Hello World

I’ve been a reluctantly happy resident of SF for the past year and like most new residents, I currently work in tech.

For San Francisco, the barometer of how well you’re doing is if you can afford rent (with or without a roommate) and still afford groceries. If you can financially stomach being able to reside in a livable dwelling in this city and still afford to feed yourself, you are very lucky.

In that sense, I am extremely lucky.

I’m in my 20’s and make a low but healthy six-figure salary working as a software developer, in a city that is desperate for them. But even then, I have trouble saving up. When a basic bedroom takes up $1.5–2.5k and you still have a roommate(s), that’s a fucked up situation.

So, I cope.

Besides being a software developer, I really love to find little loopholes provided by some very generous VC funds that have been injected into our lovely city by way of 20-somethings trying to fix first world yuppy problems.

These loopholes have helped me not only save money but also indulge. They’re completely legal; just generally seen as a nuisance by the companies that employ easily hackable tactics.

Right now, from a user standpoint, it feels like Silicon Valley’s only real strategy for B2C customer acquisition is to push prices low and offer free or significant discounts in the hopes that customers will reuse their service again.

That’s fine for some companies, but when you’re in as saturated a field as, say, on-demand whatever, your first time customer deal isn’t going to bring you success.

Anyhow, I’ll try to highlight what I find here — both hacks and also just legitimate, great deals that I find in SF.