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Can we take a minute to re-direct this conversation away from just the politics of SF?
I want to draw attention to Bob Lee, a well-respected technologist and prototype hacker, always curious and sharing lots of interesting technical developments. He was a great role model for how Engineers should be respected in an executive capacity as he advanced his career from 'Software' to 'Product'. His efforts contributed to technology used by millions. What happened to him is tragic and wrong; he deserved better. Thank you, I'll miss you 'crazybob'.
Please share your stories featuring Bob Lee, who I'm sure would like to be remembered for his contributions rather than as a victim of this unfortunate awful event.
I agree and am going to partition these threads so that there's a place to remember Bob Lee that isn't an argument about current affairs.
To facilitate this, I've taken the liberty of converting your text here into a new submission (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457341) and am going to move the relevant comments there. I hope that's ok with you (and if not, let me know and I'll rework this).
I wish some of the comments from below were merged into this comment for better visibility of those comments. There are things in those comments about what he did in his lifetime that are great to hear about.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454844
2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454971
Yeah, thanks so much. I actually had regret for engaging and piling on to a comment. It was pretty tasteless on my part :(
Here are some statistics that might help the discussion:
"With a crime rate of 54 per one thousand residents, San Francisco has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 18."
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#des...
And here is New York for comparison "The crime rate in New York is considerably higher than the national average across all communities in America from the largest to the smallest, although at 25 crimes per one thousand residents, it is not among the communities with the very highest crime rate. The chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime in New York is 1 in 40. Based on FBI crime data, New York is not one of the safest communities in America." https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/new-york/crime#descript...
Edit: I know this neighborhoodscout's methodology is not perfect. I wanted to use this as a starting to add more data to the discussion. Would love to see more stats on this
I've lived in SF for almost 10 years, and it saddens me to live in such low trust community because of all the crime. It changes people.
I've had my car stolen once and broken into several times. I've had two bikes stolen, once out of an office building, and another time through an iron gate that blocks my doorway. My neighbor had his motorcycle stolen out of his garage. I've caught someone stealing packages from a building I lived in. Last time I moved, someone tried to break into my U-Haul. I've seen people walking out of several stores with bags stuffed full of stolen goods (going to Westfield mall feels surreal—even inside the mall, shops need to hire their own private security to protect themselves).
These are just a few incidents that come to mind—I could list many more. My point in listing all of these cases is to say—it's not enough to look at crime metrics. Not to say that we shouldn't look at metrics and try to improve them, but the current metrics are flawed to some degree. People in SF-proper (e.g. mid-market, SoMA, Mission, Haight) are living with a constant low-to-moderate anxiety that they will be robbed at any time.
In all cases that I've been close to, there have been no arrests or prosecution. You won't find that I had to chase away someone trying to break into my U-Haul in any crime statistic report. No one from SF is comfortable leaving anything in their car, leaving their garage open, parking their bike outside.
All I want is a candidate to run on the platform of simply enforcing the law—it's baffling to me how controversial that is. Perhaps we'll get the right catalyst for that to happen someday.
So Wikipedia has a list of US Cities, sortable by crime rate, and has separate statistics for violent crime and property crime [1]. This list is based on FBI's data from 2019.
By that list, sorted by the total violent crime rate from highest to lowest, SF is 37th on the list of 100 cities, NYC is 59th, Austin is 73rd. In absolute numbers, SF is 715/100k, NYC is 539/100k, Austin is 415/100k.
Also, by that list, the top cities for violent crime with population over 1M are: Chicago #17, Houston #18, Philly #25, Tuscon #29, Dallas #31, LA #32, Phoenix #33.
Now if only we could get a graph of this data mapped over time, it would be interesting to see trends.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
Its a real bummer with SF, but the problems are totally self inflicted. If the politics were of a different breed I could see it being one of the best cities to live in the US, let alone the world. Having worked there for close to a decade the stuff I have seen was really depressing. I visited my cousin who works at Ouster nearby for lunch one day and was wondering what all these white casings were littering the ground, he said they were from junkie's needles. While on our walk a man was screaming inside a car with all the windows smashed in, and there were huge piles of shit due to junkies "unloading" on the sidewalk.
I went to the local walgreens in SF and was trying to buy a tube of toothpaste, apparently the theft is so bad I had to have a person who works there open the case, and while I was waiting in line to buy it a homeless person ran out with merchandise.
There are thousands and thousands of similar stories from others but until residents in SF start voting different I see things getting even worse than they are now. I know that may be hard to believe but we have been experiencing a boom economy, once that changes and things go south expect crime to surge to levels unimaginable.
There are enough comments on here that I am probably not adding much new, but I lived in SF for 10 years until recently. When I arrived (from New York City) I thought — hey, it's a bit sketchy but not so bad overall. I think it got progressively worse every year.
