I’ve had three long trips to the Bay area a in the last couple of years. It’s so interesting to hear locals talking about SF and SV as different worlds and making such a big deal about driving over.

They are less than an hour apart (roughly) and it’s all a connected continuum. It’s trivial to move between them several times a day for different appointments. I thought people were much more used to long drives than in EU, I suppose it varies by region.

dotcom was more SV than SF

It wasn't the dot-com bubble popping in 2000. It was the 'AppStore gold rush': July 10, 2008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store_(Apple)

The dotcom boom happened in Silicon Valley, not San Francisco. All of the action was in the Santa Clara valley. Things moved toward San Francisco during the social media boom that happened many years later.

At some point, after the dot-com collapse but around the time of the Facebook IPO, SF (and SV) started to attract people who cared more about the money than the tech itself. Creating a software product was seen not as a goal in itself, but as a means to make money. The actual thing, SaaS, social network, shopping, trading, whatever, didn't matter. All that mattered was that it could make money, the more the better.

Of course for now the AI companies are bleeding money, as it costs more per user than they charge, but that will change as soon as they accomplish the necessary lock-in.

> to trying to improve the lives of the upper middle class with debatable impacts on everyone else (gig economy stuff) to something whose most obvious application is destroying jobs (ai).

Butter them up and then cut them off, they’ll be too fat to do anything about it.

> The advertising/billboards do reflect/are the zeitgeist.

If you're going by the billboards along 101, at least they're still tech oriented. The values/culture in the Bay Area has declined and yes, it's now full of finance-bros, but at least we still value things like education and building the future. It could be a lot worse: where I lived for a long time before moving to California, the billboards say things like "Don't Shake Your Baby" and "Jesus Loves, Sinners Burn In Hell" not to mention the confederate flags everywhere.

Yeah I let that go, it seems to be following Orwell's "fascist means anything we don't like" observation. Otherwise I think there is some grain of truth to the high level observations in article, even if the treatment is pretty shallow.

That's not how the word exalt works, even if you put it in scare quotes.

It's possible to be gay and be far-right. Most people have some internal conflicts in their personal political positions, if they even think it through that far.

If you're a billionaire, your class interest in protecting capital usually overrides social interests and alliances.

The current far-right is ultimately Social Darwinism repackaged into a hoodie with an ironic vibe.

These people ultimately see themselves as the elite and those who have misgivings about their work as "less than". To oppose things like mass tech surveillance and mass unemployment through AI isn't just a thing born out of concerns held by many people, it's a literal attack on the order of nature. If your concerns were worth anything, you'd be sharing it with them at an esoteric corporate-backed technology foundation retreat or at a Mar-a-Lago lunch, but you're not.

Who is "climate man"?

I'd say that anyone who cavorts with the likes of Thiel and Yarvin are under the far-right umbrella. And a huge number of SV elites are more than happy to sit at the same table, quite literally.

It was useful during a talent crunch for CEOs to signal they are left-leaning. In reality their left-leaning stance was just as performative as any cozying-up to Trump, etc.

To me it felt a little more about being left behind. I felt this undercurrent of bitterness that the city the author once exalted, through the tech boom, the tech bro era, is leaving her behind, and in its place are the natural progressions of that era she whims nostalgically about.

Like the factory towns of the pre-digital era, when it's good it's great, but when they leave, innovate away, or move on it can leave those behind feeling cheated.

I think like most things the internet 'ate' SF now you can work remote and most importantly start new companies remotely. OFC scale, capital and in-person still matter, but Australia, UK, Germany, Spain, all now have significant tech hubs, with VC scale capital, decent talent pipelines and same access as everyone else. Its only a matter of time over the next few cycles as more and more future 'big tech' comes from elsewhere in the world.

> Money is a sickness

No, it’s just the most versatile medium of economic exchange that we have. The sickness is not having the word “enough” in your vocabulary.

I am sad to hear about your exp. and I think I understand where you're coming from but is the same also not true of most other jobs? I think the big advantage of a 'screen job' is less pressure on your body, alot of plumbers for example end up with bad knees and back issues.

