> i was surprised at how seldom “junior” was written, e.g. “jr developer.” either employees stick around awhile before calling it quits on San Francisco, or they lie about their job title.
Because "Junior Software Engineer" is usually written as just "Software Engineer", "Software Engineer I", ...?
I would love to read a meta article on posts like: `so blessed with ${numOffers}, it was so hard to narrow down, i can't wait to start working at ${company}`
Please do. The lack of capitalization made me close the tab after about two sentences; this just doesn't make it past my "worth reading" filter. Sure, maybe it's good, but I have heuristics like this for a reason, and I'm quite happy to ignore work that simply can't be bother with basic English language norms.
It's not fake rules, its things which make it easier to read a large piece of text. You apparently value being unique and "non rule following" over the comfort and ease of reading of your readers which says a lot imho.
I don't see how that's relevant, as I was talking about the man, his actions, and the presumption of motive.
Cummings disregarded capitalization norms in his prose as well.
Edit: Maybe you meant: since Cummings wrote a lot of poetry, he is a special case and therefore can be forgiven for disregarding capitalization norms in his prose?
It's much more important the quality of the poetry he wrote than the quantity.
I can write a program to generate thousands of haikus. Doing so does not make that body of poetry meaningful in any way [0].
[0] Well, other than the fact that it got me a free monogrammed PowerBook G4 Laptop sleeve that was being given away by some people who underestimated the willingness of a younger programmer to beseige them with computer-generated haikus. ;)
Let's keep this in context. Are you saying that Cummings did or did not 'apparently value being unique and "non rule following" over the comfort and ease of reading' ?
Edit: Or maybe you are saying that we should only presume motive of people who don't write great works?
>I think it is unfair of you to assume his motive, and inappropriate to use the idiom normally used to impugn one's character.
The post I replied to basically said that asking for capitalization makes you stickler to pointless rules who won't get far in life. I merely replied in kind to the tone of that post which probably isn't exactly nice of me but I would say it is fair.
Many years ago, I took a poetry class and on the first day the instructor said (roughly): When E.E. Cummings did not capitalize the word 'I', it was creative and original. You are not E. E. Cummings. If you do not capitalize 'I', you are boring and pretentious. Capitalize your 'I's."
Breaking the rules of grammar is good when it adds value to the writing. I don't see how refusing to capitalize added any value here.
I find your capitalization choices relaxing to read, and allows for better pacing. The critical parent comment was primarily sharing a perspective shared by a subset of potential readers. You can ignore the feedback, but responding with this tone can lead to you being dogpiled by haters.
if author saw my previous comment re adopting a "proper case" toggle view, they could have given me the benefit of the doubt. i definitely want people to read in a format comfortable for them. i also know which rules don't matter
I thought the lack of capitalization made the article seem more down to earth and cozy- Kinda like if a friend sent me a long text. Don’t let the grammar nazis & pedantic condescension on HN deter you. I like the design.
To be honest, the author's capitalization didn't bother me, and I didn't notice it until halfway through. Even his comments here are readable to me.
However, your heuristic worked because the content of the article was crap. Or to be more charitable: over-promised with a good idea and under-delivered with incompetent data-analysis, mangled conclusions, and ax-grinding (reiterating an opinion that he admits isn't supported by his data).
Sadly, it gives us another data point: a person who doesn't follow "fake rules" and totally uses "totes" in comments didn't write a good article. not a good look
Is it possible you responded to the wrong person? I agree that this thread seems to be damaged by excessive criticism and focus on the writing style, but the parent comment was simply offering a solution.
Nice to meet you. I used to write primarily in lower case and often ignored punctuation, because it's faster and easier. I also find less-capitalized-than-normal text easier to read.
I find it fascinating that people who communicate largely through certain media (like SMS, or twitter) have evolved their own independent systems for assigning meaning to capitalization and punctuation. While there is a benefit to having an norms shared by all within a discourse community, it's a shame some people are so fastidious and judgemental when applying their own cultural norms to others.
I also find it curious that safety and sanitation aren't referenced. I by no means have all the answers; however, I am sure my main reason for leaving San Francisco will be along the lines of these things. I've had traumatic experiences living in this city and I am 6 ft male that lifts weights often (I'm just trying to imply that some people most likely get harassed even more than I). I wish I had more of a capacity to help this city rather than leave.
The surprising thing to me is seeing how bad many other cities have gotten with tent cities and homelessness. I remember (circa 2007) when there were no tents on SF streets, even under the freeway. But then I see how bad other cities have gotten: Portland, LA, Tucson, Vancouver... this is not an isolated issue and each city is managing homelessness/affordability in different ways. Although SF and CA in general have drawn themselves into a corner through decades of bad policy.
I wouldn't trust keyword analysis or word frequency to figure out why people are leaving. And unless AI has gotten a lot smarter than I'm aware of, I'd say that the only way to get a meaningful result is to actually read each blog post and then write a short 5-10 word summary. Sure, it's subjective but you'd get a lot more nuance like, "His girlfriend lives in New York", "Misses skiing and now has money to do just that", "Closer to elderly parents who need care", "New startup in Texas that's perfect fit", "Can't renew U.S. visa", "Moving to attend grad school".