I have no idea what policy changes would help, but it's the only place I've ever been where I saw crime being committed in broad daylight. It's the only place where leaving anything within sight in a parked car results in a break-in. A fucking bag of potato chips once.
There are nice parts; the higher your physical elevation, the less chance of your being affected by crime. Literally people living their ivory towers watching their city burn.
At the end of the day, it's a democracy. The voters get what they deserve. Remote work is here — the tax base is on its way out, or retreating to high ground.
I come from Ciudad Juarez. Between 2008-2011, the city was the murder capital in the world and basically unlivable.
My brother and I were no longer living there because we were in college. My parents decided to send my sister, then starting highschool, to a city in central Mexico with friends of the family to avoid having her grow up in what was a life and death environment. My parents stayed.
Mexicans speak a lot about cartel wars and the violence it comes with. What is not often mentioned is that what _really_ kills the city and society is the unorganized crime that pops up when laws are not applied.
The cartel wars laid bare that the police was not going to prosecute anything in fear of retaliation. This opened the door to anyone to commit any sort of crime. Carjacking was increasingly common. My uncle fled one such attempt and miraculously escaped to the US unharmed but with his truck showered with bullets. My mother saw a guy getting shot in the streets just because of road rage. Friends had their parents killed or kidnapped.
Every crime that goes unprosecuted is an invitation for a repeat crime. This is as true in Juarez as it is in San Francisco.
The most basic definition and purpose of the state is to hold the monopoly of violence. It must jealously protect this. The alternative is unsustainable anarchy followed by someone else filling that void.
San Francisco has been ceding its monopoly of violence for years if not decades.
I have commented on SF threads before regarding the violent crime.
I don't think we have figured out if this was premeditated or not, but either way, SF is becoming incredibly dangerous. Progressive DA's and a neutered police force are to blame for the rise in violent crime.
Many of my friends have taken their remote gigs and left SF in the last 3 years. What's the point in rolling the dice every time you walk outside for some air and to potentially catch an attack or worse? I can't blame them at all for the move.
Wow. RIP Bob Lee.
He died at Harrison and Main st. That area is tame compared to the mission, tenderloin, and other spots in SOMA. Of all places, I would never have guessed a stabbing would occur there but I haven't been in the area since 2020.
Just a give a sense of the place, the area has a lot of apartments and skyrises. A friend of mine lived two blocks away at the jasper building. We would walk around there at night with his dog and never really saw anybody else in the area past midnight.
My company's headquarters was also a few blocks away directly across the street from the Salesforce park. Several major tech companies and organizations had satellite offices and/or headquarters in the area.
Could someone please enlighten me on why we don't treat governing like we do software solutions?
When I'm given a task to complete, my first instinct is to find where other developers have done what I'm asked to do and then utilize their wisdom into my own solution which will likely look very similar to theirs.
Why do we see such drastically different approaches to solving issues in society and government?
Want better education? Step 1: Find a state/city that has great education and study what they did to achieve it
Want less crime? Step 1: Mimic a state/city that has successfully reduced crime
Seems so simple to me but yet I never hear politicians/people saying things like "Boston has successfully raised their level of education by doing XYZ so we're going to follow those steps here with minor tweaks to best suite our area"
This is crazy, Bob is such an excellent engineer that has contributed so much to the engineering world. I have no words for this.
Sf needs to get their shits together, i still can’t believe that the majority of the high income earners stayed home because they’re afraid of the people on the street. I often asked my mates when I visited SF, how come a city so rich has such a basic security issue where people don’t feel safe walking around their own city??
I lived a block from here prior to Covid, and I would've called this a safe part of town. Honestly incredible there was a stabbing there.
My condolences to the family. The guy was too young.
I am very spoiled by living in one of the European capitals. It's super safe here, and it's normal thing to see young females taking a dog out for a walk in 22-02h.
I visit SF at least once a year, and default to my learned habit of walking alone, and later at night.
No more.
My condolences to Bob's family. I hope this finally gets SF city government to get it's shit together. Ik the VC commmunity is pretty closely knit here but always seemed to concentrate on national politics. Maybe they'll now pressure City govt to finally start maintaining quality of life
Edit: Jesus, this happened right in Rincon Hill. This is SF's equivalent of Murray Hill. Yea shit needs to be fixed.
My family has lived in SF since the 1800s. I recently moved because it has gotten so bad. I hate what the government has done to my city.
> A friend who was planning to meet Lee in Miami this weekend told The Standard that Lee had been in San Francisco on business, had stayed an extra day and was killed on that day.
I am genuinely curious to know how SF residents feel about this.
