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Facebook Employees Living in a Garage Hope Zuckerberg Will Learn What's Happening in His Own City (cnbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the reality-check dept.

At the beginning of the year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg set a goal to visit every state in the U.S. so he could learn more about the millions of people who use the social network every day. But two of his employees tell The Guardian that they wonder when the billionaire is going to get to know his own community. From a report: The employees, a married couple named Nicole and Victor, are both contract workers in the cafeteria at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters. And they wish they, and the problems closer to home, could also get a share of Zuckerberg's attention. "He should learn what's happening in this city," Nicole tells The Guardian. The couple says they can barely make ends meet. Together with their three children, Nicole and Victor share a two-car garage adjacent to Victor's parents' home. They borrow money from friends and family to stay afloat and occasionally resort to payday loans. Although they earn too much to qualify for state benefits, they don't earn enough to afford Facebook's health care plan.

34 of 520 comments (clear)

  1. Three kids? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well there is your first problem....

    1. Re:Three kids? by Camembert · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We have become a sad population if we reproach people having 3 kids.

    2. Re: Three kids? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Kids are expensive. Ultra expensive if you give them a chance to go to college. They are a major drain on finances. Like it or. Ot their own decisions have put them in the situation.

      My wife and I make 300k combined in Atlanta. We are talking about 1 kid. Figuring out how we will budget for daycare, college, food, clothes, etc. plus any life emergencies and our retirement. Three kids would not only break us but be unfair to them.

    3. Re:Three kids? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      If you decide to have three kids while on a cafeteria worker's income, you deserve some reproach.

    4. Re:Three kids? by Train0987 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Having three kids isn't bad. Having three kids without the ability to support them is. I'm no fan of Zuckerburg but this couple is where they are in life because of their own choices. That's not Zuck's fault.

    5. Re: Three kids? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seriously? My wife and I make half that, live in the most expensive county in the country, and are sending the oldest of our two children to college in a few weeks. You have wildly skewed priorities if you don't think you can support one child on a $300K income

    6. Re:Three kids? by Baron_Yam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the problem is we're greedy at every level of society.

      Individually, we want 'stuff', so we put off kids (sometimes forever) because they crimp our lifestyles. This causes the birthrate to drop below replacement rate. Societally, we want an ever-expanding economy as we've structured pretty much everything to depend on there being more people in the future, and things start to fall apart if that doesn't happen.

      So... immigration from places with high birth rates when we really should be content to let our populations shrink so we don't consume as many resources.

      Really... why is a stagnant (or even shrinking!) population such a bad thing? No additional housing or extension of infrastructure is required. No ever-increasing issues with pollution, food production, or whatever. No ever-denser urban centers.

      In a world with 700 million people instead of 7 billion, our available resources would stretch 10x further and we'd still be far from any threat of depopulating ourselves to extinction.

    7. Re: Three kids? by randomErr · · Score: 1, Insightful

      They probably have $100,000 student loans each. They do work at Facebook. Also where they are has a ton of social programs that are raising the tax.

      --
      You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
    8. Re: Three kids? by kilfarsnar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Having an average of 2 kids or more each is vital to our economy. If itâ(TM)s unaffordable to have children, we have a big big problem on our hands.

      Of course we have a big problem on our hands. That's been the case for at least 30 years. The owners of capital are taking a larger and larger share of the economic pie. The population has largely been propagandized to think that forming unions leads to corruption and constraint, thus blunting the only power they have; their numbers. Our economic system is set up to serve business. If your boss wanted you to have kids, they would have made them part of the benefits package. Hell, we have had to pass laws to keep pregnant women from being fired!

      Hardly anyone with any power is looking at the long term. There is little sense of shared destiny. Those kids won't be needed to replace the workforce for 20 years. But there are profit target bonuses to be had now! So employers pay as little as possible. If people can't afford to have children on that pay (if people are even making that calculation) then too bad. The people running things now sure don't give a shit.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    9. Re:Three kids? by kilfarsnar · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you decide to have three kids while on a cafeteria worker's income, you deserve some reproach.

