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I feel what you're saying, and that definitely is something that happens. Especially for people who move for the job, it's very easy to keep oneself separate from the community. But making it illegal to feed your employees is a very stupid, very authoritarian way of dealing with it that feels like a terrible idea. I don't want to be told where to shop, ever, for any reason, and I dislike that these local governments are trying to force people to spend money at specific places over others. It would be difficult to describe this as any part of a free economy, and if I were starting one of these startups it would be a bad indicator for what might happen in the future and I would be extremely reluctant to set up shop in the town. What if the next move is even more egregious? Can't risk it man.

I see these types of comments, and I have a really hard time viewing them as anything but pretty entitled.

I mean, yeah, it's unfortunate for those who won't get free lunches anymore (I'm currently part of the group that does, although I'm not in the bay area) but it's not like you deserve free food as a perk any more than any other random worker. If it were my company inflicting the decision on me after a record earnings call, yeah, I'd probably be pretty pissed off. But a city trying to make sure a corporation in a public, mixed use space doesn't insulate itself too much from the surrounding economy? There are pretty obviously people who benefit and people who are harmed, but it's not like this is the end of the world, those employees just aren't getting a benefit 99% of other employees in the world don't get either.

Why don't you deserve the free food more? It's a job benefit that the company provides to entice talent (and yeah to keep people at their desks). Do you not deserve the high pay as well any more than any other random worker?

No. I can tell you that most minimum wage workers are working far, far, far harder than most of the people in this board, myself included.

How much revenue is a minimum wage worker generating? There is your answer.

The answer to that is it doesn't matter.

And some of them were working in those private cafeterias. Not anymore, though; restaurateurs profits are more important.

Private corporations on private property should be able to make private contracts with employee as they see fit, without government interference.

If the private corporation didn't like the conditions of the city zoning and development laws, they could build their office elsewhere.

Or instead we could vote these politicians out of office.

There are more techies moving to the bay area every day. Sooner or later those numbers add up and we've got ourselves a real voting bloc.

So many of them are H1B workers, they don't even vote.

These were the politicians that techies voted into office. The politicians that techies voted out of office opposed all development whatsoever - they were the folks that opposed the San Antonio Center development as a whole, and that blocked the North Bayshore redevelopment for over a decade until Googlers actually did form a voting bloc and voted the supervisors opposed to redevelopment out en-masse.

There are a surprising number of tech employees who actually do favor smart urbanization, community engagement, and mixed-use developments instead of holing themselves up in their employers and writing code. Tech (and particular Big Tech) has become a lot more extroverted than the days when it was kids who got bullied at recess because they spent all day playing with computers rather than learning social skills. (And IMHO, this is one reason why the industry has become less innovative lately - there are fewer programmers willing to hole themselves up with a computer for years until they solve a hard technical problem, and fewer managers willing to sponsor that kind of work. The Erlich Bachmans are outnumbering the Richard Hendricks.)

Indeed.

As bad as the current supervisors are, the former ones were a hundred times worse as they opposed ALL development.

And because of the changing demographics of the city, the worse politicians were voted out. Which basically proves my point.

And as demographics continue to change, the political power of this voting Bloc will continue to improve as well.

Maybe in another decade this increase in voting power will allow us to vote in politicians who are actually decent, as opposed to merely being less horrible than previous ones.

Yes, techie voting power has fought off the worst of the problems, but we can still continue to improve.

If you build an office in the middle of a city, sometimes you need to be part of the city... The employees can always bring a lunch to work if they don't want to spend money going out to restaurants. Yes, it would suck if you expected free food and got stuck at this FB office. But, it would also suck if Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale became full of offices and private cafeterias and lost all essence of a "downtown". I mean Palo Alto is already full of Palantir buildings.

> But, it would also suck if Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale became full of offices and private cafeterias and lost all essence of a "downtown". I mean Palo Alto is already full of Palantir buildings.