The author has pared the list down to 137 blog posts, so even a fast reader would take a day to read all of them. But probably he already spent at least a day collecting that data, doing the analysis, creating the graphics, etc., so it's not crazy to suggest doing it manually. Alternatively, the list could be further cut down to 20-40 postings, which could be read in a few hours. That would result in a way more interesting (human) analysis.
EDIT: For each blog post, it would be interesting to note the sentiment of whether the person is being pushed out of San Francisco (can't afford the city, lost job, can't renew visa, etc.) or whether they are being pulled to a new location (perfect new job, girlfriend/boyfriend in different location, etc.).
> I wouldn't trust keyword analysis or word frequency to figure out why people are leaving
Even if I trusted automated analysis of blog posts to tell why the authors of the posts are leaving, I wouldn't trust a non-systematic collection of 100 blog posts to reflect people who write blog posts about leaving, nor would I trust people who write blog posts about leaving to represent people who leave.
* Unsafe. 2 vehicle break-ins, 1 apartment intruder while I was home. Fortunately I own a handgun.
* Dirty
* The proportion of creepy weirdos I met got too high. When I first got there, it was something like 1 out of every 20 people I met. By the end, it was something like 1/4.
* Overpriced
* Bad transit
* Corrupt city government
* NIMBYism
Why I stayed longer than I should have:
* Rent control. I'm paying twice as much in rent now.
* The issues didn't appear all at once, they got a little worse each year.
* Cost of moving. It cost me around $15k and it took a lot of energy to pack/apartment hunt/unpack/drive with trailer.
I left Oakland last summer after 20 years in the Bay Area. I had noticed a gradual decline especially over the past 5-6 years in cleanliness and public safety in my area, including frequent car break-ins (about every 3 months for the last 2 years), visible symptoms of drug addiction and homelessness everywhere, and so on. The disdain for law enforcement as well as individual rights of self-protection is a dangerous combo. When I started a family and realized that I had to make school district decisions in the next few years, I could no longer square the extremely high taxes, decrepit quality of living (including my 90 year old highly energy-inefficient dwelling as well as the well known public sanitation issues) AND the likelihood of private school tuition a few years down the line and started looking for a way out.
I hope the Bay Area will right itself (although I don't have any suggestions for how that could be done), but I fear that some of the most impacted areas are going to go through a cycle of urban decay and flight and hit "rock bottom" politically before things get safer and cleaner again.
The disdain for law enforcement as well as individual rights of self-protection is a dangerous combo.
It takes two to tango. Wanting police to be held accountable for their actions is not disdain for police. Wanting to be treated like a human being doesn't mean being soft on crime (nor does it mean there's disdain for police).
On the other hand Oakland PD rather famously pimped out a child (Celeste Guap) not that long ago (2017), so perhaps they have earned whatever disdain you're referring to?
Some members of Oakland PD, who were removed years ago, being bad does not mean that Oakland does not deserve the rule of law now.
Removed years ago? We're talking 14 OPD officers alone (Guap was used by a variety of bay area police departments), maybe 2-3 years ago, not yonks. If you want to talk eons ago, let's talk about the Oakland Riders. OPD is under federal receivership not because the citizens of Oakland "don't deserve the rule of law" but because the federal government thought that the Oakland police department was simply that fucked up. For a brief moment in time OPD had a chief (Batts) that was reform oriented and did engage the community. He got thrown under the bus and landed at a research gig at Harvard. Now we're back to this utterly dichotomous rhetoric that police simply can't do anything wrong.
But if you'd like to talk about Guap, let's. The chief resigned and one of the cops committed suicide. As more evidence came to light one candidate for chief decided to remain at the rank of captain instead of seeking a promotion to chief. By 2018 charges against all but three of the officers implicated were dropped. OPD did not clean house.
The rule of law does not mean that you simply give carte-blanche to the cops. As long as you've got structural issues exempting the police from oversight you don't have rule of law. And as long as you shut down any discourse that isn't in lockstep with the police, you don't even have a facade of rule of law.
Police aren't the (only) problem, but they are very much part of the problem.
You're part of the problem. I moved away from the Bay Area to get away from people like you.
You're certainly welcome to move wherever you want for whatever reason. But, please, let's not pretend that not wanting police officers to pimp out a teenager is some dog whistle for agitating against the rule of law (or against law enforcement in general).
Lemme guess tho. In your free time you post blue lives matter nonsense to facebook?
There you go again conflating police oversight and accountability with disdain for law enforcement. With that attitude it's not surprising you bailed on the Bay Area.
I should have worded that less ambiguously, I'm not talking about the disdain for the police department, which I agree in OPD's case is warranted (I've been around for long enough to remember the Rough Riders scandal), because they are as corrupt as the city council and mayor that they report to. I'm talking about disdain for enforcing the law; as in, making sure that perpetrators suffer the proscribed consequences for breaking the law, you see this both from vocal minority of citizens as well as the police themselves, enforcing the law is either too much trouble too expensive or racist or regressive or just not cool. Who knows, it means a lot of broken car windows and drug paraphenalia and muggings and burned up teenagers in underground night clubs.
