Wow can relate to so so much of this! We also live in the Bay Area. I also have a husband working in tech. We also (obviously) find the housing market crushing here. I read this article while eating dinner in silence with my two year old, my husband didn’t get home until 8pm. By 5:30 dinner time, there is really nothing left to talk about with a toddler. We just took a shower and read picture books until bedtime to pass the time. Denver is our most likely place to move after this. I feel like we’re just following in your footsteps, in a hopefully not creepy way! This felt so validating to read
My God, this is so so good. I've almost always worked in the public or nonprofit sectors and I've seldom been so glad. Clearly the company store is next, for purchase of all essential goods on credit at jacked-up prices so you don't have to--and can never--leave.
This resonated sooooo much and was also such a reflection for me on what life might have been like without the pandemic. My husband and I lived in the Bay Area for six years, and had our baby in March 2020. He came early, was in the NICU, was incredibly colicky when he got home...we'd been wanting to move to Seattle for a long time (my husband grew up there) but the pandemic was definitely the push we needed. It's certainly not AFFORDABLE in Seattle but it's better than the Bay, and pandemic WFH (plus the fact that I was laid off in March 2020 and was at home for a year after my son was born) has made homelife and getting to be around our family a whole lot easier. We lived with my in-laws for 8 months while we house-hunted which was honestly delightful after months and months of pandemic isolation with a tiny baby. My work is starting to want us to come back more and I'm dreading the loss of my own time to get ready in the morning, bring my kid to daycare, workout in the afternoon, and be home in time for dinner.
The diamond formation analogy 🌋 I graduated into the Great Recession with a degree in art history and I was thrilled/desperate to find I could put my student loan debt to use working in the Chicago jewelry industry. Not the same as tech, but the finance bro who owns the small company definitely planned the achieve the scalability of tech, by any means necessary. We butted heads a lot during the pandemic - whats in it for my immunocompromised parents, the only childcare option available when all the preschools closed, for me to work in-person without PPE under the guise of "essential manufacturing".
The intensity of the rage I had to tamp down every day, while being made to feel personally responsible for the safety of everyone around me and compromises my boss continued to persue against it. When you finally explode and the diamonds are extracted from the mine, the only ones of perceived value are the ones deemed "flawless", proximity to flawlessness is acceptable but if you come out of the ground with visible carbon the value plummets. The grey hairs and laugh lines are apparently worth less.
This is my second December not actively working in jewelry. (I had the audacity to give birth to my second kid in October...after a meticulously planned Spring first child so that my needs wouldn't interfere with The Season, and a miscarriage that dashed plans for a late summer baby, so I could get back to work "in time".) I'm finally in a space where I don't hear his voice blaming my choices (to exist, as a human, outside of his company) and don't have ideation on overpasses too. When my kids were sick for 3 weeks last month - for the first time in their lives- I actually have the spoons to provide the care my kids need from me. An imperfect diamond is still made of the toughest stuff in Earth.
Another good one. I left the Bay Area fifteen years ago, and I feel like I have been trying to avoid getting strip mined for my labor ever since. Isn't that all American adulthood is, it seems? Elon Musk feels like Blade Runner come to haunt our real lives. Thanks for this.
I was an early adopter SV stay-home mom/wife of tech worker widow. I knew something was off and was unhappy but felt guilty when I complained. (I am embarrassed that i used to call my husband around 6 to see if he’d left yet—this was pre cell phone—and if he answered, i knew it would be another hour at least and I wouldn’t cry, but yell because i felt more entitled to anger than sadness. What I was really feeling was desperate. 12 hours is a long time to be alone with 2 little kids.) I had a marriage therapist actually say to me that my ex-husband’s work was how I got all my nice things and this great life. The message was I didn’t deserve to complain about his hours working. Ugh. It makes me crazy now to think about that, the collective gaslighting of getting us all to believe we owed our lives to these companies that might make some of us Zuckerberg rich (although they never said it so crassly, preferring to keep us chained to our desks with the promise of changing the world.)
Great piece - love all the connections you made. Hope you're on the mend!
They took "Sorry to Bother You" quite seriously. They always seem to take satiric dystopian art and decide it's actually a blueprint.
