As a resident of SF I find coffee-shop laptop users to be a pest in busy cafes. Coffee shops are a great social environment, and dominating a seat for an extended period of time while you are immersed in your computer runs counter to that culture.
This is a design problem and Starbucks has it right; uncomfortable and small seats and tables. So you can sit, but anything past 20mins and you want to get up and move.
The other side of this, however, is that if I need to work somewhere and I don't have an office, where can I go? 2 people cannot comfortably work in my dinky condo (I can barely live in it...) and I don't want to pay $100+ for a co-working space. Compared to a $2.50 coffee, that's insane!
It will depend on your city, but public libraries are usually fantastic. The wifi is free, the seating is spacious, and everyone is there with a purpose. They also cost nothing and you never get the "am I loitering?" feeling that you get in coffee shops.
University libraries can also be good, but be mindful of the date. If it's exam season I tend to avoid them simply because students should have priority to the libraries they are paying for.
I think this entirely depends on the vibe and setup of the cafe. There are some I frequent that are clearly not the place to whip out your laptop and start working away, but there are others that openly cater to that crowd and are setup towards that end. Heck one of the better ones I frequent is putting in Google Fiber and wired gigabit connections for the folks that like to work from their shop.
I agree, some coffee shops like it, apparently somehow they make the economics work (the one next to me calls itself a "Platform for Entrepreneurs," ugh).
I'd like to see someone open a cafe that has a communal-only seating policy, perhaps even you are assigned to a seat in one of the communal seating areas, no laptops. The cafe promotes active engagement and conversation amongst people who do not know each other. A return to the original purpose of the London coffee house -- a place to debate[1].
There are plenty of coffee shops where people are buried into their laptops already, but as this article demonstrates, some people really do want to talk to people they don't know, but they find it tough to get out of their comfort zone. If there's a space where this is encouraged and promoted, I think many would welcome it.
One of my favorite coffee shops in SF has no wifi and is explicit about it. It's fantastic. Doesn't stop anyone from tethering, obviously, but it keeps the laptop warriors out all the same.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
I think many hackers (myself included) find this interesting.
That's the stereotype. As a former H1B holder myself I can say that I never experienced it.
That said, if your employer sponsors you for a green card while you're on an H1B you are quite trapped in your job, and I wouldn't be surprised if people found their wages not rising as much as they would have otherwise.
Why do you assume they aren't getting paid market wages? Your statement, in a way, is contradictory. Engineers are perceived as scarce, but they aren't paid market wages.
As a tech worker living in San Francisco, his 'open letter' infuriated me. If anything, it makes my life here more difficult, and reflects poorly on the industry I work in. Unintended consequence? Probably. But I will happily vent my frustration with his callousness, lack of tact and compassion, just as he vented his frustrations.
Then fucking ask to meet with him and tell him how you feel. Get his perspective. Find out if he meant what you think he meant or if he was just misunderstood. And if you're still angry then, let him have it face to face instead of behind some pseudonym on the internet.
Pray you never post anything that draws the ire of the mob, lest you become the whipping boy of dozens of nationally syndicated columnists and thousands of spineless social media bullies, some of which who threaten you actual, physical harm.
My guess is, if you're actually bold enough to meet him in person, you'll soften your position. If not, then good for you, at least you had the conviction to remain angry.
Oh cry me a river. There is a theme evolving, and the media have latched onto it. Are lawyers and school teachers continually writing these self-righteous 'open letters'? Are lawyers and teachers of a growing, sufficient mass in a city that is struggling to serve a great proportion of it's population (for various, complicated reasons)? No.
Life is easier for 'us' than the mentally ill, the addicts, and those with less luck in life. When a self aggrandizing 20 something white guy working in a prosperous industry starts complaining like this, with the intent of attracting attention, it promotes a stereotype of a lack of sensitivity, and compassion for those around us.
Prestige and respect? Earn it, as a person. Compassion is part of that equation. You don't earn it by becoming a programmer or working in tech.
I and countless other programmers have put in thousands of hours unpaid labor to produce public goods in the form of open source software. For that alone I and my profession deserve respect (compare us to dentists, most in the US won't even take medicaid, let alone perform free dental work), and especially respect from these same media outlets that rely on the fruits of our unpaid labor.
Idiots like the author give tech workers a bad name. The move reeks of a publicity stunt, and the appropriate response would be for the industry to reject whatever startup he is fronting.