As an outsider who never lived in the US, I think they are already well beyond saving. At least this isn't my idea of a "downtown". It's not like you can somehow rekindle social diversity in those cities at this point. Outside of tech workers, almost nobody can afford living there. I believe most of these restaurant employees wouldn't mind working at a private cafeteria instead.

Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale residents start frothing at the mouth when development threatens to make any part of their city look like a downtown. They are deeply committed to preventing any hint of such a thing. At most, they want a 1950s small-town Main St.

San Antonio Center is very much starting to look like a downtown, complete with the dense apartment blocks over street-level retail, underground parking garages, 11-story apartment buildings, and pedestrian-only alleyways. It's still sort of a hybrid development, because the Walmart side of the block hasn't been redeveloped yet and features a giant parking lot and all around them are tiny 1950s-style strip malls and small apartment complexes that literally were built in the 60s, but you can see in both the zoning codes and satellite photos of the area redeveloped that they were going for a real city in density & usage.

I remember thinking, when initial development started around 2010/2011 and all the news was about traffic on 101 and Google shuttle buses making life hell in the Mission, that it looked like the solution was to bring the City to Mountain View rather than bring all the workers from the City.

They get away with this because the area was basically barren strip mall & parking lot before redevelopment - it was the old Sears store, plus Shockley Semiconductor (which I think had been turned into a small grocer that nobody except tech tourists visited), plus a few other old-economy retailers that were going bankrupt. There weren't actually any neighbors to get mad, plus I doubt they'd shed a tear.

> The problem MV's fixing is the perception

That's a lot of regulation to fix a perception. If this doesn't work, will they mandate friendship between employees and others in town?

> connected by pedestrian thoroughfares to the office space that Facebook is about to rent

Why is the city building large office space like this if desires strong interaction between people in town? Even corporate campuses in middle America build cafeterias once the office space is big enough. Food, gyms, etc. just make sense as something to make easily accessible -- nothing new here. What did the city think would happen?

If there's a market for people to dine out, you open a restaurant. If there's a market for people to dine in, you open a delivery kitchen or a catering company. Why does a particular set of dining out behavior need to get preserved? (And when did Chili's become a beacon of community preservation?)

> The whole point is to fix all the problems with tech insularity and wealth polarization that everyone complains about here.

It's not at all clear how forcing some software engineers to eat out for lunch will magically fix insularity or wealth polarization. Saying "hello" and "thank you" to a server at a restaurant is supposed to somehow make tech workers feel more in touch with their community (and I don't even know who decided tech workers, and they alone, are out of touch). Also have you been to Castro Street at weekday lunchtime? Free food or not, those restaurants are jam-packed.

> OTOH, the cynic in me says that it won't actually do a damn thing about this, and that tech workers will stand around talking to each other and ignoring the locals in line for Veggie Grill

You seem to be making a distinction between "tech workers" and "locals". If they live and work here, aren't tech workers locals too?

> while the service workers around them eat at the Walmart cafeteria.

I wasn't aware Walmart had a cafeteria. That aside, because cities around the Bay Area have decide not to allow any new housing ever, these service workers are ironically not "locals". They have back-breaking commutes from far-off places. They should be locals but they mostly cannot afford it. Maybe if a more diverse population could afford to live in the Bay Area, restaurants would have a wider customer base and wouldn't have to resort to such coercion.

> the flip side of intangibles like community engagement are reduced efficiency and heavy-handed regulation.

Except that there's very little proof that people who eat out in a city have more "community engagement" (whatever that means). If the city is going for increased engagement from tech workers there's a million other ideas that are better. Here's some:

1. Build more housing so that tech workers can afford to buy in MV instead of renting or commuting from somewhere else (like South San Jose). Living in a place, buying property and raising a family there will deeply connect you to it - you'll care about the schools, parks, libraries, and swimming pools

2. Allow more mixed-use development instead of restricting it to places like the Village

3. Reduce parking minimums so that stores are closer together and more walkalble. Why is only Castro Street like that?

Another possible consequence is that food prices in vicinity of new FB office will go up and price everyone else out.

