (laundromats aren't exactly a new thing), food (home preparation may have to be a luxury with this system, though I'm sure someone could cobble together a non-profit to handle managing community cooking spaces...), etc. Is it everyone's ideal? Of course not. But it does still offer the benefits of living in San Francisco (night life, arts community, medical marijuana, etc) to those in a lower income range where this otherwise may not continue being the case for long.
If I were still 20, I'd HAPPILY jump at the chance to utilize such facilities. They're not great long term solutions, but for a few years, they could potentially be a great way for young folks to save some money and get a leg up, and enjoy city living in an area that otherwise has run out of space for them.
Google doesn't pay tax on billions in profits, yet uses taxpayer funded roads and bus stops. Sounds like a damn fine reason to protest.
I live in a neighborhood of San Francisco that has regular Google, Apple and Genentech bus traffic. I just recently saw fliers put up for attempts to ban these types of buses from driving around (through ordinances/local petitions) and I can probably shed some additional light on this issue.
These buses wait for passengers where the Muni (SF public buses) have sheltered bus stops. They might wait there for 5 or 10 minutes. The public buses then have to wait or attempt to drive around these huge obstacles (not always possible/slows down the commute for local commuters). Also keep in mind that the companies using these buses (Google, Apple) have invested close to nothing in the SF public transportation/infrastructure. I mean, this is not trivial. Old city streets have been widened to make room for Muni buses, bike lanes have been designed and built to interact safely with bus lanes/bus stops, not to mention the physical construction/maintenance of the bus stops themselves.
This is the crux of the issue in my mind. The tour buses are a symbol, not just of gentrification, but also of the failure to promote progress. Instead of lobbying for San Francisco to meet changing transportation demands, or hell, spurring development with their own funds (Elon Musk anyone?) they have clearly drawn a line saying," We are going to use everything you have, but don't expect us to make what you have better." To me, the tour buses symbolize a unilateral manipulation of public resources that will only get worse. As for the rights/appropriateness of protesters blocking traffic... it clearly worked! This is now national news.
And for all of the people who are describing how environmentally friendly the buses are, keep in mind that all SF Muni buses are actually electric, and so are the Amtrak trains. The tour buses are not electric, and I have no idea if they've attempted to make them cleaner (my guess is they have not). Not to mention, if these people lived a reasonable distance from work, they could... you know, walk or ride a bike.
The problem with America is people who create products and services that hundreds of millions of people across the globe are using at any moment.
The patriots and activists who attacked these worthless parasites will be immortalized by...by...by...[help me out here]?
For public stop usage the SFMTA was aware of and already working toward a solution since late 2011:
https://www.sfmta.com/projects-planning/projects/shuttle-partners-program/detail
It's all laid out pretty reasonably without having to get into a ticketing war or protests. These protesters are late to this issue, yet will probably claim credit when the mutli-year regulation update goes in place next year.
Of course, this is just a side issue for the bus protesters, it is more about the evictions. There are a lot of things driving that from zoning regulations to economics, so they pick a visible if somewhat poorly representative target.
In your case, it does seems like quite a traffic growth problem, but replacing the each bus with 30+ cars doesn't seem like a good solution.
This just in: The homeless and unemployed mobbed a bus full of people perceived to be rich, perhaps unaware of the 60-80 hour work weeks endured by software engineers, that once you take that into consideration, many in the industry make at, or less, than minimum wage.
Most engineers at these companies make well over $50/hour, assuming a 40 hour work week. Let's say that they are really working 24 hours per day, instead of 8 hours per day. That means they are still making over ~$16/hour, which is still double California's $8/hour minimum wage. So, girlintraining, is it math that you are getting training in?
I have empathy for the plight of people being squeezed between the inflation induced by the kidney-shutdown class trickle-down nonsense that has been attempted since 2008 in an attempt to keep the Viagra hard-on economy from wilting like a speed-addled aging pornstar and the dwindling class mobility and median income provided by their meager to non-existent skills, but they should be protesting developers, not goddamn working people, even if they are primarily H1-B fugees and other gradual students completely incapable of doing the menial labor of those shaking their signs in impotent futile protest.
The price of housing in SF was driven up before Google.
When SF repealed the Owner Occupied Exemption to rent control, THAT was when housing in the city lost a HUGE chunk of housing int he form of rooms to rent at under market prices.
It also caused many people who rented rooms in their homes to simply stop doing so.
It also ended a tradition many people had, which was to take a chance and help someone out, because if things didn't work out, you could get them out of your own home in 30 days should they prove to be incompatible roomies.
So SF has what it deserves. It's really a shithole of liars and junkies and remarkably conformist idiots.
Like many "activists" in SF, these ones are outright liars. Housing in SF is not impacted by Google employees, as critical as I am of Google.
SF has a rich tradition of creating an environment that drives businesses that refuse to be extorted out of the city.
SF sucks.
Everyone complaining: Turn in all tech immediately. This includes all android and iPhones and stop the use of google entirely.
