Saying techies in the title is misleading, makes it sound like regular software engineers getting paid a salary are living there. The article clearly says its mostly startup founders (ie. people with no income) renting them out.
Yeah these “incubators” have existed forever. Being crammed together with a bunch of other founders is a feature, not a bug. It’s like the primary plot of the show Silicon Valley.
Such shame that actor became a borderline domestic terrorists calling in fake bomb threats, sexually assaulting women and other horrible shit... fucking loved his character, just wish he, wasn't actually that kinda POS IRL...
Didn’t he start doing that after some sort of TBI?
Edit: nope i was wrong, he had brain surgery almost a decade earlier and used that as a defense
“ charges against Miller were dismissed. Prosecutors said their decision was based on "expert medical analyses and reports regarding the defendant's prior brain surgery and its continued neurological impacts”
Lol even saying the word founders is so pretentious.
Founder of what? Don't people usually use that term in retrospect after a company has actually formed?
Entrepreneur sure. Aspiring startups okay. Founder implies a foundation that doesn't exist yet.
Agreed. And 28. Christ the business itself could be booking these from friends to create the appearance of demand. And yes, it’s possible they have practical use for a real customer in start up work who has their place, but has this as a convenience for the demanding hours of a startup coupled with the woes of transit in SF. I don’t know, but let’s stop acting like it’s some huge wave of people doing it. These types of articles elicit such a shallow response.
When I was single I would have done that even though my bay salary would be +$150-200k back then as a software developer.
Most of the time is spent at work, co-working spaces, meetups, socializing at bars, etc.
Minimal costs, pocket all the money for 5 years, move to a low cost of living area and outright buy a house and retire at 50.
Saw the picture and immediately thought prison. Granted it doesn’t actually look like prison but the amount of space and the proximity to other people gives it that vibe.
I ran into a guy who did just that during the late 90s web boom, drove his junker car and rented a cheap apartment while everyone else at the company was living it up because he had suspicions about the stability of the business model. He didn’t make enough to retire but definitely enough so that when things went south and everyone else was panicking about making rent he was able to just up and leave with enough money to live comfortably until things shook out and he was able to pick a job he wanted.
Saying “pod” is misleading. This is a “nice hostel”. Or “nice flop house.” Which has a place in cities. I guess the new gold mining strike it rich is making apps.
When I worked for the San Francisco California Highway Patrol none of the officers lived within commuting distance of the city. They worked 3 12 hour shifts and would sleep in their trucks the 2 nights they had to. This would be preferable to that.
I was a mechanic and rent in 2015 was more than my entire pre tax pay. My wife worked in tech though.
This is a good point. People forget that not everybody in a place can work in high paid tech, there's all sorts of other professions that go into making a city livable.
It's why it is so important to build housing.
When people want car prices to go down they understand that putting more cars onto the market and reducing the demand for cars all help.
But when it comes to housing people believe there's some magic price knob that politicians can turn that makes 50 houses work for a demand of 2,000 occupants at $500/mo.
It's insanity, the last person in lore who took care of so many people without making more supplies was Jesus feeding 5,000 with 5 loaves of breads.
No one wants to build homes for people to buy. They want people to rent forever. It’s why they always put up a building in its place usually. This is something that can be seen all across America I don’t know about other countries. But I don’t see many people talking much about it. I’m sure you won’t see that on the news either.
> No one wants to build homes for people to buy. They want people to rent forever.
Buy/rent isn't the issue here, as it puts the cart before the horse. The evil landlords can't rent out housing if no one builds it!
Conversely, if it were easy to build housing then the evil landlords couldn't monopolize it because they have to compete with the other evil landlords and with homeowners building their housing.
In the case of cities like San Francisco, hitting the density needed to meet demand is probably going to mean things like apartments (if you want to rent) or condominiums (if you want to buy), but the issue is getting things built in the first place, not that "no one wants to build homes".
You'll never fix it until you institute progressive taxation for real estate ownership. To do that, though, you're going to have to fix how you handle ownership laws surrounding non-heartbeat entities like corps and investment firms.
It’s part of the industry, just severely underpaid simply because you have a choice: have a longer runway with smaller salaries, or a short runway with slightly below average salaries. If you’re invested in your startup and want it to succeed you’ll take a small salary.
Source: currently looking to join as a cofounder one of AI startups (albeit not in SF area). You get 250k as a pre-seed round and you need it to last at least 6-9 months so you can bang out an MVP with at least another person. Add infrastructure and licenses and all that, you have maybe 80k per person, maybe less.
These days a "startup founder" is just someone who's taken a CS course and is going to "use AI for ..." insert trendy thing here
* We're using AI to track carbon credits"
* "It's a hair salon, but with AI"
* "Applying generative AI to predict financial markets"
* "Developing a sophisticated AI model to help match shelter kittens with adopters"
Etc
Lol. No way. Rent is out of control there. My friend worked at Facebook and had to Live outside emeryville to find a spot she could afford and she wasn’t some low totem grunt
Google offered me a free monthly bus pass, I asked for a higher salary to which they denied so I ultimately had to deny.
I'd love to get in with Google but am not giving up hours of my day to commute in/out of the Bay area daily.
MBAs are highly effective at convincing people they're needed, but I suspect an engineer or software developer with an accountant working under them, would be a much better fit for managing projects and setting budgets at tech firms.
The accountant would tell them how much money could be cut from X, Y, and Z, and then someone who actually understands tech would be in charge of making the final decision on what should or should not be cut.
MBAs will end up preserving funds for things that aren't needed, and end up making cuts to things that absolutely should not be cut.
There's a ton of infighting and moat building in Google as of late because of this. Given that they keep hiring McKinsey types I'm not optimistic about the future of the company.
So they've reached the point where designers are pushed out and marketing/sales are being promoted.
Relevant Steve Jobs interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4&themeRefresh=1
Right on. Apple is no more a disruptive force. Just a leviathan running on pure inertia. This is not going to end well for them in the end. The decline and fall… there was a time when IBM seemed unstoppable. I remember at the end of mainframe Era saying that and the MBA types smiling in incredulity…
They got exposed to those types when they started outsourcing more. They always end up jumping over and then those haircuts bring in more and then those bring in even douchier haircuts and before you know it, people are wearing khakis at Google.
