I have issues with Seattle, especially the city counsil, and prefer the smaller towns that surround it, but a few of your items are outright falsehoods.
>> - Tokyo offers people nice 1BR apartments for roughly $900-1000 a month, because they are pro-development. that same apartment costs me $2k a month in Seattle
Seattle is doing it's best to accommodate growth. Estimates now peg 1,000 people moving to Seattle each week[1], which is not easy to absorb for a city of 700,000. Seattle has had the most construction cranes in America, each month since July 2016[2] to try to cope with growth.
>> - spending by the city of Seattle has doubled over the last few years, but the population did not double. this means that taxes will eventually be raised to fill the gap. I'm not my brother's keeper, so I'm moving to another low-tax state.
Agreed, Seattle city high earners tax is stupid, but it's being taken to the state Supreme Court where it's widely expected to be tossed out as the Washington State constitution prevents any income tax.
>> - the city has done next to nothing to remove restrictions on the heights of new buildings downtown. it also has made it nearly impossible to do mixed-use arrangements inside towers.
Which area of Seattle are you referring to? There are several skyscrapers being built currently downtown.
>> - taxes on ridesharing? why?! if you want to get rid of cars, as I do, hurting ridesharing won't get you there.
I wasn't able to find any reference to this. Do you have one? Seattle is attempting to push cars out by increasing car tab fees and the cost of parking, which appears to be working with y/y ridership up 12% [3]
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My point is only, Seattle city council has a lot of problems, like most do across America, so there is no reason to manufacture ones that don't exist. As someone who has grown up in the area, I'm glad they are taking some action (unlike somewhere like SF) to accommodate the sudden growth of high wage earners, even if they aren't perfect.
The interesting part is how this contradicts what Elon's original stated goal of the company was.
I am a Musk believer, and when he started Tesla he stated his goal wasn't to be a major car manufacturer but to be a proof of concept to push the major players into the space. He demonstrated this by the open sourcing of EV patents.
Tying compensation to cap value of Tesla means that he no longer believes the major players will adapt (although there is strong evidence that his original plan has worked and the other manufacturers are making much larger investments in EV), or that the auto's segment will grow as a whole so significantly, that Telsa, as a minority player, will still be able to reach a 10x size over the next decade.
With so many companies offering employees public transportation passes for commuting, I'd love to see Lyft/Uber create the ability for employers to offer free/reduced fare office commutes (within a determined range). AFAIK the only option they have is to give blanket monthly credits.
My girlfriend is starting a PhD at UCSF, and if they have to commute between 11pm and 6am the school will pay for the Uber/Lyft ride up to a certain amount. I'm not sure how it's facilitated but it's a good idea for sure.
"Almost immediately, they found that they could debunk the time-worn idea that anonymity leads to abuse. Although anonymous comments are "six times more likely to be an attack,"
Hmm, that actually DOES seem to support the idea the anonymity fosters abuse...
I think the net of it is: anonymity encourages some people to be abusive, but enough people are abusive under their real names that you can't say anonymity is the primary factor behind abuse.
Whether curbing anonymity is a necessary component of fighting abuse and/or worth it becomes a further question.
Out of the total corpus of people, there are some who would be abusive if anonymous, however they have enough 'social awareness' to not behave that way when real names are used.
However, there are another subset of this group who lacks the social awareness to curb their abusive behavior even though they are using their real names.
By enforcing a "no anonymity" policy, you filter out the first group effectively but wind up increasing the percentage make-up that the second group has in the overall community.
The study doesn't even address the question of how much real names help. No one uses their real name on Wikipedia. It is just comparing edits from logged in users with edits from people who aren't logged in (sometimes called "IPs" since their IP address is recorded). Also, some abuse from logged in users comes from sock puppet accounts.
It has died down a bit in recent years, but the idea that anonymity causes abuse is widely circulated in gaming circles because of this popular Penny Arcade comic: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
A question that always comes to my mind is that are we better off if we don't allow or cannot be abusive/intolerant/nsfw. If people do it when they are anonymous, it's still inside them, even if they can't say things. Maybe it's better for the society if there are places where they can satisfy their urges.
Housing would make a difference in high cost-of-living areas, such as SF, but the others are probably rounding errors with what is, after all, fairly high salaries.
- Out with flat org structure based purely on meritocracy, in with supervisors and middle managers. This has ticked off many people in the old guard.
- Its once famous remote-employee culture has been rolled back. Senior managers are no longer allowed to live afar and must report to the office. This was one reason why some senior execs departed or were asked to leave, one person close to the company told us.
- GitHub has hit "hypergrowth," growing from about 300 to nearly 500 employees in less than a year, with over 70 people joining last quarter alone.
