The Bay Area caste system
&gt; California is the future of the United States, goes the oft-cited cliché. What the US is doing now, Europe will be doing in five years, goes another.<p><i>Let&#x27;s hope not.</i>  I have already stated in a different thread that I will NEVER relocate to the bay area for employment.<p>There are a lot of very apparent social problems with the bay area and most of these have to do with inflated stratification and social connectedness.<p>1. Cost of living and housing shortages there are stupid absurd.  If you make enough to live in a tiny house with a tiny yard close to work then life is good, but most people cannot afford a million dollar home.  Instead move to Fort Worth or Atlanta where you can purchase 5 homes for the same price with each being substantially larger.<p>It isn&#x27;t just houses.  EVERYTHING costs more in the bay area whether talking about fuel, food, or consumer goods.  Nothing says social stratification like where and how you live.<p>2. Political correctness and social sensitivity.  There are sensitive people in the world, but only on the west coast do they stop working to band together to send political action letters to the corporate leadership.  If I wanted to play politics I would get involved with a community political action program to make a difference.  However, I would rather program at work, since this is what I get paid for and what I actually enjoy doing with my time.<p>People overly sensitive and band together to play politics at work because it is a luxury provided by the employer and the immediate socio-economic climate.  You won&#x27;t see the contracted security guards or janitors at a major valley campus banding together to whine about a military contract.<p>Allowance of extreme sensitivity in the work place feels like a huge risk to your career.  God forbid you make a process control recommendation to improve the cleanliness of code and leave people offended and sad (probably because they suck).  When their sadness becomes a cause for complaint that becomes a management problem it is a problem that ultimately falls on somebody.  Yes, I have been through foolishness like this.  This feels like putting your career in a blender.  At least that example is work related.  This one is not: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;netflix-ceo-fires-top-executive-after-use-of-the-n-word-1529709156" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;netflix-ceo-fires-top-executive...</a><p>3. Youth.  I have been programming for a long time and have come to the conclusion that in most cases young inexperienced programmers generally suck.  Yes, I know there are brilliant exceptions, but generally speaking the youngest developers are the least disciplined, least aware of second and third order consequences, and least prepared for negative feedback.<p>As an employee you don&#x27;t get to be hostile because your code sucks and some poor soul has the unfortunate circumstance of conveying this message to you.  Yes, I have actually encountered this, and no I am not exaggerating.  This is the so called &quot;millennial&quot; behavior, but it has long existed before millennials were a group and generally doesn&#x27;t exist with older people.<p>There are age discrimination laws in the US that prevent discrimination based upon age for individuals aged 40 and higher.  This means, fortunately, it is perfectly legal to outright refuse to hire persons at any age below 40 for their age alone.  As a start up I imagine discriminating against young people would be beneficial in the rare circumstance you need fantastic code shipped immediately and you are loaded with huge piles of cash as necessary to entice experienced employees to work for your startup who would otherwise know better than to take a risk on a startup.<p>Start ups generally prefer young developers because they can be worked to death, are more risk averse, are willing to work for less pay, and (most importantly) are gullible and&#x2F;or idealistic.  Older people tend to be personally invested with things such as a family, business interests, social responsibilities, multiple employments, and various other responsibilities that the young simply don&#x27;t have, which means they aren&#x27;t giving 16 hours of work a day to your startup.  Concentrating your employment population around a seriously disproportionate youthful demographic substantially expands stratification.