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Remote work is here to stay – Manhattan may never be the same

nytimes.com

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Re: Remote work is here to stay – Manhattan may never be the same

#61

Post by throwaway0a5e »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #51
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine a world where you might once again say hello to your neighbours That world never went away. It's just a couple tax brackets below the typical HN user.

No, that world definitely went away in some places, even for the urban poor. For instance, residents of apartment blocks in the large Finnish cities today typically don't know their neighbors. (In fact, some would even consider it a faux pas to leave the flat without first checking through the peephole to see if someone else is in the corridor. This is because it could make both you and your neighbor uncomfortable if…

You're right, it did go away for the poor who are thoroughly under the thumb of the wealthy. Many of the less well off residents of (for example) Boston or DC would relate to that sort of "trying to keep your existence on the down low lest you draw the ire of someone who will make your life harder" pattern of action.

Places like Cleveland, Buffalo, or anywhere that the local culture if free of thinking highly of the local culture people are much more open and friendly than major metros and their high class suburbs.

Re: Remote work is here to stay – Manhattan may never be the same

#62

Post by jedberg »

sokoloff wrote: post #34
wcarss wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, imagine living in a lovely small town that has an active social life and a commercial scene, fuelled by the scores of people moving out there with nothing better to do in the evenings, who want to get out of the house. People who don't spend all their energy commuting into and out of a city each day, people who are free from the crowded lonelinesses of the subway, and the hyper-busy trendy weekend coffee-…

At the risk of sounding picky, I am statistically much more interested in socializing with a randomly chosen person from this website than a randomly chosen person from my town (excluding my household). Even my kids’ friends’ parents are often tedious to hang out with. “Can you believe ?” Or some town gossip that is interesting only to the other half of the conversation. I have non-work friends, most of which I met l…

> Even my kids’ friends’ parents are often tedious to hang out with.

I consider myself very lucky to live in the Bay Area, where most of my kids' friend's parents also work in tech. So hanging out at a random birthday party ends up being an unintentional networking event, where I get to meet new people working on cool tech.

I wonder as remote work continues to be popular, if that will continue.

Re: Remote work is here to stay – Manhattan may never be the same

#63

Post by cauliflower2718 »

fhifjfhjjjk wrote: post #41
sokoloff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding picky, I am statistically much more interested in socializing with a randomly chosen person from this website than a randomly chosen person from my town (excluding my household). Even my kids’ friends’ parents are often tedious to hang out with. “Can you believe ?” Or some town gossip that is interesting only to the other half of the conversation. I have non-work friends, most of which I met l…

You are sounding picky and you are projecting the problems specific to your life on the rest of us. We don't all want to be your friend, we want to avoid the rat race.

Not to be unfriendly, but perhaps _you're_ projecting your desire to avoid your coworkers on to others. I think both you and the person you responded to make interesting points, both of which I can see myself relating to at different parts of my life, depending on how much I liked my work vs my local community.

Re: Remote work is here to stay – Manhattan may never be the same

#64

Post by clapper »

aphextron wrote: post #8

It's even more pronounced in SF, and it's probably the best thing that has happened to the city in decades, minus the obvious catastrophe of the pandemic itself. A nice studio apartment in a decent neighborhood can be had now for $1500; something unthinkable a year ago. Hopefully this can help start to revitalize the city's culture into something more than a monolithic tech frat party.

Where are you finding places for $1500? I'm seeing most stuff around the $2000 range.

Re: Remote work is here to stay – Manhattan may never be the same

#65

Post by EricE »

jedberg wrote: post #32

Manhattan will be fine. It's reinvented itself many times before. 100 years ago it was filled with warehouses and factories. Those all left and never came back, and they were renovated into housing and offices. If the offices leave, all those buildings will be renovated into WeWork like spaces (if not WeWork itself) or into more housing. Especially if everyone is working from home, people will want bigger places to r…

lol - it will be interesting to see how much of the “culture” returns after the fiascos of last year.

Re: Remote work is here to stay – Manhattan may never be the same

#66

Post by [deleted] »

standardUser wrote: post #56
dcolkitt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> New York is still a cultural center. People will want to live there. New Orleans is also a major cultural center. Some people will pay up to live around culture. But the vast majority of people paying NYC prices are doing so because of access to high paying professional jobs. There's a reason that San Jose is nearly as expensive as NYC. There's not a single major city in the world that survives off culture alone.