This is absolutely what will happen. In an attempt to force tech workers to "interact" with the community, what will happen is that the restaurants will become playgrounds for tech workers and the community members will go elsewhere.

Seems a little early to say this with certainty, no? The thing hasn't even finished being built AFAIU

Why is it too early? We’ve seen this exact same drama play out repeatedly across the country. This would just be an instance of micro-gentrification instead of gentrification at the scale of entire neighborhoods. I see zero reason to think that “this time is different”.

nobody goes out to eat lunch at a restaurant in order to engage with their community

Most of those complaints about the technorati are about Google/Facebook etc. Large companies that bus in their employees. But this legislation won't affect any of them because they are all grandfathered in.

And I think I agree with your cynic. How many people who live in affordable housing are going to be going to the same restaurants for lunch as googler/facebookers anyway?

If you want people to care about a neighborhood, give them housing to live there. Or take a softer approach and tax cafeterias and use the proceeds to actually improves someone's lives.

This situation sucks.

On one hand, it might lead to higher wages being offered if you can't sell "free food" as a perk of employment. On the other hand, this makes me feel very libertarian and enraged that a local gov is trying to limit where I can get food. Currently I work in IT, and my employer has occasionally made food available with enough regularity that I stay onsite. I don't like having to hike back to my rental car, navigate to the venue, wait to order and pick up food, and suffer in what is usually a dirty public area while eating it. I acknowledge the insulation and welcome it. Often there isn't enough time to eat, so the whole experience is stress away from the stress of customer support. Sometimes I just don't eat if it means going outside. My work has me travelling a lot and it's difficult to r/mealprepsunday from a hotel mini fridge.

There has to be a better way to attract people with access to free food to local restaurants, and it's not this. If local venues are saying they're missing out on patrons that should be available then they should adapt to offering a corporate experience? Starbucks became much more successful when they became a spot for people with Macbooks to vegetate all day in.

You could have the company give an allowance to their employees to go out and spend it on local food, and then give the company a tax break for encouraging investment in said local venues (based on how much was spent). (maybe?)

Agreed that the situation sucks. I loved the free food in the Googleplex.

As for other solutions - personally I'd love to see some form of vouchers + electronic ordering system where employees at local businesses could go online, select from the menu, have their employer pick up the tab (perhaps with some quota or auditing so you aren't always eating gourmet on the employers dime), and your phone beeps when your food will be ready in 5 minutes and you can go walk in, flash your employee badge, and pick it up. That gets a lot of the in-house benefits of higher efficiency and less hassle for workers, but also directs money to local restaurants and gives additional consumer choices for workers. It'd likely cost more for the company (who is paying retail prices rather than contracting with a catering company), but that's because the restaurants have more negotiating leverage when they're also open to the public and aren't held hostage by a single customer, which if you're in favor of consumer choice is exactly how it should work.

90% of this system already exists, too, between company credit cards, Concur or other expense-reporting software, online ordering for DoorDash/Yelp/etc, mixed-use developments, decent restaurants, food-is-done buzzers at sit-down restaurants, etc. It's just there's no integrated portal where you can eg. swipe your badge when you order instead of having to pull out your company credit card or get notifications when it's time to walk over.

My fiance worked at a company that had pretty much literally this system, just without the "free" part of it.

Go online, pick food from one or two places, get a text when the food arrives for the office. My understanding was that it worked decently well, just was a bit expensive compared to bringing lunch from home (obviously) and sometimes the food got repetitive.

Yeah, the Communist party in Albania had a great way to deal with 'community involvment'

Every first Sunday of the month (Sundays were the only days people had off, as Saturdays were actually work day), people were required to get out, and help clean out the neighborhood in 'cleaning actions'.

