Except in a gold rush everyone is trying to get a piece of a real, actual resource.
What are folks flocking to? A unique combination of deep VC pockets and gullibility that can only be found in the SF geological record?
No, this looks more like a regular ol bubble to me... The flywheel is spinning up, driven by run of the mill irrational exuberance and a belief that everyone in the bay area is just smarter than everyone else. Anyone on wall street in 2007 should find that eerily familiar...
Money has been close to free for years. As the interest rate ticks up everything will change. It's already starting to. More expensive borrowing, less leverage, and better places to put dollars than venture.
The one thing I really agree with though is the funny thing that happens here with the word "engineer". If you can make a website you somehow qualify for the title software engineer. By Bay Area standards, I myself am director level engineering talent—and I get offers for such all the time—and yet I don't even remotely consider myself an engineer. Because I can make a website? Because I know a little python, ruby and node? Come on. I've never written anything that lives in a real production environment and you want to hire me as your director of engineering? Are you mad?
> [...] and yet I don't even remotely consider myself an engineer.
I phone screened somebody not so long ago who asked me if it was the "kind of job where you have to write a lot of code", because they "weren't that sort of software engineer". Didn't quite know what to make of that.
That person might be perfect for my job. I've been largely reading mountains of code that other people have written, until I understand what it does, and then make (usually small) changes in order to either fix a defect or add functionality.
I don't love it. Maybe the person you screened should be doing my job.
If you have an engineering degree from an accredited program, you're an engineer. If you don't you're not. The US is very lax with usage of the word but in other countries it's classed in the same way "Doctor" is.
The funny thing being, most of the best "software engineers" are people without software engineering degrees. Because the practice has existed longer than the degree has.
I guess that the vast majority of "software engineers" of any kind (not just the best) don't have software engineering degrees. Maybe you were thinking computer science degrees?
Interest rates aren't going to tick up. The Fed isn't going to raise rates, they're going to cut and launch a new round of QE. That's not even a debate at this point, it's blatantly obvious. Will that end at some point with another asset crash? Maybe, however it's not going to happen soon. The Fed will print your brains out first to support stocks and real-estate. They have a lot of room to abuse the dollar from where it's at today.
If I was a betting man, I'd side with you on this one in that low interest rates may be a permanent fixture until the Fed has pushed to the extreme and the system can bend no further.
Can you elaborate on why you think it's "blatantly obvious" though? I can't make any of these types of guesses with high confidence.
Tangent but: I doubt the rate raise will stick. They'll probably have to cut it again. I see a "planet Japan" scenario in which global central banks are zero-bound for decades, if not "forever". Rapid growth is over. There are no more frontiers and birth rates are stabilizing. From an ecological point of view the stabilization of birth rates is good, but it basically breaks all the economic assumptions of the past 250+ years. A heavily leveraged credit economy does not work without fairly rapid growth, and until the economy is fundamentally restructured toward something built for a more steady-state mode of operation we'll have to hack it by constantly printing money to prevent deflationary collapse.
The only thing that might change this is something like the opening of the final frontier-- space. But in that case I'm not sure if it would... distances between say Earth and Mars are so vast that any Martian economy would effectively be a separate entity. It might experience rapid growth but I'm not sure if that would translate over here. The Homeworld might still be like Japan-- a zero-bound no-growth economy.
I suppose an AI explosion that wasn't destructive might change things too by creating a lot of new non-corporeal economic entities, but we're well off into sci-fi land here.
Edit: I don't necessarily mean that all forms of "growth" are over. We could still have tremendous growth in knowledge, technological capability, standard of living, and some amount of economic growth. But heavily leveraged inflationary credit economics requires crazy exponential growth in an absolute sense. Without crazy growth it breaks, and the only way to keep it nominally running is to pump money into it to prevent cascading default.
In a sense I think the "pop Austrians" are right that the present system is broken, but they've historically had the failure mode exactly wrong. The failure mode is not hyperinflation-- it's hyperdeflation that's permanently held at bay by money printing ("Japan"). That's because pop Austrians don't get the money multiplier. Almost all money in circulation is credit/debt, not M1. You'd have to print absurd amounts of money and make sure it's distributed more widely than banks to cause a non-localized hyperinflation in a credit economy. (Localized hyperinflation is possible due to bubbles but these usually collapse.)
Of course another way of keeping the illusion alive is to pump up localized credit bubbles repeatedly. These give the illusion to certain sectors or regions that the economy is still growing the way it should... for a while. But then they pop and you need another round of money printing to prevent hyperdeflation. Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile these bubbles distort the price structure of the economy, such as by making housing ridiculous or driving certain commodities crazy.
> Tangent but: I doubt the rate raise will stick. They'll probably have to cut it again. I see a "planet Japan" scenario in which global central banks are zero-bound for decades, if not "forever". Rapid growth is over.
Agreed nominal interest rates will likely drop down again to zero to restimulate the economy, but I doubt that will stick for the next decade, as inflation should creep back in forcing the Fed's hand. However, if you believe that "real interest rates" (ie subtracting inflation) will be zero for a long time, I can concur -- currently they are negative.
"Zero-bound" means "at or near zero." Inflation is easy to kill in today's world: just raise interest rates a little tiny bit for a short period of time and the deflationary downdraft will snuff any little inflationary ticks upward. But they'll be forced to drop rates again quickly or we'll fall back into deflation. The instant they raise rates the debt defaults and asset price collapses will start.
Earth is now Japan. Perhaps Mars is the next America.
China is facing a demographic cliff similar to what happened to Japan after the 80s boom. India and Africa could experience growth for a while but they have major problems, chief among them very deep structural corruption at all levels of society. Even if they can overcome this they will eventually face the same demographic cliff as China today and Japan in the 90s.
Rapid growth doesn't need more economic entities (whether natural or AI), it just needs more production. Rapid increases in productivity with a steady state population suffices to achieve that.
0/Near 0 interest is the end-game of fractional reserve banking. Consider the alternative: Rates climb back to 20%. You (and everyone else borrowing) now need to somehow collect an additional 20% (ignoring compounding and early payments) money each year. 1) that's not going to happen unless massive amounts of money are borrowed by lots of people 2) that money must move fast enough (and be continually reborrowed) to make it out to everyone who has an upcoming (very large) interest payment.
The banks are a serious drain on the system. They get to extract percentages from the economy year over year, while contributing nothing (except interest obligations).
Some type of "normalization" process can probably be used successfully for a while, but more seriously: I think we need to track dependencies; as in, the full supply chain.