I recently left SF, and feel a little differently, so I'll share my take on your points:
* Homeless people are rare in most of SF, but super common in the middle of downtown (Market St area). So if you live/work near Market St (especially near Tenderloin), you'll feel like homeless people are everywhere. If you don't, you probably won't
* I felt super safe in SF. Even in the Tenderloin, I never felt unsafe or heard of any of my friends being mugged or anything. Stolen bikes, yes. There are parts in and around the Tenderloin that feel very sketch, even if they're safe. You can find neighborhoods like that in most any big city. The difference in SF is that they're in the middle of downtown
* Public transportation isn't anywhere near as good as NYC, but you can get most anywhere on a bus and/or muni (metro/subway). Where I lived most recently (Haight Ashbury area), I thought public transportation was pretty convenient. I took ubers to get to my office in Dogpatch though
* I agree with point #3 - rent is expensive, and buying costs are prohibitively expensive (even with a well-paying job)
* Almost none of my friends in SF own cars. They even recently closed down the main downtown street (Market) from cars [0]. You do need to take buses/ubers to get most places
* It's sweatshirt weather pretty much year-round. Although it does get shorts-warm around October/November. If, like me, you like sweatshirt weather, you won't mind it. If you prefer seasons or hot weather months, you probably won't love the weather
For me, housing prices were the biggest issue. Buying a house in a good school district in the Bay Area is ridiculously expensive. Looking on Zillow, you see a sad number of foreclosures on people's homes who probably had a $1M+ mortgage. If the housing costs stay at these prices or go up, I'd be surprised if you don't see more and more people leaving the Bay Area. I hope that Google/Facebook's plan to build more homes actually brings prices down some [1][2]. We'll see
Homeless people are rare in most of SF, but super common in the middle of downtown (Market St area). So if you live/work near Market St (especially near Tenderloin), you'll feel like homeless people are everywhere. If you don't, you probably won't
I saw comments (perhaps yours?) along these lines on the last HN post about San Francisco I read. This doesn't jive with my experiences in San Francisco at all. In fact a couple weeks ago I took the 38R to the outer richmond and was just shocked both by the number of vacant storefronts along Geary and the number of homeless folks around.
I felt super safe in SF. Even in the Tenderloin, I never felt unsafe or heard of any of my friends being mugged or anything. Stolen bikes, yes. There are parts in and around the Tenderloin that feel very sketch, even if they're safe. You can find neighborhoods like that in most any big city. The difference in SF is that they're in the middle of downtown
I've never had a problem in the Tenderloin and I've plenty of opportunity to, but Turk & Taylor definitely earned its reputation. It's a dirty and poor neighborhood but the junkies generally put me less on edge than the folks with more outward facing psychiatric issues like you find in Potrero.
Public transportation isn't anywhere near as good as NYC, but you can get most anywhere on a bus and/or muni (metro/subway). Where I lived most recently (Haight Ashbury area), I thought public transportation was pretty convenient. I took ubers to get to my office in Dogpatch though
New Yorkers will happily kvetch about their public transit (last time I was there I ended up talking with these women on the subway who were grousing about having to transfer or walk a few blocks because late night service was upended by construction/maintenance). And, quite frankly, you'll have trouble getting to the outer reaches (especially outer Queens + Brooklyn) on a bus/taxi/subway car.
The Haight is incredibly well served by buses and streetcars, but the Dogpatch is not. The metro past embarcadero is a shit show (by design).
Woot. I find it extremely hard to avoid them unless you live in a very very residential part of SF and you only stay there. I'm in Castro and I cross probably 15 homeless people just walking to my bus every morning.
> I felt super safe in SF
I met several people who told me this, they are all used to the city and have been here (or worse places) for a while. On the other hand I've lived in China, France, England, Canada and moving here to SF was really scary in my first couple months, I can say I got used to it though. But definitely one of the sketchier place I've ever been in the world.
Where do you go to though? I'm trying to leave Pittsburgh because it's so car-centric and the weather is awful. I'm not sure there's a city in the U.S. where you can bike commute every day of the year and be comfortable. San Francisco seems like the best available.
One factor that wasn't mentioned here (probably because people don't really mention it publicly) that I've anecdotally heard of from a number of people in tech who've made the SF->NYC move is the better gender and career diversity there. For men this can equate to a better dating lifestyle, and just in general some want to be surrounded by people besides tech bros.
Regarding politics, I wonder if another way to interpret this is people who find San Francisco too liberal (or unsupportive of Trump) and want to move somewhere more representative of how a majority of the country (however you define that) thinks.
ahh the plot thickens. maybe a lot of people leave SF because they support Trump and want more of that. (doesn't exactly explain high NYC frequency, which is also liberal), but i like it
> I've anecdotally heard of from a number of people in tech who've made the SF->NYC move is the better gender and career diversity there. For men this can equate to a better dating lifestyle, and just in general some want to be surrounded by people besides tech bros.
This is absolutely valid and it's sad to see this greyed out. SF dating is a shitshow from many perspectives.