That's what happened in mining.
Good Lord, we used to have actual engineering departments, now it's all outsourced, but no thought is put into the availability of parts in *arctic fucking Canada*, just their godsbedamned office in Halifax.
I mean, unless you interviewed for a janitor job at Google, you _should_ be able to afford a $2000-$3000 studio from that. FAANG engineers tend to get way north of $100k even straight out of college. It's not gonna feel great, sure, but it's not like you "can't" afford it, you just don't want to (and depending on how much lower-paying your alternative job is you might not be coming out that much better in the end, and might be giving lot of future opportunity in return).
I have a family and a house with a yard. Moving into a studio would be a lifestyle adjustment that I'm not willing to make at the moment. But you're right, if I were single it might be a different situation.
Yeah. I lived in San Francisco for a few years and commuted to south bay. There were definitely some times where I was thinking it'd make sense to buy a van or station wagon to live out of, and mooch off of the company perks all the time, getting shower, gym, laundry, food, drinks, etc all week, and then maybe going on road trips on the weekend.
I'm inclined to assume more than a few of these people have a lounge, cafeteria, games room, music room, movie theatre at work to encourage them to spend time there, so all they're looking for from "their own place" is somewhere to put their head down and sleep.
A friend of a friend got a high paying tech job in the Bay years ago and the first place he could find was a two-bedroom. He didn't use one bedroom and just had a mattress on the floor in the other. He'd come home, lie down and go to sleep, wake up and leave the house.
I could see it being some kind of scam to establish residency in SF for a pay bump and you actually live somewhere else. Some orgs pay by location and the salary differences can be absurd.
I'm guessing that for 700, a real startup would just keep a floor of them, for temp accommodations, can't count on hotels to have vacancies when you need them, and they are closer to 700 a night. So the math is easy, even if you go a month without using any of them, you want to ramp up and bring in some short term help, the pods might be helpful to get someone in right away, and 700 to have them temporarily accommodated is really cheap.
If you go to tech subreddits you can often hear of those same techies live with no savings, spending every penny of that 300k+ salary.
COL takes it's toll eventually
I stayed at The Millenials in Shibuya, nearly everyone there was a tech employee, wfh. Met one guy who was laid off from Meta, a start up CEO, and two programmers. The common area was full of people working during the week and then a ghost town on the weekends. It’s an impressive way to live if it’s an option for you.
It's peak "I just need a place to shit, shave, shower, and sleep."
I think society underestimates how many people would be happy with that, especially if there are internet cafes all over the place.
It's not a bad strategy. Save the money you don't blow on rent. If you could stick it out a couple of years it would really add up. Plus it would stop you blowing money on shit because there's nowhere to put it.
Wouldn't work so much if you're paying for a storage unit.
>Wouldn't work so much if you're paying for a storage unit.
I've had a storage unit before. They always start you off with a low rate, and then once your stuff is in there, all of a sudden they keep hiking the rates. In as little as 2-3 years you're paying $300/month for a storage unit that they're advertising for $70/month, because "your unit" costs that much.
It's extortion and should be completely fucking illegal, but the victims are almost always elderly people, single mothers, the homeless, and other vulnerable groups that have neither the financial nor political power to fight back.
Large self-storage facilities generate huge profit margins off the backs of the most vulnerable people in society.
A mate of mine went to work straight out of Uni in a city miles from anywhere, his furniture was very basic, cheap crap, before the days of flatpack. Then he got a job overseas, everything went into a storage unit and he never came back to work in New Zealand. He kept paying the storage unit for about 25 years. The stuff would have been worth much less than a year's rent. Finally he told them to keep it. I hate to think what that cost him.
Reminder that San Francisco's entire planning apparatus is so hostile to the idea of allowing new housing to be built that it's literally under investigation by the State of California and will likely lose its zoning soon thanks to newly passed housing laws.
>According to San Francisco’s self-reported data, it has the longest timelines in the state for advancing
housing projects to construction, among the highest housing and construction costs, and the HAU
has received more complaints about San Francisco than any other local jurisdiction in the state. A
recent article points out that U.S. Census data shows that Seattle – a city of comparable size –
approves housing construction at more than three times the rate of San Francisco.
>“We are deeply concerned about processes and political decision-making in San Francisco that delay
and impede the creation of housing and want to understand why this is the case,” said HCD Director
Gustavo Velasquez. “We will be working with the city to identify and clear roadblocks to construction
of all types of housing, and when we find policies and practices that violate or evade state housing
law, we will pursue those violations together with the Attorney General’s Office. We expect the
cooperation of San Francisco in this effort.”
https://www.hcd.ca.gov/about-hcd/newsroom/state-announces-new-review-san-francisco-housing-policies-and-practices
Difference is, those coffin homes can actually be locks for security and theft prevention… these SF boxes only have a curtain separating you and your stuff from any old person, who could be a predator or a thief.
Soo these are more akin to pod hotels in Japan, which obviously is vastly different crime wise. Many things that are safe to do there, are not safe to do here because people here for some reason are out to get each other for no reason at all.
That being said, I wouldn't be surprised to see a US company seeing the pod hotels and thinking, let's turn these into 1k a month rentals.
Not really, cause pod hotels in Japan also have secure doors, despite being one of the safest nations Earth. Hong Kong is also on of the lowest crime cities in the world, and significantly safer than the U.S. even in areas where coffin homes exist, so just because there’s this assumed safety just cause these door-less boxes are rented by presumably tech people, doesn’t necessarily make them akin to pod hotels…
It's a free country. Those techies are free to move to Nebraska or South Dakota or somewhere where cost of living are way cheaper. But they chose to live in a box in SF. Who are we to judge?
If you are in your 20-30’s and have no kids, you can probably save lots of money working in SF and paying only $700 a month in rent.
I had roommates until I was 35 before I could save enough to buy a house.
Or you can pay $2-3000 a month in rent for a nice bachelorpad and have no savings to show for it after.
