cwerdna
Well-known member
Off the top of my head, I hadn't heard that but there was https://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truck-in-parking-lot-2015-10. I need to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG0_KiM9Mv8 in its entirety but at 5:30, they talk about Brandon living in the back of his truck and in 2016 was making $175K/year. It's got to be the same guy.goldbrick said:My favorite story about google is how many employees live in RV's in the parking lot at the GooglePlex since they cannot afford a house locally. At least that's the story I heard from a google employee who moved to Boulder from CA due to housing prices.
Now that I think about it more, I could believe it for lower paid service workers (e.g. janitors, food service, security) who work at the Googleplex.
That said, in the Bay Area, esp. South Bay, there are a lot of homeless (for lack of a better word) people who live in RVs. The are certain areas where there are stretches of that (e.g. https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2021/12/13/new-survey-finds-hundreds-of-inhabited-rvs-parked-on-mountain-views-city-streets). I've definitely seen it in certain areas like next to Rengstorff Park (https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4022466,-122.0961358,3a,75y,112.01h,73.05t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szdriJZu-TSeksDDFDhU3Bw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192). AFAIK, many of them do have jobs but can't afford the housing here.
I believe there wasn't such a thing going on over there many years back and you can confirm that if you look at the Street View archives. Try 2011 or earlier. Even in Dec 2013, that wasn't much of that.
I used to work near a VTA (https://www.vta.org/) bus depot between 2004 and 2009 before there was a lot of happening but near the VTA depot were a couple RVs. We believed it was bus drivers living in them and that they'd go back home (much further away) on weekends/their days off.
Yes, I remember that. I was in tech during the .com boom then bust. But, some tech companies having been laying off (including mine, which has a small %... my company is partly a tech company). Many other tech companies are slowing down or freezing hiring. Certain sectors like crypto have been hit hard.goldbrick said:It's been a while but anyone who has been in the tech business a while (ok, decades.... ) remembers times when every company was laying off people and it was hard to find a job. I don't wish that on anyone but until you've been through it, it is easy to forget that good times don't always last forever.
I have had some worries and don't expect a boost in compensation this year. It seems like companies are back in the driver's seat again.
Anyway, if we want to talk about Bay Area housing, jobs, salaries, we should probably continue in an off-topic thread.
BTW, back to EVs, we do have a few ID.4s at my work. When I last did an informal count on my work's EV/PHEV registry (for plug sharing), Teslas dominate. We literally have several hundred in our registry. There's at least Rivian truck and I've seen it.
We have quite a variation in what people drive to/from work or have as cars. There was a guy who used to drive a salvage title Hyundai to work. His brother had a very old Accord with over 150K miles that he would drive from Oakland to work (about 50 miles each way) but before COVID, it got stolen from the front of his house. It was the 4th time it'd be stolen and he gave up at that point. Was missing its battery and something else. He didn't know if the car would run if he replaced the 12 volt.
Then, there's a guy w/a used Ferrari, Model 3 (I think he sold that) and Lexus RX (he sold that). Another guy had some McLaren. We have people with very loaded Model S or X. We've got at least one Taycan and e-tron GT (https://www.audiusa.com/us/web/en/models/e-tron/e-tron-gt/2022/overview.html). I know the driver of the latter.