Then, perhaps, we try to figure out how to engineer solutions that will guarantee certain certain conditions will be met (e.g. Enough food for every person in an area will make it to that area for everyone there to live satisfactorily).
As the dependencies are mapped out and tracked, it will become obvious which tasks are necessary to fulfill the current economic objectives. Then, it's simply a matter of performing the tasks.
The latest is data scientist or even scientist in general. People have realised that marketing and charisma will get them most of the way so they bs and reap the rewards. Sad but true.
You can thank companies giving out VP or Director titles to their first technical hires for that.
At my last company, my boss was the first technical hire. His title was Director of Software Engineering. He got that title and the responsibilities that came with it solely because he was the first technical hire.
He had no management experience at all. He was a great engineer, but he couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag. He had the double whammy of both not knowing a thing about process and not understanding people. He didn't think having a process was necessary because his own code was amazing, he wrote the initial versions of our software all by himself in what actually is a solid example of a well-engineered project, and he couldn't fathom how anyone's code could be less than amazing. He also couldn't handle stress, and he had a habit of screaming at his subordinates and treating us like children whenever he got stressed.
I think engineers/developers/hackers tend to undervalue the skills necessary to manage a project well. Basically considering the work a lot easier than writing code or building something and thinking that anyone can do it (including themselves in your example).
I think the reason for this is because a lot of people can do a shitty job managing a team and it's not as obvious as when people do a shitty job programming (or at least there are more people that can be a bad manager undetected than can be a bad programmer).
It's harder to bullshit technical skills, but a bad manager could have good enough social/political skills to get power and it's probably also more likely to attract people looking for power. Engineering seems to provide a filter to avoid some of this naturally.
That said being a really effective PM, Manager, VP is a skill different from programming and with a similar depth that shouldn't be dismissed easily. This is more obvious to HN probably because startup founders often have to get better at it in order to build a company. Since it tends to rely a decent amount on empathy and social skills in addition to being able to understand the technical pieces/prioritization it's also harder to know how good you'll be at it when starting.
It is something you can get better at though, just takes investment/learning like anything else.
Reminds me of Tom West from Soul of a New Machine.
I wish there was a popular Rate my Manager site like Rate My Professor. Or companies at least took the time to poll people anonymously about their managers and took action against it. Managers make or break your experience at work.
In my experience, once you are in management it takes a hell of a lot more fuck-ups before you are ousted.
A good friend (and ex boss) is a VP of engineering at a very large publicly traded "ex-startup" he has no engineering background outside of what he's picked up managing engineering teams (and I've seen him hack around every so often). At the Director or VP level in many companies managing engineers doesn't always mean you're actually an engineer, and in fact you may not want your best engineers in those roles.
I would've thought having technical experience and the ability to get your hands dirty would be a requirement of being VP of Engineering (or similar). Two things that immediately come to mind is the ability to make competent technical decisions and estimate required time/resources required. Strong engineering/technical background is a requirement for the two. How do you even get into this leadership role without having the foundation?
I completely agree that you may not want your best engineers in this role because interfacing with and leading people is a completely separate skill, but I would still think any competent exec with a technical title will have some technical experience.
I have written code full-time for the past 7 years and been an engineer for the past 13, but have never maintained a "production app". There are large numbers of software engineers operating in fields where there is no such concept.
In Canada, you get sued if you call yourself an engineer when you're not part of an order of engineers.
Even if you're a bona fide engineer, but not enrolled in the order, calling yourself one opens the floodgates of hell where spaghetti coders do the same and get hired by retarded HR departments to take the lead on some mission-critical software.
I like this. I am a self-learned developer. When my peers call themselves engineers, I spit my coffee.
As an experienced Canadian developer who is seeking a work visa to work in the US, it is actually extremely difficult to get one.
It seems as though the US prioritizes shit-developers/wannabe-engineers over experienced Canadian developers. Which kind of makes sense, in that you feed your own before feeding your neighbour.
So I really doubt that H1B flooding is a thing. Open to debate though.
"Many of the visas are given out through a lottery, and a small number of giant global outsourcing companies had flooded the system with applications, significantly increasing their chances of success. While he had one application in last year’s lottery and lost, one of the outsourcing companies applied for at least 14,000."
A quick fix would be to award H1B based on salary instead of lottery.
Many jurisdictions in the US have protected titles such as "professional engineer" or "licensed engineer." IEEE's position is that "engineer" is an available title for people who have graduated with a degree from an ABET or EAC accredited engineering program and the legally protected titles should remain protected.
> In Canada, you get sued if you call yourself an engineer when you're not part of an order of engineers.
Ehhhh. If you try to stamp and sign structural engineering documents as an engineer, and then a bridge collapses, you're open to litigation. I don't think anyone has been (successfully?) sued for declaring themeselves as Software Engineers in Canada. There are no damages.
Interestingly, you can call yourself an "SE," and its fine (according the professional engineering associations), but companies in YVR actively recruit "software engineers" (e.g. Electronic Arts)
On paper, it's the same in the US. In practice, no one cares, and you see the title "Front end engineer" for "guy who tweaks the CSS until the site looks right" and "UX engineer" for "guy who makes pictures of what the product should look like in Photoshop".
I do cringe, though, at the extreme overuse of the term in software; I have two parents who are legit PEs in the US and drilled the distinction in with me.
At the very least, it should be reserved for someone with a broad theoretical and practical background who solves more complicated problems ... but you know how title inflation goes.
Most of the blame is cast on the big companies (Twitter, Facebook etc) but the reality is that there are hundreds of smaller companies choosing SF and the valley in general.
And again I say, until companies allow people to work from wherever this will be fueled more.
Finding talent is getting ever more difficult already, if you expand your search area to the entire country/world there's a better chance you'd find people no?
They don't need talent. They need mindless drones to work from 10am to 9pm in cramped co-working spaces. There is nothing interesting or challenging about the "problems" these startups are "solving".
Exactly. Read my latest post - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10976903. I hate the culture/environment of co-working spaces. I don't understand why people are so opposed to working from home, they automatically assume everyone is a child that can't manage themselves. Now I have to waste YEARS of my life getting to an office.
I like SV and do wish it would spread around more. But it does seem like companies aren't considered a startup anymore unless you are paying some of the highest rents in the country in SF. Something doesn't compute, high rent is not the best decision for early stage companies except in SV, unless there is some other angle like maybe you own the building/real estate. Maybe in the end lots of VC is real-estate plays parallel to product development.
