To me there are more factors than "the work is there" (at least in more developed country) to move to a big growing metropolis. An anecdotal observation I read somewhere here on HN was something like "have you logged on to tinder in a suburb of some smaller US city?".
Another big factor is the environmental one, sure if we can reduce the commute for a majority of people that would be awesome, however people will not stop moving around (restaurants, entertainment, socializing). What alternatives do we have if people are going to leave the city? Public transportation is for the most part only viable in highly dense areas. Electric car is of course going to grow their share, but medium term expanded public transportation is an extremely important part of the equation.
It is illegal for me to do things far less dangerous to myself and others compared to driving a car, and as someone who has no plans to own a car again, I neither want to breathe in exhaust fumes or risk getting hit by a vehicle just because others feel entitled to drive. If we're going to live in a nanny state, let's actually maintain a consistent framework for measuring harm and stick to it.
What are you going on about? Every country in the world is enforcing social isolation now...
Commuting, lunch, tons of cloths/uniforms, (likely more stuff I am not thinking off) is also a huge cost to employees.
I know my mortgage payment is due if I go to an office or WFH. My car, on the other hand, requires loads more fuel and maintenance when I work in the office.
Electricity bill goes up slightly.
Heating / cooling costs goes up a bit. I was already heating and cooling my home though but a schedule made it so I didn't heat or cool as much during business hours (when I was not home).
For lunch I am not going out nearly as much. Mostly because my home is not well positioned for a quick trip for lunch.
Seems to me there are savings on both sides here. I could be convinced otherwise though - I have not read any proper studies where the dynamics here have been fleshed out.
I feel like I am saving lots of money and a fair amount of time with WFH.
Where do you think all the tech people with kids moved to? And they are probably dual income. And the couples who don’t have houses were saving up for houses so that the percentage devoted to rent was limited anyway.
The beach and GG Park are mostly in the fog belt. Lived near both places. Nope. Must be thinking about one of the few really warm and sunny days. Not that nice unless you like surfing. If you are thinking the Marina area, well that is very expensive already.
Generalizing, the really nice areas in California are already pricey. You need to make a trade off for things to work out such as if you love snow and skiing, then go to Tahoe. You trade that off for food choices that won’t be nearly as good and meagre entertainment options.
The number of people in an area drives up prices but provides a quality of its own. One prime example is the variety and quality of food. So does the infrastructure/wealth of the area lead to improved education, health care services, etc...
It’s as if the wealth is mostly in the people rather than the geography and concentrating people creates more wealth.
I had not really considered moving because WFH is an option, other than the digital nomad dreams that float through my mind. :D
In my case, I live in small town WV (pop < 2500) and work outside Pittsburgh, PA. Living in WV basically means you can afford a house with acres of property IF you can make more than 60k / year (which is a big IF for most around here).
Back to the original point - The choice to live in one place over another, shorter or longer commutes, etc.. Is not the company shifting its operating cost onto its employees. is it? Do I misunderstand still?
Seems to me, if anything, this is an opportunity to continue to live the way you did before with slightly more free time and potentially more money OR, as you say, move a bit more out of town and save even more money.
This change should decrease costs for the employee, open up the labor market for the employer thus lowering costs for them as well. Shedding office space is a great way to save money anywhere in the country - Let alone in a hyper expensive place like downtown SF.
I am still failing to understand how this is pushing the cost of business onto employees.
This is fascinating to me. I've lived in the rural Midwest, NYC and Texas and always had A/C everywhere I lived – only question was central or window unit.
Nobody except masochists really stay inside a stuffy apartment mid-day in the summer though. The reason you pay so much in living expenses is mostly for the good weather, so people spend their weekends out and about. As a kid in the summer, I remember walking around shops in the mall just to stay cool during the hottest hours of the day, and going to the beach often. My parents would do their grocery store shopping on Saturdays and Sundays mid-day if it was going to be hot. As I got older we'd go catch a matinee, or hit up a restaurant or a bar.
I imagine workers in the L.A. area will largely flood into cafes and co-work-esque places as businesses start opening back up and remote work becomes more dominant.
It gets colder here than you’d think. Not “Late January in Chicago” cold, but averages down into the 40s are the norm during winter.
Working from home, no AC. Too lazy to get up from my code and turn on the fan. Then again, I moved to LA because I love the sun and hate the cold.
Zuckerberg was recently in the press saying he wants Facebook to pay remote workers less (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264521). That could skew the results a little.
The prospect of a full time shift to remote was not communicated as context for the poll. Employees answered the polls thinking they were talking about how they'd go to the office given COVID-19 (a lot more people saying they'd do 50/50, when in reality, that just reflected their lack of comfort due to the disease).
