| The problem is not that Google, Facebook, and others are "solving a problem" by providing these bus fleets. They are offering jobs on the peninsula paying more than jobs tend to pay in SF [because SF companies have to pay more for rent and ACTUALLY PAY THEIR FUCKING PAYROLL TAXES TO PAY TO MAINTAIN THE BUS STOPS], with a greater likelihood of becoming filthy rich, to people largely moving from other parts of the country and/or world, with the promise that they can work in one community and live in another. When such employees are not being recruited from other places, they are being recruited from SF. Google and Facebook have a problem that their offices are in FUCKING BORING monoculture suburbs which young, smart, energetic people do not typically want to live in. And their big, monolithic companies aren't a great match for the culture of SF, though companies like Twitter have been trying to make it work by insisting that SF is doomed without them. One has to ask, why do people want to live in SF rather than Mountain View or Palo Alto? Is it because those places are FUCKING BORING? Yes. And they are not FUCKING BORING because they lack craft cocktail places, they have a monoculture that is unattractive to people accustomed to diversity. That is why these buses are gross, and that is why it is gross that people who just recently moved to SF after rents roughly doubled think that people should just get a better job if they want to live here, because who ever lived in SF except rich people? How can someone who moved here as a student and began trying to build a life for themselves in the bay area ever fit without basically letting Larry, Sergei, and Zuck declare the sort of job that people who live in SF can have? How can people ever own a home in this city if the only way is by being [un]lucky and boring enough to be at a behemoth company or a random startup that couldn't easily be predicted to hit, and take a bunch of stock away? Also, if SF becomes a place where most people who can afford to live here have to work in another city, it will be largely devoid of employed people during the day. There will be jobs serving coffee in the morning, dinner in the evening, mostly stocked by people who live in the east bay, and we're likely to see some of the crime problems that Oakland has which I believe directly have to do with this, specifically that lots of people who pay rent and mortages in Oakland have to go to another city to do so, on woefully overloaded transit systems that are struggling for funding, leaving the city largely full of unemployed people and violent police officers during the day. SF is an amazing place and I can't imagine why anyone would only want to work here during the first and last hours of the day, when I do my best to be here as many hours of the day as possible, though I can't afford to live here. Plus a lot of these assholes don't even like SF. It's like a fancy fucking pair of shoes for them to brag about. |
"How can someone who moved here as a student and began trying to build a life for themselves in the bay area ever fit without basically letting Larry, Sergei, and Zuck declare the sort of job that people who live in SF can have?"
When I moved here, those guys were in Jr High probably telling poor taste jokes. So 10 - 15 years from now they may have no say at all in what job you want.
"How can people ever own a home in this city if the only way is by being [un]lucky and boring enough to be at a behemoth company or a random startup that couldn't easily be predicted to hit, and take a bunch of stock away?"
My wife and I bought a home in 1985. We were leveraged to the hilt (loans from the seller, the bank, her parents, and our savings). It wasn't "easy", I didn't see any current run movies, I rarely went out to lunch, but we were focused on getting into the housing market as soon as we could. Over the years I've watched all of my friends buy houses.
They were able to do that because they both saved when they needed too and they benefited from the success of the companies they worked for. Few were made 'rich' by startups, most by putting in their hours at HP or Sun or Oracle, saving money, buying their own company's stock with the employee stock program. Most were married or in committed relationships (it really correlates strongly with house ownership if you can split your living expenses with another person).
The theme in your comment is "I want what I want RIGHT NOW!" but life isn't like that. It plays out over weeks and months and years. Trust me when I tell you that if you did get what everything you wanted without effort, without time, without failure. You would hate it, worse you might despise yourself for having it.
If you evaluate your life based on the lives of others, you won't ever be happy.