This is a feature not a bug. The whole VC model the Bay Area thrives on is based on the premise of hitting on only a small percentage of successful startups and you never know what's going to be a hit. Many successful startups have pivoted out of "stupid" ideas. I'm sure at one point "Blogging 140 characters at a time" was considered a stupid idea.
"Blogging 140 characters at a time" was considered a stupid idea.
I struggle with this all the time
I try to put myself in the shoes of VCs hearing AirBNB, Uber, Twitter and other pitches. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't give them money. (and then, I would post on HN saying "How I missed AirBNB. Including email threads with the founders and beating myself up).
This is indeed the premise of VCs but even with that in mind, some startups being funded are just ridiculous.
It's worth remembering that at the time it wasn't "blogging 140 characters at a time" it was "SMS blogging" which is a much easier idea to pitch in that the use case is more obvious (being on the go) and the character limit isn't arbitrary.
Tell you what, hard engineering problems are never not a hit. But nobody cares, because they require so much money and so much hard work... Same with bio-engineering, and whatnot.
No, let's just make yet another app which brings insignificant incremental deveopment to calendar viewing apps.
tldr: Guy comes to SF, figures it all out in a weekend, sees things that I've never seen living here like 'dozens of co-working facilities in 10 blocks'. Here's my take: The concentration of wealth here still pales to NYC area, Google, Apple, Facebook alone are giant money funnels from the whole world into this area, and there are more funnels being built every day. Not saying it will or should go up in a straight line, but personally I'd bet on the trend.
Perspective is key. Where is this guy finding $15 IPAs? $16 tiny artisanal salads? Sure they're out there, but in my opinion it's just as easy to find reasonably priced restaurants/bars.
I thought it was somehow tied into the hipster-foodie thing, like you'd get charged $15 for a 50 cent banana if it was delivered to you by some precariously employed scooter driver swaddled up like the baby Jesus.
Perhaps it's my unadventurous lifestyle, but I have never found myself in a situation where I so urgently needed a posing pouch that 'Uberising' the industry would have helped me out.
Looks like this week is "Maybe Startups Aren't Inherently Great" week on Hacker News. :p
That being said, the number of startups in San Francisco is fine as long as there is corrective balance. At the least, startups which are failing will die faster due to rent alone.
"They can take an arbitrary sabbatical from work, they cannot be told no or reprimanded, and they make so much money that they can just take random breaks from employment to chill."
I have yet to hear a convincing argument why this is a bad thing.
JM Keynes said eons ago that with increases in efficiency we will eventually be able to get to a 15-hour work week. So, a particular industry in a particular area was able to get to an approximation of that, and the counter-argument is that this is not a productive use of capital?
Besides, TFA complains that all these people are working on silly startups, which is presumably not a productive use of capital either. You can't have it both ways.
> a particular industry in a particular area was able to get to an approximation of that
On the backs of whom? How much are those Uber drivers, grocery deliverers, and artisanal salad chefs making?
It is good that one group of people is moving forward, we just have to be careful that we aren't doing it at the expense of other groups. The impression I get is that in the US today, it's not just that some people are getting richer, many others are getting poorer.
I'm confused. At least in this subthread we are discussing just the sabbatical part here, not the general economic inequality. Are you saying that someone who has enough money to take a sabbatical is doing it on the backs of uber drivers and grocery deliverers?
Seriously, most tech startups are not bringing a bump in productivity, but are a mere pixel moving money waste for VCs, who don't really care if about the 9 failures if 1 startup pays off massively. The problem is that VC's don't even care about profitability anymore, they only care about being bought-off by next stage VCs. So all the money actually comes from 1 ad supported startup which became profitable and the losses for all the others were written off.
The employee certainly improves their value in terms of skills acquired during a sabbatical. The employee also gains significantly in terms of value of life experiences when they take time to travel, support kids, etc.
Certainly there are unproductive poor team players who dissapear whenever trouble happens but we shouldn't set our policies based on this minority.
> The only thing that's really hard to avoid spending way too much money on is housing.
And people shouldn't discount that.
Here in suburban Dallas, I'm paying $1220 (soon to go up to $1270) per month for a 1513 sq. ft. townhouse that I have entirely to myself. And my commute isn't bad because most of the tech companies here are also in the suburbs (the Telecom Corridor in Richardson).
Good luck finding anything like that in SF.
I'm a very private person, and I like having a lot of space to myself. The idea of having a roommate or living in a small apartment (especially in an urban environment) makes me physically ill. I'd never be able to live there.
You're probably right. I was being a bit excessive with the beer comment, I just found it funny that I never recognized anything on tap. I'm also not really an IPA guy =/
Regarding dumb startups - I can't wait for the coming collapse. There are lots of talented developers/designers working on dumb startups, which makes it very difficult for me to find good people to work with.
"Engineers are particularly spoiled. They can take an arbitrary sabbatical from work..." <---> (on the about page) "...Currently a principal engineer at AppNexus on sabbatical..." ???
"AppNexus helps brands connect with consumers, empowering agencies and advertisers with a uniquely powerful approach to programmatic online advertising."
Thanks for working on Ad Tech, the very thing that powers this bubble by trading attention as a commodity. Other people work on silly startups, but this shit is akin to HFT.
Unless microtransactions for content take off, and they haven't, ad tech is necessary to incentivize content on the web. 90% of the websites you read could not exist without the ecosystem that appnexus is a big player in. Hacker News, being one big ad for ycombinator, doesn't need to bother.
So he's doing a real thing that provides real value to the web. And it's actually a sustainable business, to boot.
Lastly, there's absolutely no need to get so personal -- if his article offended you, discuss the article.
See, whether a startup is silly or not is an opinion. I happen to have an opinion that adtech is evil. Whether it has a side benefit like allowing "content" to exist is tangential.
I usually keep that opinion to myself because it's not a popular one, but in this particular subthread we are not discussing the article, we are discussing the author who volunteered his "I am very hypocritical" comment.
Elsewhere in this comment thread I discuss the article.
1) In a thread where the author shows up and says "I am very hypocritical", standard rules like "discuss the article, not the author" do not apply. The author is fair game for discussion.
2) I don't usually crap on other peoples' industries, but not in this case, because (1).
Funnily enough, a big side effect of the ad tech's evolution over the last 10 years is that junk websites tend to get junk ads with junk CPM and quality websites get the higher-value stuff.
You don't need to incentivize content on the web. People's interests and need for collaberation and sharing should incentivize content on the web.
We're in enough of a media bubble already - there's so much media and so few trusted sources that its impossible to filter content anymore. Ads inject themselves after people's ability to filter burn out like a virus. Its not good for society.