This is the same city that banned Happy Meals. They should just get the city to ban Google/Apple buses.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
If these people spent half the time studying when in school, assuming any of them ever showed up, as they do in protesting, they wouldn't be adults doing minimum wage jobs. Ever talk to some of these protesters? I have and most can't think logically, string two thoughts together or pass a basic 12th grade reading or math test. They are very good at: a) repeating a rhyming slogan somebody else told them to say, b) using paint and markers to create signs and c) having all the time in the world to interfere in the lives of others.
If they used all that extra time to take a few courses or learn a marketable skill, they might be in a better pay scale and station in life instead of begrudging the success of those who contribute, work hard and try to get ahead.
Ask an Oregonian how much sympathy they'd give these protestors. "Rich" Californians have been buying up Oregon property at inflated prices for decades. Many times driving the prices out of reach of local Oregonians.
I was in the Bay area for the 1st dot-com explosion -- this has been going on for quite awhile. I remember one of the radio stations out of SFO has placed an ad for a 70 sq ft apartment - with a view, close to SOMA without kitchen, bath room for $4000/month and they had 150+ phone calls for the place. Turns out they were advertising a DUMPSTER. The point is more the a hundred people were calling for a 1 BEDROOM place at $4000 per month and THOUGH NOTHING OF IT.
So this bs is not new. It's basic economics -- supply - and - demand! Landlord, real estate agents, etc. all know they can get PREMIUM dollars for premium locations (rule #1 of real estate - LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION). So if the "tech workers (sic)" are driving up prices - so be it -- their driving the market due to demand and of course the supplier (owners) want AS MUCH AS THEY CAN GET for the place they're selling/renting.
Cities residents all cry foul when the local governments try to reestablish a viable tax base in urban areas by attracting HIGH INCOME WAGE EARNERS. They're just doing what they need to do to survive -- you want another Detroit !!!
Hey GIT, check your numbers. I'm making $47k/yr and take home more than that even after my 401k and whatnot. Of course we don't have income tax in Washington State but I'm sure CA doesn't take out that much.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
45$/h means 1800$ per WEEK, before tax. And the 1929 includes transport and healthcare which you get for free. It also includes a $1,144 rent/mortgage. Since few single people will pay more than $2500 monthly rent, and the rest of the expenses are nonexistent(healthcare), lower (transport), or comparable (food/other), it follows that a 95K Google employee has a $2K+ monthly discretionary income, while staying in a $2.5K rent and spending ~1K on other things.
In other words, Nowhere, AZ and Nowhere, TX.
So you're making $45.67 an hour. Woo! Big time money now. But Uncle Sam just showed up, and he wants his cut. Your biweekly was $1,826.80.
$1,826.80 / $45.67/hour = 40hours
Most software engineers work full time, which constitutes more than 40 hours of work in a biweekly pay period. Generally speaking, full time usually starts at 80 hours per biweekly pay period.
TL;DR: Double that $688.36 per week, because you fail at basic math.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Interesting: Google blocked me sending a link to this topic via gmail to a friend who lives in SF bay area. I had to resend it, through Apple.... and that worked.
There's been an anti-gentrification movement in the Mission for years. In the first dot-com boom, they were putting signs on SUVs found in the area. The photos of the Google bus are on 24th between Mission and Valencia. The building with all the bars at street level is a Christian church. (It was buiit as a synagogue, but they went bust and another brand picked up the space.)
I'm surprised Google employees want to live there. It's not that fun an area. It's a working-class neighborhood with crap schools. The Mission was never that cool. There are some good restaurants; I've eaten at many of them. But that's about it. There are bars, but not much of a club scene.
SOMA used to be cool, because there were lots of big art things and clubs going on in former industrial spaces. SOMA did get gentrified; all the empty industrial spaces have been repurposed or torn down. Tall buildings have replaced many of them. The artists moved out to Emeryville or Oakland or South San Francisco, or even the Richmond shipyard, where space is cheaper.
Coincidentally, most financial experts will tell you that having about 25-35% of your income as discretionary is the ideal case: Less and you can't really save any money for retirement, etc.
I think you captured the essence of the argument right here. What you're saying is that a $95k/yr salary is roughly the minimum in order to maintain a financially-prudent household. One that is able to sustain itself and even weather a storm or two. In other words, you've basically made it.
There is a huge comfort. A huge luxury to be able to live free of serious financial worry. I hope that you share this comfort, and I hope that you never have to learn the enormity of that comfort firsthand*. I'm not talking about having unlimited funds here--just knowing that a life event isn't going to turn your circumstances dire. If you aren't set up that way, then you really are at risk of an illness or job loss or something causing a huge turmoil. Like needing to move, going bankrupt, etc.
So, yeah, I get that $95k is not going to give you the life of a king in a high cost of living area, but it does afford a huge benefit of being financially secure.
