This is a difficult conversation because any statement you make about the real problems facing workers in downtown can easily get you lumped into a category of people who hate the poor.

There is no question that disrespectful attitudes toward the poor and homeless in any city betrays a shocking lack of empathy about the struggles that they encounter.

The flip side is that there are real problems facing workers (tech and otherwise) in these neighborhoods and just labeling anyone who complains about them as some kind of bigot neither cures that person of any perceived bigotry, it also does not solve the core problems that people who live in those neighborhoods are facing: extreme poverty, mental illnesses, rising rent costs and more.

One of my co-workers is a woman and she is harassed daily as she walks into our office, to the point that we are moving offices as a result. The comments she endures are sickening and I've witnessed it myself. Interestingly, it happens much less when I walk down Market Street with her. But what I've noticed is that it's not the homeless who make those comments.

There are multiple groups all clustered together and it combines to create an unsettling experience for people who walk through the neighborhood. There are the homeless, who generally seem to keep to themselves and are preoccupied with staying warm, begging for food / money, etc.

Then there are the apparently mentally ill, who are likely also homeless, who can be found screaming in the street, disrobing and more. There are also obvious drug addicts - I watched a man lick a needle and inject it into an open sore on his leg in broad daylight. Then there are the loiterers, dealers and gamblers on the street. These dudes actually are the most abusive toward women. They are the ones who make inappropriate comments toward my co-worker and other women I see walking down the street. They yell at people, threaten them, and attack one another.

Combine all this with the smell of feces, urine and trash littered all over the street and you do genuinely wonder why it's so bad. I can't think of a single other city in America that I've visited that has this many problems.

Some of the core causes appear to be an impenetrable and growing wealth gap, lack of available services for those in need, lack of proactive police coverage (but please, no military-wannabe cops need apply) and ongoing gentrification. In the Tenderloin, I would almost characterize it as an active rebellion against gentrification, where long-time residents feel the need to intimidate the tech workers moving in to set up new offices, coffee shops, etc. Call it the Scooby Doo strategy.

It's a difficult situation because on the one hand I completely sympathize with those who are seeing their ability to afford living in older neighborhoods vanish before their eyes. On the other hand, tech workers are often portrayed as entitled tech hipster bros who just want a clean street to walk down on their way to the new Blue Bottle cafe.

The reality is that the actual "tech workers" who are trying to make a living also includes women, men and women with families and new immigrants to the US. Because of the money some of these folks earn, it's easy enough to demonize them when one jackass makes inappropriate comments on Facebook. But the same Valleywag bloggers who demonize the tech hipster bros also can't be seen actually doing anything to make a difference on their own and probably share the same thoughts as they walk toward a new cafe to work on their next piece, this one already forgotten.