Dating in SF is… interesting, especially if you're trying to do so within the confines of the tech community. Take a look at r/SFr4r (yikes). The tech community out here is also pretty damn small. Looking on HN, facebook, or reddit I'll still run into posts from folks I've gone out with or know professionally.
From attending devops days in Manhattan a couple years ago I'd say that the NYC tech community certainly seems more diverse than what I'm used to out here.
> Regarding politics, I wonder if another way to interpret this is people who find San Francisco too liberal (or unsupportive of Trump) and want to move somewhere more representative of how a majority of the country (however you define that) thinks.
I'll provide a personal anecdote...
I lean on the conservative side, and lived in San Francisco for a few years. I never had any particular desire to live somewhere else just to be around others who believe that the nation can be more effectively governed with lower taxes and a leaner bureaucracy; or those who believe that abortion is murder. However, in the last five years, there's been a large uptick in representation of a very opinionated, very loud, and increasingly violent minority of those associated with the left. The kind of people who will call you a Nazi for not agreeing with them, or for suggesting in any context that a person ought to be responsible for their own well-being.
I think I'm not alone in stating that was a factor in my moving away from the area. I did not even vote for Trump in 2016 by the way, and I left in 2017.
I left Mountain View (for Oakland) for similar reasons, so many people in tech. Even though I’m in tech I don’t want to be smothered in it, I hear NYC has a similar issue with finance.
I'm a little disappointed that you're still convinced it's a "safety" thing.
People say the same thing about Seattle, and virtually without exception they're people who have simply never lived in a major city before, and wildly misunderstand what counts as "crime."
Like the guy upthread who wanted to move because he'd experienced two car prowls.
i lived in the brand-new Trinity tower on 8th / Mission. leaving my apartment each morning for work i saw... 5-12 broken car windows along 8th outside the hotel. despicable.
one could argue a robbed car at 2am is not a safety issue (if nobody is in the car), but i somewhat agree with the broken window theory.
the first day i bought a new bicycle and parked/locked it outside the big mall on Market, in front of 2 security guards, my seat was stolen within 30 minutes.
Property crime != violent crime. San Francisco has a problem with both, but the issues with theft and vandalism are far worse than things that'll directly threaten your personal safety.
Crime is, fundamentally, crime. Particularly for these cut and dried historical elements like "theft". It's breaking both law and ancient custom.
SF needs to address this crime situation. So does, for that matter, Seattle. Short, medium, and long term solutions need to be developed, promoted, and delivered.
I agree that one can mis-evaluate the level of personal threat by assigning the wrong meaning to evidence of property crimes. This doesn't mean we should assign no meaning, though. Many of the factors at play which can cause escalations of property crime can also lead to violent crime.
It may not be rational to see a broken car window and conclude that you are about to be mugged, but if you want to be as safe as possible you probably would prefer to live somewhere where cars are not often broken into.
This doesn't mean we should assign no meaning, though.
Which, as it turns out, is not what I suggested, alluded to, or claimed. Just because we get earthquakes out here doesn't mean I'm going to worry about hurricanes (nor does it mean that neither earthquakes nor hurricanes are significant).
It may not be rational to see a broken car window and conclude that you are about to be mugged, but if you want to be as safe as possible you probably would prefer to live somewhere where cars are not often broken into.
Having somewhat recently relocated to the burbs, I've had more problems with property crime out here than I did in San Francisco. More homeless people, worse traffic, worse pedestrian infrastructure, much worse (and more expensive) public transit too.
I think most people count “not having to ever think about crime” as being part of what they call “safety”. And experiencing property crime does tend to shatter that feeling of safety.
Normalizing crime is a safety issue in itself, including property crime (the difference between a violent and a non-violent crime is often just if you happened to be around or not...)
Also I take exception at the "never lived in a major city before". I've lived in "major cities" for most of my life, and it wouldn't take too many car prowls to make me leave. It just never happened.
Ironically I've only been to Seattle once over a few days and on my second day got attacked by an homeless person with mental health issues. Fortunately for me, they also had the physical strength of your average toddler so I left the situation without a scratch and wondering wtf just happened.
Cities have property crime. The only way around it is to sequester yourself in a gated community or similar.
I have a fun anecdote too -- the last time I was out in a rural area I got knocked over in a Walmart by two rednecks who were fighting. I've elected not to judge the entire area based on that one experience.
Cities aren't static entities. New York (pre-Rudy) had major issues with property crime. San Francisco has a significant problem with property crime. I'm fairly unique in my social circle in that I've never had a car broke into, but it's hard to deny the amount of shattered glass on the sidewalks.
The problem comes from an influx of people that would rather sequester themselves in gated communities, have robots deliver everything, buy food at the automat, take their self-driving cars everywhere just to avoid human interaction. There's no motivation to improve the situation.
Of course the police response to Prop 47 (let's just give up!) is also hurting the situation.
They do have property crimes. They do in varying amount based on how accepted it is and how much the city and it's citizens fight it. You realistically can't bring it down to zero, but there is a big gap between, let say, Seattle vs Montreal to pick 2 extremes.
Even NYC isn't that bad depending on where you live, but it can swing straight back if people just sit back and accept it.
