albacur

I think Stripe is one of the few bad examples they could have picked to compare against FAANG. Among late-stage startups, it seems highly regarded and its employees' options are likely to hold real value in the not-so-distant future.

But generally I think the OP is correct: working for FAANG has made many, many people far more money over the past decade than they would have otherwise made on average in a startup.

I suspect that eventually the tide will turn, as it always does. The companies will get middle-manager bloat, MBAs and accountants start pinching pennies, systems get dragged down in technical debt, and more nimble competitors eventually outcompete. But we're not there yet.

Even accounting for MTA, SF’s per-capita spending remains much higher than most other US cities. DC is the only other city that is comparable.

Working from home 2-3 days a week is not what I would consider "remote work," since you'd still need to live close to the office.

From my perspective, this is worst of all possible scenarios. Employees are still shackled to an expensive city, but now they must pay for housing that supports a dedicated "home office" space (e.g., a larger apartment with an extra room, or carving out part of their living room/bedroom). This is just shifting the cost burden of real estate from the company onto the employees.

The empty Walgreen's shelves can be seen at the Walgreen's on the corner of Eddy and Van Ness Streets.

It won't be a problem much longer – that location is going to be shut down permanently.

Shoplifting has been a problem here even before Covid. Shoplifters know the law (<$950 is a misdemeanor), they know the police likely won't make an arrest, and even if they did, they know our DA likely won't prosecute.

It might require the added context of living here. San Francisco has one of the highest property crime rates in the United States [1], and Walgreens is a popular target of shoplifters, who regularly clear out entire shelves of merchandise. The company hasn't come out and said it, but some believe that rampant shoplifting is a reason why eight Walgreens locations in the city have been permanently closed [2].

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/SF-ra... [2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Rampa...

I'm excited by the idea of permanent remote work and moving somewhere more affordable. I moved to SF relatively late in my career, and only realized afterwards that I have nowhere near enough savings to own a nice home here.

But most of my coworkers seem eager to return to the office. They miss the office environment, the perks and catered meals, and the socialization. And the managers, who subsist on meetings and in-person interaction, seem even more anxious to get everyone back to their desks. The powers-that-be probably have personal motivations for keeping everyone here as well (e.g., many millions of dollars tied up in their homes, which could lose significant value if the housing market deflates).

All this is to say, I'm skeptical that workers won't be called back into the office as soon as leadership gets the chance.

At least in San Francisco Bay Area, which has one of the worst housing markets in the country, it would be a net win.

For some people who've lived here a while and bought a house for cheap or have rent control, they're making money hand over fist.

But for the rest of us, a huge portion of our paychecks goes to landlords or paying a mortgage. It would be much more reasonable in almost any other US suburb and most US cities.

Do companies you've worked for in the past normally approach you about promotions?

Maybe it's because I'm shy or bad at self-promotion, but I've never had an employer offer a promotion. Even after getting great performance reviews, I've had to fight tooth and nail or go through a promotion committee song and dance that can drag on for months or years.

Freaks & Geeks: 1 season, amazing. Ditto UK The Office.

Do I have news for you...

I'd also include Los Angeles (Getty and LACMA), Chicago (Art Institute), and Boston (MFA, beating SF by default because it doesn't even really compete in this category).

I'll give you the Michelin star restaurants, but cheap or mid-range restaurants are disappointing (understandable given the astronomical cost to open and maintain a restaurant here), the bars and nightlife are similar to what you'll find in other cities, and museums in DC, Chicago, and LA blow SF out of the water.

SF has does high-end, expensive, Michelin star restaurants well. But affordable and mid-range restaurants, bars, and museums in SF are at best on par with what you'll find in other cities.

It's where the most tech jobs are, it's where the VC money is, and if you're in your early twenties and straight out of college, it beats living in a bedroom community on the peninsula.

I've been wrestling with the idea of moving. If I do, I know it will be extremely difficult to convince myself to ever move back. I haven't found this city a desirable place to live for several years now, I'm priced out of the peninsula, and life's too short to spend hours commuting every day from the East Bay.

compared to most everyone else I seem to have failed life

Please realize how offensive and insulting this is.

You were hired by one of the most successful tech companies, which most people could never aspire to. You claim that Amazon pays you 80% of what (you assume) Facebook or Google would pay you, which puts you financially ahead of the vast majority of people. By calling yourself a failure, you’re calling nearly everyone on Earth an even bigger failure, which is offensive and makes you look extremely entitled and detached from reality.

Don’t know why people say this.

It’s because you come off in your posts as entitled, obsessive, elitist, insensitive, and bitter. These are the only sideS of yourself that you convey here, so that’s why people assume you’re failing your behavioral interviews.

Sorry again if I’m being harsh, but you’ve been posting the same stuff here for months, and every discussion gets derailed by people consoling you or advising you, which you invariably reject. Let’s stop going in circles.

You pop up in every post about Google or Facebook and make the conversation about yourself, wallowing in self pity because you didn't land a job there straight out of college. This might sound harsh, but you need to get over it and move on.

I realize the big tech companies aren’t perfect.

But it’s weird to me that when tech is one of the few bright spots of the U.S. economy in our lifetimes, and one of the few industries offering a large swath of employees a path to the middle class and upper-middle class that only previous generations could aspire to, and there are so many people hell bent on capping it at its knees.

Startups do have advantages: they can give early employees a bigger piece of the equity pie than FAANG ever could, and provide a gamble on becoming much wealthier than employees could become working at FAANG. They can also give employees more overall product impact, more autonomy, and better growth opportunities.

