It's not making the "you can't win" argument that tech companies should be critiqued whether or not they build housing.
Rather, it's that they're supposedly constructing "company towns" in the sense that the housing stock they build won't be for sale, and presumably only rented to employees. If you get fired you also get evicted.
Furthermore they'll own the nearby retail space as well. Will an Oculus competitor be for sale in the Facebook-owned chain of stores? Will someone trying to organize a Facebook union be allowed to use the meeting spaces at the Facebook town hall?
If you get fired, you basically lose your healthcare, which in many cases is much worse. Though quite a number of Americans seem fine with that arrangement for some reason.
I'm married, things happened, and we ended up having a baby. Due to various circumstances beyond our control. That cost $100k.
As a healthy guy in my 20's, I suffered an injury through no fault of my own that led to me needing a serious back surgery. Net cost -> $250k.
Rolling the dice on something that fundamentally life altering, and expecting society to pick up the tab for the consequences of your risk management is bullshit. It is a good illustration of why you can't treat healthcare as a market driven thing unless you're willing to drop the moral obligation to preserve human life (and expect the providers to "absorb" it).
Who is responsible for your health? I'd argue that the baby is entirely on you, and $100K for a delivery is insane unless you had incredible complications.
And if the back injury wasn't your fault, you could seek redress from whom is responsible. If it's work related, then work should pay. If it's an accident, then whomever is negligent should pay.
Unfortunately, no one wants to take responsibility, and expects "society" to make an individual whole after a loss.
I make no judgements on your moral character, but to follow your philosophy requires a fundamental acceptance that certain human life has less intrinsic value than other human life.
You likely didn’t pay for the prenatal care after the first trimester, and likely didn’t pay for the delivery beyond coinsurance.
What was out of control was a complication that nearly resulted in her death.
Those types of things happen. If you are married to someone who has a stroke, should you be sentenced to a lifetime of ramen noodles and destitution because your spouse needs care that costs $500/day.
When this happens, the vultures will be circling. And this happens far too often.
I don't think I know any family without a member of it having some kind of medical condition. (bad turn of phrase, but do I get the point across ?)
On the other hand, being evicted from your home is going to affect everyone, and there's no avoiding the upheaval - you're forced to find new housing in a famously overpriced market at the exact moment that you just lost your job.
Not in the US, at least not for 18 months anyway. It’s called COBRA and is available to anyone with work provided insurance.
2) Everything is relative. $600/month is certainly FAR FAR cheaper than the $10k/month the medicine I critically take costs. Comparable ACA plan w/o outrageous deductible is usually $700-900.
Lesson to be learned is, just because it isn't cost effective in your eyes, doesn't mean that many can't benefit from it! Feel lucky that your health needs are so basic, it almost certainly won't stay that way forever.
I haven't worked for a company, Fortune 50 to small startup, in the past 20 years that provided medical insurance and didn't provide the employer covered cost data in an easy place for access on demand.
I pay $3.00/month for the group policy at work, but when I get fired I will also lose the company's payments to the plan on my behalf. So my expenses actually go up as a result of trying to take advantage of COBRA. Whereas if I were paying for my own policy, I would be aware of what it costs and would be paying the same price for insurance regardless of my employment status.
How long does it take before someone has expertise valuable enough to go full Count Zero and extract them outside the reach of legal consequences? It's basically the approach Samuel Slater took, and I keep expecting to see it repeated today in either AI or biotech.
The bus thing is not the only example those people are contradictory against themselves. They blame techies for the hike of real-estate price, which to certain degree is justified. But at the same time they also oppose any construction of high density accommodation, blaming the company for destroying the neighborhood culture, talking about the good old days with orchards and trees.
I think what is really important here is, story like this fits into the narrative that big companies are inherently evil, and live their success on the misery of everyone else. I think you will be surprised how wide-spread it is, even on HN.
My biggest issue is their motivation: it is completely destructive. The only resolution, if according to them, is to reverse this, which I don't know how to accomplish, without severely disrupting the local economy, but I guess they don't care either, they got the clicks already. shrug.