      Money buys you everything in this society; including the ability to have a family. Is there anything Capitalism won't put a price on?

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    10. Re:Three kids? by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Simple math tells us that if couples don't have at least two kids, population will decline. Having just one more kid than that shouldn't be a problem. If it is, then that's a problem.

    11. Re: Three kids? by OneSmartFellow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are majorly fucking up if you have to worry about your expenses on a $300K income.  I earn well under that and I honestly don't have anything sensible to spend my money on. 

    12. Re: Three kids? by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I expect you are not willing to make some sacrifices for your family. Which I am not going to judge, you probably have the money to not have to make them, but you could find ways to save money and still live well. But people with much less income, can and should be able to survive with a family of three.

      The problem is we are equating their money that they make is equal to their value to society. A lot of people who are poor are valuable to society and are worth extra support. This guy is working on feeding the Facebook employees and keeping them productive, avoiding them from getting hungry and unproductive. However normal supply and demand means that his job will pay less, as it is easy to find other people who can do his job.

      There is a myth if your work hard you can make it. This is only partially true. If you work hard then you fall into a group of Hardworking people, which there is a larger demand for less of a supply of. However the Supply of Hardworking people is still large, and the demand trade-off between a hardworking person and a average one, is very elastic. So this will limit your earning potential, and not enough to have you make it. The other people at Facebook who are making the big bucks, may or may not be working as hard as the Cafeteria worker. But they have skills that are not as easily found, and there is a demand for. So they get paid more for a job that may mean less work.

      However to society, feeding people may be more important to society, then that facebook developer who is finding a new way to shovel advertisements in front of our face.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    13. Re: Three kids? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      We all know how Rich Democrats feel about, "The Help".

      Right... and Rich Republicans are so much more empathetic towards "The Help".

    14. Re: Three kids? by acoustix · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They probably have $100,000 student loans each. They do work at Facebook. Also where they are has a ton of social programs that are raising the tax.

      $100k student loans and they're contract employees in a cafeteria. Is that what a college education gets a person these days?

      --
      "A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
    15. Re: Three kids? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      At 300K/year, you're obviously pissing away money left and right. You either live in an over-priced house, are paying for private school, spend money on shit you don't need like sub-zero refrigerators, or a combination of all three.

      Before I met her, my wife as a single mother managed to raise a child on less 1/10th of what you make. THAT was hard. You're just delusional.

    16. Re:Three kids? by Nidi62 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't understand why you would keep bringing them into this world if you can't afford them.

      Maybe if they actually had received effective sex education in school or have access to family planning and abortion services poorer people wouldn't keep having kids. But nope, sorry, abstinence-only sex ed for everyone! Defund Planned Parenthood! People who undertake a perfectly normal bodily function must be punished!

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    17. Re: Three kids? by jedidiah · · Score: 1, Insightful

      >> We all know how Rich Democrats feel about, "The Help".
      >
      > Right... and Rich Republicans are so much more empathetic towards "The Help".

      Rich Republicans don't pretend to and then try to virtue signal about it while demonizing the other side.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    18. Re: Three kids? by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I think most of the people who want to tax the wealth view rich people like Scrooge McDuck. The rich all have swimming pools inside vaults, full of gold coins to swim around in.
      http://s3.fantasticfest.com/_u...

      This is their view of rich people.

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    19. Re: Three kids? by jlf278 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem is we are equating their money that they make is equal to their value to society. A lot of people who are poor are valuable to society and are worth extra support

      The amount of money you have directly indicates your worth to American society. People making that equation are correct. Poor people are NOT valuable to society, and not worth much extra support; if they were, society would be showing its support for them. It does not, hence they are not valuable.

      In short, if we as a society actually believed this stuff you spout, our society would look very different.