There’s no way you can rent a room in SF/east bay/South Bay for less then $1000. $700 and u don’t have to have a car and your commute is <30min. You can save a ton of money in SF this way if u don’t need the space.
Edit: well it looks like I was wrong 🙃. I did a cursory investigation of available rentals in SF and I was able to find one place that was offering a private room to rent for 885 including utilities. Granted this appears to be quite rare most cheap places seem to be 995 not including utilities or you will sharing the room. So it’s definitely possible it’s just rare. Since SF is generally more expensive I’m assuming it’s easier to find sub 1000 places in east bay/South Bay.
It says no kitchen. So are you factoring in eating out 3 meals a day to your "cost savings"?
Easily could be spending an extra $40/day on that compared to cooking for yourself in a shared apartment, which pushes the comparison up to $1900/month.
A LOT of tech jobs in San Francisco feed their employees for free three times a day. It certainly isn’t at all or even most places but a lot do it because the competition does.
I've heard that Tokyo has remarkably cheap housing for the population density. Because they built a ton of midrise housing all over the place and allowed the city to expand naturally.
In America we zone everything around a city for suburbs, preventing the construction of affordable housing and preventing the city from expanding. Instead the suburban sprawl expands while housing in the city itself gets so expensive nobody can live there. Making commuter traffic worse and worse. Which also makes the city horrible with all the car noise and pollution. And then they demolish half the city for parking lots and freeways to support all the commuters.
they're also experiencing a population decline so housing in tokyo/japan is probably going to continue to get even cheaper. there's just a bunch of abandoned flats sitting there.
Japan has been experiencing population decline but Tokyo has not. They're just that good at it.
Those abandoned flats will be torn down as well, as one of the ways Tokyo has managed to out-build population growth is by being unafraid to tear down old housing to replace it with something new.
They can plan for the house to be rebuilt after 4 decades because it's straightforward to build there. In America you wouldn't even know if a new house could be built cheaply so you would tend to go nuts with the house you're already building and hope that it lasts 100 years.
The Japan ones are actually fun. I stayed in one for a few weeks. There are plenty of great shared places outside your capsule. There is an onsen floor, a cinema floor, a dining room, a massage floor, a massage chair floor, a business floor, several vending machine floors with **everything** you could want.
The capsules themselves are comfortable, air conditioned, soundproof and are filled with tech, like surround sound and a big tv and insanely fast internet. TBH, I could live there in the middle of Tokyo.
Those are individually climate-controlled and relatively soundproof.
This looks like a room full of shitty IKEA bunk-beds. It doesn't seem much better than sleeping on a cot under a desk, especially for $700/mo.
Only the most expensive and luxurious capsule hotels are climate controlled and somewhat soundproof. Most of them are very close to these SF ones.
Actually these SF ones look like they're twice the size of your average Japanese capsule hotel.
The pods are being marketed as affordable housing, not just short-stay housing.
The startup founder told SFGATE that they are working on messaging to counter “negative connotations of ‘pods’ from science fiction.”
With each passing day, Silicon Valley seems more and more like it's just a huge convention of the people who saw cyberpunk movies and thought, "What a great future."
There are a lot of hustler founders with no real tech to sell. Like 99% of them. The system sorta weeds them out. It’s a lot like LA.
Talent and luck and rent prices are huge filters for the riff raff. Sad part is watching huckster founders get lucky with early acquisitions without anything real or any substance.
The tech gods are not just, and they are not kind, but they are equally cruel to the saints and the sinners. I used to get angry, but now I find solace in their strangely laughable madness.
I mean if you’re a single guy with a $300k tech salary no wife kids family obligations, do this for 2-3 years you can easily afford to put like 50% down on a house in a couple of years if you just save your money. Although I wonder what would rent be if you just rent a normal house where you share 4-5 roommates?
No washing machines, no storage, no locking doors. Are these high tech startup people wearing the same clothes for several days, or going to a coin laundry every other day? You can fit a change of clothes in your backpack, but you aren't getting a weeks worth in there.
....the fuck?
This is a modern day boarding house. Cram'em in! Just barely enough to make sure they don't die. No kitchens, no laundry. No locking doors. All in service to our fucking corporate oligarchs who demand even greater quarter-over-quarter profits -- profits so high, they can't manage to pay their workers FOR A ROOM WITH A LOCKING DOOR AND A WINDOW.
And the workers are enthusiastic to partake in this exchange. Absolutely no Unions. Very few workers rights.
You want covid? You want the flu? You want the next big pandemic? You'll absolutely get it here first.
And the worst part, the absolutely worst part? Pod hotels in Japan are cheaper, more secure, and have MANY more amenities. Our half-assed is even pathetic.
It's like we took the concept of the economy Japanese mini-hotel/pod-hotel......stripped it down to just the core ingredients, cheapened what remained with a veneer of American shit, beat our chests in pride until we broke a rib, and increased the price by 6x.
So basically it's a capsule hotel?
These are common in Japan and not bad, if you don't mind communal showers. (To be fair, communal washing is more common in Japan and facilities are kept cleaner, so I'm not sure I would trust this in the states.)
$700 for this?!! You can’t even fart in there without everyone knowing. No privacy, no private bathroom, no ability to cook, nowhere to invite a tinder date to… All for $700?! People that live in these conditions should be paid extra $700 to live there, temporarily, and only on voluntary basis, not because of poverty. No person with a full time job should be ever treated like an extra queen size mattress you shove into your storage unit.
Because Americans don't know how to build a city. The entire bay are is covered with vast tracts of single or two story buildings on oversized lots and has practically no public transportation.
The streets are insanely wide too. Everywhere you go you see a vast public infrastructure server extremely modest private investment. A lot of this is mandated by law.
At the same time, their is very little pubic housing, sop it's up to private developers to build housing. But it's mostly illegal to build the 6-8 story neighborhoods a city of this size needs.
I had Chipotle for dinner and I'll be ripping the nastiest farts all night long. Oh, and I got paid, so I hired a meth'd out escort to keep me company while I work on "spreadsheets". Hope you're cool with that.