They blame techies for the hike of real-estate price,
[...] they also oppose any construction of high density
accommodation
Renter Roy can't afford a house, and thinks tech companies' money is bidding up prices. Homeowner Harold has lived and worked in this neighbourhood for 40 years and doesn't want its character to change and his house's value to fall. Techie Tammy wants somewhere to live, she'd prefer not to spend a fortune to live in a hovel while her neighbours shame her for gentrifying.
Any pair of Roy, Harold and Tammy can get on OK - but it's just not possible for all three of them to get what they want.
There seems to be a contradiction - but that's because any time Roy and Tammy are about to agree, Harold is motivated to enter the conversation and disagree - and the same thing happens when Harold and Tammy are about to agree.
Sure, you can get to an armistice with Harold and Tammy: Housing costs are high but your salary is such that even spending 66% of your pay on housing leaves you with an ample amount of money.
But I wouldn't call that agreement anything other than begrudging.
This seems like the essential problem. Harold isn't actually a buyer in the housing market; he locked in a fixed-rate mortgage 20 years ago. If he's planning on retiring somewhere outside the city, or to a managed community, he might never be on the buyer's side of the market again.
But he's definitely a seller - that house will presumably be sold or passed on to his kids. Property taxes are a pain, but they're a manageable one for a house bought as an investment. Harold is actively opposed to Roy and Tammy; if their rent doubled that would be a good outcome for him.
We keep treating this like all the residents of the city are a group, but that's not true. Renters own zero units of housing, homeowners own one unit, landlords own multiple. It's not at all guaranteed that homeowners align with renters more than with landlords.
But this is a dilemma (or in this case a trilemma) only for individuals, "don't change the nature of this neighbourhood" shouldn't be something policymakers care about.
Who do you think votes for those policymakers? (And donates to their campaigns)
Lots of people want to be part of a community that feels diverse and functional, rather than be part of some weird polarizing over-class just because they took a job.
Of course that might be just a best case scenario..
Even in the most company-townish scenarios, I can't really see a company forbidding you from leaving the premises. If you wanna stay friends with a Googler, just invite them over.
I moved internationally so often, I'm used to building new circles of friends.
Harder to comeback to a job and much more awkward to hangout around old coworkers.
It seems to me that the article's main topic is that tech companies are building company towns, comprising not only housing units (The expansion of its headquarters will boast fifteen hundred units of housing, 15 percent of which it claims will be “offered at below-market rates.”) but also commercial spaces to provide town services such as retail stores and police stations.
The article goes on about what the author perceives as being the perils of a company town, complete with emotive platitudes regarding capitalism, but it is in fact an article about company towns, not "tech companies are building big offices".
I really don't understand how you were able to completely miss the whole point made in the article. Have you actually read it?
Society never moves at the pace of life. It always lags --even in command economies like China's or to a degree S Korea and Singapore. Adjustment takes time. At the same time as you point out, often times it's damned if they do, damned if they don't.
It's almost as if they would feel better if FB automated all the jobs away --not just manual labor low hanging fruit, but all jobs so that they would not have anything to blame on FB --except now everyone who used to work for them is now unemployed (presuming much of the industry learns from FB and also automates --in a purposely extreme example)
I really don't think that putting the next 5000 employees next to the last 10000 employees improves productivity. Spread out. Spread the wealth and the pain. Make yourself less vulnerable to a single point of failure.
Thank you for sharing this. I wish other people could look at all articles through this lens to see the biases that authors have.
I suppose the next step is to blame the Google buses for being "elitist" and "gentrifying", while in the next paragraph, blaming Google for putting cars on the road and making traffic worse....
“Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, a priest who heard the confessions of condemned witches, wrote in 1631 the Cautio Criminalis (‘prudence in criminal cases’) in which he bitingly described the decision tree for condemning accused witches: If the witch had led an evil and improper life, she was guilty; if she had led a good and proper life, this too was a proof, for witches dissemble and try to appear especially virtuous. After the woman was put in prison: if she was afraid, this proved her guilt; if she was not afraid, this proved her guilt, for witches characteristically pretend innocence and wear a bold front. Or on hearing of a denunciation of witchcraft against her, she might seek flight or remain; if she ran, that proved her guilt; if she remained, the devil had detained her so she could not get away.”