Paying Dues is Old News
Jordana Willner
Originally published San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, March 26, 2000
THE BAY AREA's lifestyle treadmill has been running on high for a while now. But it's the greed, not the speed, that has me reaching for the off-switch.
Look around, and you see people panting gracelessly as they scramble to keep up with the local pace of upward mobility. Listen closely, and you hear their little chant of ``more money, more stocks, more house, more car, more RAM, more than the guy next to me.'' The relentless pursuit of more -- and the expectation that it is due to everyone -- is getting to be a collective obsession once again.
But the excitement of living in the Bay Area in this historic time of technological and economic boom is giving way to unease and exhaustion. New tools and toys launch daily, yet with the advances have come a disturbing upward ratcheting of salaries, living costs, and expectations.
We hear about the 64 new Silicon Valley millionaires a day, the job- hoppers who pick up an easy $25K each time they switch employers, and the endless abundance of juicy venture capital. Money, and the promise of all it can buy, has been renewed as a driving force. And while I'm a card-carrying capitalist who values a buck, I can't deny that the frantic pace has me ready to jump track.
When I first stepped on five years ago, it was at a very different tempo. I was surviving on $21,000 a year, and though I didn't like it, I thought it appropriate for my age and experience. I was six months out of college, and I had everything I had anticipated: a hard-won entry-level job, a broom closet studio apartment, and a regular paycheck. I knew the meager earnings would be temporary, that I would eventually find professional success and financial comfort. But I expected them later than sooner.
Temporary post-graduate poverty was a noble rite of passage that was neither a surprise nor a real hardship, but, in the Bay Area's high-tech industry, it no longer exists. Today, recent college grads are fielding offers that begin at $70,000 a year.
My friend, a manager of programmers at a large financial institution, recently hired a ``kid who knows absolutely nothing,'' for the mere potential he has to learn. He was asking $75,000. She scoffed, and hired him at $72K.
It's not actually the high salaries, however, that concern me. Nor do I particularly mind the SUVs, the boats, houses, interior designers, vacations or wine cellars. It's the single-minded focus on the acquisition of more, instigated largely by the knowledge that others are making it, so therefore, we're all owed. Worse, it's the nagging question of what my peers may be losing by making their fortunes so easily and what, if anything, comes after the money is made or the well runs dry.
Many of us forget, too, that not everyone is making big bucks on the current boom. But whether we are the earners or the aspirers, everyone is talking about money -- who's making it, and how to get in on the action. It is in response to this fixation on wealth that I find myself, despite having traded up to reach my current comfortable salary and managerial position, developing a revulsion to our current professional climate. Backlash, to the money-grubbing, material-acquiring, stock- option-coveting culture, is nearly upon me. And I'm not alone.
While most of my friends are caught up in the revolving earn-and-spend cycle, there appears a recent glimmer of sanity. A handful of people around me seem to recognize that, as economically and socially costly as it may be to sacrifice some opportunities, trade-offs may be necessary to preserve a little heart and humility.
When my sister finished college last May, she landed a sweet job in the financial world but quickly left for a folksy bookstore position, where she is poor but valued. One of my well-paid contract technical writers bailed for a local nonprofit company that pays him in little more than good vibes. A struggling entry-level architect I know has more roommates than he can count, a childhood friend works nights in a local shelter for adolescent girls, and even I found myself filling in bubbles on the state teaching exam last month, contemplating a trade of my hefty paycheck for some meaningful work.
Making money isn't wrong. But when my feet start to drag because my only motivation is to keep up, it's time to question who set this pace, and why it's worth maintaining. As my 20s speed by, I'd like to define myself as more than a product of my fast and greedy time. Doing so might mean trading in the car, the big apartment, the plans for early retirement, and all those sushi dinners, but pursuing something other than the pursuit of wealth might just turn out to be, in Bay Area terms, a remarkably lucrative venture.
