Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 424 posts

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#41

Post by papito »

aripickar wrote: post #8

I'm pretty bearish on the pandemic actually leading to massive change in the number of people permanently working from home. My boss put out a survey a week or two ago among my org (30 or so people), and 70% said that they want to work from the office, full time, 20% said some time or most of the time, and 10% said fully remote. And this is a group of people that would be largely well suited to working from home duri…

The optics of being in the office will never change. Humans are very shallow and highly visual. I see - therefore you are.

That said, there is a middle ground. You have to be in the office twice a week in order to achieve the full benefit of face-to-face interaction. I, for one, would welcome having to get out of the house twice a week and go talk to actual humans, go to lunch, or to a bar.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#42

Post by [deleted] »

zaidf wrote: post #14

People won't continue making their current SF salary by working out of Farmville, Ohio. I think this point is missed by many I fully expect Twitter, for example, to come out with salary adjustment policies for people who want to work from home from an entirely different city and state

[deleted]

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#43

Post by city41 »

mips_avatar wrote: post #29

I'm considering it. But I am pretty sure that once things open up, my office culture is going back to one where all the important decisions get made in the hallways after a meeting. Being remote in that scenario means you have no say, and you miss out on important information.

Being the only remote person on a team is really hard. I’ve both done it and been on teams where someone else does it. It’s less than ideal for everyone. It’s a constant nag that never goes away (oh did you remember to join the hangout for Matt?) and pretty much no matter what you miss out on a good deal of communication. I definitely think remote would work best when everyone is doing it.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#44

Post by geddy »

mips_avatar wrote: post #29

I'm considering it. But I am pretty sure that once things open up, my office culture is going back to one where all the important decisions get made in the hallways after a meeting. Being remote in that scenario means you have no say, and you miss out on important information.

Sounds like process needs to be changed on a higher level, not that an ever-growing population needs a slavish devotion to sitting in ever-growing levels of traffic.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#45

Post by kbenson »

capableweb wrote: post #21
_jal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> young, no kids, etc There is your major reason for that survey result. Companies with median-older workforces will see more enthusiasm for remote work.

I read it the other way. Only people who are young with no distractions at home, favor working at home. People who usually have family members at home, get too distracted compared to a office environment, to prefer working at home.

There's likely a few things at play. While working from home might be a little harder with distractions, those distractions generally imply of a lot of other considerations that make working from home appealing. Juggling work and getting kids to school, and getting them ready for school, and various errands needed for kids (i.e. teacher meetings, after school activities, after school care), mean there are many, many benefits to opening up your schedule somewhat by not being requires to be at an office. I would be happy to shift an extra 30-60 minutes of commute and other time to productive work time if it lessened the stress of juggling all these competing responsibilities.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#46

Post by capableweb »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #35
capableweb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it the other way. Only people who are young with no distractions at home, favor working at home. People who usually have family members at home, get too distracted compared to a office environment, to prefer working at home.

Mid 30s, partner, two kids, will only work from home. Will not consider a commute or an office. Have worked remotely for almost a decade. Doing the math, I've saved almost 3360 hours by not having to commute (~2 hr/workday), not to mention wear and tear on a vehicle and the associated commute costs. When my office door is closed, everyone knows I'm "at work". If you don't have a separate physical space where you only…

I'm 30s as well, partner, no kids, will only work in office. I won't consider remote anymore after two experiences with different companies (during 4+ years). Worked in office and remotely equally long in total. I never see the same productivity in myself or others when working remote compared to the office.

I think it just boils down to different people have different needs and work differently. Remote works well for some, offices work well for some. We will never find something that works 100% for everyone.

Thanks for the anecdote though :)

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#47

Post by timtam2 »

dougmwne wrote: post #25

It must be tempting to make even a short-term move out of the Bay area. If your lease is coming due and you were planning on looking for a new place anyway, why not move back in with family or get a short-term rental somewhere further out. Rents will likely be going down over the next few years, not up, so it's a terrible time to lock yourself into a new lease. And we can expect re-opening to happen slowly, so there…

I live in SF but rented a vacation rental for May and June. No point to live in my 600sqft condo when everything is closed and I can rent a 2000sqft house with a pool for small change.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#48

Post by ransom1538 »

zaidf wrote: post #14

People won't continue making their current SF salary by working out of Farmville, Ohio. I think this point is missed by many I fully expect Twitter, for example, to come out with salary adjustment policies for people who want to work from home from an entirely different city and state

Salary based on your locale even though everyone is remote: hilarious. "Oh you live in Alabama you get 60k" "Oh you live in Manhattan on 65th street that is 150k". This will backfire into a political hell.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#49

Post by Grimm1 »

Yeah, I'm an at risk group for this thing and I'm not commuting into an office for the foreseeable future, my office has been good so far but if they don't make an arrangement with me to continue this when our half baked state reopenings happen then I'll find a place that will.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#50

Post by ghaff »

otoburb wrote: post #31
dv_dt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That actually isn't bad is it? Cut back 50% on office space for savings (or leave some extra for growth), and have both groups accommodated.

The follow-on repercussion is that the pendulum swings even further to open-seating hot desk arrangements.

While I think that's true, I work for a company that even normally has a lot of remote and mostly WFH employees. In general, people who come in more then X% of the time can still get an assigned spot. But--at least if space is tight--you'll need to hot desk if you just come in a day or two per week or less.
Post reply on HN