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by mort9610 hours ago |
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upvoteby swiftcoder8 hours ago|
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> Does cities like San Francisco not have janitors? Waiters?

When I used to visit the Meta campus in Menlo Park, the QA folk I worked with were commuting 2 hours each way just to be able to afford housing. I've no idea how far away the janitorial staff must have lived to do the same

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upvoteby jalla2 hours ago|
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I worked at Redwood Shores. On a walk across the 101, I discovered where the cleaning staff and food workers lived. In cars, under the bridge or parked in a quiet corner of the street next to industrial or commercial property.
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upvoteby throw-the-towel9 hours ago|
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> I can not imagine what one could possibly need $300,000 per year for unless an apartment costs like $200,000 per year.

Being able to afford unpredictable expenses and not have it bankrupt you. In the US, that would include healthcare. Everywhere in the world, that would be useful if you were laid off.

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upvoteby mort968 hours ago|
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To build an emergency fund, you just need an income that's a bit higher than your expenses. If you earn $60,000 after tax per year, and spend $50,000 per year, you have a decent $10,000 emergency fund after one year and a massive $100,000 emergency fund after a decade. You don't need $300,000 per year to save.
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upvoteby 0x3f9 hours ago|
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You get by on a low salary by living with multiple people in the same apartment. Or you live far away and commute. Or both.

Not really a tenable long-term situation for a senior employee with plans to start a family. Family homes of decent size and area are literally millions of dollars.

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upvoteby mort969 hours ago|
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I guess I don't understand why programmers somehow deserve a better life than other people. Janitors deserve to start families too, don't they?
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upvoteby prepend4 hours ago|
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Its about how the market values those skillsets, not about what people “deserve.”

No one is sitting around and setting salaries based on the intrinsic human dignity of the people working jobs.

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upvoteby throw-the-towel9 hours ago|
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Usually this kind of argument leads to punishing the programmers, not lifting up the janitors.
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upvoteby mort968 hours ago|
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That's kind of two sides of the same coin, isn't it? The cost of living is so high in part because so many have ridiculously high salaries, isn't it?
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upvoteby swiftcoder8 hours ago|
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> The cost of living is so high in part because so many have ridiculously high salaries

Bigger problem in the SF area is that a bunch of folks who owned property before the gold rush have ended up real-estate-rich, and formed a voting block that actively prevents the construction of new housing (on the basis that it might devalue their accidental real estate investment)

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upvoteby 0x3f9 hours ago|
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It's not about deserving, programmers just have enough market power to be able to choose to go elsewhere. Janitors and other more fungible employees do not.

Besides, I did already say that everyone else was underpaid relative to costs. But that's not unique to the Bay Area. Cost of housing relative to income is terrible in almost all of the major European cities too.

Once cities become wealthy enough to develop a home owning class, they seem to cease being able to provision adequate housing supply in general.

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