Can someone very briefly wrap this whole "SF is broken"-situation up for somebody from Europe?
I only ever read that it's "because of the policies" and there are lots of rather disturbing videos about SF making its rounds on YouTube.
But what exactly happened? Did they just remove all the police? Did they gave out free drugs to everybody?
I'm not interested in blaming political parties, I just want to get a quick grasp of what exactly has happened.
Nothing will change. I was attacked in Christmas ‘21 in the Tenderloin, right after walking out of the KFC/Taco Bell on Eddy. Two cop cars drove by me and did nothing. It was only due to an ambulance finishing a run at Sutter and spotting me that I didn’t bleed out on the suitcase.
I have video, proof of damages physical and financial, eyewitnesses and the info of the men who attacked me. SFPD will not arrest them because Boudin refused to prosecute. New DA has not gotten back to me despite repeated attempts.
I wanted to build a life and have my family in SF, to contribute and make it the city I believe it to be, but I refuse to put people I love in that situation. I’ve left for Estonia and couldn’t be happier.
RIP Bob Lee! I was highly inpired by some of your Java talks in Youtube and other places. Aside from that alas! what have things come down to in San Francisco? It has become an utter lawless city.
People in big cities get mugged, sometimes violently. This happened in Republican led cities when I was young. It happens in Democratic led cities now. It happens in London. It happens in Moscow. You can have policy differences with the government of San Francisco, but please don't capitalize on this tragic death to advance them. It's exploitive and disrespectful to Bob Lee's family. I know I'm whistling in the wind, but I needed to say it for myself.
Everyone commenting on here about how bad things are in SF has likely rarely or never stepped into the core parts of Protrero Hill, Noe Valley, Richmond, Sunset, Glenn Park, Forest Hill etc. SF is a tale of two cities divided by natural barriers. There is a side to the city where you see almost no drugs, or homelessness. This is not a dismissal of the real issues facing the city but an acknowledgement that it is still a very livable city.
Bob was a good friend, tried to hire me numerous tries at Square, and was my next door neighbor for 3 years. I knew him well and spent a lot of time with him. He will be dearly missed.
I have been told from very well placed sources in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit.
That being said, I left San Francisco in 2018 because I was worried I would eventually become the random murder that would finally wake up the tech world to what an absolute crime ridden shithole San Francisco is. Don't quote statistics at me. I had numerous police officer friends who told me the statistics are all fake since they purposefully don't report over 50% of the crime in order to keep the city looking halfway decent since so much of it depends upon tourist revenue.
I tried for years to tell my friends the city needed to take the crime problem more seriously and the response I always got was dismissal or that "it's no worse than any other major city."
Well, I live in another major city now and I can tell you with great certainty, SF is much, much, much worse.
And now a good friend is fucking dead.
Fuck San Francisco.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/crazybob/
He was Chief Product Officer at MobileCoin. Hopefully we learn who stabbed him, and why. 43 is just way too young. Thoughts go out to his wife. He was instrumental in creating Android. Whatever you may think of it today, we wouldn't have it if it weren't for him.
Ken Griffin on Citadel leaving Chicago for Miami..."In April, Griffin expanded on the crime issue in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “If people aren’t safe here, they’re not going to live here,” he said. “I’ve had multiple colleagues mugged at gunpoint. I’ve had a colleague stabbed on the way to work. Countless issues of burglary. I mean, that’s a really difficult backdrop with which to draw talent to your city from.”
Hedge fund Citadel decided to leave Chicago due to employee safety issues. Wonder if this will prompt similar responses in SF.
https://nypost.com/2022/09/21/ken-griffins-citadel-left-chic...
To those who are going to be curious about crime statistics, it appears that while SF isn't high up in terms of violent crime rates, it is unusually high for robberies (#20) and *very* high when it comes to property crime rates (burglary, theft, etc) where it ranks 4th in the nation.
If we think logically about what allows property crimes to remain high in one city vs another, a couple things come to mind:
1. A higher poverty/homelessness rate leading to people resorting to property crimes 2. A higher repeat offender rate if the DA of that city chooses not to prosecute/press charges against many of those who commit that crime
For factor #1, this would be remedied by tackling the causes of persistent homelessness with things like Housing First initiatives to house people dealing with those conditions, and to also give them medical assistance since a good chunk of them are dealing with mental illnesses.
For factor #2, this seems like it would be a simple case of the DA needing to be more aggressive in prosecuting property crime perpetrators to both deter the act and to keep them off the streets to begin with. The SF DA office is particularly known for being too loose with this, unsurprisingly.
I'm by no means a crime expert or a lawyer, but this is what seems like is going on at face value.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
Sounds like SF to me. It has never been "nice". I was commuting to and from work there for over a year back in ~2015 and it was hell then.