--Jordana Willner wrote a monthly "Next Generation" column for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999, 2000, and 2001
*************************************************************
Letters to the Editor
SILICON VALLEY IS BOUND TO HIT THE SKIDS
Editor -- What a marvelous article -- congratulations on the quality and truth of its content and in the intellectual maturity Jordana Willner displayed in writing it (Sunday, March 26). I recognize that it must be difficult for writers to come up with good ideas on a daily or weekly basis, and so many of her colleagues do not succeed in that effort. So it is refreshing to read an article like hers.
Regarding the content of the article (and I am a well-educated 61-year-old with pretty sound basic values), I can only add the old truism, ``What goes around comes around.'' What she discussed in the article cannot go on forever, and the momentum behind it (Silicon Valley) will cycle down sometime in the future for two reasons. Every industry cycles, the only variables being the duration and amplitude of the cycles.
Secondly, Silicon Valley has a volatile history, and the down phase of the next cycle will definitely come. I lived in Silicon Valley when it was called Santa Clara Valley and we still had orchards lining I-280 in Santa Clara County. We still have a home in San Carlos, and my wife and I stay familiar with what is happening there.
I just hope that the next down cycle will not extensively hurt a lot of people, but it probably will. Most people have very short memories. Again, great article.
JERRY YOUNG
Truckee
____________________________________________
MAYBE IT'S TIME TO DROP OUT AGAIN
Editor -- How much I enjoyed Jordana Willner's words on a Sunday morning! I have been feeling quite the same, and my perspective is that of a 52-year-old. While I am fortunate enough to have a home and a job I enjoy on most days, I have felt lately as if I would like to sell in this crazy market, find a small cabin in the woods somewhere, and move in with my dog!
The traffic in San Mateo County, the values one overhears at work or out socially, I don't know that I want to be even a passive participant in that life. I know there are others who feel as I do.
I am always amazed, as I shop for wedding gifts that have been prechosen by registering, that couples start off with all of the best material possessions. What is there to work toward then?
Maybe I am old-fashioned? Reading Willner's perspective though was quite encouraging to me. Not only ``mature'' people (I still cannot say ``older'') share my concern about the direction in which we are allowing life to take us, sometimes without our even stopping to realize it.
Keep up the good work!
HELEN DONEUX
Redwood City
Originally published San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, March 26, 2000
THE BAY AREA's lifestyle treadmill has been running on high for a while now. But it's the greed, not the speed, that has me reaching for the off-switch.
Look around, and you see people panting gracelessly as they scramble to keep up with the local pace of upward mobility. Listen closely, and you hear their little chant of ``more money, more stocks, more house, more car, more RAM, more than the guy next to me.'' The relentless pursuit of more -- and the expectation that it is due to everyone -- is getting to be a collective obsession once again.
But the excitement of living in the Bay Area in this historic time of technological and economic boom is giving way to unease and exhaustion. New tools and toys launch daily, yet with the advances have come a disturbing upward ratcheting of salaries, living costs, and expectations.
We hear about the 64 new Silicon Valley millionaires a day, the job- hoppers who pick up an easy $25K each time they switch employers, and the endless abundance of juicy venture capital. Money, and the promise of all it can buy, has been renewed as a driving force. And while I'm a card-carrying capitalist who values a buck, I can't deny that the frantic pace has me ready to jump track.
When I first stepped on five years ago, it was at a very different tempo. I was surviving on $21,000 a year, and though I didn't like it, I thought it appropriate for my age and experience. I was six months out of college, and I had everything I had anticipated: a hard-won entry-level job, a broom closet studio apartment, and a regular paycheck. I knew the meager earnings would be temporary, that I would eventually find professional success and financial comfort. But I expected them later than sooner.
Temporary post-graduate poverty was a noble rite of passage that was neither a surprise nor a real hardship, but, in the Bay Area's high-tech industry, it no longer exists. Today, recent college grads are fielding offers that begin at $70,000 a year.
My friend, a manager of programmers at a large financial institution, recently hired a ``kid who knows absolutely nothing,'' for the mere potential he has to learn. He was asking $75,000. She scoffed, and hired him at $72K.