We left in 2015 because:
1) The extremely high cost of living which makes everyone poor. only 25% of the housing there is market rate and thus available. Our salaries were pretty high working in tech, but not high enough to afford a nice place to live in SF.
2) Homelessness
3) The politics.
4) Poop (although much worse now). It's not so much the poop itself that bothers me. It's the attitude of the politicians in SF. we just really disliked the way things were being handled and are currently being handled in SF. They are "progressive" in title only. there's really no progress in living standard at all. if anything, things are getting worse and worse and worse, based on the things I've read and the stories I'm hearing.
5) we didn't want to live in a city that might not even be able to provide schooling for our child.
6) Day care costs would have been astronomical (by now it's up to 3000 per month, i've heard)
> They are "progressive" in title only. there's really no progress in living standard at all.
"Progressive" usually refers to progress in equality & social justice. There've been many instances in American history where a small group has made significant progress at the expense of some larger outside group: initial settlement, slavery, Manifest Destiny, industrialization, redlining, the software boom. These are usually not labeled as progressive. The in-group usually labels them with terms like "destiny", "building the future", "progress" (not "progressive"), "technology", and "rationalization", while the out-group labels them as "colonialism", "imperialism", "conquest", and "corporate greed".
The other major eras of progressivism in the U.S. (1900-1929 and the Civil Rights era from 1965-1980) also did not feature rising living standards for the dominant social group. The former involved a plateau in the rate of technological development & industrialization while increasing unionization started sharing those fruits more broadly, while the latter involved an extension of basic civil rights to non-whites, at the same time that stagflation was taking root and the wages of the white working class started to plateau.
Keep that in mind: when you hear "progressive" it might not be progress for you.
> Keep that in mind: when you hear "progressive" it might not be progress for you.
You're missing the point. While it's debatable whether the theory of progressivism is working out for the homelessness, I hope we can agree that the execution has been horrible. Progressives have controlled the local government there for some time now, and since they've done so, things have grown worse. The situation hasn't been much better in Seattle, Chicago, or Detroit. Progressives like to point fingers to blame others for the problems, but there's a very real possibility that, yes, they really are in actuality regressive for everyone, homeless included.
Well, it may not be progress for "me", but it's also not progress for the poor. CA has one of the highest poverty rates (SPA living cost adjusted rate of nearly 21%) in the entire nation. You have entire families that make over 45k per year (a salary considered middle class in the rest of the nation), living in garages in Palo Alto. I don't see many winners from the policies we have in CA/SF.
> thus i’m curious how conservatives or Trump have anything to do with one’s departure.
Oh, that one's simple enough if you assume they're part of the reason why you'd leave the country. And while we're on that topic, the same two reasons might also get factored into deciding to not come to SF or any other US city -- alongside guns, overpriced education, and overpriced healthcare.
This is an interesting analysis. It's kind of social science research. I wish the author had some training in the area.
A simple way to improve the trustworthy of the analysis is having another person working with you to develop the categories, and then independently code the posts, and then resolve the differences through discussion.
When I ran the numbers about a decade ago, the BA was significantly more expensive than NY, at least if you need a house and a good school for your kids. SF proper is inconceivable, of course.
> sadly i failed to write my own retrospective when i left in 2016 after a year of working in venture capital, then a portfolio startup, and then founding my own company.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but 1 year to do any one of these things, let alone all three, doesn't really seem like much time at all.
The homeless and trash situation in the bay area has exploded in the last 2 years. Big sections of 880 are strewn with trash like a dump site and there are tent cities populating the underpasses in Berkeley, West/East Oakland. The cities governments seem paralyzed between bickering homeless advocacy groups, CalTrans and tax payers furious at the decline of so many public areas.
Time is running out for some of the regions politicians. With hundreds of millions spent, it feels like there is almost zero impact.
I'm probably looking in the wrong place but this was the only statement I could find on California's annual homeless budget in the linked article... "California's homeless and housing crises are linked, and the budget will spend $2.4 billion addressing those concerns."
This is roughly 1% of the annual operating budget.
Not much as $60k/person would cover just 40,000 people. Homeless advocacy/Non-profits would take a large percentage of this for administration so the per person dollar spend is far lower.
104 comments
[ 0.59 ms ] story [ 2344 ms ] threadBecause "Junior Software Engineer" is usually written as just "Software Engineer", "Software Engineer I", ...?
totally valid criticism tho
i do have css for down-casing title etc however
spoke more in depth about this stylistic decision, with context, here: https://www.everyonehatesmarketers.com/marketing-without-bud...
Would you apply the same reasoning to Cummings?
Cummings disregarded capitalization norms in his prose as well.
Edit: Maybe you meant: since Cummings wrote a lot of poetry, he is a special case and therefore can be forgiven for disregarding capitalization norms in his prose?
I can write a program to generate thousands of haikus. Doing so does not make that body of poetry meaningful in any way [0].
[0] Well, other than the fact that it got me a free monogrammed PowerBook G4 Laptop sleeve that was being given away by some people who underestimated the willingness of a younger programmer to beseige them with computer-generated haikus. ;)
Edit: Or maybe you are saying that we should only presume motive of people who don't write great works?