We like to call out politicians and such for who sponsors them. What's wrong with calling out our information sources in the same way? (serious question)
Advertising is a necessary part of selling a product. Selling a product is a necessary part of being profitable. Why hate on that? Way better than waste-my-time Farmville or an enhanced "like" button. Adtech actually helps commerce.
Interestingly, this bubble is not powered by ads. Only one of the top 25 "unicorns" worldwide, Snapchat, is ad-based. The others provide a good or service paid for directly by their customers.
Ignoring the hypocritical nature of this statement, I take offense in this generalization in particular.
If you're an engineer with a family here in SV, you cannot take a sabbatical. In most cases you need to get a job in a week or the rent will drive you to bankruptcy.
Hey, you know that the vast majority of businesses are not very friendly to remote work, and moving away from these areas frequently means a pay cut or sometimes inability to find work?
I'm not defending this at all, as I think it's stupid, but they are not "rich". They are frankly just less screwed than other middle class folks.
The median household income in the US is $51,939 (2013).
You seriously think having double or probably triple from just one salary isn't rich?
And where exactly are all your caterers and cleaners and gardeners and nannies and baristas and tavern workers and shop people living and buying their food with their minimum wage in the bay area? Obviously they aren't remote working.
>You seriously think having double or probably triple from just one salary isn't rich?
First of all, cost of living varies widely from locality to locality. Making 90k a year in middle of nowhere Idaho or some other piece of flyover country is totally different than making 150k in an urban area like NYC or SF.
Saying: "welp, it's your fault your cost of living is so high, you should move 2 hours away to Sacramento, stupid" is not only incredibly naive, but borders on a level of ignorance that I haven't seen in quite some time.
Based on when you joined HN, I think it is safe to conclude that you have been here long enough to know the high signal-to-noise ratio that the community strives for here. I think that there are more eloquent and meaningful ways to express your opinion and disagree [1][2].
Just a friendly reminder:
1. There is another human being on the other side of the conversation.
The author complains about that behavior, labeling it a sign of how 'spoiled' engineers are. The author also engages in this behavior. Pointing this out, and labelling it hypocrisy, does not constitute an ad hominem attack. Because what the author has done is the definition of hypocrisy.
The combination of a cultural bloodthirst for hypocrisy, as well as the human intelligent capacity for abstraction and pattern matching guarantees that anyone can, and probably will, end up being labeled a hypocrite.
I've seen grads come out of boot camps that are better programmers than people who have been programming for years. They might lack the knowledge, but they've got good sense and hustle, and at the end of the day, I'd take that over a stubborn engineer who looks like they're gonna age into a Dilbert comic.
I taught at a bootcamp for a while and always covered big O. It's pretty important for interviewing. Bootcamp kids know more CS than you might think...
> Everything is too expensive. I’m from New York...
I take issue with this one. It's entirely possible to live frugally while living IN San Francisco. I moved here about 7 months ago and expected it to be incredibly expensive but it hasn't been the case (beyond rent).
The author mentions $15 crappy local IPAs but I've actually never found a beer for this price. There is no shortage of $7 craft beers you can buy at a brewery or bar, no shortage of Trader Joe's with the same prices as, say, Charlottesville VA.
I've found that other than rent, the prices are comparable to other places. If you get a salad delivered on postmates or uber eats or something then that's what you're paying for. That isn't SF.
I think a lot of people are living a lifestyle where they have no problem paying for stuff like a delivered salad when they can walk next door, or uber instead of taking the bus, but lots of people are walking and grocery shopping and not paying those prices.
Compared to NY, he's wrong.
Compared to most other places, even other metro areas, he's very right :)
Prices in SF are definitely 2x-3x what I have paid anywhere else.
In fact, every time i visit, say, chicago, or atlanta, i'm strongly reminded of this fact.
Can you find quality places in SF where that's not true? I'm sure.
But on average, it's definitely the case that it's significantly more expensive here.
Compared to Portland, $7 a beer is actually pretty expensive. Not as crazy as the mythical $15, but for a local craft beer it should be more like $5-6. But that could all just be taxes.
(and we do have $7-12 beers, they're just known to be extra fancy or aged)
Overall Portland is still relatively cheap. The only thing getting out of control is rent and house purchasing (because of the serious lack of inventory), but the entire nation is seeing this so it's not specific to Portland.
What do people normally count in cost of living? Utilities and services are fine, and groceries are easy to find reasonably priced. Transportation is fine.
So I think as others have mentioned, rent and house prices are the things climbing sharply. I know someone paying $900 for a room in a 3 person house, in a really great part of town (Division, for locals). I've heard studios go for well over $1000, and fill up fast. But really, you don't have to look very hard to find something cheap(er). Surrounding areas (with new access to light rail that goes down town) are reasonable.
I don't think it's really as bad as some people make it out to be, but it definitely is getting more expensive in town. I mean, that's the nature of the housing market recovery :)
I agree - I'm yet to find a $15 IPA! If anything, I'd say that rightly or wrongly the prices are very comparable to that of New York. I often spend more on food when I visit New York but admittedly I'd be taking the opportunity to go to a popular restaurant or bar rather than trying to find a convenience store etc. I can only anticipate the same thing would happen if I lived in NY and were visiting here.
Im thinkning of moving to München, this might be another reason too. A Heiniken 33cl beer in Stockholm costs around 12 USD if you are at a nightclub, otherwise around 10 USD.
I believe it may even have made it into official marketing campaigns since then. Berlin is gentrifying fast though. The Neukölln neighbourhood is unrecognisable to the place I moved to 4 years ago.
I think his point was that you CAN buy a $7 beer in a bar, but you can also buy a $1 beer at a grocery store like Trader Joes. So $7 is the high end here, not the "frugal" option.
Rent is expensive, but I pay 6-8$ for a good craft beer and ~12 for a nice bowl of pho for lunch. I dont even know where you could go to buy 14$ beer? Some hotel sky bar or a nightclub?
nothing against the author but it seems like he is painting a very wide brush with something he's seen for 3? days.
i certainly have never taken ubers everyday to work even though i could probably(?) afford to do so. seems like an expensive daily habit though.
i actually live in the city where it's not some huge loft in fidi/downtown. good for anyone who can get their groceries sent up to their room but i'm not sure how close to the norm that is. tech workers are all across the board in terms of how they live, how much they get paid and how willing they are to fetch their own groceries.
i live on the first floor of a older apartment complex, but i have to walk down a hill to fetch my groceries. i do sometimes use one of the gazillion food delivery services to eat dinner though.
anyways i would say this is similar to someone who goes to ny, visits the financial district in manhattan for 3 days and then proclaims, "everyone in ny is rich! of course they can afford all that housing! they're so stuck up! why are the cabbies so rude? why are new yorkers so rude?"
