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The Google Employee Who Opted For a Truck Over Bay Area Rents (dice.com)
Nerval's Lobster writes: A little over a year ago, Google employees on a Quora thread announced they'd discovered an interesting way to live in the ultra-expensive Bay Area: Rather than pay for conventional housing, they resided in trucks and RVs parked near (or on) the company's campus, and took advantage of corporate perks—including free food, gym facilities, and dry cleaning—to get by on a day-by-day basis. Now one Googler, Brandon S., has taken to his blog to describe how he engaged in a little off-grid living within sight of Google's high-tech headquarters. First he spent $10,000 of his Google signing bonus on a 2006 Ford truck with 128 square feet of room in the back, which he filled with a bed, dresser, and coat rack. Google pays for his phone, and he uses the company's gym and cafeterias to eat and shower. For those Bay Area tech pros who think Brandon's lifestyle sounds appealing, his list of drawbacks includes "social suicide," the inconvenience of not having a bathroom or fridge in close proximity, stress, insect infestations, and the upfront costs of purchasing a large-enough vehicle. On the other hand, he's also using the cash savings to rapidly pay down his student loans.
Google pays what's considered well more than a living wage in most parts of the country. However San Francisco real estate costs some 18 times what you'll find in most parts of the country. This isn't because somebody decided that one day, rather collectively a lot of people decided that they just wanted to live there, but San Franciscans are about twice as smug as New Yorkers, so they don't let anybody build up, making the housing availability permanently low, making housing costs more than what NY costs.
The median price for a home there is $1.35 million, and the houses you get at that price are crap compared to what you'll get elsewhere for about $200,000.
Google pays their technical staff extremely well. The problem is that Bay Area housing prices are astronomical, and it's pretty hard to get ahead when you're paying out several thousand dollars of after-tax money every month just to rent a room in a shared house.
I suspect that this guy will only be able to live this way for a year or so - either Google will step in and ask him to move his truck (especially if others get similar ideas) or he'll grow tired of his spartan living arrangements once he's paid off his student loans and will return to more standard living arrangements.
It seems, however, that there's a business opportunity for someone who offers micro-apartments with shared common spaces (like some college dorm designs, where four or five people have extremely compact private bedrooms but there's a shared den/kitchen/bathroom. Figure out a way to squeeze it into the size of a moderately sized standard apartment and offer it at a reasonable rate.
Cleveland, Pittsburg, Detroit, and Upstate NY are all good locations with easy access to urban centers such as Chicago, Boston, and NYC; and a host of good tech schools to recruit from such as MIT, Rochester, Rensselaer, and CMU. I've investigated moving east and have found some cities who are tech friendly, no longer are smokestack cities, have amenities and social life, no droughts, no earthquakes, no wildfires, and a cost of housing 50% less than where I currently live. And salaries are basically the same as I am currently making. I am really considering it. I would have no qualms moving if a decent job offer came along.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's less smugness and more earthquake protection. Building anything taller than 2 floors in San Francisco is a regulatory nightmare AND a civil engineering nightmare, because it has to be able to withstand the last big quake as we're all waiting for the next one. I live 30 miles north, enjoy a very safe neighborhood (I don't even lock my door - a lot of my neighbors don't, which is why one evening I found an old guy in my kitchen primly inform me that I was out of orange juice before he realized he got to the wrong home) and show up in person once a week.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
This. I migrated from Wichita to the Bay Area in 2008 and lived there until last summer when I moved back. I had already been an independent contractor for 3 years before the move, so finding work was only slightly more difficult after the move. The advantages are clear:
1. For less than half the monthly price of my rent controlled 1-bedroom apartment in SF, I now own a 3-bedroom house with a yard and everything.
2. There aren't really any jobs in Wichita for me, so all my work is remote. I hate commuting. While in SF, I could sometimes find gigs which allowed some remote work, but most expected you to commute to the office if you were in the area.
3. The lower cost of living means I can be more selective about what work I take on. I have more free time to spend with my girlfriend and on hobbies, not to mention the space. I've taken up woodworking since I moved back, and it's easily one of the most pleasurable activities I've ever taken up.