If you didn't do it, you'd be reprimanded, and if you didn't comply you'd be sent into re-education class, on how community involvement was crucial to a good communist society. If you still didn't comply then you'd be sent off to some 'action' in some more remote area.

Anyways, this is not communist 'community involvement' level yet, but the government should have no say on a person's personal private time.

> Anyways, this is not communist 'community involvement' level yet, but the government should have no say on a person's personal private time.

Zoning itself is quite a loud say from the government about what someone may do in their personal private time in their personal private property. For example, you can't run a bakery in your personal private time in an area zoned only for residential use.

Do you think zoning should not be legal?

If zoning weren't legal, lots of things would change. Mostly for the better, but perhaps not entirely. There would be a lot more pedestrians and cyclists, and a lot fewer automobiles, in most urban areas. On the other hand you might live closer to a tavern. I lived in Denver for a few years; it's not so bad to live close to taverns.

There's actually a real example of this, and it basically shows the opposite of your point.

The city of Houston has no zoning laws - you are free to build wherever, whatever, occupied by whomever, subject only to market forces and contracts. The result has been a sprawling, car-driven metropolis where to get anywhere, you need at least a 20-minute drive in a car. My sister lives in a development of over 10,000 people, all single-family homes spread over several square miles of drained floodplain. There is basically zero commercial or office space in the development; to get to the nearest restaurant or supermarket, she needs to get on the highway. Her husband has roughly an hour commute to work; she had a 45-minute commute when she was working. The highways are so congested at rush hour that you use privately-developed toll roads to get across town if you have the money.

There's also various absurdities like people being sold homes inside flood-control reservoirs, or sex shops next to preschools, or residential homes next to chemical storage tanks.

On the plus side, housing is really cheap - the same house that would go for $1.5M in my neighborhood in Sunnyvale (a 3BR2BA on 1/4 acre) goes for under $200K in Houston. My sister lives in a gorgeous 5BR4BA waterfront property that cost < $600K; you literally can't find anything for that price where I live.

What's the problem with a sex shop near a preschool? Or even a residential home next to chemical storage - it should be perfectly safe to live next to those.

Houston has some problems. Would zoning have prevented the subdivisions inside the reservoirs? When they interviewed the county officials who should have enforced the admittedly rudimentary requirements Houston does have, they claimed not to know about the reservoirs. I sort of blame CoE, for not buying up the development rights for the farmland they condemned to flood. As usual with CoE (or USA military in general?), everyone would have been better off if they hadn't done anything.

Most of what you write here seems to confirm my point, with the exception of the zero commercial in your sister's development. Should we assume there is some sort of contract or HOA enforcing that? If so, I guess that isn't zoning, but it acts in largely the same way, doesn't it? Also, look at any other metropolis in Houston's timezone, and you'll find identical suburban situations. So maybe we can't blame the lack of zoning here? As I'm sure you're aware, in many situations zoning has been blamed for unmixed development.

It's possible that Houston might do some sort of BRT someday, which would help a great deal with commute times. BRT could even use some of those horrible un-American private roads. Already, the commutes you describe are better than those in lots of cities with extensive public transit.

Houston actually does have zoning laws, but they're called something different: parking minimums [0]. While there might not be any restrictions on what you can build, the fact that you need a certain amount of parking will naturally lead to certain types of housing being built.

[0]: https://empowertexans.com/around-texas/the-burden-of-parking...

An absolutely enormous number of problems in this country can be pointed at zoning, especially NIMBY zoning. We would be far better off wiping it all and replacing it with something like Japan's system, with residential and commercial combined into a handful of categories that are only different in the maximum size of xyz. And even the smaller zones allow small apartment buildings.

This isn't the government having a say in what a person does in their private time.

To fit the allegory of Communist Albania that you gave, the government would be have to be forcing tech workers to eat a minimum quantity of food at local restaurants every week.

That's not what they are doing. You are still free to bring sandwiches from home, or order Soylent online and get it sent direct to your office, bypassing the local economy entirely.