The guy makes some good points, and there does seem to be a lot of questionable startups, but it's not like they're tapping into public funds. Somewhere, somehow, some angel investor thought that it was a good team and a good idea and they were happy to part with their money. It's better that we live in a more optimistic world than one where every crazy idea is a bad idea.
However, how is taking Uber to work every day 'spoiled'? I bet the guys owns a car where he is from and spends significantly more on monthly transportation than I do. For $4 more than a bus, I get point to point pick up and drop off, and save about 40 minutes of my time (which I can use to go work out in the mornings).
And some others have figured out that it makes sense to spend $20 on grocery delivery rather than spending 90 minutes doing it yourself if you're working 60-80 hours per week and make more than $20/hour. To be sure, a lot of people work long and hard. They make certain sacrifices but just because they are not the same sacrifices that the author would make it doesn't mean they're bad.
Depending on where you live, Uber/Lyft can be a lot more expensive than a bus.
In Dallas, a monthly public transport pass costs $80. This comes with unlimited uses of the buses and trains for an entire month. Let's say you work twenty days (four weeks) a month, with a trip each way. That amortizes to $2 a trip, less if you also use your pass for personal trips on weekends.
Lyft costs me about $11 on average to get me between home and work. If I were to take Lyft to and from work every day for a month, again assuming twenty working days a month, I'd be paying about $440 a month. That's not $4 more; it's $9 more. That's 5.5 times how much I'd be paying for public transport. Again, that's not counting using it for personal trips on weekends (here, the minimum is $5.70, including the trust & safety fee).
If Uber/Lyft is only $4 more than a bus in SF, then buses are way expensive there.
Agreed that it definitely depends on where you live. I don't, but could, take an Uber/Lyft for my commute everyday and it would cost about $5-$7, whereas a ride on SF public transit would take $2.25 and + 10-20 extra minutes.
Lyft Line (the thing where you share with other people) is capped at $6 within a decent size swath of SF. Muni is $2.25 and Bart is $1.95 for within the same general area. I think that's where the $4 came from.
I have to say that I didn't really understand the perspective the writer was coming from. It kind of felt like he just wanted to finger wag at SF.
> Everything is too expensive.
Just normal supply and demand economics. This happens all the time all over the world when lots of high earning people suddenly move to an area.
> There are thousands of dumb startups.
Yup. And most of them will die. And some of them will become AirBnB. The problem is, it's extremely difficult to predict which is which. That's just the nature of searching for "the next big thing". I'd rather live in a world where there are lots of dumb companies so that the few exceptional ones have a chance to get started.
> People are spoiled.
No, people in SF value their time, as it's the only resource you can't get more of. I absolutely understand why someone with the money would have groceries deliver for them. It's more efficient. The locally sourced and organic thing does feel a bit silly though, although I would say that's a fad you see everywhere.
> There cannot be these many quality engineers.
I'm sure there are some bad engineers there. But SF has a massive pool for exceptional talent, and while I'm sure not every engineer is extremely high quality, I have no doubt that a substantial amount of top tier programmers are in SF. If the majority of programmers weren't making meaningful contributions to their companies, I don't think you would see them being compensated the way they are.
Some of the dumbest ideas are the biggest. Strangers driving you in their cars? People turning their spare rooms into hotel rooms? I wouldn't have believed (or invested in) either of these ideas.
My favorite example is YouTube. If you had asked me if I wanted to invest in a video upload site where 95% of the material were pirated clips off of TV I would have said "you're crazy! You'll be sued out of existence."
>> I absolutely understand why someone with the money would have groceries deliver for them.
There is s difference between lazy, spoiled and pretentious. Rich people have existed for a very long time. Few have ever had groceries delivered. The hire personal shoppers, housekeepers, chefs, maids to buy their food. This getting groceries delivered is a passing fad, an affectation for people looking to cultivate an image of themselves. Having more money than time is nothing new.
If you're mature and hardworking, I have no problem with you taking PTO whenever you need it or not committing to hard deadlines. But those are earned privileges based on trust and a history of delivering.
It is so hard to hire software engineers and there are tons of them. Bootcamps are not the answer. It is not a quantity problem, it is a quality problem.
There might be a bubble, but extremely limited anecdata isn't enough to prove it.
Who cares if people are spending money to get shit done for them that they don't want to personally do (laundry, groceries). As long as they can pay for it and are utilizing hours to what they actually want to do in life I don't see the harm.
And expensive food exists in most major cities.
There might be some truth to the title, but the article lacked the data to support any of it. I'm flabbergasted that it got upvoted on the frontpage of HN.
There are lots of dumb startups. But a handful of these dumb startups are going to turn into big, meaningful companies that change some aspect of people's lives, hopefully in a positive way (at a minimum they will offer employment). Because of that, it's worth putting up with these "dumb" ones because 0.1% of them will pay off the other ones.
Companies evolve, and some don't stay dumb forever.
meaningful way? Something like Facebook has certainly changed things, but whether or not the change is meaningful remains up for debate. Most of these 'changes' just make our lives slightly more convenient or seem a bit more futuristic, but these are illusions.
Change that is categorically meaningful involves things like a cure for cancer, a new source of energy, etc..etc.. If we are to judge whether this startup trend has changed peoples lives in a meaningful way, we should look for changes that are categorically meaningful.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 329 ms ] threadWhat are folks flocking to? A unique combination of deep VC pockets and gullibility that can only be found in the SF geological record?
No, this looks more like a regular ol bubble to me... The flywheel is spinning up, driven by run of the mill irrational exuberance and a belief that everyone in the bay area is just smarter than everyone else. Anyone on wall street in 2007 should find that eerily familiar...
That's what makes gold rush economics similar to bubble economics: Everyone decides to chase after a nebulous source of value.
San Francisco has always been the Gold Rush City.
Which means it is best to sell the shovels so startup X can more easily/faster "disrupt the banana hammock ordering process"
The one thing I really agree with though is the funny thing that happens here with the word "engineer". If you can make a website you somehow qualify for the title software engineer. By Bay Area standards, I myself am director level engineering talent—and I get offers for such all the time—and yet I don't even remotely consider myself an engineer. Because I can make a website? Because I know a little python, ruby and node? Come on. I've never written anything that lives in a real production environment and you want to hire me as your director of engineering? Are you mad?