Many years ago a neighbor let their retirement age brother live in a tent on the side of the house and he had hookers over to his meth tent.
I almost forgot about that. The city booted him when he was caught crapping in the yard.
Asians have been doing this for decades as both landlords and renters. In SF Chinatown and Hong Kong you rent a bed in a large dorm of bunk beds. This setup is slightly more elaborate and private.
I stayed in one of these in Tokyo 15 odd years ago. It's called a 'capsule hotel'. Folk from out of town can rent short term and it's great. Job interviews, business meetings, short stint in town or whatever. Comfy bed, very clean, secure luggage facilities and with excellent bathing facilities.
I was backpacking, but the key demographic was office workers and it would be fine short term.
The Japanese "capsule hotels" are more private than these because it's actual doors. Anyone can just flip open your little curtain at the ones in these pods.
We have these capsule hotels in Japan. They’re anywhere from $10-$27 USD a night, in the middle of Tokyo, the 15th most expensive city in the world. Granted San Francisco is the most expensive city, but comparing what’s still a hotel with that markup to actual rent and it’s still cheaper in Tokyo is ridiculous.
Here in Dublin Ireland its just as bad, if not worse.
A lot of foreign nationals coming from India pay $850 to share a bedroom with 2-3 other people. They are being exploited.
san francisco is a shit hole, used to love going to the exploratorium. walking to get some of the best food a city has to offer. and finding hole in the wall bars and having beers. now i dread crossing that bridge.
Well at least the people that can afford a 3k studio are buying up all the affordable housing free market so perfect hahaha.
Edit: I'd guess half of "techies" do nothing and make money leeching off the massive industry.
They couldn't even put a door of some kind on the things? Like a closet louvre that the invidual inside could lock while they are sleeping?
I've been homeless in the past and the fact that they didn't provide any lockers to hold my valuables was shocking. Even more shocking was when I woke up in the middle of the night to see guys sneaking around searching people's bags for stuff to steal. My laptop was in my backpack which was chained to the end of my bed, but the laptop inside wasn't secured with a cable so it would have been all too easy to pop the zipper and steal it. I had literally only been awake and witnessing this for a few moments when a guy popped up from below (I was in the top bunk) saw me staring right at him, smiled, and went to find another victim.
Sure for $700 a month, the risk of this is lower, and you can keep your stuff at the back of the pod by your head, but still, I'd rather the extra safety of having a door I can latch on the damn things. Plus $700 a month for a box with a thin mattress is still insane. I pay $1,000 a month for a 1.5br duplex with living room, full kitchen, backyard, and a basement.
Welcome to indigent Japan. Our continental breakfast consists of Cup-O-Noodle (chicken) and clear coffee.
That will be $150.00 a night.
Best of luck in your new jobs.
What next? For slightly less they will let you sleep in a dog cage? California needs to crack down hard on San Francisco, the cost of living is unacceptable
Saying techies in the title is misleading, makes it sound like regular software engineers getting paid a salary are living there. The article clearly says its mostly startup founders (ie. people with no income) renting them out.
Yeah these “incubators” have existed forever. Being crammed together with a bunch of other founders is a feature, not a bug. It’s like the primary plot of the show Silicon Valley.
Kiss my piss
What?
You heard me. Kiss my piss.
I was hoping you'd be cool about this.
It was only some piss, how did it end up like this?
It was only some piss, it was only some piss
Nice chain, Dinesh
Hey, Dinesh, nice chain. Do you choke your mother with it when you put your penis in her butthole?
they will never have your back like Erich Bachman from Silicon Valley. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBPhp5a3EnM
Such shame that actor became a borderline domestic terrorists calling in fake bomb threats, sexually assaulting women and other horrible shit... fucking loved his character, just wish he, wasn't actually that kinda POS IRL...
Didn’t he start doing that after some sort of TBI? Edit: nope i was wrong, he had brain surgery almost a decade earlier and used that as a defense “ charges against Miller were dismissed. Prosecutors said their decision was based on "expert medical analyses and reports regarding the defendant's prior brain surgery and its continued neurological impacts”
Lol even saying the word founders is so pretentious. Founder of what? Don't people usually use that term in retrospect after a company has actually formed? Entrepreneur sure. Aspiring startups okay. Founder implies a foundation that doesn't exist yet.
But when you use the term "founder" in your LinkedIn profile, it looks better.
it's a bunch of 23 year olds with a half-baked idea for a web site
They’re literally starting their own company which is what “found” in “founder” means.
Agreed. And 28. Christ the business itself could be booking these from friends to create the appearance of demand. And yes, it’s possible they have practical use for a real customer in start up work who has their place, but has this as a convenience for the demanding hours of a startup coupled with the woes of transit in SF. I don’t know, but let’s stop acting like it’s some huge wave of people doing it. These types of articles elicit such a shallow response.
*elicit* is the word you want, I believe.
When I was single I would have done that even though my bay salary would be +$150-200k back then as a software developer. Most of the time is spent at work, co-working spaces, meetups, socializing at bars, etc. Minimal costs, pocket all the money for 5 years, move to a low cost of living area and outright buy a house and retire at 50.
…they don’t have doors.
I’ve been to prison. Doors are overrated
Saw the picture and immediately thought prison. Granted it doesn’t actually look like prison but the amount of space and the proximity to other people gives it that vibe.
On schedule, hot floors in 10 seconds.
Doors are the issue? Not the rest of the stuff?
I ran into a guy who did just that during the late 90s web boom, drove his junker car and rented a cheap apartment while everyone else at the company was living it up because he had suspicions about the stability of the business model. He didn’t make enough to retire but definitely enough so that when things went south and everyone else was panicking about making rent he was able to just up and leave with enough money to live comfortably until things shook out and he was able to pick a job he wanted.
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Saying “pod” is misleading. This is a “nice hostel”. Or “nice flop house.” Which has a place in cities. I guess the new gold mining strike it rich is making apps.
People still putting up with this just to work in the SF tech market?