I don't know what employers you interact with that believe a prospective employee should take a sub-market pay in exchange for the privilege to work at their company, but it's terrible.
There have been many good articles on HN about salary negotiation, setting freelance rate, and seeing through the "one day you'll be a billionaire because of these options if you work for almost-free" and the kind of nonsense your touting does nothing but set the conversation back.
There are more than a few cases where working for below market rate can be something other than "terrible" on the part of the employer.
Non-profits are the obvious example where the business typically just can't afford to pay market, but employees accept sub-market pay because they place value on the opportunity to (hopefully) help others.
Companies that offer extraordinary benefits to the employee that may or may not have direct cash value and are often not included when applicants consider "total compensation". Training and learning opportunities are an example of this. Short term loss as investment towards long term gain.
> I said that most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job.
Sure, and most employees would love to have an employer who isn't trying to pay them the minimum possible. The idea that it's a bad sign for employees to try to maximize their salaries while it's okay for employers to try to minimize them is an absurd double-standard.
> I said that most employers would love to have employees where the salary is not the first (or even top 3) factors in their decision to take a job.
In any publicly traded company, this is an unacceptable viewpoint.
How is it in any way reasonable for an employer (who has a fiduciary responsibility to return maximum value for its shareholders) to take this stance and then admonish their at-will employees for it?
Not sure where you're seeing that. Many prominent Republicans have endorsed Trump, but then denounce comment after comment Trump makes, without ever removing their endorsement of the candidate out of loyalty to the party.
The "problem" for Republicans is that at least 1 and possibly up to 3 supreme court seats are opening up within the 4 years. Presidents come and go, congressional majorities ebb and flow, but if the Democrats get to seat 3 new justices then they might lose the Supreme Court for a generation, and the Republicans care a lot about the supreme court. So the question is not who will be the better president, but who will select the the 'better' supreme court candidates.
They might disagree with him on many things, but I don't think they think he's outright unfit. It seems to me that they still sincerely think he's the best choice when the other one is Clinton.
In any case, it's the electorate that really matters, not the leadership. I don't see any prospective voters afraid to speak their mind. Trump supporters among the general population all seem to be completely sincere. Trump opposers are unafraid to declare it.
> "He needs someone highly experienced and very knowledgeable because it's pretty obvious he doesn't know a lot about the issues," McConnell said of a running mate for the mogul.
He doesn't say he is "unfit" because he can't -- How can you not think a comment like that from McConnell is pretty damning of Trump's abilities?
You are coming close to claiming that vocal people are the ones that are vocal. How much of the electorate has not said anything to reveal their position (and how important are they when it comes to the election)?
In past elections, you'd always have people saying they were undecided and that they liked this aspect of Candidate A but that aspect of Candidate B, or similar.
I'm not hearing that this time around, except for people who are basically saying "I can't believe I have to choose between these two, I think I'll just stay home and get drunk on election day instead."
Perhaps this is just a reflection of my memory or my media consumption. But that's why I started my comment off with an explicit disclaimer that it's just about what I've seen.
>> - Tokyo offers people nice 1BR apartments for roughly $900-1000 a month, because they are pro-development. that same apartment costs me $2k a month in Seattle
Seattle is doing it's best to accommodate growth. Estimates now peg 1,000 people moving to Seattle each week[1], which is not easy to absorb for a city of 700,000. Seattle has had the most construction cranes in America, each month since July 2016[2] to try to cope with growth.
>> - spending by the city of Seattle has doubled over the last few years, but the population did not double. this means that taxes will eventually be raised to fill the gap. I'm not my brother's keeper, so I'm moving to another low-tax state.
Agreed, Seattle city high earners tax is stupid, but it's being taken to the state Supreme Court where it's widely expected to be tossed out as the Washington State constitution prevents any income tax.
>> - the city has done next to nothing to remove restrictions on the heights of new buildings downtown. it also has made it nearly impossible to do mixed-use arrangements inside towers.
Which area of Seattle are you referring to? There are several skyscrapers being built currently downtown.
>> - taxes on ridesharing? why?! if you want to get rid of cars, as I do, hurting ridesharing won't get you there.
I wasn't able to find any reference to this. Do you have one? Seattle is attempting to push cars out by increasing car tab fees and the cost of parking, which appears to be working with y/y ridership up 12% [3]
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My point is only, Seattle city council has a lot of problems, like most do across America, so there is no reason to manufacture ones that don't exist. As someone who has grown up in the area, I'm glad they are taking some action (unlike somewhere like SF) to accommodate the sudden growth of high wage earners, even if they aren't perfect.
[1] https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/03/27/25043201/more-th...
[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/fewer-cran...
[3] https://patch.com/washington/seattle/sound-transit-ridership...