Destination cities will still be desirable, however there will be a very slow rebuilding of demand. The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. The entire world was forced to work from home for an extended period of time, introducing those from industries that would scoff at the idea to a different lifestyle. Sure some people don’t like it, they will be the ones moving back to cities, but I think enough find it vastly favorable to the grind of commuting too and from a physical office that it will have some stickiness once social distancing can safely be stopped.

This general shift in attitude will make it far more realistic to work where you actually in your heart of hearts want to live. I’m excited for this change, I live in downtown San Francisco right now and it’s not BAD— life is fine, we’re making due with the times. But I never wanted to permanently live here, and now there is this perfect chance to move out of the city, you bet your ass I’m taking it when my lease is up :)

Growth of cities and the increase of wealth of cities is 5,000 year trend, that includes in its history pandemics and plagues.

Given that we've had multiple localized epidemics or global pandemics in the last two decades alone (SARS, Ebola, Swine Flu/H1N1, etc), the likelihood of more seems increasingly high. Perhaps it doesn't even matter whether the next one will have a higher CFR; whether large cities prosper depends not only on whether people believe it will, but also on how well the cities do in many other respects, such as crime, taxes, pollution, trash, homelessness, etc. SF is not only suffering because of the pandemic: the pandemic just put an extra sense of urgency on the snowball effect that was already happening.

When cities are safe, healthy, clean and beautiful, they're great and everyone is happy to live there, but now? Not so much.

It’s important to note also that sanitation, preparedness, and scientific knowledge will all continue to improve over time. Pandemics may become more common but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be as deadly or effective as the current one.

1. The growth of information/knowledge (the Information Age) jobs, which are now the majority of all jobs in the U.S.

2. The growth of remote work tools (the jury is out on how productive people are remotely at the moment, but new tech will drive this soon so that you will be just as or almost as effective in your kitchen or local coffee shop)

3. The growth of global transportation (the Jet Age) that allows previously localized diseases to spread globally in hours, instead of months or years

These factors are new and together likely presage a historic shift in how and where people work.

Ironically, except for this market adjustment in larger cities, the ability for people to work productively in other locations will put continuing downward pressure on the cost of living in cities as people leave, and probably hit some sort of equilibrium at some point soon.

... all this to mean that you should sell your investment properties in the Tenderloin ;)

To me the question is whether companies/employees will continue letting/wanting to work remotely in the future. I am certainly not concerned about a population collapse in big cities because many companies and people want to live there and don't because of cost.

I don't believe this; very few companies are okay with permanent remote work after the pandemic is over, even though they are very notable exceptions, eg Facebook.

This also assumes the population of people interested in living in destination cities is constant, but it's been growing every year the last decade except this one. COVID and the possibilities of remote work and COVID will dampen growth, but when we get through COVID, I expect demand to be higher than ever. It's not like SF will solve their systemic housing problems in the next 20 years, or our lifetimes.

By a long shot, the largest expense for large companies in employee salaries - rent, by comparison, is a drop in the bucket. What follows is that companies should be most concerned about employee and team productivity rather then office expenses.

I know companies in Canada that are way ahead of the curve on this: they've been consulting for American companies for years, meaning they can afford way more person hours than american counterparts given a US dollar contract size solely because of the salary gap difference.

The US vs. not-US gap is certainly larger, but I expect that US-based companies would much rather hire someone 3 timezones away than 8 or 12. Having to be on conference calls at 7am or 8pm gets old real quick.

I haven’t heard of one, and I would think this would be a huge selling point so anyone doing it would want to advertise it to engineers.

On the other hand there are plenty of companies transparent about their policy to match pay to cost of living, for instance gitlab publishes their conversion percentages for different cities. Many places in the US they pay ~60% of Bay Area.

https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&s...

https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&s...

Can companies measure productivity of knowledge workers to that granularity?

Office expenses make a relatively small fraction of employee overall expenses. Say 10% to be extremely generous. NYC five-borough average back in 2015 was around $15K per year [1]. A fully-burdened employee expense is around 2X base salary, so a $100K salary position clocks in around $200K fully-burdened, or around 7.5% of that 2015 NYC average figure. I don't currently see companies wholesale changing employment strategies for 10% differentials.

I'm not sure companies can measure productivity down to that expense detail level for knowledge workers.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-much-your-compan...

I personally don't know of any large corporations that track it well enough on a corporation wide level to be able to tell you if any change significantly affected developer productivity.

But the check they write every month for rent is very easily measured and reduced.

Also I was specifically told by the VP who was in charge of making the decision for his division why he was doing it, and it was costs savings.

Will young people suddenly not want to live in close proximity to other young people? Will that become another luxury item for the well-connected?

I’d counter that many young people permanently leave their “hometown” for financial opportunities that are currently only available away from that “hometown”.