The post I replied to basically said that asking for capitalization makes you stickler to pointless rules who won't get far in life. I merely replied in kind to the tone of that post which probably isn't exactly nice of me but I would say it is fair.
Many years ago, I took a poetry class and on the first day the instructor said (roughly): When E.E. Cummings did not capitalize the word 'I', it was creative and original. You are not E. E. Cummings. If you do not capitalize 'I', you are boring and pretentious. Capitalize your 'I's."
Breaking the rules of grammar is good when it adds value to the writing. I don't see how refusing to capitalize added any value here.
>> i also know which rules don't matter
Are you sure? These 2 statements conflict in this context.
(aka the problem is you)
However, your heuristic worked because the content of the article was crap. Or to be more charitable: over-promised with a good idea and under-delivered with incompetent data-analysis, mangled conclusions, and ax-grinding (reiterating an opinion that he admits isn't supported by his data).
Sadly, it gives us another data point: a person who doesn't follow "fake rules" and totally uses "totes" in comments didn't write a good article. not a good look
QED
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22293891
after ~30 years of online chatting, they kind of naturally went away for me.
I find it fascinating that people who communicate largely through certain media (like SMS, or twitter) have evolved their own independent systems for assigning meaning to capitalization and punctuation. While there is a benefit to having an norms shared by all within a discourse community, it's a shame some people are so fastidious and judgemental when applying their own cultural norms to others.
perhaps as many people leave nyc, for example, but only the SF posts get shared
The author has pared the list down to 137 blog posts, so even a fast reader would take a day to read all of them. But probably he already spent at least a day collecting that data, doing the analysis, creating the graphics, etc., so it's not crazy to suggest doing it manually. Alternatively, the list could be further cut down to 20-40 postings, which could be read in a few hours. That would result in a way more interesting (human) analysis.
EDIT: For each blog post, it would be interesting to note the sentiment of whether the person is being pushed out of San Francisco (can't afford the city, lost job, can't renew visa, etc.) or whether they are being pulled to a new location (perfect new job, girlfriend/boyfriend in different location, etc.).
Even if I trusted automated analysis of blog posts to tell why the authors of the posts are leaving, I wouldn't trust a non-systematic collection of 100 blog posts to reflect people who write blog posts about leaving, nor would I trust people who write blog posts about leaving to represent people who leave.
* number of homeless people (they are everywhere)
* safety in general
* poor public transport
* cost of renting and buying
* density (it is quite an empty city and is designed for cars)
* a bit too cold
* Unsafe. 2 vehicle break-ins, 1 apartment intruder while I was home. Fortunately I own a handgun.
* Dirty
* The proportion of creepy weirdos I met got too high. When I first got there, it was something like 1 out of every 20 people I met. By the end, it was something like 1/4.
* Overpriced
* Bad transit
* Corrupt city government
* NIMBYism
Why I stayed longer than I should have:
* Rent control. I'm paying twice as much in rent now.
* The issues didn't appear all at once, they got a little worse each year.
* Cost of moving. It cost me around $15k and it took a lot of energy to pack/apartment hunt/unpack/drive with trailer.
I hope the Bay Area will right itself (although I don't have any suggestions for how that could be done), but I fear that some of the most impacted areas are going to go through a cycle of urban decay and flight and hit "rock bottom" politically before things get safer and cleaner again.
It takes two to tango. Wanting police to be held accountable for their actions is not disdain for police. Wanting to be treated like a human being doesn't mean being soft on crime (nor does it mean there's disdain for police).
On the other hand Oakland PD rather famously pimped out a child (Celeste Guap) not that long ago (2017), so perhaps they have earned whatever disdain you're referring to?
You're part of the problem. I moved away from the Bay Area to get away from people like you.
Removed years ago? We're talking 14 OPD officers alone (Guap was used by a variety of bay area police departments), maybe 2-3 years ago, not yonks. If you want to talk eons ago, let's talk about the Oakland Riders. OPD is under federal receivership not because the citizens of Oakland "don't deserve the rule of law" but because the federal government thought that the Oakland police department was simply that fucked up. For a brief moment in time OPD had a chief (Batts) that was reform oriented and did engage the community. He got thrown under the bus and landed at a research gig at Harvard. Now we're back to this utterly dichotomous rhetoric that police simply can't do anything wrong.
But if you'd like to talk about Guap, let's. The chief resigned and one of the cops committed suicide. As more evidence came to light one candidate for chief decided to remain at the rank of captain instead of seeking a promotion to chief. By 2018 charges against all but three of the officers implicated were dropped. OPD did not clean house.
The rule of law does not mean that you simply give carte-blanche to the cops. As long as you've got structural issues exempting the police from oversight you don't have rule of law. And as long as you shut down any discourse that isn't in lockstep with the police, you don't even have a facade of rule of law.
Police aren't the (only) problem, but they are very much part of the problem.
You're part of the problem. I moved away from the Bay Area to get away from people like you.
You're certainly welcome to move wherever you want for whatever reason. But, please, let's not pretend that not wanting police officers to pimp out a teenager is some dog whistle for agitating against the rule of law (or against law enforcement in general).
Lemme guess tho. In your free time you post blue lives matter nonsense to facebook?
