$1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes • Hacker News Board

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#41

Post by CiPHPerCoder » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #37

toomuchtodo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, there are fully remote companies (bootstrapped, lifestyle, and startups) collectively worth over a billion dollars that are fully remote. I don't buy this argument at all having worked for one of them. Face to face communication is only necessary if your collaboration tools and business/workplace processes are not up to par, and that's a business problem, not a social interaction problem. To echo the refrain…

Those companies are pretty cool and I think we'll see more in the future. That said, while they're better than the alternative of not existing at all, it's not a given that they're not inferior to a company operating out of one office where it's easier to communicate.

Open offices with white noise generators don't exactly strike me as the paragon of ease of communication.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#42

Post by malcolmgreaves » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #2

Most major tech companies want to hire onsite, when there are plenty of places in this country where you can buy a lot of real estate for much cheaper than the Bay Area. I pay less on my mortgage for a large house with over an acre of land than friends of mine pay for rent for studio apartments in San Francisco or Seattle. Investing $1B into housing in the Bay Area seems nice at the surface, but maybe if we stopped d…

Many people want to live in deaireable areas. There's a reason why your home is cheap.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#43

Post by yters » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

quelsolaar wrote: post #26

Here is a buisnes idea Ive been thinking about lately for SF, Hong Kong, NY and other expensive places. Buy a smaller cruise ships and rent a pier to dock it. I found a newly renovated ship with 72 cabins for 5.8 million. With the average rent in SF that ship has paid for itself in 2 years (yes there will be additional costs, but back of a napkin, its a good start). Then buy more ships and stack them. Renovate/remode…

And then once the ship city state has developed enough independence it can quietly slip out to sea beyond national borders and become its own seastead mini-nation of Google.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#44

Post by CiPHPerCoder » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #40

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That studio in San Francisco or Seattle comes with the opportunity of a high paying job at a tech company. ...and your high paying job mostly pays your landlord. If the same company offered the same job to remote employees for comparable pay, it'd remove the financial incentive to move to these cities. This would have a lot of immediate obvious benefits.

> If the same company offered the same job to remote employees for comparable pay Why would they do that? They only pay as much as they do in Silicon Valley to offset the cost of living.

I said comparable, not equivalent. Cost of Living Adjustments can be included in their offer calculus.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#45

Post by calvinbhai » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

quelsolaar wrote: post #26

Here is a buisnes idea Ive been thinking about lately for SF, Hong Kong, NY and other expensive places. Buy a smaller cruise ships and rent a pier to dock it. I found a newly renovated ship with 72 cabins for 5.8 million. With the average rent in SF that ship has paid for itself in 2 years (yes there will be additional costs, but back of a napkin, its a good start). Then buy more ships and stack them. Renovate/remode…

Bottle neck: commute between ship and land.

How do you factor for that?

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#46

Post by Tade0 » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

dymk wrote: post #18

manigandham wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it not easy? The internet is global just like the products these companies create. There's not much, if any, reason they need to be so consolidated in a single region or city.

Face-to-face communication has not been supplanted with online tools yet, and face-to-face communication is very important to this job.

and face-to-face communication is very important to this job.

For what purpose specifically?

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#47

Post by bluedino » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #31

GuiA wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I pay less on my mortgage for a large house with over an acre of land than friends of mine pay for rent for studio apartments in San Francisco or Seattle. That studio in San Francisco or Seattle comes with the opportunity of a high paying job at a tech company. The large house with an acre of land gives you other opportunities, but if that one specific dimension is what you care about then it falls short.

> That studio in San Francisco or Seattle comes with the opportunity of a high paying job at a tech company. ...and your high paying job mostly pays your landlord. If the same company offered the same job to remote employees for comparable pay, it'd remove the financial incentive to move to these cities. This would have a lot of immediate obvious benefits.

$2,000 house payment vs a $3,000 apartment rental is only $12,000 a year in difference.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#48

Post by kennystone » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

George Pullman made a town outside of Chicago for workers to build his railcars. It didn't end well:

"the town and its design were... a paternalistic system that took away men's rights as citizens, including the right to control their own domestic environment"

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1030.html

Happy that google is making this investment; it's worth a shot even if it is far the ideal way to build housing. Hopefully the NIMBYism that defines this area won't kill it.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#49

Post by andrew311 » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

dymk wrote: post #18

manigandham wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it not easy? The internet is global just like the products these companies create. There's not much, if any, reason they need to be so consolidated in a single region or city.

Face-to-face communication has not been supplanted with online tools yet, and face-to-face communication is very important to this job.

An alternative way of looking at it: whether or not face to face is important for the specifics of the job, it might be important for emotional connection between humans, fulfilling a common human desire to connect with peers and be happy on the job and _outside_ the job. In other words, we might want to be around peers for social (non-job) reasons.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#50

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

quelsolaar wrote: post #26

Here is a buisnes idea Ive been thinking about lately for SF, Hong Kong, NY and other expensive places. Buy a smaller cruise ships and rent a pier to dock it. I found a newly renovated ship with 72 cabins for 5.8 million. With the average rent in SF that ship has paid for itself in 2 years (yes there will be additional costs, but back of a napkin, its a good start). Then buy more ships and stack them. Renovate/remode…

Here is a buisnes idea Ive been thinking about lately for SF, Hong Kong, NY and other expensive places. Buy a smaller cruise ships and rent a pier to dock it.

This has been tried before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueseed

EDIT: Oh, you mean as residences! There are people who live in the marinas. There is some gatekeeping for that.

A high speed high tech ferry running between SF and the South Bay would be dandy.