🔥🔥🔥
This is so well said! I can relate to this so much.
Wow can relate to so so much of this! We also live in the Bay Area. I also have a husband working in tech. We also (obviously) find the housing market crushing here. I read this article while eating dinner in silence with my two year old, my husband didn’t get home until 8pm. By 5:30 dinner time, there is really nothing left to talk about with a toddler. We just took a shower and read picture books until bedtime to pass the time. Denver is our most likely place to move after this. I feel like we’re just following in your footsteps, in a hopefully not creepy way! This felt so validating to read
This is just gutting.
My God, this is so so good. I've almost always worked in the public or nonprofit sectors and I've seldom been so glad. Clearly the company store is next, for purchase of all essential goods on credit at jacked-up prices so you don't have to--and can never--leave.
This resonated sooooo much and was also such a reflection for me on what life might have been like without the pandemic. My husband and I lived in the Bay Area for six years, and had our baby in March 2020. He came early, was in the NICU, was incredibly colicky when he got home...we'd been wanting to move to Seattle for a long time (my husband grew up there) but the pandemic was definitely the push we needed. It's certainly not AFFORDABLE in Seattle but it's better than the Bay, and pandemic WFH (plus the fact that I was laid off in March 2020 and was at home for a year after my son was born) has made homelife and getting to be around our family a whole lot easier. We lived with my in-laws for 8 months while we house-hunted which was honestly delightful after months and months of pandemic isolation with a tiny baby. My work is starting to want us to come back more and I'm dreading the loss of my own time to get ready in the morning, bring my kid to daycare, workout in the afternoon, and be home in time for dinner.
The diamond formation analogy 🌋 I graduated into the Great Recession with a degree in art history and I was thrilled/desperate to find I could put my student loan debt to use working in the Chicago jewelry industry. Not the same as tech, but the finance bro who owns the small company definitely planned the achieve the scalability of tech, by any means necessary. We butted heads a lot during the pandemic - whats in it for my immunocompromised parents, the only childcare option available when all the preschools closed, for me to work in-person without PPE under the guise of "essential manufacturing".
The intensity of the rage I had to tamp down every day, while being made to feel personally responsible for the safety of everyone around me and compromises my boss continued to persue against it. When you finally explode and the diamonds are extracted from the mine, the only ones of perceived value are the ones deemed "flawless", proximity to flawlessness is acceptable but if you come out of the ground with visible carbon the value plummets. The grey hairs and laugh lines are apparently worth less.
This is my second December not actively working in jewelry. (I had the audacity to give birth to my second kid in October...after a meticulously planned Spring first child so that my needs wouldn't interfere with The Season, and a miscarriage that dashed plans for a late summer baby, so I could get back to work "in time".) I'm finally in a space where I don't hear his voice blaming my choices (to exist, as a human, outside of his company) and don't have ideation on overpasses too. When my kids were sick for 3 weeks last month - for the first time in their lives- I actually have the spoons to provide the care my kids need from me. An imperfect diamond is still made of the toughest stuff in Earth.
This is breathtakingly good. Forwarding immediately to my (engineer) husband as we navigate a new labor/life balance with our 2 month old newborn.
Another good one. I left the Bay Area fifteen years ago, and I feel like I have been trying to avoid getting strip mined for my labor ever since. Isn't that all American adulthood is, it seems? Elon Musk feels like Blade Runner come to haunt our real lives. Thanks for this.
I was an early adopter SV stay-home mom/wife of tech worker widow. I knew something was off and was unhappy but felt guilty when I complained. (I am embarrassed that i used to call my husband around 6 to see if he’d left yet—this was pre cell phone—and if he answered, i knew it would be another hour at least and I wouldn’t cry, but yell because i felt more entitled to anger than sadness. What I was really feeling was desperate. 12 hours is a long time to be alone with 2 little kids.) I had a marriage therapist actually say to me that my ex-husband’s work was how I got all my nice things and this great life. The message was I didn’t deserve to complain about his hours working. Ugh. It makes me crazy now to think about that, the collective gaslighting of getting us all to believe we owed our lives to these companies that might make some of us Zuckerberg rich (although they never said it so crassly, preferring to keep us chained to our desks with the promise of changing the world.)