I miss SF sometimes, but the trade-offs are quite clear. And now that I'm not throwing away so much of my earnings on living expenses, I can afford to visit SF if I want, not to mention other possible destinations.
One last thing: a good friend of mine back in SF, also in the tech industry, recently purchased a school bus which he will be living in, rather than finding a new apartment. In part I think it's kind of cool in a radical, fuck the norm sort of way. But on the other hand, it really shows the heights of ever escalating absurdity the Bay Area has reached in terms of housing.
Maybe Google could add Google Condos/Flats/Apartments to their campus? Hmm, well that would require Government approval too.
They tried. The city council shot them down. Facebook also tried to do this, and were also shot down.
... and I'll never understand the lure of Silicon Valley. I live a couple of miles outside Nashville in the country, in a very nice house I managed to pay off in 10 years. I make a decent living doing high-end computer work (academic HPC) which is pretty fun. Ambitious but realistic 40-hour week schedules, with co-workers as smart as any I've met at the Supercomputing conferences. I can eat out, go to the gym, go on a date, or just go home and watch a movie with my cat in my lap any time I want. I'll probably be able to retire in my 50's should I choose to do so.
Why, other than the hope of becoming an overnight millionaire, do people choose to work in Silicon Valley, with the insane hours, cost-of-living, commutes from hell, and a lack of any social life? Because if money is all they wanted, they can buy Powerball tickets in most states.
It's less smugness and more earthquake protection.
Not true at all. Modern skyscrapers can ride out even the biggest quakes. San Francisco has tall buildings, it just doesn't have many of them. Last year, more than 95% of building permits in SF were rejected. One and two story buildings were rejected right along with the tall buildings. This is not about safety. It is about incumbent property owners protecting their interests.
I think it's time for companies (and tech companies especially) to start to encourage more remote workers.
Companies with stacked ranking don't do "remote".
This is because stacked ranking is basically a high school popularity contest which pits employees against each other to stay above the bottom part of the bell curve so that they don't end up on a PIP ("Performance Improvement Program") or just plain fired/asked to lead/offered severance.
When Marissa Mayer came into Yahoo from Google, she instituted stacked ranking. It's the main reason she disallowed remote workers, since they were going to be the lowest ranked anyway, and if you are going to be ranked low, you might as well pack your bags before it's an issue.
So... between a remote worker, who you hardly ever have any personal interactions with, and a local worker who you eat lunch with daily, and consider a good work friend/buddy... who are you going to shove under the bus?
Exactly.
So remote workers are strongly discouraged at most companies that originated in the Amazon/Google/Facebook cultures, or hired HR or management out of those cultures, which is to say "Company X is successful; let's act just like company X, and we will be successful, too".
Buddy did this in an RV. he bought one that was fiberglass sides and spent a weekend peeling off the graphics and roller painting on white paint. he then slapped "AT&T" logo stickers around it.
it looks like an AT&T fiber maintenance vehicle. he put mirror tint on all the windows and spent 5 years in works parking lot without problems. put out a couple of orange cones and nobody even questions it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Being a normal foreigner, I find it disturbing as you Americans think it's normal to pay 500,000, 800,000, a million for homes that cost 100,000 to be built just because the greedy owner thinks he can charge a million. In a more normal country, this is called extortion. Google to this point have so much money that he could build their own city where he wanted and let these bastards rot waiting for a sucker to pay the price they want.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
I think he's quite clever. Trading a little up front discomfort for paying off $22k of student loans in 10 months? Sounds pretty smart to me. Hes sacrificing less than a year of his life.
Doesn't all of this inflated cost mean it's time to MOVE?
Shouldn't there be some market-correcting free capitalism thing going on? Companies moving elsewhere, where costs of living are not blown out of proportion? I'm sure there are plenty of other neat spots in Caly. Yeah, there's this great vibe and synergy going on there, but I thought cutting corners and being efficient with resources was one of the mantras of this whole startup craze.
Seriously, is the place built on a cursed, native American graveyard or something? You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave.