What is the Dark Side of Silicon Valley? (San Jose, Santa Clara: apartments, rent)

[LexusNexus]

Interesting perspective by people who live and have lived in SV. Question to anyone who has lived and worked in Silicon Valley: What is the Dark Side of the valley from your experience?

What's the Dark Side of Silicon Valley? - Quora

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by LexusNexus

Interesting perspective by people who live and have lived in SV. Question to anyone who has lived and worked in Silicon Valley: What is the Dark Side of the valley from your experience?

What's the Dark Side of Silicon Valley? - Quora

I think the link summed it up pretty well. But the short version is:

--Housing is very expensive, especially for those who want kids, making the area very family unfriendly.
--Traffic is terrible, and mass transit inadequate.
--Too many tech people make it unbalanced---too much of the same personality type in one place.
--Relatively weak arts & culture scene for a metro area of nearly 2M people (See previous bullet point.)
--Many people are busy and their lives revolve heavily around career/work and many don't have much of a life outside of work.
--Sense of arrogance/superiority to other parts of the country, esp. among the tech crowd, although this attitude seems more prevalent in SF.
--If you don't work in tech., you feel like an outsider.

[jonlovet]

I agree with whatever is mentioned in the post. If a person wants to be part of companies who have changed the world, better stay here. Else avg person making 100k who wants good value of money and more laid back life, family time etc should leave.

The housing, renting is becoming astronomically expensive. I have observed it and there are many threads on citydata which are emphasizing the problem. That is what is mentioned in the above post.

-Jon

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by jonlovet

I agree with whatever is mentioned in the post. If a person wants to be part of companies who have changed the world, better stay here. Else avg person making 100k who wants good value of money and more laid back life, family time etc should leave.

The housing, renting is becoming astronomically expensive. I have observed it and there are many threads on citydata which are emphasizing the problem. That is what is mentioned in the above post.

-Jon

Yep. The negatives of SV have basically been the same for the last 20 years, if not longer. Nothing's changed.

[roadwarrior101]

I could definitely relate to this article. I was fortunate to have bought a condo in Mountain View in 2009-2010, so I rode a great appreciation wave. However, when it came time to look at buying a nicer house, we simply couldn't afford something nice, in a good school district. That would be in the $2-3M range, at least. Not only that, but I just don't really like the culture of the valley. As this person pointed out, its just too techy. Yeah, it may be cool working on a revolutionary product, but I don't like how tech leads the social scene (or lack thereof). We used to like walking around downtown Mountain View or Palo Alto. Those are indeed nice downtowns and there are some very good restaurants. Unfortunately, all you see are people with Google shirts, dressed like slobs. Fortunately, I'm married and my wife and I met when we lived in the city. Otherwise, I think I'd have a very hard time finding a single woman that I'd be attracted to there. People were very insular and it was very difficult to make social connections. It always felt like we had to schedule something a month in advance, at least. On top of it, it was beginning to be overrun by Indians. As a white male, I often felt like an outsider. We tried to make social connections with them, but we often found that they didn't want to interact with people other than their kind. At times, it felt that they were outwordly racist. I don't have a racist upbringing per se, but when you're surrounded by people that are rude towards you, it sort of rubs off. I felt that if I was going to stay in the valley, I'd become a bigger and bigger jerk. As someone who was born and raised in a small town with friendly people, I couldn't tolerate that.

We have a 2 year old son and another on the way. Looking at daycare costs of around $3,500/month for 2 kids, that was like another mortgage. My wife and I both have good jobs and our household income is on the high side (not astronomically so), even for the Silicon Valley. However, we felt like we were barely scraping by in the middle class.

What is amazing is that compared to my boss and his boss, we're the fortunate ones that have been able to afford to buy a place. That is amazing to me.

So, we ended up moving out several months ago to the tri-valley. I have to say that I much prefer this to the valley. People are nicer and are more interested in building relationships, vs getting rich and getting out. It feels like more of a community.

Its still a struggle, but at least here we can afford a nice house and putting two kids in daycare. The commute is long and we're still getting used to it.

I wish that I could say that we could have it all.....great house in great neighborhood, affordable and with a manageable commute. Virtually nobody I know in the area can have it all. Generally, people here have to sacrifice one or more of the above. I can see why people give up on the Bay Area entirely. We almost did last year and probably would've if it wasn't for having family nearby.

[sprtgrl22]

I find a lot of these "dark side" anecdotes to be first world, even 1%, problems. One of the Quora responses complains about the alternative minimum tax (AMT) on their Incentivized Stock Options. Geez people. And though affordable housing get's mentioned a lot, I find most complaints are along the lines of "I make $200K and can only afford a 3br house in an OK school district." But the reality is that this area isn't affordable *at all* unless you've for a good job in the tech sector.

For the basic minimum apartment (most likely a studio), with a max rent of $1000, Craigslist shows 56 results for the South Bay.

I quickly combed through them, and found most were miscategorized and were actually room shares. Out of 53, *6* were actually apartments, nearly all tiny studios, some with income limits. And three were in Hollister and one was in Gilroy.

Now doing some quick calculations, let's say you work a pretty good retail job and make $15/hour -- which is actually not a bad salary at all, about $30K/year. That's almost 3x the poverty limit for a single person, almost double the state minimum wage, and well above what is often considered "living wage."

Take home pay: $2,035.21 (no dependents, no deductions)

Rent (the phantom $1000 studio. Most likely you are sharing housing, though this is not practical for some) - $1000
Utilities ( Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowed-- this says $214 for 85 sq m, but you're gonna be living in a 400 sq ft studio, so we'll scale it down) - $150
Health insurance (I'm pulling this number from my own costs of only catastrophic coverage for a very healthy 29 year old, don't know about subsidies/deductions in other situations) - $190
Car expenses (just being realistic, a car is pretty necessary. I assumed a 20 year old Corolla, commuting 10 miles each way, since you probably won't be living that close to your work. If you'd like, a bus pass is $70, which maybe saves you $50/month.)
- insurance (absolute minimum) - $37
- gas (only to work and back) - $46
- car loan ($3000 used car, 5 years, 3% interest rate) - $45
- food (cook at home, let's assume $10/day for three square meals, which is still half the price of a McD combo meal) - $300

That leaves...$267/month for everything else (savings, student loans, cell phone, home internet, clothes, car maintenance, household and personal supplies, and god forbid you eat a $10 meal once in a while or ever want to do something besides go to work).

But this is assuming the perfect lowest cost scenario I could imagine: good credit, good health, good driving record, no debts, your car doesn't break down, you don't get sick. I imagine that $267 disappears pretty quickly in real life. And don't forget, this also assumes a pretty good hourly job and effectively unattainable rent if you want your own place. Drop the wage to $14/hour and rent ups to $1200, and poof! You're running in the red even before any bad things even happen. And this is still with no kids!

Actually, I found this, which sums it up better: Living Wage Calculator - Living Wage Calculation for San Jose city, Santa Clara County, California. They calculate a living wage for a single person to be $12, $24 with a child. So if you're a parent, you need a $49K job just to cover necessities. Many solid jobs that require college degrees do not pay that well.

The effects of the current tech boom (and also the longer-term tech boom) to the wider community's well being is pretty tragic.

[roadwarrior101]

@sprtgrl22 - If you have a kid, you need to factor in daycare costs. The cheapest I could find in the valley (and that's assuming home daycare, not a center) = about $300/week or $1,250/month. That's not even including other expenses for the kid, such as food, clothing, medical, transportation, etc. Also, a one bedroom apartment isn't very practical if you have a kid. I'm just saying that even your calculations are very much on the low side. I honestly don't even know how someone with a teacher's salary can afford it here (unless they are married to a wealthy professional).

[thetrb]

In my opinion for everyone earning less than $40k a year it would make much more sense to move out of this area into a lower-cost area. You'll probably find a similarly paying job with a much lower cost of living. Of course that's not always easily possible due to family, etc. I definitely understand that.

For everyone in tech this is just the best area to find jobs and the salaries are high enough to offset the high COL. I would not plan to retire here, though. But if you can save 20% of a 150k income every year then that will give you very good retirement savings where you can then live in a cheaper part of the country. Raising kids of course makes things harder, especially as schools are surprisingly mediocre here (for all the people with University degrees working here).

[pecanku]

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

I think the link summed it up pretty well. But the short version is:

--Housing is very expensive, especially for those who want kids, making the area very family unfriendly.
--Traffic is terrible, and mass transit inadequate.
--Too many tech people make it unbalanced---too much of the same personality type in one place.
--Relatively weak arts & culture scene for a metro area of nearly 2M people (See previous bullet point.)
--Many people are busy and their lives revolve heavily around career/work and many don't have much of a life outside of work.
--Sense of arrogance/superiority to other parts of the country, esp. among the tech crowd, although this attitude seems more prevalent in SF.
--If you don't work in tech., you feel like an outsider.

All of that is correct, but I'm looking at the last one on this list. Not having worked a hi-tech job, I don't necessarily feel like an outsider, but rather the area to be more open to non hi-tech workers.

[ccm123]

A lot of start-ups are started by engineers, who have started to develop a product, that they perceive is "disruptive technology", or the next "game changer". Some (not all) of these people have no business education, or common sense and recruit awful people (nepotism is likely involved, at least in some cases) to run these start-ups.