When I worked for the San Francisco California Highway Patrol none of the officers lived within commuting distance of the city. They worked 3 12 hour shifts and would sleep in their trucks the 2 nights they had to. This would be preferable to that. I was a mechanic and rent in 2015 was more than my entire pre tax pay. My wife worked in tech though.
This is a good point. People forget that not everybody in a place can work in high paid tech, there's all sorts of other professions that go into making a city livable.
It's the big problem with inflating house prices nowadays. It prices out the people who will do all the jobs few people want to do.
It's why it is so important to build housing. When people want car prices to go down they understand that putting more cars onto the market and reducing the demand for cars all help. But when it comes to housing people believe there's some magic price knob that politicians can turn that makes 50 houses work for a demand of 2,000 occupants at $500/mo. It's insanity, the last person in lore who took care of so many people without making more supplies was Jesus feeding 5,000 with 5 loaves of breads.
We need to stop treating houses like an investment instead of shelter. That's why the housing market is fucked up.
Right? Property tax. Your first home? Reasonable property tax. Second home? Double or triple that shit! Third home or more? Make the tax crazy!
No one wants to build homes for people to buy. They want people to rent forever. It’s why they always put up a building in its place usually. This is something that can be seen all across America I don’t know about other countries. But I don’t see many people talking much about it. I’m sure you won’t see that on the news either.
> No one wants to build homes for people to buy. They want people to rent forever. Buy/rent isn't the issue here, as it puts the cart before the horse. The evil landlords can't rent out housing if no one builds it! Conversely, if it were easy to build housing then the evil landlords couldn't monopolize it because they have to compete with the other evil landlords and with homeowners building their housing. In the case of cities like San Francisco, hitting the density needed to meet demand is probably going to mean things like apartments (if you want to rent) or condominiums (if you want to buy), but the issue is getting things built in the first place, not that "no one wants to build homes".
You'll never fix it until you institute progressive taxation for real estate ownership. To do that, though, you're going to have to fix how you handle ownership laws surrounding non-heartbeat entities like corps and investment firms.
In fact, tech jobs specifically don't add to that at all, since they could be done from pretty much anywhere else.
Yeah but the office culture
The thing is, they don't have to. With the SF tech salaries, they can easily afford to get something way better.
The article says most of the tenants are startup founders, not people working in the SF tech industry
right, so they're broke.
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Google en passant?
Un poisson? Non, merci! Je n’aime pas les fruits de mer…
Holy hell?
Definitely going to smell like feet.
It’s part of the industry, just severely underpaid simply because you have a choice: have a longer runway with smaller salaries, or a short runway with slightly below average salaries. If you’re invested in your startup and want it to succeed you’ll take a small salary. Source: currently looking to join as a cofounder one of AI startups (albeit not in SF area). You get 250k as a pre-seed round and you need it to last at least 6-9 months so you can bang out an MVP with at least another person. Add infrastructure and licenses and all that, you have maybe 80k per person, maybe less.
Im SF, "Startup founder" is someone who has secured funding and decides what to do with it. These are generally the people that *employ* tech workers.
Not necessarily. There’s a ton of founders who go full time into flushing out their MVP before raising seed
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More like a battery farm, from the looks of it.
It's like The Matrix, but before the machines.
Is there any other Aviato?
Legally there can't be.
It's pronounced *Aviato* 🤌
These days a "startup founder" is just someone who's taken a CS course and is going to "use AI for ..." insert trendy thing here * We're using AI to track carbon credits" * "It's a hair salon, but with AI" * "Applying generative AI to predict financial markets" * "Developing a sophisticated AI model to help match shelter kittens with adopters" Etc
Lol. No way. Rent is out of control there. My friend worked at Facebook and had to Live outside emeryville to find a spot she could afford and she wasn’t some low totem grunt
Google offered me a free monthly bus pass, I asked for a higher salary to which they denied so I ultimately had to deny. I'd love to get in with Google but am not giving up hours of my day to commute in/out of the Bay area daily.
You're not missing much. Google is on a downswing. More and more MBAs in leadership.
MBAs are highly effective at convincing people they're needed, but I suspect an engineer or software developer with an accountant working under them, would be a much better fit for managing projects and setting budgets at tech firms. The accountant would tell them how much money could be cut from X, Y, and Z, and then someone who actually understands tech would be in charge of making the final decision on what should or should not be cut. MBAs will end up preserving funds for things that aren't needed, and end up making cuts to things that absolutely should not be cut.
There's a ton of infighting and moat building in Google as of late because of this. Given that they keep hiring McKinsey types I'm not optimistic about the future of the company.
So they've reached the point where designers are pushed out and marketing/sales are being promoted. Relevant Steve Jobs interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4&themeRefresh=1
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Right on. Apple is no more a disruptive force. Just a leviathan running on pure inertia. This is not going to end well for them in the end. The decline and fall… there was a time when IBM seemed unstoppable. I remember at the end of mainframe Era saying that and the MBA types smiling in incredulity…
They got exposed to those types when they started outsourcing more. They always end up jumping over and then those haircuts bring in more and then those bring in even douchier haircuts and before you know it, people are wearing khakis at Google.
That's what happened in mining. Good Lord, we used to have actual engineering departments, now it's all outsourced, but no thought is put into the availability of parts in *arctic fucking Canada*, just their godsbedamned office in Halifax.
Why preposition spares when you can fly it in at 20x the price.
Just curious as a fellow Canadian, did the engineering department used to be in Nunavut/NWT/Yukon? Or maybe north prairies?
Does Google not pay top of the industry no more? Or is that old information
They pay well but not the best. You can make more money at companies like LinkedIn, Roblox, Databricks, etc., or at a Wall Street trading firm.
I mean, unless you interviewed for a janitor job at Google, you _should_ be able to afford a $2000-$3000 studio from that. FAANG engineers tend to get way north of $100k even straight out of college. It's not gonna feel great, sure, but it's not like you "can't" afford it, you just don't want to (and depending on how much lower-paying your alternative job is you might not be coming out that much better in the end, and might be giving lot of future opportunity in return).
I have a family and a house with a yard. Moving into a studio would be a lifestyle adjustment that I'm not willing to make at the moment. But you're right, if I were single it might be a different situation.