I phone screened somebody not so long ago who asked me if it was the "kind of job where you have to write a lot of code", because they "weren't that sort of software engineer". Didn't quite know what to make of that.
I don't love it. Maybe the person you screened should be doing my job.
The reason is because they learned out of innate curiosity and true passion. You always go farther with those.
However, you go even farther with curiosity, passion and a degree.
Can you elaborate on why you think it's "blatantly obvious" though? I can't make any of these types of guesses with high confidence.
The only thing that might change this is something like the opening of the final frontier-- space. But in that case I'm not sure if it would... distances between say Earth and Mars are so vast that any Martian economy would effectively be a separate entity. It might experience rapid growth but I'm not sure if that would translate over here. The Homeworld might still be like Japan-- a zero-bound no-growth economy.
I suppose an AI explosion that wasn't destructive might change things too by creating a lot of new non-corporeal economic entities, but we're well off into sci-fi land here.
Edit: I don't necessarily mean that all forms of "growth" are over. We could still have tremendous growth in knowledge, technological capability, standard of living, and some amount of economic growth. But heavily leveraged inflationary credit economics requires crazy exponential growth in an absolute sense. Without crazy growth it breaks, and the only way to keep it nominally running is to pump money into it to prevent cascading default.
In a sense I think the "pop Austrians" are right that the present system is broken, but they've historically had the failure mode exactly wrong. The failure mode is not hyperinflation-- it's hyperdeflation that's permanently held at bay by money printing ("Japan"). That's because pop Austrians don't get the money multiplier. Almost all money in circulation is credit/debt, not M1. You'd have to print absurd amounts of money and make sure it's distributed more widely than banks to cause a non-localized hyperinflation in a credit economy. (Localized hyperinflation is possible due to bubbles but these usually collapse.)
Of course another way of keeping the illusion alive is to pump up localized credit bubbles repeatedly. These give the illusion to certain sectors or regions that the economy is still growing the way it should... for a while. But then they pop and you need another round of money printing to prevent hyperdeflation. Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile these bubbles distort the price structure of the economy, such as by making housing ridiculous or driving certain commodities crazy.
Agreed nominal interest rates will likely drop down again to zero to restimulate the economy, but I doubt that will stick for the next decade, as inflation should creep back in forcing the Fed's hand. However, if you believe that "real interest rates" (ie subtracting inflation) will be zero for a long time, I can concur -- currently they are negative.
Earth is now Japan. Perhaps Mars is the next America.
The banks are a serious drain on the system. They get to extract percentages from the economy year over year, while contributing nothing (except interest obligations).
Then, perhaps, we try to figure out how to engineer solutions that will guarantee certain certain conditions will be met (e.g. Enough food for every person in an area will make it to that area for everyone there to live satisfactorily).
As the dependencies are mapped out and tracked, it will become obvious which tasks are necessary to fulfill the current economic objectives. Then, it's simply a matter of performing the tasks.
Have you ever fired anyone? "Nope"
Have you ever shipped a product and supported it for more than a year? "Nope"
Do you have any quality engineers that would come with you? "Nope"
Have you ever managed a manager? "Nope"
I noped his ass out the door.
Fear not, this craziness will pass.
At my last company, my boss was the first technical hire. His title was Director of Software Engineering. He got that title and the responsibilities that came with it solely because he was the first technical hire.
He had no management experience at all. He was a great engineer, but he couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag. He had the double whammy of both not knowing a thing about process and not understanding people. He didn't think having a process was necessary because his own code was amazing, he wrote the initial versions of our software all by himself in what actually is a solid example of a well-engineered project, and he couldn't fathom how anyone's code could be less than amazing. He also couldn't handle stress, and he had a habit of screaming at his subordinates and treating us like children whenever he got stressed.
His management was the biggest reason I quit.
I think engineers/developers/hackers tend to undervalue the skills necessary to manage a project well. Basically considering the work a lot easier than writing code or building something and thinking that anyone can do it (including themselves in your example).
I think the reason for this is because a lot of people can do a shitty job managing a team and it's not as obvious as when people do a shitty job programming (or at least there are more people that can be a bad manager undetected than can be a bad programmer).
It's harder to bullshit technical skills, but a bad manager could have good enough social/political skills to get power and it's probably also more likely to attract people looking for power. Engineering seems to provide a filter to avoid some of this naturally.
That said being a really effective PM, Manager, VP is a skill different from programming and with a similar depth that shouldn't be dismissed easily. This is more obvious to HN probably because startup founders often have to get better at it in order to build a company. Since it tends to rely a decent amount on empathy and social skills in addition to being able to understand the technical pieces/prioritization it's also harder to know how good you'll be at it when starting.
It is something you can get better at though, just takes investment/learning like anything else.
Reminds me of Tom West from Soul of a New Machine.
In my experience, once you are in management it takes a hell of a lot more fuck-ups before you are ousted.
Because they got the job.
You've never maintained a production app and you're getting offers as director of engineering?
I completely agree that you may not want your best engineers in this role because interfacing with and leading people is a completely separate skill, but I would still think any competent exec with a technical title will have some technical experience.
What's worse, the people interviewing me know even less than I do. The patchwork of bullshit runs deep in San Francisco.
Even if you're a bona fide engineer, but not enrolled in the order, calling yourself one opens the floodgates of hell where spaghetti coders do the same and get hired by retarded HR departments to take the lead on some mission-critical software.
I like this. I am a self-learned developer. When my peers call themselves engineers, I spit my coffee.
It seems as though the US prioritizes shit-developers/wannabe-engineers over experienced Canadian developers. Which kind of makes sense, in that you feed your own before feeding your neighbour.
So I really doubt that H1B flooding is a thing. Open to debate though.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/us/large-companies-game-h-...
"Many of the visas are given out through a lottery, and a small number of giant global outsourcing companies had flooded the system with applications, significantly increasing their chances of success. While he had one application in last year’s lottery and lost, one of the outsourcing companies applied for at least 14,000."
A quick fix would be to award H1B based on salary instead of lottery.
We do it because it works...
Ehhhh. If you try to stamp and sign structural engineering documents as an engineer, and then a bridge collapses, you're open to litigation. I don't think anyone has been (successfully?) sued for declaring themeselves as Software Engineers in Canada. There are no damages.
Interestingly, you can call yourself an "SE," and its fine (according the professional engineering associations), but companies in YVR actively recruit "software engineers" (e.g. Electronic Arts)
I do cringe, though, at the extreme overuse of the term in software; I have two parents who are legit PEs in the US and drilled the distinction in with me.
