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

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 92 posts

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

#81

Post by charwalker »

dcolkitt wrote: post #40
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…

> 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.

Louisiana has little to offer politically compared to CA or WA/Seattle area, at least to me. I'm so happy I skipped a job in 2019 that would have out me in San Antonio this winter. I'll happily pay higher taxes so my power stays on, my partner/etc own their own bodies, and the people I live around actually want to help make this a better place for all. IMO that stability is worth the cost of a blue state+ tech minded city combo.

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

#83

Post by valarauko »

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…

>New York is still a cultural center. People will want to live there.

True, as well as healthcare - NYC has some of the best healthcare infrastructure & expertise in the world.

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

#84

Post by valarauko »

marrowgari wrote: post #45
jaredwiener wrote: post #43

I'm a long-time NYC resident, looking to move next month when my lease is up. Yes -- prices are down somewhat, and we will be upgrading, though not by as much as I expected when starting to look. And the demand is definitely there -- an apartment we were interested was leased sometime over the weekend. NYC will be fine.

Also a NYC resident. Been casually looking at apartments to take advantage of the decrease in price of the rental market. Found out 2 things; (1) that if you see an apartment you like you have to act instantly and submit an application otherwise it'll be off the market the next day, (2) the decrease in price is largely a myth. Some are cheaper but it's mostly negligible and temporary. These both tell me that the city…

I agree. Late last year you could get upto 3 free months on your lease. Now it's down to one month mostly.

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

#85

Post by rsj_hn »

jonahbenton wrote: post #47
rsj_hn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And NYC is best place to live/work as a young person NYC is the best place to live/work if you don't plan on having children, which is the ultimate arbiter of whether a given environment is indeed "good for young people" or not. If it wasn't for the flood of people moving into NYC from regions where people still have kids at higher rates, the entire city's population would quickly collapse. It's a genetic graveyard…

Ah, completely false. NYC is a great place to raise kids and many more are born here than move in- obviously because of cost structure. It is expensive. But the resources available to and in the public school system dwarf those in any other system anywhere else in the world. And kids being able to be mobile without cars is...huge.

If you ran a Zoo and the population of your lions kept collapsing so that you must constantly important new lions from elsewhere in order to stabilize the population, you would not conclude "my zoo is a great place for lions". And when someone pointed out that perhaps your zoo isn't a good place to send lions, you would not reply with "completely false!". Someone who cares about lions and their well-being would try recognize that there is something very unhealthy about that zoo.

That New York's fertility rate is abysmal is not "completely false", it is an objective fact.

Whether you think New York is a "great place to have kids" is completely beside the point. What matters is whether the people in NYC actually have those kids, and at what rate. In New York, not enough of them are born to make the city a viable concern if it were not for massive population infusions from elsewhere. NYC is a population sink.

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

#86

Post by mrkramer »

greenyoda wrote: post #73
mrkramer wrote: post #53

Most of big companies are for physical offices because it is hard to manage big work force remotely. Listen to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon https://youtu.be/x8-eUse5hg8?t=413 Things like apprenticeship are impossible to do remotely. Also Zuckerberg is for physical offices for the same reasons Dimon is. Hard to manage, no apprenticeship/internship, no culture. Maybe it is possible for small companies and startups but mana…

> Zuckerberg is for physical offices That would explain why, as the article mentioned, Facebook has added 1 million square feet of Manhattan office space during the pandemic.

I read somewhere that at first Zuckerberg was against remote work but I think he gave in because of peer pressure within Facebook and within tech industry. Facebook will probably embrace hybrid: half physical half remote work.

But I agree with JPMorgan CEO that remote work is problematic and that only some ops can go permanently remote. Maybe in the future everybody can work remotely but I think it is still too early.

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

#87

Post by decafninja »

jedberg wrote: post #62
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…

> 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.

Some people find what you describe as undesirable, but I think I'd love it. Possibly a grass is greener on the other side situation though, I admit.

In NYC, I'd say there is a lot more diversity in terms of industries people work in, but tech is noticeably a tiny minority. Finance is obviously huge - and is probably the industry closest to being in the situation you describe.

Case in point - I am, and have been part of, various social organizations, and AFAIK I'm the only SWE I've encountered. Tons of finance people, tons of medical professionals (though interestingly enough, many many dentists and nurses but M.D.s are rare), tons of people in marketing and education. But no SWEs. A tiny handful of tech professionals from the helpdesk/sysadmin/networkadmin side of things.

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

#88

Post by underseacables »

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 fear the pandemic has crushed hang out culture for the foreseeable future. Out here in the Midwest, I grew up hanging out on the back porch is talking late into the night. People don’t do that anymore it seems.

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

#89

Post by baby »

clpm4j wrote: post #57
baby wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are rents still decreasing? I look on craigslist from times to times and I think I'm seeing less apartments available than like 3 months ago. Although I'm looking at the prices and for what I used to pay for an old 1br, I can get the same but 3br and a parking in low pac height.

They seemed to have pretty much bottomed out. All of the good places and good deals get snatched up within a week or two of listing. The demand is still higher than the supply. Although there does seem to be more places available in the less desirable parts of the city (the northeastern bit) which suggests to me that a significant portion of the people who couldn't really afford to be here have left.

I can't stop but wonder why this comes from a green account :) ? (I'm a bit paranoid and I now lots of people here on HN have something to lose with the market going down)

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

#90

Post by baby »

greenyoda wrote: post #68
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://ne…

Won't stop me from flagging them.
Post reply on HN