US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt
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Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt
#2There are other ways to get on the internet than a crowded "open office floor plan" where you're smelling each others' farts all day and have to remind people to message you on Slack instead of walking across the room to tap you on the shoulder when you already have headphones on.
Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt
#3[deleted]
Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt
#4It’s weird going to downtown SF these days.
Everyone seems from out of town. Or if they live nearby, just downtown for their teams onsite.
It’s like a decrepit city district that exists for the sole purpose of flying people in to meet in person. Less a thriving center for tech. More a default place for leadership to get everyone together.
Obviously the vicious cycle of nimbyism, lack of affordability, and homelessness only continue a downward spiral that existed pre pandemic. But there doesn’t seem to be a lot of original thinking on a solution other than “get people back to offices” from those that CAN afford to live nearby and pretend the world hasn’t changed.
Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt
#5I’ve been a remote engineer for over a decade, but only recently switched to a hybrid schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays. IMO, these two days are effectively useless for any kind of productive technical work. There are simply too many visual distractions, interruptions, and a complete lack of comfort in an office.
…But I do enjoy these in-office days for what they make up for in remote work: Face to face chats; Real time human bonding; A sense of place. The office is just a socially accepted excuse to get everyone out of their homes and together for a few hours.
I’m especially grateful that our cofounders understand why we should actually be at the office, and that any expectation of “being more productive” is nothing more but a polite fiction. Ironically, our two days in the office are mostly spent just outside the building. Technical chats over lunch, 1 on 1 meetings as a walk around the neighborhood, and drinks in the evening. That’s what hybrid should be. I’ll send my pull requests at 3 am while in my comfy chair at home.
As for the commercial real estate market, I truly believe they’re fucked in the long run. There aren’t enough jobs like my Montessori arrangement that justify all the buildings in their portfolio. Hell, we couldn’t even go back to full-office because our team is so distributed!
Personally, I think this is commodification coming back to bite short-term economics applied to financial districts. We don’t need a Chipotle on every corner. We don’t need another $20 box salad store.
We need neighborhoods that people want to be in for reasons other than work!
I’m guessing that in the coming months there’s gonna be talks of a real estate bailout. Investors have entwined their holdings into everyone’s retirement plans, and will no doubt appear on the nightly news wearing a vest made out of dynamite. They will threaten to take us all down with them.
Such a shame that they’ve over-leveraged their position. Did they forget that we already have nothing to lose? The irony will be lost on them.
Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt
#6I think one thing people aren't considering is how remote work makes people more easily substitutable. Why live in SF if you can live in a small Colorado town? Why pay for a remote developer in SF when you could pay for a remote developer in Arizona? Why hire in the U.S when you can get a good dev in South America? There used to be a geographic monopoly on labor, but making remote the norm moves us away from that.
Maybe that's a good thing, as it will make NYC affordable, but NYC is also experiencing huge budget shortages from the drop in land value. I suspect these will only get worse over time in all major U.S cities.
Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt
#7I think one thing people aren't considering is how remote work makes people more easily substitutable. Why live in SF if you can live in a small Colorado town? Why pay for a remote developer in SF when you could pay for a remote developer in Arizona? Why hire in the U.S when you can get a good dev in South America? There used to be a geographic monopoly on labor, but making remote the norm moves us away from that. Ma…
This is what programmers wanted right? The right to work from wherever they wanted. Except, that includes cheap areas where salary requirements tend to be much lower and pushes down wages.
Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt
#8I think one thing people aren't considering is how remote work makes people more easily substitutable. Why live in SF if you can live in a small Colorado town? Why pay for a remote developer in SF when you could pay for a remote developer in Arizona? Why hire in the U.S when you can get a good dev in South America? There used to be a geographic monopoly on labor, but making remote the norm moves us away from that. Ma…
To some degree yes,
However living in the same city is only one aspect of substitutability.
There’s also specialized skills, organizational tenure, time zone, how easily legally a company can hire in a country, language barrier and many others.
Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt
#9Hm ... how about we tax work from home? Like, tax homes for doubling as office space. I think it's a brilliant idea
Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt
#10Hm ... how about we tax work from home? Like, tax homes for doubling as office space. I think it's a brilliant idea
You might be joking but we already tax the extra space you need for work from home because the larger amount of space results in a more expensive home.