Because it’s great, it’s a perk, and companies use perks to attract and retain talent.
In other words, it’s obvious.
i’ve always assumed that the “just get it done, now” mentality is what lead to the private buses. county and city governments move way too slow for the go-go-go silicon valley set.
Are they really protestors or are they some Koch brothers funded astroturf campaign that is being paid to behave in a totally offensive and counterproductive manner?
Essentially a SF version of the ‘New Black Panthers’ that Fox News invented so that they can do race driving trollies stories every couple of months.
Their behavior really does make me think they are paid agent provocateurs.
The journey takes over 2 hours on Caltrain with multiple stops, 40 minutes by car or bus.
And Caltrain does not have the capacity in any case. What the Bay area needs is for more companies to do the same thing. Its what we normally call ‘ride sharing’. Each of those busses is saving 20-60 cars at peak rush hour both inside the city and on Route 101.
Thats why the whole protest screams ‘fake’ like there is some oil industry group putting cash in someone’s pockets to run these ‘protests’ so as to discourage other companies from following suit.
Maybe thats why they attacked the guy involved in the electric car/self driving car project.
I grew up in one of those places. The land-values were much, much lower than San Francisco’s. You know what happens when land-values rise? People start locking their doors…
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Community? The Google employees aren’t part of the community – they’re carpet-baggers.
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You know people might actually start to care and listen to this protest if the people who support it didn’t instantly resort to name calling and hate speech. This whole movement is so low class and ugly.
Yeah - why should anyone who is intelligent and has benefited from what society has to offer care about anyone else?
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…or are they samurai martians here to fight crime?
…or are they part of a conspiracy to rob satellites of dog food?
…or are they cleverly disguised computer keyboards who are also wine connoisseurs?
When you beg the question like that, nobody has to take you seriously. Nobody should take you seriously. Not because what you suggest is outside the realm of possibility, but because you don’t have a shred of a piece of a slice of a fraction of a corner of a part of the tiniest bit of evidence beyond a vague suspicion. You can raise it as a possibility, not as a fact, and certainly not as a rebuttal to anything.
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That was so low-class of me. Thank you for being upper-class and able to save me. I apologize for stepping out of my place, and being a burden.
You are absolutely correct – the tech-influxers do not have suitcases made of carpet; ergo, they are not carpetbaggers.
However, they are not of the SF community. They have not lived there for a long time, they do not have deep community ties. They are immigrants who are insisting that the existing culture change to suit their desires. They are unwilling to adapt.
And they carry designer luggage, one would presume . And if this is a false presumption – please, correct me, wise, kind sir. As I’m sure you are aware, we of the lower-classes desperately crave the guidance we have come to expect from our betters.
[updated “new” to “existing” culture for accuracy]
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Exactly. Tech companies should invest in buying out existing landlords and property owners, so that they can control and profit from the need of other people to live in the Bay Area. Draw a line in society to divide the rich from the poor - perhaps you need a certain income to be eligible to own property in the Bay Area - that way anyone who is below that line is using their rent to contribute to the wealth of people above the line.
If you take the combined revenue of HP, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Google and Dell, you’ve got about 4% of US GDP. There’s 50 contiguous states, so each state is only contributing on average 2% of GDP. Tech companies should be allowed to follow the Disney route and become their own self governing territories, with police forces and law making authority, non-tech workers would be shuttled into the state but would live elsewhere.
On the contrary, I provided plenty of evidence that this group does not pass the sniff test. The fake video that turned out to be one of their people ‘acting’ as if they were a Google employee followed by the violent attack on one bus breaking a window followed by the creepy following employees to their homes.
That is case closed as far as the group being stinky as far as I am concerned. Now the question is why are they doing this? I don’t know real groups who work on those issues who behave like that. But it is behavior I have seen time and again from the right, the ClimateGate hack, the fake BO’Keefe acorn pimp video, Fox News doorstepping people who criticize O’Reiley.
Not that it really matters if they are right or left. They are bullies and bullies don’t deserve attention for their causes.
I don’t live in San Francisco so maybe I am missing some context, but I do live in a big, densely populated, and severely expensive city that, like most cities of it’s kind, suffers from serious congestion. If some company were to provide luxurious transport for its employees I would be thrilled to have fewer people on the public transit I take. I am sure the drivers in the area would also welcome the extra space on the road. Sure I might be jealous that they get a better bus but then they have skills that are in high demand and people with skills in high demand generally get compensated for them. I don’t see what is unfair about that.
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Who qualifies as a carpetbagger? At least two of the co-editors are not SF natives. Oh wait I get it it’s only the people you don’t like.
Reading these comments is interesting - 3 weeks ago the sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of the protesters. That attitude seems to be shifting now. Maybe all the money that the Koch brothers, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Illuminanti are pouring into controlling the dialogue is paying off.
Basic human decency?
Yeah, sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face.
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In a perfict world they wouldn’t and shouldn’t have to. As is because they have been targeted they now have to do something constructive til a new target is selected. I do not find this fair, but it seems to be how reality works.
Wow, good comeback to my “basic human decency” suggestion. I surely won’t make that mistake again.
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I used to commute via Caltrain every weekday to Mountain View from San Francisco. It takes about 50 minutes during commute hours, not 2 hours.
Here’s what Google could do to become a good corporate citizen:
1: Pay their engineers less so they can only pay the rents everybody in the existing SF community paid before the tech bubble, and
2: Demand from city authorities that they impose a ban on rent hiking and strongly regulate rent and house prices, so housing stays affordable.
That way, Google employees would not be seen as rich carpet-baggers on an economic cleansing mission, but as bona fide new members of the community.
1906 disagrees with you.
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