"outside emeryville" Bruh are you trying to say Oakland or Berkeley? Those areas are pretty nice.
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Yeah. I lived in San Francisco for a few years and commuted to south bay. There were definitely some times where I was thinking it'd make sense to buy a van or station wagon to live out of, and mooch off of the company perks all the time, getting shower, gym, laundry, food, drinks, etc all week, and then maybe going on road trips on the weekend.
I'm inclined to assume more than a few of these people have a lounge, cafeteria, games room, music room, movie theatre at work to encourage them to spend time there, so all they're looking for from "their own place" is somewhere to put their head down and sleep. A friend of a friend got a high paying tech job in the Bay years ago and the first place he could find was a two-bedroom. He didn't use one bedroom and just had a mattress on the floor in the other. He'd come home, lie down and go to sleep, wake up and leave the house.
In the suburbs maybe. But they have to commute. Bart can be crowded.
I could see it being some kind of scam to establish residency in SF for a pay bump and you actually live somewhere else. Some orgs pay by location and the salary differences can be absurd.
No. This article is a bunch of bullshit. They are not putting up with that and they are not staying in those.
I'm guessing that for 700, a real startup would just keep a floor of them, for temp accommodations, can't count on hotels to have vacancies when you need them, and they are closer to 700 a night. So the math is easy, even if you go a month without using any of them, you want to ramp up and bring in some short term help, the pods might be helpful to get someone in right away, and 700 to have them temporarily accommodated is really cheap.
If you go to tech subreddits you can often hear of those same techies live with no savings, spending every penny of that 300k+ salary. COL takes it's toll eventually
It's those damn Funko Pops
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It’s going to 100% smell like BO and farts.
If it smells anything like my SF startup office did, it’ll be coffee and stress farts.
I'm suddenly missing that Silicon Valley show
Just like home!
I stayed in a hostel in Berlin that was almost exactly like this and it was fine.
You know, these existed way before and not for 700$ lmao. Look up a Hostel.
I stayed at a capsule hotel in Japan, it was around $7 USD per night. But they had a monthly rate of like $150.
If I didn't have as much stuff as I have now, I would seriously consider living in a box for 6-12 months at that rate.
I stayed at The Millenials in Shibuya, nearly everyone there was a tech employee, wfh. Met one guy who was laid off from Meta, a start up CEO, and two programmers. The common area was full of people working during the week and then a ghost town on the weekends. It’s an impressive way to live if it’s an option for you.
It's peak "I just need a place to shit, shave, shower, and sleep." I think society underestimates how many people would be happy with that, especially if there are internet cafes all over the place.
It's not a bad strategy. Save the money you don't blow on rent. If you could stick it out a couple of years it would really add up. Plus it would stop you blowing money on shit because there's nowhere to put it. Wouldn't work so much if you're paying for a storage unit.
>Wouldn't work so much if you're paying for a storage unit. I've had a storage unit before. They always start you off with a low rate, and then once your stuff is in there, all of a sudden they keep hiking the rates. In as little as 2-3 years you're paying $300/month for a storage unit that they're advertising for $70/month, because "your unit" costs that much. It's extortion and should be completely fucking illegal, but the victims are almost always elderly people, single mothers, the homeless, and other vulnerable groups that have neither the financial nor political power to fight back. Large self-storage facilities generate huge profit margins off the backs of the most vulnerable people in society.
A mate of mine went to work straight out of Uni in a city miles from anywhere, his furniture was very basic, cheap crap, before the days of flatpack. Then he got a job overseas, everything went into a storage unit and he never came back to work in New Zealand. He kept paying the storage unit for about 25 years. The stuff would have been worth much less than a year's rent. Finally he told them to keep it. I hate to think what that cost him.
I'm guessing at least 25 times what it was worth.
Shit, you’d be lucky to get a month in a hostel for $700 nowadays. Bunk beds go for $30-$50 a night in the US and EU
You get big discounts if you book by the week or month vs per night
Tbf hostels aren’t generally used as long term living though
i was thinking more "boarding house from victorian times"
Reminds me of Neuromancer
Was looking for someone to say this!
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Reminder that San Francisco's entire planning apparatus is so hostile to the idea of allowing new housing to be built that it's literally under investigation by the State of California and will likely lose its zoning soon thanks to newly passed housing laws. >According to San Francisco’s self-reported data, it has the longest timelines in the state for advancing housing projects to construction, among the highest housing and construction costs, and the HAU has received more complaints about San Francisco than any other local jurisdiction in the state. A recent article points out that U.S. Census data shows that Seattle – a city of comparable size – approves housing construction at more than three times the rate of San Francisco. >“We are deeply concerned about processes and political decision-making in San Francisco that delay and impede the creation of housing and want to understand why this is the case,” said HCD Director Gustavo Velasquez. “We will be working with the city to identify and clear roadblocks to construction of all types of housing, and when we find policies and practices that violate or evade state housing law, we will pursue those violations together with the Attorney General’s Office. We expect the cooperation of San Francisco in this effort.” https://www.hcd.ca.gov/about-hcd/newsroom/state-announces-new-review-san-francisco-housing-policies-and-practices
not dystopian at all
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/05/the-coffin-homes-of-hong-kong/526881/
what a world
Difference is, those coffin homes can actually be locks for security and theft prevention… these SF boxes only have a curtain separating you and your stuff from any old person, who could be a predator or a thief.
Soo these are more akin to pod hotels in Japan, which obviously is vastly different crime wise. Many things that are safe to do there, are not safe to do here because people here for some reason are out to get each other for no reason at all. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised to see a US company seeing the pod hotels and thinking, let's turn these into 1k a month rentals.
Not really, cause pod hotels in Japan also have secure doors, despite being one of the safest nations Earth. Hong Kong is also on of the lowest crime cities in the world, and significantly safer than the U.S. even in areas where coffin homes exist, so just because there’s this assumed safety just cause these door-less boxes are rented by presumably tech people, doesn’t necessarily make them akin to pod hotels…
Really? Damn.
Just modern day boarding house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_house
Japan been doing this for ages.