I'm leaving. For many years I believed that working in a generally positive corner of one of the megacorps would enable me to make the world a better place by contributing positively through work and generating a huge amount of income that I could donate to charity.

But the feeling of the entire industry being anti-humanity is growing too strong.

> I got into tech because I wanted to help make the world better, not worse. I can confidentially say after working in the industry for over 20 years, that it doesn't do that. That's not what it is. It's not what it's ever been about.

I can confidently say that it does. Sturgeon's law applies: 90% of everything is crap, but there are pockets of good, and they make all the difference.

As a 42-year old who has been at this 20 years or so... and who got into tech back in the early 2000s for the love of computer science, I keep thinking to myself... maybe I could become a:

* Physical therapist (5+ years of training)

* Nurse (5+ years of training)

* Pharmacist (Out of the picture at this point)

* Plumber (5+ years of training (to actually get to a point

* where I would be pulling in good money))

* Electrician (same)

* Carpenter (same)

Or... continue to languish here. It really sucks right now. I've been doing 9x9x6 for the past several months because my company fired most of the US staff and are left with a skeleton contingent picking up the pieces, and of course now everything is on fire and everything is an emergency. Lunch meetings, 7AM, 9PM, weekend meetings aren't even blinked at in terms of being abnormal.

I can't stand AI and what it has "done" for society.

:-(

That sucks.

I'm happy I moved away from advertising/other tech shit I don't agree with and found a position at a company whose work I respect.

I really enjoy mentoring the younger engineers. And because all tech basically looks the same to me at this point (I.E. it's very rare I encounter a new pattern after 15 years of startups, personal projects, and big cos, and freelance) I spend a ton less time focused on learning and more time focused on creating opportunities for others.

I'm also really thankful to have a mostly remote work style, opportunities to volunteer through work (and other events like game nights, happy hours), and a product people know and like.

It is of course not all roses and sweet teas. Promotions are scarce, the stock's volatile, sometimes people can suck to work with, and the organization can be hard to work in due to complexity and coordination challenges. But that's okay, can't have it all I suppose.

If I felt like you do... I'd... do something else I think, or look for a new gig. (Easier said than done I know). Hope you find some peace friend

Small idea: Have you looked outside of the Tech industry towards other areas where companies need tech workers?

> and for what

A ton of money? Easy to forget about that if you don't have to worry about where next month's rent is coming from.

> I can confidentially say after working in the industry for over 20 years, that it doesn't do that.

I can confidently say that it has made the world better. You've just forgotten about all the things that sucked. Remember how we used to have to get taxis?

For me, the answer was always open source. Tech is endlessly interesting, and I love programming, but it's usually wasted in a corporate environment.

>Eventually as you get older, your "passion" for learning new things just for the sake of learning wanes

Crucially, you're not really even learning anything that matters. You're just learning new UIs, a new query language, a new framework, etc, and all are equally meaningless; they aren't applicable to other parts of your life, and aren't necessarily even applicable to your job a few years from now.

What are you doing now? Still working in tech or something else?

I feel you. After working in tech for 19 years, going on 20. I am utterly sick of it, too.

Sadly, I struck out badly in the startup lottery. So I'm broke and can't afford to move to a farm or something like that. Wish I could do things differently now.

One of the greatest comments posted on this site:

noname123 on March 27, 2016 | parent | context | un‑favorite | on: My year in startup hell

>It's brilliant, I'd never want to work for a corporate company! We have regular parties, play table tennis daily, beers on Friday. It just makes work so much more enjoyable.

When you leave or a bunch of your friends who used to go to happy hour together leave "for better opportunities," you'll realize that most people who are your work drinking buddies didn't really know you or felt or thought deeply about your personal experiences. (It's not that they're bad people, it's just what happens when people are put in an artificial social environment where people slap high-fives after work rec dogeball and shout out witty one-liners).