      To be kind, that is a naive economic assertion. Ideally, this would be true in an efficient free market, but in reality, it is not. People do not make purely efficient financial decisions where the money or attention they spend reflects a pure preference based on economic value. Additionally, collusion or even criminal behavior among the haves can lead to undervaluing of the economic benefit of the have nots. It is also a false assertion as eliminating the minimum wage would result in some being paid less, but their value to society would actually increase since they would be providing the same work for less compensation. Also, do you really think that every celebrity provides several magnitudes greater value to society than each trash collector, construction worker, line cook, or grade school teacher? Another counterexample - if I buy the rights to a drug and mark up the price 100 times to make a profit, what value did I just provide to society?

    20. Re: Three kids? by Enigma2175 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Conservatives and religious people donate more money (a higher percentage of their income/assets, not just in terms of raw dollars) to charities and non-profits than liberals and atheists.

      I don't know whether or not they feel smug when doing so.

      A lot of religious donations aren't used for charity, but they are still tax deductible and are included as "charitable donations". Those donations build churches, pay pastors, gild statues, evangelize their church, and plenty of other things that have nothing to do with charity. Sure, there are many churches that do plenty of charitable work but there are also many that do none and those donations are just as tax deductible.

      That all may be beside the point, since this article cites an MIT study that found that political affiliation didn't have a relationship with willingness to give, although conservatives gave more dollars in total (because they are richer) both sides give at about the same rate. Interestingly the article also states that "only 10% to 25% of church donations end up being spent on social welfare purposes" which backs up my point above, with religious donations excluded conservatives might give at a lower rate than liberals.

      --

      Enigma

    21. Re: Three kids? by geekmux · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think most of the people who want to tax the wealth view rich people like Scrooge McDuck. The rich all have swimming pools inside vaults, full of gold coins to swim around in. http://s3.fantasticfest.com/_u...

      This is their view of rich people.

      The financial chasm between the wealthy elite and the other 99.999% of the planet isn't fucking shrinking, and their pool is called an offshore tax haven. They swim around in $100 million dollar yachts, wearing diamond-encrusted watches.

      Scrooge McDuck looks like a saint compared to Greed N. Corruption that controls the world today.

    22. Re: Three kids? by stabiesoft · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When I was a kid we went to one of the churches to go to. The amount of money spent on the pipe organ upgrade could have paid to house the homeless in town. The electric bill to cool the place and gas bill to heat it would have paid for the food banks. The building expansion funds, the new bibles, the staff, ... Yep about 10% went to real charity. I saw the budget. The real purpose of most upscale churches is to make sure the kids date the right kind of people. It is a tax deductible social club.

  2. It's Virtue Signaling; They Don't Care by Kunedog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    Google spends millions to provide WiFi to "refugee" camps in the EU as if there aren't poor people in the US that could use help. It's virtue signalling with political overtones and nothing else.

  3. Ok. easy to fix but would you go along with it? by Glasswire · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is simple. FB needs to relocate the staff in their unit to some rural site in in North Dakota where those FB employees could no doubt afford palatial houses.
    What you don't want to live there, you want to live in a CA area with insanely high real estate prices? That's not Zukerberg's problem, it's yours.

    1. Re:Ok. easy to fix but would you go along with it? by Hentes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So do you propose all the other FB employees walk to North Dakota at lunchtime? You can't relocate a cafeteria.

  4. THEN QUIT! by p51d007 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    YOU made the choice to work for Facebook. Did facebook hold a gun to your head, and say you MUST work for them? Is it Facebook, or for that matter, any other employers fault, that where Facebook is located, is a SUPER expensive place to live? Nope! This is just another bleeding heart story. There are many places you can live & work, but YOU wanted to work for Facebook for the obvious reason that there might be some "gravy" associated with it on the other end.

    1. Re:THEN QUIT! by jeff4747 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Life is hard. Sometimes you have to do hard things to make it work. They choose not to.

