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

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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 Thursday July 27, 2017 @02:05AM 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.

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Three kids? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-07-27 02:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

Well there is your first problem....
1. Re:Three kids? by Camembert · 2017-07-27 02:08 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  We have become a sad population if we reproach people having 3 kids.
2. Re:Three kids? by Train0987 · 2017-07-27 02:16 · 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.
3. Re: Three kids? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-07-27 02:21 · 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
4. Re:Three kids? by Baron_Yam · 2017-07-27 02:21 · 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.
5. Re: Three kids? by ZipK · 2017-07-27 02:35 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  They probably have $100,000 student loans each. They do work at Facebook.
  The headline is misleading. They work for a company that provides contract employees to Facebook for the cafeteria, as per the first sentence of the report:
  
  The employees, a married couple named Nicole and Victor, are both contract workers in the cafeteria at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters.
6. Re: Three kids? by kilfarsnar · 2017-07-27 02:39 · 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)
7. Re:Three kids? by Anubis+IV · 2017-07-27 02:41 · 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.
8. Re: Three kids? by Nidi62 · 2017-07-27 02:49 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
  Me and my wife live in Atlanta (well, Woodstock) and are talking about our first kid as well. We make less than 1/3 of what you do. Of course, we live in a suburb, own a house that is priced and sized correctly for our income and expected family size (2k sq ft) located in a very desirable neighborhood(10 minute walk, 1 minute drive to physically be in downtown Woodstock), own 2 cars outright, and paying off about 30k in student loans (one of the loans we just paid off in cash a few months ago). We contribute to my 401k monthly from my salary, my wife contributes to savings monthly from her salary, we do not live paycheck to paycheck, and have plenty in bank accounts to account for medical/home repair/car repair emergencies. If we have a kid, we could easily get by on my salary alone while my wife stays home to take care of the kid/does some light work from home or side jobs. You are doing it completely wrong. Move out of your Buckhead condo or John's Creek McMansion, stop leasing brand new Mercedes or BMWs every 2 years, and on 300k a year you could easily have enough for retirement and to put your kid through college debt free.
  
  --
  The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
9. Re: Three kids? by OneSmartFellow · 2017-07-27 02:51 · 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.
10. Re: Three kids? by jellomizer · 2017-07-27 02:53 · 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.
11. Re:Three kids? by Nidi62 · 2017-07-27 03:17 · 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
12. Re: Three kids? by pjw2072 · 2017-07-27 04:23 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I make less than 100K and we're expecting our sixth kid (yes, we're planning on single handedly saving social security). We live in an area with a middle range cost of living and easily have everything we need. I can't conceive of how one child could break the bank in Atlanta even if they're getting everything they've ever wanted.
13. Re: Three kids? by dgatwood · 2017-07-27 04:53 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  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.
  There is no way you could afford to live in SF on less than $150k/yr and send a kid to college.
  SF county isn't the most expensive place in the U.S.; in fact, SF proper is barely even in the top 10 (#9). Washington D.C. is the most expensive, largely because of higher child care costs.
  If you're willing to live in the South Bay, it isn't that hard to live on less than $150k per year. Buy a mobile home at ~$300k, pay for it over ten years, and once you're clear of that, you're spending $1k a month on rent for 1800 square feet, and your overall cost of living isn't that much worse than anywhere else in the country.
  
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
14. Re: Three kids? by jlf278 · 2017-07-27 05:45 · 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?
15. Re: Three kids? by LS1+Brains · 2017-07-27 05:52 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Can't speak for all conservative Christians, but I'm quiet about my donations and charitable acts. If anyone is curious, Matthew chapter 6 sums it up.
  I treat "the help" better than I treat myself. I do my best to treat everyone better, honestly. It pays off too. The kid taking your dinner order today may not be tomorrow. If you make an impression on people, good or bad, they'll tend to remember you.
  Not to mention, it feels pretty darned good to bump into someone you met in a "lowly" position, only to find they've thrived and reached their goals. Every job is worthwhile, otherwise you wouldn't be paid to do it. People who take those entry level jobs seriously tend to also take their careers seriously, and they usually end up doing very well for themselves.
16. Re: Three kids? by nnet · 2017-07-27 05:56 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Georgia.
17. Re: Three kids? by Enigma2175 · 2017-07-27 05:57 · 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
18. Re: Three kids? by geekmux · 2017-07-27 07:53 · 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.
19. Re: Three kids? by stabiesoft · 2017-07-27 07:56 · 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.
It's Virtue Signaling; They Don't Care by Kunedog · 2017-07-27 02:11 · 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.
Ok. easy to fix but would you go along with it? by Glasswire · 2017-07-27 02:12 · 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 · 2017-07-27 02:56 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  So do you propose all the other FB employees walk to North Dakota at lunchtime? You can't relocate a cafeteria.
Not even allowed to use the gym by Anonymous Coward · 2017-07-27 02:13 · Score: 3, Informative

