25 years since I started learning C++ as a kid, 14 years in industry and feeling like a disappointed old man despite still having the youthful looks to pass for a student!
This is exactly it. There's a lot of apex fallacy going on in the discussion of tech.
Most of us in tech don't have any say in the direction of the industry. Many of the rank and file workers would actually prefer to live someplace cheaper like Seattle, but it's the leadership of the tech industry (VCs, execs, etc) that have been slow to geographically diversify the industry.
There's too much blaming of all techies for the actions of the people at the top of the tech hierarchy.
"Tech bro" describes a few people at the top (think Adam Neumann or Travis Kalanick) known for their bad behavior but unfortunately is used by the media to paint the rest of the men in tech with the same negative light.
The irony is that these people don't have a strong technical role -- they are mostly founders and executives. It's the people working under them with less influence who are doing all the hands-on tech work.
The problem is that large organizations like government agencies and corporations don't want alternate opinions, except in the rare cases where they specifically have a devil's advocate position to test the validity of ideas.
Better performance isn't an argument that sways these organizations that care more about preserving the status quo than about success in their stated goals.
This is significant because it is a company that pays very well. Not because of where it stands relative to the US average.
I'd like to know what this person actually did for work. The media tends to ambiguously use terms like "tech worker" without specifying whether they are technical or non-tech employees at tech companies.
Googler not on Cloud team, but using Google Cloud Platform for an internal project. I've encountered my share of bugs and other flaws while using this platform. I think all these platforms are just too damn complex and brittle. It's easy for even a smart SWE or SRE to overlook one little thing that will bring down a bigger part of system.
Maybe many people you see are Asian foreigners (Chinese, Korean, Filipinos, etc) and you just don't realize it. I hear Chinese spoken on the streets all the time.
I had a travel plug adapter (for conversion between US/UK/EU-style) that had a bright blue LED on it to indicate power.
I don't know who thought the choice of blue was a good idea, because as a travel adapter, it would be plugged into the hotel room where the user would be sleeping. /facepalm
If I had the option to reduce my working hours by 25%, I would actually prefer to accrue the extra time as vacation, so that I can take several weeks off at once.
I've been in OP's boat, mentoring people (normal hires, not from boot camps) who couldn't be bothered to put in the effort. It was a colossal time and energy sink.
My attitude today is that you have to put in the initial effort to demonstrate that whatever I invest in training you will be paid off by your future work using that training over and over again. Otherwise it's a wasted investment.
And that attitude is basically that of the old kung fu master: First prove that you are a worthy student, then I will spend time to teach you. Yet in a modern software dev environment, it somehow becomes snobby and elitist?
Edit: I've gotten the same criticism from elsewhere, so the the parent comment (which has since been flagged) is not unique.
The data you linked is for the entire Tokyo metropolitan area. The trend is that people are moving out of rural areas and into the urban core. It would be more appropriate to look at the central part of Tokyo, the 23 wards (former city of Tokyo):
http://www.newgeography.com/content/002923-the-evolving-urba...
From 1990 to 2010 (latest year in data), the population grew 9.6%.
Not a big difference if you ask me. Yet SF prices have skyrocketed.
Tokyo may require citizenship to buy, but that doesn't mean foreigners can't rent. Rent prices in central Tokyo often start at around $1500/month, which is a lot less than that of SF bay area suburbs.
If only the naysayers of development as a solution bothered to do research on how Asian cities (esp Tokyo) develop to get ideas to apply to cities in the west.
Keep in mind that this is a survey of people of each age living during the 2010s. Not a graph of how each generation's happiness has changed as they aged.
FTFY