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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.
or, you know, google could pay a living wage.
Time to unionize, boys!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"... He uses the company's gym and cafeterias to eat and shower."
Hopefully not in that order.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Don't Be This Guy! is the takeaway. He isn't living, he's merely existing, and worse, he's existing only to do his corporate masters' bidding.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
>> 90% of my after-tax income, and throwing that in student loans...$22,434 worth of student loans, and has paid it down to $16,449...four months
That's only $1,500 paid down on student loans per month. If that's 90% of his after-tax income (even in California), he's making maybe $22K/year, and spending just $150 month on other stuff.
He mentions this and points out that it was his Mom who brought up this issue. That must have been a fun conversation ;-)
Isn't sleeping under your desk while your code is compiling allowed or even encouraged at Google?
Most of the towns in the South Bay have ordinances with prohibitions against motorhomes. You can't live in them, you can't park them on their streets or in driveways. And they certainly don't allow businesses to allow motorhomes to live in their parking lots. So it all has to be on the downlow, it has to look like a regular van and no one has to notice you.
Sounds some like the rental RVs.
The rental companies (for example cruiseamerica ) sell them off after a couple of years (and and few 100.000 miles).
They cost more (around 25.000$), but come complete with furniture and bathroom and are probably still a lot cheaper than an appartment in the long run
http://vancouver.craigslist.ca...
http://seattle.craigslist.org/...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
... where everyone is a "consultant" (temp) and company provides a trailer park and hookups for employees' winnebagos. when your project wraps, you drive it to your next "job."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I'm sure they would, but SF won't let them. SF has brought this on themselves by refusing to allow sufficient development.
SF dwellers wanted to keep the quaint neighborhoods and everything, but there's a reason that those neighborhoods were bulldozed in other urban areas. They keep the maximum population density very low. That keeps prices extremely high.
I have sympathy for not wanting to live in a crowded, overbuilt urban area, but without development, even things like rent control would just force everyone to move out to the suburbs, where those house prices would skyrocket instead, and everyone would have to commute somehow.
A houseboat berth in Sausalito will cost you $5k in rent just for the berth. Then you have to lease or buy a houseboat on top of it...
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
I've consider the RV as my work has the same amenities as well as a large shopping center across the street. But my old lady said "no". It's also impracticable if you happen to play the Hammond Organ for fun.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
... 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.
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".
I am not from Google and not in the US but I did something similar : living in a used RV for 5 years. It's impressive how fast you are saving money this way.
In the end I managed to buy a nice apartment downtown. Most of it paid upfront.
Smart that it's urban camouflage, nobody questions a big white truck parked for a long time.
Dumb that the same money would have bought him a very nice RV that would be a lot more comfortable and would have been useable for a very long term compared to living in a box truck where someone can slap a padlock on the outside and trap you in it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Just got laid off from a place like that. For the last several years, the mantra had been "We want to be just like Zynga!" nevermind how THAT company was rotting from the inside out. And then management decided to adopt Google's OKR process. A key problem is that management talked big about doing these things but rarely ever actually does them, so you end up with some teams and groups doing OKRs and others who have none, for years. So when the annual reviews come around, you cannot say you have met any OKRs because you and your manager and their manager and in fact the entire department never had any OKRs.
But of course the REAL secret of the OKRs we did was to set ridiculous goals you could never meet. For example, the team I was in was kind of a helpdesk/front line firefighter team, doing things like on-call support at 3:00AM. Client support stuff. We eventually got an OKR of "increase sales turnovers by 20%" but of course we weren't IN sales and had no training or tools to do that, and if we'd actually tried, the real sales side would have had a fit. So nobody ever met that OKR. It was impossible and stupid. By attaching OKRs like that to most of the teams and pinning bonuses on results, what they did was rig it so very few people qualified for bonuses any more. Now they SAID "we're setting sky-high impossible OKRs so you will reach for the sky and achieve the amazing" but they meant "we've set a goal not even God can meet, good luck to you hahahaha!"
At the same time, they began hiring H1Bs, kids fresh from college, and co-ops and interns, all working for half the wages and sometimes actually buying the "We're just like Google!" bullshit.
Anyway, they'd been gunning for me for a while. Had a decent review and scored well. They went back and changed it and decided no, I needed to be on a PIP. Because somebody had to be. Gave me stupid goals and priorities and then while I was on approved vacation, my manager told HR I'd quit.
Raised a stink about that but they laid me off two weeks later anyway. More than a decade at that place. Absolutely thrilled to be gone.
Sig for hire.
Housing prices are higher than "the cost to build" in major metropolitan areas all over the world (London, Paris, Rome, Moscow, etc., etc.).
Your definition of 'normal' is abnormal.
You articulated it clearer, but you are still wrong. The price of the house includes more than just the simple construction cost. You are also paying for location, which is a huge factor. That is the reason the exact same house can cost different amounts in different locations.
You are close to repeating Adam Smith's "natural price" theory.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.