Facebook treats them like shit. They can't even use the gym, showers, healthcare, or recreational facilities at Facebook. He pays them squat. To Zuckerberg, these hard working folks are untermenschen. The irony is that Zuckerberg is the real untermenschen.
1. Re:Not even allowed to use the gym by Train0987 · 2017-07-27 02:39 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  These people don't work for Facebook. They work for a contractor.
2. Re:Not even allowed to use the gym by trevize42 · 2017-07-27 02:52 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  This is the chronic issue. They work full time at Facebook, but Facebook outsourced this labor to a sub-contractor for cheap rates. They skirt employment laws by outsourcing labor. Then the employees are paid far below a living wage. It happens in all tiers of employment. The is very dominant in IT. Large companies outsource their IT labor to contractors and those contractors get a sub-standard wage and no health benefits. The company get's a good financial outlook on paper while large portions of their workforce are shafted. What needs to happen is a change in law, that which if you work full time for a company you must be paid by that company at least a living wage and health benefits. All this sub-contracting to skirt decent wages and benefits needs to end.
Re:Their emperor has no clothes by Binestar · 2017-07-27 02:29 · Score: 4, Informative

Zuckerberg is still partying on the collective dimes of investors who don't understand how facebook works - or why it still doesn't make money.
I believe you are completely uninformed sir. Facebook has been making consistent profit since IPO: https://www.theguardian.com/te...

--
Do you Gentoo!?
because 7 8 9 by Thud457 · 2017-07-27 02:39 · Score: 4, Funny

our resources are stretched so thin we can't even afford adequate maths for everybody.

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the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Re:Whole area has unreasonable real estate by kilfarsnar · 2017-07-27 02:48 · 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)
Fix cost of living by ErichTheRed · 2017-07-27 02:57 · Score: 4, Informative

The root of the problem is a lack of affordable places to live that aren't several hours' commute from places where people work. I live in the NY metro area, and even 60 miles away house prices are high in good school districts. Northern California is way worse -- you're starting at a million for ownership of any kind of home, which means you need a job that pays an outsized salary just to have a massive mortgage payment.
This problem is repeated in cities all over the US to lesser degrees. Atlanta has very affordable housing if you're willing to put up with hours of driving, and Georgia has almost no property taxes...but in my opinion sitting on the road for another 10 or 15 hours a week isn't worth it.
One fix I could see is to make retirement stability easier to maintain. So many people in our area have little saved for retirement and are banking on selling their high-priced house and moving to North Carolina or similar. It's their only retirement asset, and in the current environment it's in everyone's best interest to keep these mini housing bubbles inflated until they can cash out.
Something wrong with our society by XXongo · 2017-07-27 02:59 · 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 · 2017-07-27 03:33 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  No. It's just him.
2. Re:Something wrong with our society by Grishnakh · 2017-07-27 05:03 · 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.
Re:THEN QUIT! by jeff4747 · 2017-07-27 03:31 · 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.
WAIT by DarkOx · 2017-07-27 03:43 · Score: 4, Interesting

There is more to this story here. Health insurance can't cost more that 10% of your income: Thanks Obama. So how can they not afford FB's own health plan?
They are staying in a garage adjacent to their parents house. I assume therefore this is in fact their parents garage. Mom and Dad can't give them a little break on the rent long enough for them to get some savings?
I mean seriously if my kid had nowhere else to go with his family, and was apparently this broke. I think I'd say "Shit son, I'll back the cars out and you can stay in the garage, rent free as long as you need; if you'll clean any bird crap off the paint when you come home from work each day."
I suspect there is more going here. Somebody has an insane pile of student loan or credit card debt would be my first two guesses. Spend every dime on some get rich stock scam that fell apart would be my third.

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Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Greed itself isn't your root problem .... by King_TJ · 2017-07-27 04:14 · 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.
Re:THEN QUIT! by aicrules · 2017-07-27 04:40 · Score: 3, Interesting

Take a quick look around that apartment (it's not a garage, maybe it once was, but it's one room apartment now) and note a few things. They have some pretty damn nice looking furniture. They have a projector. They have what appears to be a flat screen TV to the left. They have one of those "bladeless" fans that at least looks like a dyson. They have better shit than I did when I moved. They make $78K a year, which isn't rich, but I found numerous apartments for rent in Menlo Park for less that $2000 a month that are bigger than that "garage". Based on 78000 a year, without consideration for the 3 deductions they have, their after tax income in california would be $58000. That leaves 2800 a month after rent if they're paying that much. Not a ton, but I lived on less than that with my family in california. I didn't own a big TV or a projector. We ate mac n cheese a lot. And I found a way to save up enough to move to a better job and place for us all.

Sounds more likely to me that they have managed their income poorly.
Re:THEN QUIT! by Areyoukiddingme · 2017-07-27 21:00 · Score: 3, Interesting

The parents are even letting the kids stay in the main house. Do you really think they are going to give a large TV and bladeless fan to them?
I assume you meant "aren't even letting". And yes, that's exactly what I expect. That's the usual pattern with families like that. The fan doesn't work very well—give it to the kids. Replaced the bedroom TV—give the old one to the kids. Happens all the time.