> But the vast majority of people paying NYC prices... Those prices have already dropped and if there's a continued, long-term drop in physical jobs then those prices will drop further, attracting a younger crowd that values aspects of the city other than proximity to a workplace. I've been apartment hunting and a lot of brokers say there's already a huge influx of younger renters, and I have multiple friends looking…

[deleted]

Re: Remote work is here to stay – Manhattan may never be the same

#67

Post by midrus »

softwaredoug wrote: post #5

I’m a bit sad how remote work is likely to hurt my social life I have many close friends that grew out of the intimacy of solving problems together. We could casually hangout IRL after work. Our partners and kids would get to know each other. In turn, that growing trust would feedback into a more positive workplace. It’s not the only way to make friends, but it was an easy way. Now my relationships with coworkers can…

Then use the commuting time you're saving now to go and make friends at the gym, at the local reading club, coffee shop, church or social centre.

I'm totally in about making friends and getting along with all coworkers, being nice to each other, etc is very important. But work is work. Despite what the "People" department says, it's not your family, not are you a "Examplecompanying".

I rant about this because I know more of one case where people missing their friend coworkers made everyone in the team have to go back so we "all work together" when people are more productive and get more job done with less distractions and more free time doing it from home.

TL;DR, look for social life out of work. Work is work.

Re: Remote work is here to stay – Manhattan may never be the same

#68

Post by greenyoda »

baby wrote: post #31

[flagged]

The HN FAQ[1] has this to say about paywalls:

> Are paywalls ok?

> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. More here.[2]

In fact, someone posted a link to an unpaywalled copy of the article before you posted your complaint: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26623921

For that matter, you can read NY Times articles just by disabling cookies/JavaScript on the site with various browser extensions (I use uMatrix in Firefox).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=a...

Re: Remote work is here to stay – Manhattan may never be the same

#69

Post by decafninja »

burlesona wrote: post #16
softwaredoug wrote: post #5

I’m a bit sad how remote work is likely to hurt my social life I have many close friends that grew out of the intimacy of solving problems together. We could casually hangout IRL after work. Our partners and kids would get to know each other. In turn, that growing trust would feedback into a more positive workplace. It’s not the only way to make friends, but it was an easy way. Now my relationships with coworkers can…

I share your general concern. I worked remotely for most of my career before finding an office job that would pay enough for me to move to SF. I'll admit that housing in SF was a tough fit for me and my family, but outside of the housing problem we absolutely loved it. There was a great social network of people living and working in the same industry and neighborhood, and the sense of camaraderie was great. That empl…

I wonder how much attitudes towards preferring office vs. WFH is dependent on the actual physical office environment.

I am in the prefer WFH camp. However if my office was something more akin to what I see in many Silicon Valley style tech companies, I could theoretically imagine myself enjoying the office more.

As it is, my current office (for that matter, for my entire career) is more akin to what you see in The Office TV show, or Dilbert, or other stereotypically dystopian, dull, boring, traditional offices where everyone is mandated to wear at least business casual - dress shirt, dress pants, dress shoes.

Re: Remote work is here to stay – Manhattan may never be the same

#70

Post by qqqwerty »

sokoloff wrote: post #34
wcarss wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, imagine living in a lovely small town that has an active social life and a commercial scene, fuelled by the scores of people moving out there with nothing better to do in the evenings, who want to get out of the house. People who don't spend all their energy commuting into and out of a city each day, people who are free from the crowded lonelinesses of the subway, and the hyper-busy trendy weekend coffee-…

At the risk of sounding picky, I am statistically much more interested in socializing with a randomly chosen person from this website than a randomly chosen person from my town (excluding my household). Even my kids’ friends’ parents are often tedious to hang out with. “Can you believe ?” Or some town gossip that is interesting only to the other half of the conversation. I have non-work friends, most of which I met l…

It also has some major disadvantages. Folks can get fired or laid off if the business goes south. You are competing with those same friends for promotions. And the HR department gets the final word on what is considered appropriate behavior.

Much better to just connect with people that share your same interests outside of work. Join a club, go to a meetup, etc... And quite frankly, when it comes to more technical matters, I find online conversation to be much more fulfilling than IRL. And there are no shortage of outlets for that, including HN.

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