* Homeless people are rare in most of SF, but super common in the middle of downtown (Market St area). So if you live/work near Market St (especially near Tenderloin), you'll feel like homeless people are everywhere. If you don't, you probably won't
* I felt super safe in SF. Even in the Tenderloin, I never felt unsafe or heard of any of my friends being mugged or anything. Stolen bikes, yes. There are parts in and around the Tenderloin that feel very sketch, even if they're safe. You can find neighborhoods like that in most any big city. The difference in SF is that they're in the middle of downtown
* Public transportation isn't anywhere near as good as NYC, but you can get most anywhere on a bus and/or muni (metro/subway). Where I lived most recently (Haight Ashbury area), I thought public transportation was pretty convenient. I took ubers to get to my office in Dogpatch though
* I agree with point #3 - rent is expensive, and buying costs are prohibitively expensive (even with a well-paying job)
* Almost none of my friends in SF own cars. They even recently closed down the main downtown street (Market) from cars [0]. You do need to take buses/ubers to get most places
* It's sweatshirt weather pretty much year-round. Although it does get shorts-warm around October/November. If, like me, you like sweatshirt weather, you won't mind it. If you prefer seasons or hot weather months, you probably won't love the weather
For me, housing prices were the biggest issue. Buying a house in a good school district in the Bay Area is ridiculously expensive. Looking on Zillow, you see a sad number of foreclosures on people's homes who probably had a $1M+ mortgage. If the housing costs stay at these prices or go up, I'd be surprised if you don't see more and more people leaving the Bay Area. I hope that Google/Facebook's plan to build more homes actually brings prices down some [1][2]. We'll see
[0] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2020/01/market-street... [1] https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/... [2] https://about.fb.com/news/2019/10/facebook-commits-1-billion...
I saw comments (perhaps yours?) along these lines on the last HN post about San Francisco I read. This doesn't jive with my experiences in San Francisco at all. In fact a couple weeks ago I took the 38R to the outer richmond and was just shocked both by the number of vacant storefronts along Geary and the number of homeless folks around.
I felt super safe in SF. Even in the Tenderloin, I never felt unsafe or heard of any of my friends being mugged or anything. Stolen bikes, yes. There are parts in and around the Tenderloin that feel very sketch, even if they're safe. You can find neighborhoods like that in most any big city. The difference in SF is that they're in the middle of downtown
I've never had a problem in the Tenderloin and I've plenty of opportunity to, but Turk & Taylor definitely earned its reputation. It's a dirty and poor neighborhood but the junkies generally put me less on edge than the folks with more outward facing psychiatric issues like you find in Potrero.
Public transportation isn't anywhere near as good as NYC, but you can get most anywhere on a bus and/or muni (metro/subway). Where I lived most recently (Haight Ashbury area), I thought public transportation was pretty convenient. I took ubers to get to my office in Dogpatch though
New Yorkers will happily kvetch about their public transit (last time I was there I ended up talking with these women on the subway who were grousing about having to transfer or walk a few blocks because late night service was upended by construction/maintenance). And, quite frankly, you'll have trouble getting to the outer reaches (especially outer Queens + Brooklyn) on a bus/taxi/subway car.
The Haight is incredibly well served by buses and streetcars, but the Dogpatch is not. The metro past embarcadero is a shit show (by design).
Woot. I find it extremely hard to avoid them unless you live in a very very residential part of SF and you only stay there. I'm in Castro and I cross probably 15 homeless people just walking to my bus every morning.
> I felt super safe in SF
I met several people who told me this, they are all used to the city and have been here (or worse places) for a while. On the other hand I've lived in China, France, England, Canada and moving here to SF was really scary in my first couple months, I can say I got used to it though. But definitely one of the sketchier place I've ever been in the world.
Regarding politics, I wonder if another way to interpret this is people who find San Francisco too liberal (or unsupportive of Trump) and want to move somewhere more representative of how a majority of the country (however you define that) thinks.
This is absolutely valid and it's sad to see this greyed out. SF dating is a shitshow from many perspectives.
Dating in SF is… interesting, especially if you're trying to do so within the confines of the tech community. Take a look at r/SFr4r (yikes). The tech community out here is also pretty damn small. Looking on HN, facebook, or reddit I'll still run into posts from folks I've gone out with or know professionally.
From attending devops days in Manhattan a couple years ago I'd say that the NYC tech community certainly seems more diverse than what I'm used to out here.
I'll provide a personal anecdote...
I lean on the conservative side, and lived in San Francisco for a few years. I never had any particular desire to live somewhere else just to be around others who believe that the nation can be more effectively governed with lower taxes and a leaner bureaucracy; or those who believe that abortion is murder. However, in the last five years, there's been a large uptick in representation of a very opinionated, very loud, and increasingly violent minority of those associated with the left. The kind of people who will call you a Nazi for not agreeing with them, or for suggesting in any context that a person ought to be responsible for their own well-being.
I think I'm not alone in stating that was a factor in my moving away from the area. I did not even vote for Trump in 2016 by the way, and I left in 2017.
https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/19966/U-Haul-Migration-...
Perhaps, because one can leave the country when you leave SF? I did.
