Cam Ysidron

@CamYsidron

Engineer & startup enthusiast (among other things..)

San Francisco, CA

Joined November 2021

198 Following

50 Followers

49 Posts

CamYsidron retweeted

evan conrad

@evanjconrad

about 2 years ago

I've lived in SF for about 7 years. Growing up, I had horribly severe panic disorder; I had panic attacks nearly every day. Much like the folks you see on the street, I would wander around in the middle of the night, grabbing parts of my body and talking to myself. Because of that, I bombed every class in school, and so picked up programming as like "here's the job you can do even if you're an insane person". I got into building products because no one would hire me for an internship because my grades were bad, and so my housemates and I started making products we could sell to people. Originally, I came to SF to work at startup. As far as I can tell, the reason that startup was there, and why the tech industry broadly was in San Francisco (instead of down in south bay), was because it was explicitly invited to be here. After the 2008 financial crisis, the city's bank account was in shambles (much like it is today), and so mayor Ed Lee proposed the mid market tax exemption, which encouraged tech companies to move up to SF, and then they could collect taxes on them and their employees. What they did not do, was build housing for the new tech workers they were encouraging to move to SF. And so, as a new grad following economic forces, I moved to SF. I packed into a house with a bunch other people, because no one bothered to build anything new. And for years, there was "tech shame". When you moved to SF as a new grad, you suddenly inserted yourself into a political fight you didn't realize you were a part of. Despite the city explicitly inviting the tech industry, it viewed all it's new immigrants with contempt. So, as a new grad, you're told you're the rich bad guy. Often you're told this by folks far, far wealthier than you are (ie, folks like Dean Preston). But nonetheless, I loved SF. Within the little bubble, it was the first place where I felt at home. Everyone was optimistic; people wanted to hear about your project and would encourage you to do it. No one cared if you were weird, so having panic attacks was okay. SF's tech bubble is a home for the neurodivergent. I suspect a lot of the conflict from tech culture and the outside culture comes from outsiders encountering not-masked neurodivergence for the first time. For example, when journalists look to pick on people in the tech industry, they always pick the most neurodivergent people to hate on. Then the pandemic hit and all the folks who were sick of it, who were only there for work, started to ask why they should stay in the city that refused to build housing for them and them blamed them for their very existence. But the folks that stayed were all the people who, despite everything, LOVED San Francisco. They were all the people who were ready to double down. You had to be if you rode out the pandemic here. And so when the city started to open up a bit, all those people were the folks who started promoting the city, throwing events, and building things together. Then, a bunch of new people started moving here. And this time, it's by choice. Many of the previous big cos downtown all went remote. All the new people aren't moving here because they have to, they're moving here because they want to. The tech bubble of the past was a lot of transients. The tech bubble of today are folks who are double-down-on-san-francisco. This bubble has been inspected and reported upon by outsiders, and they've come to the conclusion that this new flock of folks will save the city, it's downtown, and it's finances. It's probably right. Our company is growing, all my friends companies are growing. We're all hiring, moving into bigger offices, and we're coming for those buildings downtown. The technologists of today will do what technologists of the past have done: invent the future and fill sky scrapers. San Francisco, through the intense love of a small group of technologists who weathered the pandemic, is getting another shot at recovery. It should try hard to not, once again, kill the golden goose. And that starts with not letting insane people smash our windows or harass our community. It also means building enough housing for all these new people, so rent prices don't go up. Don't build "1,000" units, build 200,000 units! Drop rent to the floor! For a long time, our community was told it's the bad guy, and so it shied away from engaging in local politics. I think it's time to stop pretending like that's the case. Immigrants aren't baddies. San Francisco gets to be your home too.