I love how people think "privacy settings" mean jack to a company that makes money selling personal data.

"Population Density" always gets blamed, but it's not the reason for USA's poor service. If it was, New York City would have awesome Internet service.

If your job can be done from home, it can be done from India.

Your cynicism and apathy are the problem.

You don't need physical presence in a state to be considered as having a nexus in that state and subject to collecting taxes.

No, but a house in Walnut Creek or Gilroy is. That's about how far most of the people I work with commute.

Simple. They can't.

Homes out here are not being purchased by middle-class families. They are being purchased by:
* Foreign (mostly Chinese) investors
* Hedge Funds
* Real Estate investment trusts
* Multiple families pooling their money (and planning on having 15 people living in a 3 bedroom house)

If you're making 60 to 80 thousand a year, you're not even close to being able to afford a home. You're living in a 1br or studio apartment in a not-so-nice part of San Jose.

Actually, fuck you with facts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_BART_extension

"In 2000 Santa Clara County voters approved a 30-year-long half cent sales tax increase to fund BART."

"In 2008, to mitigate that fact, the voters were again asked to raise sales tax this time by 1/8th of one percent to come into effect when and if federal funding of the project was given the green light."

"The project was cut into phases with service to northern San Jose at Berryessa originally planned for 2018 and to downtown San Jose by 2025 which may or may not include Santa Clara."

So, after all these taxes, federal funding, and time, this government project has still gone nowhere, they don't plan to even be done until 2025, and even then, they will have failed to even include all the destinations they planned for.

Meanwhile, these tech companies have given up waiting for the government to un-fuck itself, and just deployed their own damn mass-transportation system.

Live closer to work? LOL. Let's see, where are these companies located? Cupertino, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park... Where STARTER homes are $1 million??? In the Bay Area it is impossible for a regular tech worker to live close to work. Your only real option is a long commute. I'd rather do it in an air conditioned bus with my laptop open than in my old beater with the fan on and my blood pressure rising...

The bus stops at your home's front door?

The cost of living is much more than 2X, especially for housing, which can be up to 10X the cost of normal areas in the USA. When I moved out here from "flyover" land, my salary increased by about 1.5X but my cost of living practically tripled. It was not a good deal.

There is no serious public transport system between SF and the South Bay/Peninsula (or between tri-valley area and South Bay/Peninsula, or really between anywhere and South Bay/Peninsula). There's only Caltrain which is a sad joke. These companies are stepping up BECAUSE the government has failed. /Disclaimer, I do not work for a company that provides such bus service, but would love to--it's a HUGE benefit to not have to commute yourself 3+ hours to/from work

How about 1m x 1m resolution in 14 characters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_grid_reference_system

Yea, gotta say, those are pretty awful job postings. I'm not surprised you'd have trouble filling those positions. They basically just include lists of ways HR will try to disqualify me. They tell almost nothing about what I'd be doing, why I'd want to do it, what makes the opportunity so special or distinct. I mean, as written, minus company names, those job descriptions could apply to half the companies in the valley.

Nobody cares that a company combines and* award winning communications platform with best-in-class reputation and networking tools into one powerful web-based application that seamlessly integrates with existing workflow systems to help businesses build oh my god my brain is leaking out onto the floor out of boredom already

*LOL typo

I'm sorry, what exactly makes Waze's talent "top" as opposed to any other software company out there that could get bought?

And if Google is hurting for talent (something tells me it isn't), surely they could hire people for less than $12 million per head in this difficult job market.

The only talented person in this transaction was whoever convinced Google to pay over $1.2B.