It's not actually the high salaries, however, that concern me. Nor do I particularly mind the SUVs, the boats, houses, interior designers, vacations or wine cellars. It's the single-minded focus on the acquisition of more, instigated largely by the knowledge that others are making it, so therefore, we're all owed. Worse, it's the nagging question of what my peers may be losing by making their fortunes so easily and what, if anything, comes after the money is made or the well runs dry.
Many of us forget, too, that not everyone is making big bucks on the current boom. But whether we are the earners or the aspirers, everyone is talking about money -- who's making it, and how to get in on the action. It is in response to this fixation on wealth that I find myself, despite having traded up to reach my current comfortable salary and managerial position, developing a revulsion to our current professional climate. Backlash, to the money-grubbing, material-acquiring, stock- option-coveting culture, is nearly upon me. And I'm not alone.
While most of my friends are caught up in the revolving earn-and-spend cycle, there appears a recent glimmer of sanity. A handful of people around me seem to recognize that, as economically and socially costly as it may be to sacrifice some opportunities, trade-offs may be necessary to preserve a little heart and humility.
When my sister finished college last May, she landed a sweet job in the financial world but quickly left for a folksy bookstore position, where she is poor but valued. One of my well-paid contract technical writers bailed for a local nonprofit company that pays him in little more than good vibes. A struggling entry-level architect I know has more roommates than he can count, a childhood friend works nights in a local shelter for adolescent girls, and even I found myself filling in bubbles on the state teaching exam last month, contemplating a trade of my hefty paycheck for some meaningful work.
Making money isn't wrong. But when my feet start to drag because my only motivation is to keep up, it's time to question who set this pace, and why it's worth maintaining. As my 20s speed by, I'd like to define myself as more than a product of my fast and greedy time. Doing so might mean trading in the car, the big apartment, the plans for early retirement, and all those sushi dinners, but pursuing something other than the pursuit of wealth might just turn out to be, in Bay Area terms, a remarkably lucrative venture.
--Jordana Willner wrote a monthly "Next Generation" column for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999, 2000, and 2001
*************************************************************
Letters to the Editor
SILICON VALLEY IS BOUND TO HIT THE SKIDS
Editor -- What a marvelous article -- congratulations on the quality and truth of its content and in the intellectual maturity Jordana Willner displayed in writing it (Sunday, March 26). I recognize that it must be difficult for writers to come up with good ideas on a daily or weekly basis, and so many of her colleagues do not succeed in that effort. So it is refreshing to read an article like hers.
Regarding the content of the article (and I am a well-educated 61-year-old with pretty sound basic values), I can only add the old truism, ``What goes around comes around.'' What she discussed in the article cannot go on forever, and the momentum behind it (Silicon Valley) will cycle down sometime in the future for two reasons. Every industry cycles, the only variables being the duration and amplitude of the cycles.
Secondly, Silicon Valley has a volatile history, and the down phase of the next cycle will definitely come. I lived in Silicon Valley when it was called Santa Clara Valley and we still had orchards lining I-280 in Santa Clara County. We still have a home in San Carlos, and my wife and I stay familiar with what is happening there.
I just hope that the next down cycle will not extensively hurt a lot of people, but it probably will. Most people have very short memories. Again, great article.
JERRY YOUNG
Truckee
____________________________________________
MAYBE IT'S TIME TO DROP OUT AGAIN
Editor -- How much I enjoyed Jordana Willner's words on a Sunday morning! I have been feeling quite the same, and my perspective is that of a 52-year-old. While I am fortunate enough to have a home and a job I enjoy on most days, I have felt lately as if I would like to sell in this crazy market, find a small cabin in the woods somewhere, and move in with my dog!
The traffic in San Mateo County, the values one overhears at work or out socially, I don't know that I want to be even a passive participant in that life. I know there are others who feel as I do.
I am always amazed, as I shop for wedding gifts that have been prechosen by registering, that couples start off with all of the best material possessions. What is there to work toward then?
Maybe I am old-fashioned? Reading Willner's perspective though was quite encouraging to me. Not only ``mature'' people (I still cannot say ``older'') share my concern about the direction in which we are allowing life to take us, sometimes without our even stopping to realize it.
Keep up the good work!
HELEN DONEUX
Redwood City
posted by jmw at 10:34 PM
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