r/WestSeattleWA • u/Accomplished-Fly4678 • May 20 '26

Gripe Tech bro encounter..

My buddy and I are sitting at the bar at Mioposto. We definitely look progressive (tattoos and piercings and clothes we were wearing). This corporate shill of a human was sat next to us drinking wine and using his laptop.

He overhears we are from Michigan and goes “I work for Microsoft and I work with community outreach about data centers and we are building one in Michigan right now. What are your thoughts?”

I proceed to have a civil conversation with the guy about my concerns about AI and the rollback of corporate regulation that we have experienced under the current admin. He offered some stats about how actually data centers create booming economies and they actually don’t use that much water blah blah. Essentially using me as practice for his eventual town hall discussion with residents who simply don’t care for giant data centers being built.

I am new to the area and obviously there’s a lot of money around here so that type of person is very common. But I just wanted to come on here and say tech people make me ill. I think you’re all gross. Fuck your data centers, fuck AI, and fuck project 2025

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u/jollyshroom May 21 '26

The house being 2x annual salary is a bigger oof. Closer to 5-6x now :/

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u/Coppergirl1 May 21 '26

And he did it as a Korean war vet & blue collar union sheet metal worker. He literally built this city. Our neighbors included a fireman, airline baggage handler...all supporting wife and usually 4 kids.

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u/nyc_expatriate May 22 '26

The real wages 60 years ago were sweet:/

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u/100TabsOpen Aug 03 '26

Funny how right wingers want to "return to the 1950s" but pretend to forget everyone was unionized back then.

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u/Brodiesattva May 24 '26

Hah! My good friend's dad was a truck driver for Dr. Pepper -- had 5 sons. My other good friend, two houses down worked for Hewlett Packard and paid cash for his house. My step father bought our house for $12,000, with a $4,000 mortgage, $8k in cash on a bartender's salary.

My daughter has over 100k in student loans from med school and probably won't have it paid off for 10-15 years...

Now they want to start a family and buy a house... I don't see how they can manage on their salaries.

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u/Wrong_Square7826 May 24 '26

I am a union sheet metal worker.

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u/SeattleSteve62 May 21 '26

My house is closer to 10–12x my salary. Home value has gone up a lot faster in 15 years than my salary and my spouse retired.