If you, as a founder, don’t want to give up equity, who’s fault is that? You’re expecting employees to work for a pittance of what they can make elsewhere and take on the risk without upside.

If employees are look at your business and decide the probability of their equity being worth anything is too low, who’s fault is that? You’re trying to dupe them into taking a bad deal, or failing to communicate the opportunity.

If your company cannot scale to provide market-rate salaries, whose fault is that? You’re expecting your employees to give up their salaries and their financial security to subsidize a non-competitive lifestyle business that suits you, not them. You’d better figure out some incentive where that equation makes sense.

It’s not a class issue. It’s not a race issue. It’s a “the Bay Area is not putting anyone short of convicted murderers in prison right now” issue.

You’re trying to make this into a race issue, when that’s not really the case here.

The justice system in San Francisco bends over backwards to keep criminals of all races, classes, and backgrounds out of prison, and especially so with Covid-19.

Some people always take the path towards “more.” It doesn’t matter how much they’ve got, if they can find an opportunity for more they’ll take it.

It makes it acceptable to defend yourself. If you want claim the president shouldn't have sole authority to ban foreign companies or products, that's fair. And I don't know that he actually has that power, it could all be bluster. I mean, he also said he would make Mexico pay for a border wall.

The Constitution applies to independent foreign enterprises and state-owned enterprises that aren't under direct control of the state.

The Constitution does not apply if a foreign government "exerts sufficient control over [the enterprise] to make it an agent of the State." I don't know if it can be argued that ByteDance falls in this category, but there have been many allegations that the company works closely with the CCP to provide surveillance and disseminate propaganda on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

There actually is a guarantee by the Supreme Court that SAP, Volkswagen, and Sony are entitled to due process, because they are independent entities that don't operate as extensions of a foreign government.

The same is might be true of ByteDance as well. It's not actually clear that Trump has the authority to ban TikTok. It could just be more bluster.

It's not clear that he actually has this power. He's known to misstate things.

Also, according to the Supreme Court, SAP, Volkswagen, and Sony are entitled to due process under our Constitution. Courts make a distinction between (1) public or privately-owned enterprises, (2) state-owned enterprises that function independently of the state, and (3) state-owned enterprises that function as the alter ego of the foreign state.

Companies in the first two categories are entitled to due process under the U.S. Constitution. When it comes to China, there is a blurry line between companies and the CCP, so it's not clear where they fall here.

The pet rock was a fad.

Online companies, like brick and mortar companies, rise and fall. And even if Facebook's best days are behind it, I'm not sure we can call a business that grew for nearly 15 years and is now used by billions of people a "fad." Regardless, it generated unfathomable wealth for its founders, and made thousands of employees financially set for life.

If TikTok could capture that, it doesn't matter if it lasts five years or ten years, the people at the top will become very, very rich.

So I think both commenters above are correct: it has huge potential upside that investors are willing to gamble on, and it probably won't become the next Facebook so it might be worth it for the current owners to cash out now.

The companies may have been unblocked if they'd handed over information potentially leading to death of the protestors AND allowed the Chinese state to continue hacking their systems.

If we're not being disingenuous, that's like telling your coworker: "If you come into work today, I'll kill this bystander and rob your house," and then saying: "Hmm, I guess they decided by themselves to not to come into work today."

(And apparently, Facebook has tried multiple times since to re-enter China in one form or another, and China has either refused or quickly re-banned them: https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/25/17612162/facebook-technol...)

Wrong, Facebook was blocked in China following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots because Facebook refused to release information about Xinjiang independence activists.

In March 2009, China blocked access to Google's YouTube due to footage showing Chinese security forces beating Tibetans. Access to other Google online services was denied to users arbitrarily.

The search engine remained operational under the condition that the government could filter the search results. In January 2010, Google announced that, in response to a Chinese-originated hacking attack on them and other US tech companies, they were no longer willing to censor searches in China and would pull out of the country completely.

Also, the government didn't "block" Dragonfly. Google terminated the project after its own employees protested it and politicians criticized it.

(All the above from Wikipedia either as direct quotes or paraphrased for brevity.)

My comment wasn't specific to TikTok, but rather OP's assertion that the U.S. is a hostile actor, whereas China is just being China.

Regarding TikTok, foreign-owned companies must follow U.S. laws, which are subject to due process. Additionally, they must not pose an imminent threat to national security. For better or worse, the government tends to be tight-lipped about matters of national security and isn't compelled to divulge details to the public. Normally, this is acceptable because we trust our government to act responsibility and in our best interest. Is TikTok a legitimate threat to security? I don't know, and with Trump's tendency to make everything look like a publicity stunt, my trust in the government to use its power responsibly is not very high.

The U.S. doesn't have purely free market economy; it's regulated to prevent abuse from bad actors and it enters into trade deals to advance its strategic interests. This is true of all countries.

I have mixed feelings about TikTok, but the claim that the U.S. can't protect itself from a hostile trade partner or a security threat because it "believes in a free market economy" is utterly baseless.

Chinese policy seems to have not significantly changed in the last 5 years towards the US, but on the other hand US seemed ever more keen and eger to pursue a hostile attitude towards China.

For decades, China has blocked U.S. companies from fair competition, reneged on trade deals when it suits them, backed out of industrial partnerships after extracting the IP it deems useful, and generally been a bad trade partner.

I agree that the president shouldn't have authority to arbitrarily block a product or company (and ultimately he doesn't, he'll need broader support among elected officials), but it's absurd to suggest that the U.S. should blindly accept hostile behavior for decades on end without reacting, or else itself be labeled "hostile."