At the very least, it should be reserved for someone with a broad theoretical and practical background who solves more complicated problems ... but you know how title inflation goes.
Most of the blame is cast on the big companies (Twitter, Facebook etc) but the reality is that there are hundreds of smaller companies choosing SF and the valley in general.
And again I say, until companies allow people to work from wherever this will be fueled more.
Finding talent is getting ever more difficult already, if you expand your search area to the entire country/world there's a better chance you'd find people no?
This is a feature not a bug. The whole VC model the Bay Area thrives on is based on the premise of hitting on only a small percentage of successful startups and you never know what's going to be a hit. Many successful startups have pivoted out of "stupid" ideas. I'm sure at one point "Blogging 140 characters at a time" was considered a stupid idea.
I struggle with this all the time
I try to put myself in the shoes of VCs hearing AirBNB, Uber, Twitter and other pitches. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't give them money. (and then, I would post on HN saying "How I missed AirBNB. Including email threads with the founders and beating myself up).
This is indeed the premise of VCs but even with that in mind, some startups being funded are just ridiculous.
No, let's just make yet another app which brings insignificant incremental deveopment to calendar viewing apps.
Be serious.
Is this actually a real company and if so can someone post a link?
http://www.bananahammockworld.com/banana-hammocks-for-men/
Perhaps it's my unadventurous lifestyle, but I have never found myself in a situation where I so urgently needed a posing pouch that 'Uberising' the industry would have helped me out.
I had no idea what it was either, so I thought I was saving you a search.....
[0] https://www.meundies.com/
That being said, the number of startups in San Francisco is fine as long as there is corrective balance. At the least, startups which are failing will die faster due to rent alone.
I have yet to hear a convincing argument why this is a bad thing.
It isn't sustainable and its not a productive use of capital.
This lifestyle is going to implode when the economy stumbles.
JM Keynes said eons ago that with increases in efficiency we will eventually be able to get to a 15-hour work week. So, a particular industry in a particular area was able to get to an approximation of that, and the counter-argument is that this is not a productive use of capital?
Besides, TFA complains that all these people are working on silly startups, which is presumably not a productive use of capital either. You can't have it both ways.
On the backs of whom? How much are those Uber drivers, grocery deliverers, and artisanal salad chefs making?
It is good that one group of people is moving forward, we just have to be careful that we aren't doing it at the expense of other groups. The impression I get is that in the US today, it's not just that some people are getting richer, many others are getting poorer.
I don't believe there is such a law of economics.
The employee certainly improves their value in terms of skills acquired during a sabbatical. The employee also gains significantly in terms of value of life experiences when they take time to travel, support kids, etc.
Certainly there are unproductive poor team players who dissapear whenever trouble happens but we shouldn't set our policies based on this minority.
The only thing that's really hard to avoid spending way too much money on is housing.
Live in a van down by the river, or a cargo truck in a Google parking lot.
Next billion dollar startup
And people shouldn't discount that.
Here in suburban Dallas, I'm paying $1220 (soon to go up to $1270) per month for a 1513 sq. ft. townhouse that I have entirely to myself. And my commute isn't bad because most of the tech companies here are also in the suburbs (the Telecom Corridor in Richardson).
Good luck finding anything like that in SF.
I'm a very private person, and I like having a lot of space to myself. The idea of having a roommate or living in a small apartment (especially in an urban environment) makes me physically ill. I'd never be able to live there.
"AppNexus helps brands connect with consumers, empowering agencies and advertisers with a uniquely powerful approach to programmatic online advertising."
Thanks for working on Ad Tech, the very thing that powers this bubble by trading attention as a commodity. Other people work on silly startups, but this shit is akin to HFT.
So he's doing a real thing that provides real value to the web. And it's actually a sustainable business, to boot.
Lastly, there's absolutely no need to get so personal -- if his article offended you, discuss the article.
I usually keep that opinion to myself because it's not a popular one, but in this particular subthread we are not discussing the article, we are discussing the author who volunteered his "I am very hypocritical" comment.
Elsewhere in this comment thread I discuss the article.
1) In a thread where the author shows up and says "I am very hypocritical", standard rules like "discuss the article, not the author" do not apply. The author is fair game for discussion.
2) I don't usually crap on other peoples' industries, but not in this case, because (1).
That's ok. The internet would be better off without most junk websites, and the ones I like, I'm willing to pay for.
We're in enough of a media bubble already - there's so much media and so few trusted sources that its impossible to filter content anymore. Ads inject themselves after people's ability to filter burn out like a virus. Its not good for society.
Too many fall into the "Field of Dreams" fallacy thinking that if you build it, they will come. Most of the time it doesn't work like that.
[1] http://fortune.com/unicorns/
If you're an engineer with a family here in SV, you cannot take a sabbatical. In most cases you need to get a job in a week or the rent will drive you to bankruptcy.
I don't get people who are so smart and yet simultaneously so stupid that they think spending $100,000 a year is normal.
Wake up, you're rich, you're just too stupid to realize you could be living at a much cheaper level.
I'm not defending this at all, as I think it's stupid, but they are not "rich". They are frankly just less screwed than other middle class folks.
You seriously think having double or probably triple from just one salary isn't rich?
And where exactly are all your caterers and cleaners and gardeners and nannies and baristas and tavern workers and shop people living and buying their food with their minimum wage in the bay area? Obviously they aren't remote working.
Perspective is a bitch.
First of all, cost of living varies widely from locality to locality. Making 90k a year in middle of nowhere Idaho or some other piece of flyover country is totally different than making 150k in an urban area like NYC or SF.
Saying: "welp, it's your fault your cost of living is so high, you should move 2 hours away to Sacramento, stupid" is not only incredibly naive, but borders on a level of ignorance that I haven't seen in quite some time.
...Especially when talking about perspective.
Just a friendly reminder:
1. There is another human being on the other side of the conversation.
2. Practice compassion when responding.
----
[1] http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham's_Hierarchy_o...
There is nothing hypocritical about acknowledging one's self is spoiled.
> Currently a principal engineer at AppNexus on sabbatical, I am trying to have a new post every day.
https://www.beermenus.com/places/1609-rosamunde-sausage-gril...
I've seen grads come out of boot camps that are better programmers than people who have been programming for years. They might lack the knowledge, but they've got good sense and hustle, and at the end of the day, I'd take that over a stubborn engineer who looks like they're gonna age into a Dilbert comic.
If the app is for 10 users or for the other 75% of employees, may be less important...
I take issue with this one. It's entirely possible to live frugally while living IN San Francisco. I moved here about 7 months ago and expected it to be incredibly expensive but it hasn't been the case (beyond rent).