Also when you realize after 5 or 6 years of working, and the startup mantra of "changing the world," your other friends whom you laughed at before, toiling away in their fields have started coming on their own. You have only pushed bits for marketing, spam, online shopping, on-demand on-gig economy for people like yourself to get a stick of gum delivered in an hour. You can try to justify how you are promoted from junior all the way to lead to technical product manager, or how you led your team to switch from Rails to Node, SQL to Cassandra, Java to Scala. But you'll begin to see the thin-veneer of how little management cares about tech and how most of it is a pep-rally, a race to the bottom for those at the top of the Ponzi scheme to enrich themselves.

You look at other people in other fields or in other area's of tech. At work cafeteria IKEA lunch table (after a lengthy morning standup where there was yet another pissing match about React vs. Angular), People shoot the breeze about AlphaGo or that Tay twitter bot, and someone else shoot another witty one-liner comeback, everyone laughs, one person groans - in between the silence after the reactions settle in, it dawns slowly on your mind that we've all become spectators in the real information technology revolution.

That what you are toiling away when you go back to your desk after this lunch conversation is just another Twitter stream, another HN comment, Instagram heart, albeit decorated in syntax highlighting to the "AWS/Google Cloud/Azure Twitterverse."

That is just the same as the well-dressed girl or guy sitting in the next row over in the open-office environment, whom you never talk to but to make yourself feel better, secretly put down in your mind because what they do "is so much BS, social media customer engagement"; but they are the same, and you're all the same...

You call your friends up from college and hear their stories at the precarious precipice of 28-30. How many hours they stayed up at the hospital during a rotation, and a critical debate they had with their attending whether to admit a patient; or how many e-mails they had to sent to get their 15 minute film considered at 50 different film festivals; or staying on after getting finally their PhD, to work for free to do the technology transfer to industry the physics research they worked on in their group; and always, the one-liner remark, "tech has it so much better, you guys make so much money!"

Of course, the response begets a begrudging smile or another sequitur to equalize the conversation; but come work Monday, the habit to don on the noise canceling headphones, the cursory checks on social media to keep abreast fantasy football leagues/stock portfolio's, the internal monologue of the recalculation how much your employee stock options are going to be worth/vest, have all become instinctive rituals to not let the existential dread set in.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370776

Have you ever worked a blue collar job? Especially for current wages and current cost of living?

Your job may or may not be pointless but it probably provided a very nice quality of life for you and your family.

Things are pretty dire for a lot of professions right now...

Most other things pay a lot less or require many years of expensive schooling

I remember when I complained to my ex wife about work. She just said “welcome to the rest of the us”. Most jobs suck but in tech we at least make good money.

> Almost everyone I know in tech is not happy, and works non-stop, expected to give their all for a company that could fire them tomorrow for no reason. They have been doing this for years. If anything good comes from AI, maybe it will be a release? A release from the hell of being chained to a laptop screen for most of our lives?

And how many are libertarians, waxing poetic like billionaires about capitalism and business, and/or hate the idea of unions?

And now our power is waning and the chance of making things better for ourselves is disappearing. Software engineers are a special kind of dumb.

In some sense, that duality is true of any functioning city, isn't it? They fundamentally manifest a concentration of capital. But, they also host concentrations of young, working populations who can bring progressive culture in waves.

San Francisco has been such a concentration point and crossroads since the Gold Rush era. It had a frontier spirit, but also became a west coast center of finance and logistics. It has always been an arena for this tension between opportunism and idealism.

Because the former is branding, the latter is the business model of SF

>For a city famous for its supposed progressive politics

Don't think that has being the case when the rent start to compete with NYC. It is a shame, but that is how gentrification has ruined another city.

caveat to my above comment, I do think there is a crowd that comes to SF due to proximity to capital. There is also a contingent of longtime residents, who may or may not work in tech and may not espouse the value of the executives they work for.

Listen not to what people say, but instead watch what they do.

Not everyone is charging by the minute, we're looking at a flat fee based on the call intent / type, for example in Property management: Call to Tour / Schedule Showing – prospective tenant wants to view a unit

New Lease / Application – questions or starting an application

Maintenance Request – routine repairs, appliance issues, etc.

Emergency Maintenance – urgent (water leak, lock-out, etc.)

Billing / Payment – rent, deposits, fees

Lease Renewal / Move-Out – renewals, move-out scheduling

General Inquiry – community info, pet policy, amenities