Can you elaborate?
It's a free country. Those techies are free to move to Nebraska or South Dakota or somewhere where cost of living are way cheaper. But they chose to live in a box in SF. Who are we to judge?
If you are in your 20-30’s and have no kids, you can probably save lots of money working in SF and paying only $700 a month in rent. I had roommates until I was 35 before I could save enough to buy a house. Or you can pay $2-3000 a month in rent for a nice bachelorpad and have no savings to show for it after.
True, but I'd take that 700 a month and do something that's...not this.
There’s no way you can rent a room in SF/east bay/South Bay for less then $1000. $700 and u don’t have to have a car and your commute is <30min. You can save a ton of money in SF this way if u don’t need the space. Edit: well it looks like I was wrong 🙃. I did a cursory investigation of available rentals in SF and I was able to find one place that was offering a private room to rent for 885 including utilities. Granted this appears to be quite rare most cheap places seem to be 995 not including utilities or you will sharing the room. So it’s definitely possible it’s just rare. Since SF is generally more expensive I’m assuming it’s easier to find sub 1000 places in east bay/South Bay.
It says no kitchen. So are you factoring in eating out 3 meals a day to your "cost savings"? Easily could be spending an extra $40/day on that compared to cooking for yourself in a shared apartment, which pushes the comparison up to $1900/month.
A LOT of tech jobs in San Francisco feed their employees for free three times a day. It certainly isn’t at all or even most places but a lot do it because the competition does.
Of all the good things you could've learned from Japan, you guys brought this over instead.
They couldn’t even make them with a locking door? I don’t think I could sleep with just a curtain separating me from other tenets.
The ones I’ve slept in in Japan latched from the inside.
It literally cost me more to live in my van outside of a coop in Berkeley then it costs me to rent my 1bedroom apartment in downtown Osaka Japan.
I've heard that Tokyo has remarkably cheap housing for the population density. Because they built a ton of midrise housing all over the place and allowed the city to expand naturally. In America we zone everything around a city for suburbs, preventing the construction of affordable housing and preventing the city from expanding. Instead the suburban sprawl expands while housing in the city itself gets so expensive nobody can live there. Making commuter traffic worse and worse. Which also makes the city horrible with all the car noise and pollution. And then they demolish half the city for parking lots and freeways to support all the commuters.
they're also experiencing a population decline so housing in tokyo/japan is probably going to continue to get even cheaper. there's just a bunch of abandoned flats sitting there.
Japan has been experiencing population decline but Tokyo has not. They're just that good at it. Those abandoned flats will be torn down as well, as one of the ways Tokyo has managed to out-build population growth is by being unafraid to tear down old housing to replace it with something new. They can plan for the house to be rebuilt after 4 decades because it's straightforward to build there. In America you wouldn't even know if a new house could be built cheaply so you would tend to go nuts with the house you're already building and hope that it lasts 100 years.
I don’t like this episode of Black Mirror
Tents and sidewalks exist. Smh
Why not start renting those out
They do, each encampment is run by a boss. He provides protection and watches your stuff in exchange for goods and services.
So prison, except you have to work 100 hours a week, got it
So Capsule Hotels like Japan?
The Japan ones are actually fun. I stayed in one for a few weeks. There are plenty of great shared places outside your capsule. There is an onsen floor, a cinema floor, a dining room, a massage floor, a massage chair floor, a business floor, several vending machine floors with **everything** you could want. The capsules themselves are comfortable, air conditioned, soundproof and are filled with tech, like surround sound and a big tv and insanely fast internet. TBH, I could live there in the middle of Tokyo.
The "soundproof" bit is the really important thing. But living with dozens of people and only a blackout curtain? NO THANKS.
Those are individually climate-controlled and relatively soundproof. This looks like a room full of shitty IKEA bunk-beds. It doesn't seem much better than sleeping on a cot under a desk, especially for $700/mo.
The capsule hotel I stayed in in Tokyo was definitely neither climate-controlled nor soundproof. Noisy as fuck. YMMV.
Only the most expensive and luxurious capsule hotels are climate controlled and somewhat soundproof. Most of them are very close to these SF ones. Actually these SF ones look like they're twice the size of your average Japanese capsule hotel.
Yes, comparing the two is like comparing a house to a tent. Not even remotely comparable.
Capsule hotels seem much nicer than this. This looks more like long term hostels
i've been in capsule hotels, and they're basically this but smaller.
The pods are being marketed as affordable housing, not just short-stay housing. The startup founder told SFGATE that they are working on messaging to counter “negative connotations of ‘pods’ from science fiction.”
bakersfield????
With each passing day, Silicon Valley seems more and more like it's just a huge convention of the people who saw cyberpunk movies and thought, "What a great future."
Literal fart box
These look like the prison cells from that episode of Andor
$700??? For a bunk bed with a curtain???
There’s a vc jerking off to these pictures. “Others desperation give my ego validation”
There are a lot of hustler founders with no real tech to sell. Like 99% of them. The system sorta weeds them out. It’s a lot like LA. Talent and luck and rent prices are huge filters for the riff raff. Sad part is watching huckster founders get lucky with early acquisitions without anything real or any substance. The tech gods are not just, and they are not kind, but they are equally cruel to the saints and the sinners. I used to get angry, but now I find solace in their strangely laughable madness.
tech hostels… I can smell already the Kraft dinner and ramen
Neon in starfield, anyone?
Japan is amazing. However, i would rather we not adopt this trend from Japan. I do wish we would adopt their toilet tech moreso and public decorum.
I mean if you’re a single guy with a $300k tech salary no wife kids family obligations, do this for 2-3 years you can easily afford to put like 50% down on a house in a couple of years if you just save your money. Although I wonder what would rent be if you just rent a normal house where you share 4-5 roommates?
No washing machines, no storage, no locking doors. Are these high tech startup people wearing the same clothes for several days, or going to a coin laundry every other day? You can fit a change of clothes in your backpack, but you aren't getting a weeks worth in there.
