That’s a very good point.
Most of the resent tech resentment, or at least anti-tech-employee activism, has been directed at the relatively low level employees riding the Google bus or renting condos. I’m pretty confident most of them earn less than, say, a Muni driver.
On the other hand, the actually wealthy tech employees (managers, lawyers, marketing and sales) don’t ride the busses or rent apartments as cheap as $3000/month, so everybody loves them.
OK, I should say “vast vast majority in terms of revenue and employee base” considering it was Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and a long slew of others…
Who needs art experts! 
Average base pay of a Google engineer: $128,000. Average base pay for a Muni operator: roughly $60,000. Obviously not all Google employees are engineers, but…
Somebody already mentioned it above me, but I’m guessing that most Google employees who are renting condos are not making less than a Muni driver. Because if that was the case, said Google employees wouldn’t be outbidding, say, Muni drivers on rents (which is a big part of the problem in SF right now).
I was only pointing out that in this specific case, it’s not really a case of “Techie Hate” (or if it is, it’s misplaced, since he is not a techie). While techies have definitely contributed to the housing issues in SF (simply by creating demand), I don’t think too many of the Google techies that are taking the Google Bus to work are buying up multi-unit buildings and evicting tenants.
Being a techie that makes decent money (close to starting at my company, which is one of the big three services companies) and isn’t an asshole, I pretty much roll incognito online most of the time, as well as IRL. I’m not going to pretend that especially in the Bay area there isn’t some legitimate complaints being levied, but it sure sucks getting lumped into the hate train for just having a job. 
The average Muni driver takes home a LOT more that $60k. That’s a base number from four years ago, before overtime and bonuses, while I’m guessing the Google number includes bonus and RSUs.
In 2011, the average Muni driver took home over $100k.
This is not about tech workers. This is about people who want to work and make a living and are not able to because of a broken, dysfunctional, and unequal economy. I know guys at big tech and nontech firms that talk just like this. They don’t get it because they are insular elitists. It would be in their interests to understand and do something to help the majority of the population who are broke for no fault of their own. It is time for people that are comfortable to get out of their ivory towers and meet they’re neighbors who they otherwise ignore and discount.
Your story says >$101,000 in salary and benefits. I’m not so sure of that either given the huge discrepancy between the median as reported in that story and the median as reported…anywhere else.
Unless it’s also counting average overtime pay.
Seems more like $60k median salary. A nice middle class paycheck with some nice benefits.
I have to say that $60k number doesn’t match my experience of public employee compensation in California. However, I’d like to return to my earlier point. Why do the entry-level tech engineers get the hate, while everybody loves the actually wealthy tech employees like managers, lawyers, sales and marketing, etc?
Dunno, man, I’m an entry-level tech engineer. We don’t seem to get as much hate on the east coast.
I’m not so sure that’s really the case either, though. Do people really love sales and marketing (AKA “the thieves and the liars”)? Do people really love lawyers?
I see people complaining all the time that everyone hates rich folks. I don’t think that’s true, but I think you may be exaggerating the love a little bit.
As far as $60,000 not matching your experience, what is that experience? $60,000 per year median is consistent with bus driver salaries in other metro areas scaled for cost of living. They make about the same amount in Boston which has comparable cost of living to SF, for example (Boston has a similar reputation for overpaying their unionized public employees as well).
In the past year there have been so many bigoted, tech-worker-hating, reactionary screeds failing to understand or address the larger and decades-long dysfunction and gridlock caused by San Francisco’s and the greater Bay Area’s failure to plan and manage growth and housing.
This piece by Kim-Mai Cutler published yesterday on TechCrunch succeeds in going much deeper, past the snark and demonization, to reveal the true complexities of the predicament we’re in. It puts to shame not only the divisive and politicized bus and tech-worker harassers, but also the many superficial and clickbaiting “journalists” who’ve done such an incredibly poor job shedding light on this situation.
How Burrowing Owls Lead To Vomiting Anarchists (Or SF’s Housing Crisis Explained)
If you’re truly interested in understanding this, this long but very well-written piece is a great place to start.
problem is, cities have a lot of rentals so they can house an itinerant and fluid workforce, not become suburbs.
This has been going on forever, in NYC the urban middle class see themselves as a “protected class” deserving of having their rent stabilized apt AND their weekend house, anything else is barbaric! Here’s a article I clipped from 1998, the bottom of the last RE market, about complaints they can’t find Manhattan apartments at the price they want. What happened next? BROOKLYN EXPLODED!!!
People in San Francisco seem to love the actually wealthy people who live in Pacific Heights, The Marina, etc. A lot of them got their wealth from tech.
Entry level engineers aren’t flocking to the Mission only because it’s trendy. They’re going there because it’s one of the few parts of SF they can afford that offers a reasonable quality of life.
As far as public employees, the Mercury News has a database of public employee salaries. In 2012, 7864 City employees earned a six figure base salary, before overtime, and not including benefits. I doubt there are more Google employees than that living in SF.
So I’m frustrated by so many people who are aware of these facts, that seem utterly clueless about how to affect positive change.
The only currency is POWER. That is it. Money is a form of power, but not the only form.
If people got off their asses and put people-power to work, they could get tech firms to make positive investments in the communities in which their employees live.
Awww. Your naïveté is so cute.
which trilogy?
That’s the average base pay of a Google engineer compared to the cost of all income and benefits of a Muni driver. Start adding in Google’s extremely generous benefits, and the gap gets even bigger.
the problem is not techies.
I think it’s fairer to say the techies (the rich) aren’t the only source of the problem. But, otherwise your post sounds pretty solid to me.
William Gibson’s Bridge trilogy
Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties.
