> Why not to open many small offices _outside_ major cities so that people could A/ afford real estate B/ enjoy outdoor space C/ minimize their commute time?

Wasn't this the idea behind the suburban office-building hellscape that people absolutely hated? We thought we were escaping that with our nice city-centre offices!

The mistake there was making it car centric. Fundamentally it wasn’t such a bad idea.

The problem is that making it anything else in the (US) suburbs is damn near impossible. So you have your nice little suburban office park ... and what else? If you want to replicate the feel of a city, even at small scale, you're reliant on restaurants and other kinds of stores and entertainment venues being nearby. Unfortunately, they won't see your office park as a draw. They'll still cluster near the big roads. Your choice in the suburbs is to be in Car Hell or to be isolated.

The closest compromise I've seen is the area around a local mall. There are tons of restaurants - everything from brewpubs to fast food to a Brazilian steakhouse to coffee shops and my favorite bubble-tea shop. Groceries of all kinds and levels, all sorts of clothing, hardware, housewares, a movie complex, you name it. And there are a couple of semi-decent-looking apartment buildings in the area. It's still very car-centric, crossing the eight-lane road between the apartments and the mall wouldn't be fun, but if I were single I could see living there and hardly needing to drive anywhere.

Lots of companies do this - they just aren’t FAANGs.

Meta, Apple, Netflix, Google, so 4/5 FAANGs, all have their HQ in suburban office developments not in major cities, exactly as GP is describing.

> sacrificing your kids childhood

What do you mean by this?

Kids can't have their own rooms (unless you make $300-400k and can afford a 3BR), they do not have opportunity to enjoy outdoor space (there are homeless, traffic, no grass, etc), kids can't go outside without their parents presence, parents struggle to keep up with constantly increasing real estate prices, which down the road affects their children's future. These are just a few from the top of my head.

Kids don’t need their own rooms. Cities have parks. Kids ride the subway and bus alone — and they can walk alone.

Just a few off the top of my head as well

> Kids don’t need their own rooms.

I have a different opinion. They need their own space to play and do the homework. Parents need their own space to do their adult stuff.

> Cities have parks

Good luck trying to afford a property next to a park. 2BR in New York is $7k per month. If you are buying, prepare for $2M+.

> Kids ride the subway and bus alone

16 year olds - maybe. What about Those 7,8,9,10? Would you let your 8 yo kid to take a subway to the park? Give me a break.

> they can walk alone

No, they can't, unless they are 16+, but even then it's dangerous. My friend lived in Battery Park. Her 16 yo kid was bullied and robbed (several times he was surrounded by a few older "kids" and they took his phone away) at least once a month - all in the subway of NY.

Sincerely: fix your culture. All of this is possible in many developed countries. It's uniquely an American thing to believe children are in danger of everything.

I mean I think it’s a foolish and selfish decision to have children in the face of coming climate change, but if you’re going to have them you should do it in a city rather than the suburbs. Stick ‘em on a bus make ‘em walk, whatever.

I grew up in a big city (Moscow). I walked the streets alone and took the subway alone starting at the age of 12. I went to the playground outside of my apartment building alone starting at the age of... IDK, 5, maybe?

Did bad stuff happen occasionally? Yeah, I got robbed a couple of times, got into some fights, did some very dumb things myself, to be perfectly honest. But I feel like all of the bad stuff was a small price to pay for independence and street smarts.

Edit: one benefit of that is that as an adult, I've never felt unsafe walking the streets in the US in any neighborhood, now matter how bad its reputation is.

I grew up in Odessa and had exactly the same experience as you. But I don't remember a single occasion when a kid would disappear. Later in life I moved to New York. I lived there for 10 years. AMBER alerts were a "normal" thing.

I'm not one of those paranoid parents, but there is a line when my gut feeling tells me: "no man, this is not safe".

Everything you're expressing is unsound opinion. You're also exaggerating all numbers to skew your point.

> Good luck trying to afford a property next to a park. 2BR in New York is $7k per month. If you are buying, prepare for $2M+.

- You don't need to live next to a park to have convenient access to it. You're missing the point.

- The median 2BR in Manhattan is $5,550. Brooklyn: $3,600. Northwest Queens (closest to Manhattan): $4,417 https://www.elliman.com/resources/siteresources/commonresour...

- You can easily get perfectly comfortable 2 BRs in nice neighborhoods for far under $2M. I live in one. Didn't pay close to $2M. Only the high end (unnecessary) crosses that threshold.

I know a wide range of NYC kids and their parents of all age ranges. They haven't sacrificed anything growing up here. They're perfectly well developed kids with just as much going for them as anywhere else. I'm sorry your friend's kid has problems. That sounds horrible, and I hope they find a solution to their personal problem.

> - The median 2BR in Manhattan is $5,550

Holy smokes. Is that a counter argument? Is that a normal price?

> - You can easily get perfectly comfortable 2 BRs in nice neighborhoods for far under $2M.

Yes, you can. 1000 sq ft for $1M. You'll live in a building built in 1930-1960. Is that normal? How many people can afford a million bucks mortgage?

Let's do a back of the envelope calculations. Quick google search:

> Experts suggest you might need an annual income between $100,000 to $225,000, depending on your financial profile, in order to afford a $1 million home.

Since we are talking about families with kids in New York, I would not hold my breath to rely on $100k annually. $200k is much more realistic.

$200k is ~$5500 bi-weekly paycheck if you are not investing anywhere (401k, stocks, etc).

$1M mortgage is apprx. $6,275 per month. So you need 2 paychecks at a minimum to cover your mortgage expenses alone.

You are left with $4,725. Utilities will take another $200/month = $4,525 - $1k (food) = $3,525. Internet + phone + entertainment for kids + home maintenance - $500/month at a minimum. You are left with $3k. That might be enough if you are ready to live like a robot.

Now, all these calculations are based on the fact that you magically had $200k downpayment, which is a massive amount of money by itself. Average account balance of Americans is $4k (40-45 yo population, data from 2019), which means saving $200k is extremely hard.

An average of 6.68% of US households make over 200k. So, roughly 6.7% of the US population can _potentially_ afford to live in an old 1000 sq ft 2BR in Manhattan.

> I know a wide range of NYC kids and their parents of all age ranges. They haven't sacrificed anything growing up here.

Well, I do know as well. But the counter-argument here is that they don't actually realize that they are sacrificing anything. They have a belief that everything is normal, things are going fine, but that's simply not truth. I lived in New York for 10 years and I thought that the place was OK. Once a travelled a bit across the US, I realized how miserable New Yorkers (including myself) are.

> Kids don’t need their own rooms.

I think they actually legally do above a certain age in many places?

Which places?

In the UK for example:

> Legislation states that children of the opposite sex over the age of 10 should not share rooms - and that this can be considered overcrowding.

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/in-the-home/s...

So it’s not a legal requirement:

> While it's not illegal for them to share…

Any places that actually back up your original guess of:

> I think they actually legally do above a certain age in many places?

Try 'overcrowding' your children and see what a family court thinks of it...

Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines? We've had to ask you this more than once before. You can make your substantive points without swipes, snark, or flamebait. Please do that instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm guessing this is referring to US cities, where it feels too dangerous/stressful to raise kids. Cities in Europe, like Amsterdam, have a completely different experience.

Primary threat being cars.

I think even without taking fully remote work into account. Using small offices in small cities is an untapped market of employees.There are plenty of 500k - 1M person cities that could support an office of 100-1000 engineers well. I don't see much benefit in these huge 10k, 20k+ office complexes when people still end up doing meetings on zoom because it takes too long.