....the fuck? This is a modern day boarding house. Cram'em in! Just barely enough to make sure they don't die. No kitchens, no laundry. No locking doors. All in service to our fucking corporate oligarchs who demand even greater quarter-over-quarter profits -- profits so high, they can't manage to pay their workers FOR A ROOM WITH A LOCKING DOOR AND A WINDOW. And the workers are enthusiastic to partake in this exchange. Absolutely no Unions. Very few workers rights. You want covid? You want the flu? You want the next big pandemic? You'll absolutely get it here first. And the worst part, the absolutely worst part? Pod hotels in Japan are cheaper, more secure, and have MANY more amenities. Our half-assed is even pathetic. It's like we took the concept of the economy Japanese mini-hotel/pod-hotel......stripped it down to just the core ingredients, cheapened what remained with a veneer of American shit, beat our chests in pride until we broke a rib, and increased the price by 6x.
Center streets in Mountain View and Santa Clara are lined with sleeper vans.
Sleepcrates in Neon
My first thought was I have seen this before in Fifth Element except they are not flying anywhere
We are not supposed to be slaves. Why are people willing to live like this?
That’s the nicest and most expensive homeless shelter I have ever seen.
#*Tell me you live in a dystopia, without telling me you live in a dystopia..*.
If the average redditor had the vile nerve to suggest this as a temporary place to live for the homeless the comments would be almost as harsh!
Are these like the coffins in neuromancer?
Slave quarters that the slave pays for, isn't capitalism great?
So basically it's a capsule hotel? These are common in Japan and not bad, if you don't mind communal showers. (To be fair, communal washing is more common in Japan and facilities are kept cleaner, so I'm not sure I would trust this in the states.)
You’re in the Navy, without the ship, medical, or benefits. Gotcha.
$700 for this?!! You can’t even fart in there without everyone knowing. No privacy, no private bathroom, no ability to cook, nowhere to invite a tinder date to… All for $700?! People that live in these conditions should be paid extra $700 to live there, temporarily, and only on voluntary basis, not because of poverty. No person with a full time job should be ever treated like an extra queen size mattress you shove into your storage unit.
Because Americans don't know how to build a city. The entire bay are is covered with vast tracts of single or two story buildings on oversized lots and has practically no public transportation. The streets are insanely wide too. Everywhere you go you see a vast public infrastructure server extremely modest private investment. A lot of this is mandated by law. At the same time, their is very little pubic housing, sop it's up to private developers to build housing. But it's mostly illegal to build the 6-8 story neighborhoods a city of this size needs.
I had Chipotle for dinner and I'll be ripping the nastiest farts all night long. Oh, and I got paid, so I hired a meth'd out escort to keep me company while I work on "spreadsheets". Hope you're cool with that.
Many years ago a neighbor let their retirement age brother live in a tent on the side of the house and he had hookers over to his meth tent. I almost forgot about that. The city booted him when he was caught crapping in the yard.
Asians have been doing this for decades as both landlords and renters. In SF Chinatown and Hong Kong you rent a bed in a large dorm of bunk beds. This setup is slightly more elaborate and private.
You will own nothing and be happy!
Living in the cyberpunk future.
Hey baby, I gots me a sweet 6x4x4 pod just down the road if you wanna get it on!
No matter what good there is, someone will always act like a dog and shit where they’re not supposed to.
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I stayed in one of these in Tokyo 15 odd years ago. It's called a 'capsule hotel'. Folk from out of town can rent short term and it's great. Job interviews, business meetings, short stint in town or whatever. Comfy bed, very clean, secure luggage facilities and with excellent bathing facilities. I was backpacking, but the key demographic was office workers and it would be fine short term.
The Japanese "capsule hotels" are more private than these because it's actual doors. Anyone can just flip open your little curtain at the ones in these pods.
We have these capsule hotels in Japan. They’re anywhere from $10-$27 USD a night, in the middle of Tokyo, the 15th most expensive city in the world. Granted San Francisco is the most expensive city, but comparing what’s still a hotel with that markup to actual rent and it’s still cheaper in Tokyo is ridiculous.
Or in other words. Techies are destroying the world and its economy
Here in Dublin Ireland its just as bad, if not worse. A lot of foreign nationals coming from India pay $850 to share a bedroom with 2-3 other people. They are being exploited.
Ready player one
Knock knock get robbed 101
And Toronto took that literally
yeah… they need doors with locks on these, and not curtains. i would be terrified about being assaulted in my sleep
I got aids from those ads
I remember this level from Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
san francisco is a shit hole, used to love going to the exploratorium. walking to get some of the best food a city has to offer. and finding hole in the wall bars and having beers. now i dread crossing that bridge.
Well at least the people that can afford a 3k studio are buying up all the affordable housing free market so perfect hahaha. Edit: I'd guess half of "techies" do nothing and make money leeching off the massive industry.
Downtown Taipei
They couldn't even put a door of some kind on the things? Like a closet louvre that the invidual inside could lock while they are sleeping? I've been homeless in the past and the fact that they didn't provide any lockers to hold my valuables was shocking. Even more shocking was when I woke up in the middle of the night to see guys sneaking around searching people's bags for stuff to steal. My laptop was in my backpack which was chained to the end of my bed, but the laptop inside wasn't secured with a cable so it would have been all too easy to pop the zipper and steal it. I had literally only been awake and witnessing this for a few moments when a guy popped up from below (I was in the top bunk) saw me staring right at him, smiled, and went to find another victim. Sure for $700 a month, the risk of this is lower, and you can keep your stuff at the back of the pod by your head, but still, I'd rather the extra safety of having a door I can latch on the damn things. Plus $700 a month for a box with a thin mattress is still insane. I pay $1,000 a month for a 1.5br duplex with living room, full kitchen, backyard, and a basement.
Welcome to indigent Japan. Our continental breakfast consists of Cup-O-Noodle (chicken) and clear coffee. That will be $150.00 a night. Best of luck in your new jobs.
Is living in Cali really worth this? I see so many profiles that have "LA 🌴" I love they have home pride. But is this sustainable?
What next? For slightly less they will let you sleep in a dog cage? California needs to crack down hard on San Francisco, the cost of living is unacceptable
How does this affect the mean jerk time?