For privileged young folks who are “amenity migrants”, your statement would be admittedly true. It might be a bit classist to extend that assumption to all young people.

Sure, people who grew up in $COOL_PLACE but moved to $OTHER_PLACE for a job might want to (and be able to) move back to $COOL_PLACE now, but I don't think that generalizes to most of America.

The US is expected to add 80m people in the next 30 years. So that seems very unlikely, even if there is a shift in behavior.

Edit: reduced the population estimate with newer numbers from the census bureau.

Step out of your bubble and think about all of the people making the goods you order, maintaining your roads, construction workers that fix your home, the workers at the grocery store, the person that delivers your packages, the warehouse workers, etc etc etc.

The world runs on people being physically present working jobs that can’t be done from home... that must continue so that you CAN work from home. Until robots can do those jobs, it'll always be the minority that works from home.

If you reduce the need to maintain both a worksite for people and a home, while you will increase the need for labor to maintain/service the home and supporting infrastructure somewwhat, it will probably be less than the reduced demand for labor to maintain and service the worksite. The initial effects of a large scale shift to telecommuting is going to include a lot of net physical service/maintenance/support jobs lost.

Step out of your bubble and think about what it would mean if 40% of Americans worked from home full time.

It can be done, we've seen that, now people are running the numbers and seeing what that means. Pre-covid it was something like 3% that worked from home at least half the time.

If 3% turns into 40% - or even 20% or 6% - that starts to change things.

The whole WFH discussion is an upper-middle class discussion. Low income workers don't have the option of working from home.

Remote collaboration tools like GH have been crucial for remote work for software developers, but that's a really small slice of the pie.

Every one since then was someone I knew online for many years first.

Everyone I know in the service industry left. I doubt they ever come back. COVID was the nail in the coffin for most bars, restaurants, and clubs in SF that were already struggling. The city isn’t going to be the same after this.

When things fully reopen there’s gonna be a sort of boom in entertainment/restaurant/travel industry

Many parts of the US will definitely go back to normal, but maybe not everywhere. It may be a permanent structural change in laws and government approaches.

If trump wins, then who knows.

30% of people will never take a vaccine [0]

The first couple vaccines will be 40-60% effective [1]

Similar vaccines never exceed 70% effectiveness. [2]

It's unclear how many boosters you'll need, etc.

I hope someone out there is crunching the numbers and seeing the issue.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/317018/one-three-americans-not-... [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/12/9119879... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm

Why? No reason at all beyond managers wanting to see people physically in the office working. The management class rarely takes a page from science and reason when making decisions, gut feelings are king, and the gut feeling in many boardrooms right now is that people are slacking off working from home. Whether that is true or not in real world productivity isn't considered. That's why I think not much will change ultimately once things do eventually return to normal, whenever that may be. People will go right back to living conveniently to work.

SF, for example, was a popular place to live before it was a tech hub. Even if all the companies go away (they won't), there will still be plenty of demand. Maybe it will be a healthier sort of demand that doesn't push lower-income residents out of their homes. But there will still be demand, and it will grow as COVID becomes further behind us.

For a lot of the people who moved back in with their parents, I think social circles will be an important factor. I know if I'd moved away, I'd be anxious to see my friends again, and live close to them. That doesn't mean everyone will end up back where they started, but some will. Others might band together and pick a new, smaller city or town to live in. Some social circles won't get back together, and some will split into new combinations. Some might see it as an opportunity to move to a new city where some old friends have lived for years. Still others might decide to stay with their parents, especially if they're older and may not be around much longer.

Also consider that only something like 30% or 40% of the workforce has been working from home during COVID. Everyone else works in restaurants, bars, state and local government agencies, retail and grocery stores, hospitals, universities, and a host of other things that require a physical presence everywhere. There's no "grocery hub" like there's a "tech hub" or "entertainment hub". Every city and town needs a hospital or clinic and people to staff it, telemedicine notwithstanding. Those professions will continue to grow with the US's population, which will drive more demand everywhere, including cities.

Combine that with companies pushing more remote work, or setting up satellite offices, and you may see a slight decline in urban areas for a few years until it is in fashion again.

They don't explain why rents in SF are falling more than anywhere else.

To be fair, the article only says 31% is the most. If other cities are around 29-30%, forget what I said.

1.) There are too many people who dont have strong preference and thus go for salary because why not. Or follow friends. The higher salaries also go with bigger social status, often better negotiating position. There are people who do need money. And yes, there are many people who measure worth in salary too.

2.) Historically, people move that way. When programming turned out to be good job, students started to be way more interested in that. When you look at which majors students pick, they generally go for the ones that sound practical and earn money. Yes, some people go for antropology or history of art, but not nearly as many of them.

People moved to San Francisco in the first place because they followed opportunities. People moved out of Detroit because they followed opportunities.