People say the same thing about Seattle, and virtually without exception they're people who have simply never lived in a major city before, and wildly misunderstand what counts as "crime."
Like the guy upthread who wanted to move because he'd experienced two car prowls.
one could argue a robbed car at 2am is not a safety issue (if nobody is in the car), but i somewhat agree with the broken window theory.
the first day i bought a new bicycle and parked/locked it outside the big mall on Market, in front of 2 security guards, my seat was stolen within 30 minutes.
etc etc. presence of crime == less safe.
SF needs to address this crime situation. So does, for that matter, Seattle. Short, medium, and long term solutions need to be developed, promoted, and delivered.
It may not be rational to see a broken car window and conclude that you are about to be mugged, but if you want to be as safe as possible you probably would prefer to live somewhere where cars are not often broken into.
Which, as it turns out, is not what I suggested, alluded to, or claimed. Just because we get earthquakes out here doesn't mean I'm going to worry about hurricanes (nor does it mean that neither earthquakes nor hurricanes are significant).
It may not be rational to see a broken car window and conclude that you are about to be mugged, but if you want to be as safe as possible you probably would prefer to live somewhere where cars are not often broken into.
Having somewhat recently relocated to the burbs, I've had more problems with property crime out here than I did in San Francisco. More homeless people, worse traffic, worse pedestrian infrastructure, much worse (and more expensive) public transit too.
Also I take exception at the "never lived in a major city before". I've lived in "major cities" for most of my life, and it wouldn't take too many car prowls to make me leave. It just never happened.
Ironically I've only been to Seattle once over a few days and on my second day got attacked by an homeless person with mental health issues. Fortunately for me, they also had the physical strength of your average toddler so I left the situation without a scratch and wondering wtf just happened.
I have a fun anecdote too -- the last time I was out in a rural area I got knocked over in a Walmart by two rednecks who were fighting. I've elected not to judge the entire area based on that one experience.
Cities aren't static entities. New York (pre-Rudy) had major issues with property crime. San Francisco has a significant problem with property crime. I'm fairly unique in my social circle in that I've never had a car broke into, but it's hard to deny the amount of shattered glass on the sidewalks.
The problem comes from an influx of people that would rather sequester themselves in gated communities, have robots deliver everything, buy food at the automat, take their self-driving cars everywhere just to avoid human interaction. There's no motivation to improve the situation.
Of course the police response to Prop 47 (let's just give up!) is also hurting the situation.
Even NYC isn't that bad depending on where you live, but it can swing straight back if people just sit back and accept it.
2) Homelessness
3) The politics.
4) Poop (although much worse now). It's not so much the poop itself that bothers me. It's the attitude of the politicians in SF. we just really disliked the way things were being handled and are currently being handled in SF. They are "progressive" in title only. there's really no progress in living standard at all. if anything, things are getting worse and worse and worse, based on the things I've read and the stories I'm hearing.
5) we didn't want to live in a city that might not even be able to provide schooling for our child.
6) Day care costs would have been astronomical (by now it's up to 3000 per month, i've heard)
"Progressive" usually refers to progress in equality & social justice. There've been many instances in American history where a small group has made significant progress at the expense of some larger outside group: initial settlement, slavery, Manifest Destiny, industrialization, redlining, the software boom. These are usually not labeled as progressive. The in-group usually labels them with terms like "destiny", "building the future", "progress" (not "progressive"), "technology", and "rationalization", while the out-group labels them as "colonialism", "imperialism", "conquest", and "corporate greed".
The other major eras of progressivism in the U.S. (1900-1929 and the Civil Rights era from 1965-1980) also did not feature rising living standards for the dominant social group. The former involved a plateau in the rate of technological development & industrialization while increasing unionization started sharing those fruits more broadly, while the latter involved an extension of basic civil rights to non-whites, at the same time that stagflation was taking root and the wages of the white working class started to plateau.
Keep that in mind: when you hear "progressive" it might not be progress for you.
You're missing the point. While it's debatable whether the theory of progressivism is working out for the homelessness, I hope we can agree that the execution has been horrible. Progressives have controlled the local government there for some time now, and since they've done so, things have grown worse. The situation hasn't been much better in Seattle, Chicago, or Detroit. Progressives like to point fingers to blame others for the problems, but there's a very real possibility that, yes, they really are in actuality regressive for everyone, homeless included.
Oh, that one's simple enough if you assume they're part of the reason why you'd leave the country. And while we're on that topic, the same two reasons might also get factored into deciding to not come to SF or any other US city -- alongside guns, overpriced education, and overpriced healthcare.
A simple way to improve the trustworthy of the analysis is having another person working with you to develop the categories, and then independently code the posts, and then resolve the differences through discussion.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but 1 year to do any one of these things, let alone all three, doesn't really seem like much time at all.
Time is running out for some of the regions politicians. With hundreds of millions spent, it feels like there is almost zero impact.
https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jun/13/californias-213-billio...
This is roughly 1% of the annual operating budget.
Not much as $60k/person would cover just 40,000 people. Homeless advocacy/Non-profits would take a large percentage of this for administration so the per person dollar spend is far lower.