I interviewed around 2017 in SF and it was so bad I didn't dare walk back to the station (caught an Uber instead). It's a terrible place.
My office before I went fully remote is literally at that corner. Good luck getting me to go back to the office.
When will the people of San Francisco wake up and realize that their soft-on-crime approach is wrong?
If SF took crime seriously and actually hunted down criminals and put them in jail then normal citizens could live normal lives.
I don't see what's wrong with SF. /sarcasm
SF is the people's choice, no? The people in SF elected DAs who release booked violent criminals right away, multiple times. The people in SF elected politicians who told us, repeatedly and publicly, that looting is a way for people to express their anger or looters were hungry, and violent criminals are victims and questioning their policies are homophobic and racism. The people in SF elected politicians who could stand up projects in the name of helping homeless at cost of more than $100K per homeless person per year. That's $100K equivalent of after-tax income of a normal fucking American! The people in SF elected school board members who dumbed down curriculums. The people in SF painted "kill techies" on streets of SF and the people cheered it.
And most important of all, per the comments here, SF is fine and violent crimes are just the right's wild accusation.
So, what's wrong again?
I'm not putting any blame on Bob here (I've always been a dawn guy, not a night owl), but the city I'm in (not CA anymore) has lots of its bad things happening at 2am (the time of his stabbing) too.
When I was working in SF (downtown, SoMa, FiDi) I had a schedule that got me to a gym at 5am, the office at 7am, and back on Bart before 4pm. I can't remember the last time I was in SF after dark. Walking the city at 5-7am is like wandering the aftermath of a war zone. It's sleepy, but the overnight destruction and misfortune was on display.
That said, all the talk of crime here feels slightly premature -- the linked story doesn't clarify whether he was the victim of a random attack or by someone known to him.
The greatest deterrent for crime is the person's belief that they would be caught[1]. No amount of punishment deters people, not even the death penalty, from committing crime more than being certain that they would be prosecuted.
I don't feel safe at all living in the Bay Area. Just the day before yesterday, I heard that a colleague, who works from home, had his house broken into and robbed, even though it happened during the daytime and while he was home."
NYTimes picked it up as breaking news:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/technology/cash-app-found...
Where does it indicate the identity of the decedent?
Really hits close to home now… its always “someone else” until its not.
Very strange title, given that it's not at all verified by the contents of the article. I guess I'll have to flag this one, maybe if it's verified someone can provide a different source for the submission?
Edit: looks legit based on other new comments.
Hate to see this – wish the SF politicians AND voter-base took crime more seriously.
I accompanied my wife to a conference in SF a few years ago. While walking along Market Street, returning to our hotel from picking up food for the kids, one of those dishevelled guys with big coats ran at me full tilt. I was forced to run across the middle of the street into traffic to get away from him. He pursued me, pulling out a gun and pointing it at me midway across the street. After I got across the street he gave up and went back to his side.
I think the gun was probably a toy, but the only reason I think that is because he didn't fire it. It was small, but gunmetal colored and realistic. Now, I feel like I could have just as easily been Bob Lee, and my kids could have just as easily lost their father. For nothing more than flying in for a weekend and walking along a main thoroughfare.
It seems like this story is completely unremarkable in SF. Nobody in the vicinity seemed to care what was happening to me. It was obvious there was no point in calling 911 to report this. Apparently it's just normal that you take your life into your hands walking along Market Street, and some resident mentally ill guy might decide to end you because he doesn't like your face.
Did I miss the vouch window for this? I don’t think it should be flagged.
I have such fond memories of my (work) visit in San Francisco in June 2015 during the week of the NBA Finals. I didn't know much about the city but I thought it couldn't be any worse than Manhattan.
The only time I got sketched out was when I was walking up Filmore St. near the McDonalds. Some caricature looking fella started calling me ching chong trying to mess with me. I crossed the street before crossing the light and just walked on the other side pretending that didn't hear anything (earbuds) while keeping an eye on him.
I always thought that I can go anywhere I want after growing up and living around slums in the third world at that time but every place has its own unique set of dangers.
Assuming that the murderer has lots of priors, why is it so hard for cities to (1) not overpolice minor crimes (i.e. weed) and also (2) take violent crimes seriously and incarcerate anyone who commits X number or X severity of them?
Instead every time at least in NYC when you hear about someone killing an elderly Asian, turns out they had like 20+ priors, including some violent misdemeanors, which are often quite serious. No one wants to put people in jail for stealing a loaf of bread (a straw man that often comes out) but if repeat violent offenders keep committing more violent crimes, maybe we actually need to keep them in prison longer?
Why are people such bleeding hearts for repeat violent offenders?