Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

well i wouldn't wanna do anything risky

haha react

Tech executives respond to incentives, but not all incentives are financial. “Zuck wants money, he wants power, but more than anything he wants to be admired,” Tavis McGinn, who once worked at Facebook as Zuckerberg’s personal pollster, told me. “If you can affect his ability to walk into a room and command respect, that’s a real leverage point.”

how about affecting his ability to not behave like a fucking five year old.

Adam Neumann is the logical conclusion of ten years of artificially low interest rates combined with no wage or demand growth. A guy who believes he is god because he loses money renting out desks.

pretty fucked up that large banks and investment groups made up of billionaires are just shooting their shot at anything that might make money because.. they have all the money already and can't make it grow any further

https://monthlyreview.org/2016/07/01/surplus-absorption-and-waste-in-neoliberal-monopoly-capitalism/

Burn Silicon Valley to the ground and salt the earth IMO

dude, that's mean, considering it was pretty fertile agricultural land before

Okay, beat their Teslas into plowshares and set up the world's largest organic farm.

so turn it into skywalker ranch?

thx for the link, Tracer Hand

you're welcome!

Something only glancingly mentioned in the WSJ article is that one of the main things producing the record-scratch when people starting looking at the IPO was the news that WeWork were rebranding to "We", which Adam Neumann had come up with privately and then sold to the company for $6m.

Matt Levine (whose Money Stuff newsletters have been great on this) points out that theoretically this shouldn't be a problem for WeWork - if you're losing money because you're investing every penny that you have (and more) in buying new places and setting them up, and they'll start making money in six months, and then you'll plow that money (and more) into buying more places, then nervousness from investors is fine - you just stop buying new places and in six months you'll be deafened by the roar of all the money you're making, and the investors will be "Oh shit, I wish I'd invested in this six months ago". Of course, in theory you don't have an lunatic in charge.

One of the things that has, I think, happened since the WSJ article is that the corporate structure and super-share stuff has been reworked, so the total control that Neumann has will at least die with him, and there will be (some, limited) oversight. Which might be one of the signs of the end of the age of the 'unicorn', tech companies that have all of the mini-fiefdom aspects of privately held companies and all of the barrels of cash of public companies.

Actually here's a link to Levine's latest column - the story at the top about Overstock is nuts but far too long to quote here.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-19/overstock-has-had-a-wild-week

Good to know there are people still living in Pynchon-esque worlds of their own creation

THE GOOGLE WORKERS AT HCL HAVE WON THEIR UNION!!! WELCOME TO THE UNITED STEELWORKERS!!!!!

— lindsey disler (@lindseydisler) September 24, 2019

Meanwhile...

Wow. Media measurement giant Comscore and its former CEO have been charged with fraud by the SEC. https://t.co/L4LoB1Q7yw

— Alex Weprin (@alexweprin) September 24, 2019

WeWork is shutting down ALL of their “honesty markets”—self-service snack kiosks—due to excessive theft, according to a WeWork staffer pic.twitter.com/6ciUwwprKp

— Madeleine Varner (@tenuous) September 24, 2019

Business Insider not pulling any punches: https://www.businessinsider.com/firing-adam-neumann-wont-solve-flaws-in-wework-business-model-2019-9?r=US&IR=T

excerpt from uncanny valley in the new yorker this week. i've heard great things about the book (out in a couple of months). this piece rang very true for me.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/four-years-in-startups

Now that the IPO's off the table and all the big dogs who were set to rake in their share of the loot when WeWork went public have absorbed the idea that the WeWork money spigot is turned off, Business Insider is freed to produce a hard-hitting critical article that points out many adverse facts that have been known for a long time. /deepcynicism

caek yeah it's a good piece. her abstraction of well-known players feels a little gimmicky at first but then really works to emphasize the surreal aspects of life inside the bubble.

what's the company that Noah gets fired from? (in the article)

Hey y'all, whatcha think about "subscription housing"/"housing subscription"?

https://hoodline.com/2019/09/new-church-market-building-to-become-part-of-short-term-housing-subscription-scheme

Ah, found it. Mixpanel.

xp -Tech bros are working hard to make San Francisco the most boring possible dystopia.

subscription housing, isn't that called a lease

Inventing extended stay hotels

a box of housing delivered to your door monthly

get in the box!

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/wework-and-counterfeit-capitalism

Inventing extended stay hotels

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Saturday, September 28, 2019 5:34 PM (three days ago)

exactly -- and the thing is, (as the article mentions) the tenants have to stay at least 30 days or otherwise it is considered a "hotel" which has different zoning classifications and restrictions (and somewhat different building/fire codes) -- basically they are complying with the letter of the law and saying fuck you to the spirit of the law (which is equivalent to what the tech bros did in the late 90s vis a vis live/work housing, and now there is basically no new live/work housing in San Francisco).

I currently work out of a WeWork lol (the co. I am working for part time is, for now, based here)

did you take all the snacks?

lol at thinking people weren't going to take all the snacks and not pay for them

I got here right before they got rid of the free snacks, though there are still a few Perriers and La Croixs left

oh and also still free coffee, craft beer and cider on tap

what flavor(s)?

even the ex-ceo took the snacks hundreds of millions of dollars

i was consulting at a ratings agency for the second time recently and noticed that they no longer had free vending machines. People used to annoyingly hoard the seltzer water in their desk which was annoying... but they had to start charging 25 cents because the CEO saw someone taking a duffle bag of cans home. My friend who is at a very, very well paying firm that has catered lunches was saying they recently stopped having fruit plates because people kept taking the entire platter to take home???

ps. the 25 charge caused soda restock orders for the firm to go down like 60%.

well yeah. who has quarters?

1. warm seltzer is gross
2. a duffel of soda cans is heavy
3. time spent waiting for your chip card to clear = more than a quarter

Though I dunno about anyone expecting anything else to happen with the catering trays at the end of the day. I’d be rolling up with fresh ziplocs in my bag every day just to mooch off that produce

My office has a lot of free snacks and I have definitely done the snacks-for-lunch thing numerous times, more because I don't feel like leaving the office for one of the mediocre options around here than to save money. The extra productivity they get on account of me staying at my desk me may even pay for the snacks.

No, they were taking all the fruit before lunch so no one else was able to have fruit. I got daily updates about this. Also ice machine.

it was happening very recently at a private equity firm owned by someone who also owns a sports team that rhymes with Retroit Winstons.

Yerac, why do you always end up working at places that seem vaguely Coen Bros / Mike Judge

It's because I am very bored and observant and live for this shit.

Fruit platter is such a weird thing to steal -- they go bad really fast and it's more fruit than a small family can eat in a day.

Freeze that shit for smoothies.