* I learned how important it was when my wife fell ill with cancer and required expensive medical treatments and was unable to work during her 2-year fight with the disease. Her illness and grave prognosis were stressful, of course, but there was absolutely no financial pressure. Her disability insurance policy kicked in and her medical insurance policy is pretty decent and we just covered a lot, too (like travels to see the top specialists in her disease--seems health insurance doesn't cover that). We had our 6 months' expenses in cash, which we used a little bit, but not much. Our savings during that time were curtailed quite a bit, but for the most part, this was a financial nonevent. We just initiated our contingency plans, and they worked just fine.
Luckily, she was able to concentrate full time on the cancer fighting, and she is now in remission and back at work. Had there been financial pressure, risk of losing the house or something, I'm not sure how that would have went.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Counter-point to a lot of arguments from a theoretical viewpoint:
I want to make a living in my log cabin on the dairy farm with my fifteen cows, churning butter. I do not want to expand horizontally (more product variety) or vertically (more of the product). I want to continue making a few dozen pounds of butter every week. For a while, this works out okay, since the general store is buying it from me. Now over the course of some decades, along comes modern America with its modern grocery stores and mass-produced dairy. Now I have to lower my prices to compete with their prices, and less people are stopping by the general store because everything they need is in the store, so I'm not selling as much. These losses compound and I can no longer afford to do this. Or maybe I want to industrialize but I can't afford it because I waited too long and got too far behind the curve.
Do I have an ongoing, indelible right to make a living doing exactly what I'm doing? Maybe, maybe not. It's pretty gray. I have a right to do these activities, and nothing's wrong with getting paid for it. But I can't say I have a 'right' that someone else is trampling upon, if someone else is inventing new ways to do it or making profitable business decisions. Would I not be trampling on their rights if they were disallowed from doing so? Does anyone have a right to stay put and keep making a living there?
Should my living wage be artificially enforced somehow if I decide to keep doing this? How much would you expect the people who mass-produce to be paid? If I'm making a living off 100 units per week, and someone else with some fancy machines makes 10,000 units per week, should they then be allotted 100 times my living? If demand for my product goes down to 5 units per week, should the people with the machines subsidize me so I still make the same money? What if I suddenly find a market for my products in another town and my business explodes back up to 100? Do I have to pay back the subsidies out of fairness?
Do I need to face the obsolescence of my skills eventually? Yes. I can't expect to level off and then be carried for decades. I may need to learn a new trade if my current set of skills is eclipsed or the trade is rendered obsolete. My friend over the hill used to make buggy whips until automobiles became too popular. Now he's been out on the street for decades because he refuses to do anything other than make buggy whips. Eighteen guys down the street made barrels back in the day, now only one of them still makes barrels at all and he's only doing it part-time after his other job at the coal plant. (These examples are fictional but you get the point.)
Now if we modernize the argument - - - Suppose there is an inventory system coded in Visual Basic 3.0 and Access 97. The company keeps demanding more and more from it, wanting features like real-time updates to their website, more capacity, and on and on the list goes. The people maintaining it refuse to learn anything new because they're only paid to be good at VB 3 + Access 97. Should those people expect that they can stay employed doing that forever? What happens when the system is finally replaced, or the company goes under because it just couldn't live in the 1990s any longer?
Being secure in your living is not a right. If you cannot adapt, you will not survive. This is not a new phenomenon in history, and it shouldn't be news to anyone when it happens!
That doesn't make it suck any less or be any less regrettable when someone loses what they have. Perhaps the most regrettable loss occurs when someone loses everything because they're too stubborn to adapt and pick up something new in order to survive. I've seen people graduate from college with degrees in a field that became obsolete within a few years - think printing industry - and they're one step away from homeless, jumping from part time job to part time job, living with their parents (who have jobs that are in no danger), because they went to SCHOOL for that, so they won't do anything else. What ever happened to the idea that if digging ditches is the only job you can get, then go dig ditches?
The idiots in question seem to be these protesters, who like Canute rail against the rising tide, and as effectively. We may recall the adage concerning the lifting abilities of the rising tide, and I might stretch the metaphor to suggest that these gentlemen take up boat-building. Programming to some mean degree is accessible even to schoolchildren; I myself have in these recent years taken up the profession.
I may guess at the purpose of your tautology about one's home, and surmise that you are implying that one has a right to continued occupation of one's primary residence. That this is not so is a well established principle of law, and also a natural consequence. As I have explained, no man has a greater natural right to a piece of this Earth than any other man. We come into this world without property, and any property gained before our deaths is merely the chance of fate. However, as far as the law governing that span is concerned, we mark a difference between property held in fee simple, and lands held by hereditary title or sovereign right. If you purchase property, then it should be abundantly obvious that any man may acquire it by the same means. It is wholly a matter of finance; no natural right enters into it.
I have sympathy towards those ousted from their homes, although I neither have a permanent residence nor should I choose to do so in the Bay Area. Yet my sympathies stop well short of supporting rioting in the streets, and in this case it's absurdly indefensible; it's not as if there are not already rent controls. If this absurd rabble cannot help itself I continue to ask what they imagine may be done to stem this tide.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
...this could have been avoided if they commuted with Chrome. Upgrade to a modern driver, Google!