      Yeah, they need to just let their children starve for a year so they can save up for moving expenses.

      I moved halfway across the country to get a better job for my family. It wasn't easy. I left behind family that I haven't seen since

      Yet you were able to afford food, right? And you were able to get together the first, last and deposit for a place to live, right?

      Your "hard" is actually quite easy compared to what you demand of the people in TFS.

      Because again, you have not spent a moment thinking about their situation, and instead insert your financial situation into their story so that you can pretend there is no larger-scale problem.

  5. Re:Whole area has unreasonable real estate by kilfarsnar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Relocate and prosper.

    Why do you assume that people who can't make ends meet on a monthly basis have the thousands of dollars it costs to move a family?

    --
    "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
  6. Re:"contract workers" by kilfarsnar · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Well, there's the problem right there. They're being paid by the contracting company, not FB, so their real beef is with their actual employer. FB doesn't employ them, FB employs the contracting company. FB is using the cheapest bid for food service they could get.

    So how are actual FB employees faring at the company?

    Exactly. As long as there is a middle-man involved, Facebook doesn't have to give a fuck. It's like when I hired that contract company to have t-shirts made in Bangladesh for $0.10 an hour. I'm not the one exploiting those workers, the contracting company is. So I was completely blameless in that situation. I mean, sure I got the cost savings from paying those people so little, but I don't see how that enters into the equation at all.

    --
    "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
  7. Something wrong with our society by XXongo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Kids are expensive. Ultra expensive if you give them a chance to go to college. They are a major drain on finances. Like it or. Ot their own decisions have put them in the situation.

    Statements like this make me queasy. You're telling me that we now have a society where we have decided that it's ok that raising the next generation is too expensive for ordinary people to do. There has to be something wrong with a society that considers raising the next generation to be something ordinary people can't participate in.

    My wife and I make 300k combined in Atlanta. We are talking about 1 kid. Figuring out how we will budget for daycare, college, food, clothes, etc. plus any life emergencies and our retirement. Three kids would not only break us but be unfair to them.

    YOW! $300K and it's not enough to raise children?

    Really, you are telling me that there is something very, very wrong with our society.

    1. Re:Something wrong with our society by Dog-Cow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No. It's just him.

    2. Re:Something wrong with our society by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're telling me that we now have a society where we have decided that it's ok that raising the next generation is too expensive for ordinary people to do.

      It's not just him telling you that; it's much of the middle class. Look at the birthrates in developed western nations. Society has indeed decided that raising children is too expensive for middle class people to do, and society has structured itself this way, so they're not doing it.

      There has to be something wrong with a society that considers raising the next generation to be something ordinary people can't participate in.

      Perhaps. We'll see in a few generations how that works out I guess.

      There's been lots of societies on this planet in the past which made various choices collectively; some societies were successful, others not so much. In a century or two, we'll see how successful modern American society is, with policies like this and a culture like this. It is isn't, that's OK; not everyone can win; some other society will rise up and take its place.

  8. Greed itself isn't your root problem .... by King_TJ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's easy to blame vices for everything wrong in society. If only people weren't having so much irresponsible sex. If only people weren't so greedy.

    But since the beginning of time, humans felt compelled to take actions based on their emotions -- so if these things do make society a worse place, it should be a pretty steady drag on how "awesome" it would be otherwise. None of this is new enough to explain any perceived recent problems.

    I reject the claim that the OP made, too, that our need for an ever-expanding economy requires a constant increase in our population (and our failure to do that is causing our economic woes today). The need for economic growth is increasingly decoupled from the number of available laborers! Automation and robotics are displacing workers already in jobs like cashiers, bank tellers and even security guards. Self-driving vehicles will displace MANY more. But growth in these industries won't slow or stop because of that!

    IMO, greed is a human emotion that isn't inherently good or bad. It depends on how you direct it. Is it bad to get angry? Depends on if the anger compels you to do something constructive or not, really. Same with greed.