The author mentions $15 crappy local IPAs but I've actually never found a beer for this price. There is no shortage of $7 craft beers you can buy at a brewery or bar, no shortage of Trader Joe's with the same prices as, say, Charlottesville VA.
I've found that other than rent, the prices are comparable to other places. If you get a salad delivered on postmates or uber eats or something then that's what you're paying for. That isn't SF.
I think a lot of people are living a lifestyle where they have no problem paying for stuff like a delivered salad when they can walk next door, or uber instead of taking the bus, but lots of people are walking and grocery shopping and not paying those prices.
Prices in SF are definitely 2x-3x what I have paid anywhere else.
In fact, every time i visit, say, chicago, or atlanta, i'm strongly reminded of this fact.
Can you find quality places in SF where that's not true? I'm sure. But on average, it's definitely the case that it's significantly more expensive here.
You can compare the CPI as well: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
Groceries should not be 40% more expensive in SF :)
(and we do have $7-12 beers, they're just known to be extra fancy or aged)
Overall Portland is still relatively cheap. The only thing getting out of control is rent and house purchasing (because of the serious lack of inventory), but the entire nation is seeing this so it's not specific to Portland.
So I think as others have mentioned, rent and house prices are the things climbing sharply. I know someone paying $900 for a room in a 3 person house, in a really great part of town (Division, for locals). I've heard studios go for well over $1000, and fill up fast. But really, you don't have to look very hard to find something cheap(er). Surrounding areas (with new access to light rail that goes down town) are reasonable.
I don't think it's really as bad as some people make it out to be, but it definitely is getting more expensive in town. I mean, that's the nature of the housing market recovery :)
You can buy 6 packs of good craft beer for $7/$8 at any grocery store.
wat? it's 1.5$ actually
http://www.systembolaget.se/dryck/ol/heineken-153603
I'm visiting from Australia and its maybe 10% to 30% more expensive, and alcohol is cheaper. Nothing like what we paid for stuff in new york.
i certainly have never taken ubers everyday to work even though i could probably(?) afford to do so. seems like an expensive daily habit though.
i actually live in the city where it's not some huge loft in fidi/downtown. good for anyone who can get their groceries sent up to their room but i'm not sure how close to the norm that is. tech workers are all across the board in terms of how they live, how much they get paid and how willing they are to fetch their own groceries.
i live on the first floor of a older apartment complex, but i have to walk down a hill to fetch my groceries. i do sometimes use one of the gazillion food delivery services to eat dinner though.
anyways i would say this is similar to someone who goes to ny, visits the financial district in manhattan for 3 days and then proclaims, "everyone in ny is rich! of course they can afford all that housing! they're so stuck up! why are the cabbies so rude? why are new yorkers so rude?"
However, how is taking Uber to work every day 'spoiled'? I bet the guys owns a car where he is from and spends significantly more on monthly transportation than I do. For $4 more than a bus, I get point to point pick up and drop off, and save about 40 minutes of my time (which I can use to go work out in the mornings).
And some others have figured out that it makes sense to spend $20 on grocery delivery rather than spending 90 minutes doing it yourself if you're working 60-80 hours per week and make more than $20/hour. To be sure, a lot of people work long and hard. They make certain sacrifices but just because they are not the same sacrifices that the author would make it doesn't mean they're bad.
Depending on where you live, Uber/Lyft can be a lot more expensive than a bus.
In Dallas, a monthly public transport pass costs $80. This comes with unlimited uses of the buses and trains for an entire month. Let's say you work twenty days (four weeks) a month, with a trip each way. That amortizes to $2 a trip, less if you also use your pass for personal trips on weekends.
Lyft costs me about $11 on average to get me between home and work. If I were to take Lyft to and from work every day for a month, again assuming twenty working days a month, I'd be paying about $440 a month. That's not $4 more; it's $9 more. That's 5.5 times how much I'd be paying for public transport. Again, that's not counting using it for personal trips on weekends (here, the minimum is $5.70, including the trust & safety fee).
If Uber/Lyft is only $4 more than a bus in SF, then buses are way expensive there.
> Everything is too expensive.
Just normal supply and demand economics. This happens all the time all over the world when lots of high earning people suddenly move to an area.
> There are thousands of dumb startups.
Yup. And most of them will die. And some of them will become AirBnB. The problem is, it's extremely difficult to predict which is which. That's just the nature of searching for "the next big thing". I'd rather live in a world where there are lots of dumb companies so that the few exceptional ones have a chance to get started.
> People are spoiled.
No, people in SF value their time, as it's the only resource you can't get more of. I absolutely understand why someone with the money would have groceries deliver for them. It's more efficient. The locally sourced and organic thing does feel a bit silly though, although I would say that's a fad you see everywhere.
> There cannot be these many quality engineers.
I'm sure there are some bad engineers there. But SF has a massive pool for exceptional talent, and while I'm sure not every engineer is extremely high quality, I have no doubt that a substantial amount of top tier programmers are in SF. If the majority of programmers weren't making meaningful contributions to their companies, I don't think you would see them being compensated the way they are.
My favorite example is YouTube. If you had asked me if I wanted to invest in a video upload site where 95% of the material were pirated clips off of TV I would have said "you're crazy! You'll be sued out of existence."
There is s difference between lazy, spoiled and pretentious. Rich people have existed for a very long time. Few have ever had groceries delivered. The hire personal shoppers, housekeepers, chefs, maids to buy their food. This getting groceries delivered is a passing fad, an affectation for people looking to cultivate an image of themselves. Having more money than time is nothing new.
This is pretty much the only place i know of where people are okay with paying $30+ total for a salad and think it's normal
If you're mature and hardworking, I have no problem with you taking PTO whenever you need it or not committing to hard deadlines. But those are earned privileges based on trust and a history of delivering.
It is so hard to hire software engineers and there are tons of them. Bootcamps are not the answer. It is not a quantity problem, it is a quality problem.
Who cares if people are spending money to get shit done for them that they don't want to personally do (laundry, groceries). As long as they can pay for it and are utilizing hours to what they actually want to do in life I don't see the harm.
And expensive food exists in most major cities.
There might be some truth to the title, but the article lacked the data to support any of it. I'm flabbergasted that it got upvoted on the frontpage of HN.
Companies evolve, and some don't stay dumb forever.
Change that is categorically meaningful involves things like a cure for cancer, a new source of energy, etc..etc.. If we are to judge whether this startup trend has changed peoples lives in a meaningful way, we should look for changes that are categorically meaningful.