Companies should be sure not to confuse actions people are willing to take due to a pandemic to be what they'd do in a post-pandemic world. Same thing with productivity: just like we don't know the long term impact of this disease, we also don't know that employees will remain as productive as they've been so far.
Too many people assume remote work always means working somewhere far away from a major urban city.
Unfortunately a lot of industries outside tech do not provide those. The cost of transport, especially the drainage of energy after squeezing into a crowded train / bus definitely outweighs utility bills.
However, if a company provides both options, remote workers are usually disadvantaged because of the reasons stated in the article and the comments.
It's a tough choice, and I think the division should at least be team-based for a fair competition.
The top comment(s) are only representative of that subset of readers who both a) agree and b) bother to upvote.
I skim read the top few comments then minimise them, or minimise them immediately. I'm looking for what's different to my current understanding, and the top comment(s) almost always are perspectives I'm already familiar with.
- I don't want city overflowing (and price-gouged-by) wannabe suburbanites
- With a sufficiently high carbon tax, hopefully WFH can mean towns not exurb hell by those that insist on leaving the city
- long commutes are bad and denormalizing than as an exceptable part of modern life (in the USA) can help us make our land use less shit
- We should all work less, and making work as socially isolating for the upper classes as it already is for many lower class jobs will help move things in that direction.
> a rich network for career growth and opportunities
This is a I think the most important one, but the ultimate solution is to simply make "career" less important be making a decent quality of life available to most everyone. I know it's great us here that in the last 20 years society has begun to value intellectual work more, but the scarcity that caused this culture shit is just unsustainable.
In short, don't discount the urbanist accelerationist argument for WFH.
Anecdotally, I've spent a fair amount of time living in both environments, and for me the quality of life difference is night and day. The lack of proper "towns" within commuting distance of NYC means that we have to live in town-y neighborhoods within the city, which are much more expensive to than the 'burbs, and don't come with an acre, a pool, and free parking. The apparent lack of towns means we're eventually going to leave the entire metropolitan area, which is kind of sad, since we like working here very much.
Just because there's no mass commuting doesn't inherently mean the exurbs are cured of that. People could still shuffle arround funneling roads making traffic to go to the mall. Every has lawns but no one has nature. Everyone is still isolated.
Traditional rural towns and villages are actually quite dense---you must discount the surrounding land. I mention the carbon tax because I think it's that or highwaymen needed to force people to clump up.
\[BTW, I think the variation is key: density should be "fractle" "scale-free" or whatever other similar buzz ord one wants to throw out. Everyone gets stairs and nature.\]
Most towns I think of as pleasant in the US (I’m mostly familiar with western Massachusetts, central CA, and the border towns of NJ/PA) are still basically inaccessible by any mode of transportation other than a car outside of downtown. I don’t believe they would score high on your scale, but maybe I’m missing something!
No reason with enough carbon and land value tax the towns in the places you mention couldn't recover though. Plenty of nice Berkshire and foothill downtowns.
[1] https://qz.com/work/1825934/how-working-from-home-impacts-yo...
about that... dang wrote a long comment regarding this community, and why he thinks your sentiment comes up so often: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098
There seems to be a group on HN that really wants to make the desire to WFH seem universal. A few weeks ago a post like yours likely would have been buried.
- Office is not perfect but better than some
- I do have a home office with a nicer setup than my work office
- I love and thrive on social isolation, going home to my empty house is the best part of my day...
- See above... I have no network...
>>God forbid some people want to live in big cities
yea I have never understood those people... I live in a mid sized city and have a strong desire to move back to the farm fields. Probably more on how you grew up than anything, my childhood was in a town of less than 3000 people.
if it was not for network connectivity issues in Rural America I would probably still live in the sticks.
>on top of that, my observations are anecdotal. No need to point that out.
Sorry, this is HN it is rule to point that out :)
- long commutes
- crappy coworkers or offices
- a space large enough to comfortably work remotely (or the money to afford a bigger space)
- a partner, kids, or both, which makes extended social isolation more livable
- a rich network for career growth and opportunities
God forbid some people want to live in big cities and don't make their choices solely based on reducing costs and bottom line expenses (ironic since every other day people here rail against big corporation bean counters). Example: Facebook's latest internal polling - the majority of people want to be in the office sometimes.
People suddenly waking up and realizing the office is a huge scam is the current du jour opinion here. But time and time again the HN demographic only speaks to itself.
And of course people will reply with that it expands choice, but that doesn't stop those from cheering that companies going full remote like its a universal good thing for everyone.
And on top of that, my observations are anecdotal. No need to point that out.
edit: Going full remote is a huge cost savings to companies. A cost that is now hoisted onto employees. So unless employees are receiving some equivalent compensation for blowing out my utility bills and refitting my office, be careful who you're cheering with.