A Few Ways S.F. Tech Can Work to Be Hated Marginally Less

Over on his blog today, Anil Dash offers a few timely “Stupid Simple Things SF Techies Could Do To Stop Being Hated.” He talks about how the New York tech community has escaped similar degrees of disdain and resentment because 1. Wall Street will always be worse, and 2. in New York, tech workers have a better “ethos of community involvement.”

His first suggestion is simple, but legitimate:

First, people in tech should use their voices to push the leaders of their companies and industry to do the right thing. It is just as easy for a CEO to ask the city to accommodate affordable housing as it is for them to demand tax rebates. And if a CEO believes their employees expect this kind of request, most tech company execs will do anything to keep their engineers happy. If Google is the symbol of entitlement in San Francisco right now, Larry Page could simply and consistently amplify the voice of those already working on housing solutions and make a huge impact.

I think it’s fair to say in many cases that your boss wants to do the right thing — if even just for PR reasons — but he or she often has no idea or no time to think about this stuff. A significant part of my contribution at previous jobs has been, basically, the person who will speak up if we are about to make ourselves look like assholes. It’s always subjective but usually worth discussing either way. And if you can come up with positive things for your company to do for the community, rather than just playing defense, all the better!

This suggestion from Dash is a lot more radical, and I like it:

At a more structural level, startups which provide deluxe on-site benefits could extend their daycare, meal and on-site walk-in health care to people who have WIC or EBT cards and can show that they live in the neighborhood. The bonus here? You can meet actual people in your neighborhood. The cafeterias could charge a fair price for those extra lunches, or even better, simply talk to the people who come in to see which ones would make good employees.

I challenge anyone working at a startup to bring this idea up at their next all-hands meeting and watch your CEO try to stumble his way through responding.

Anyway, as Dash points out, these aren’t meant to be solutions. If anything to me, what’s valuable is the sentiment, and the idea of making a sincere attempt at empathy and awareness.

Photo: Heisenberg Media

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