41–50 of 129 posts
There 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.
The last couple of offices I've seen just have terrible equipment. This of course could just be my own anecdotal coincidental experience or just me being picky, but I do wonder if it's actually, at least in part, due to companies just not giving two sh*ts about equipment because fewer and fewer workers are actually going into the office.
If that hypothesis is true, then it's a really vicious and rapid positive feedback doom-spiral: worse equipment -> fewer on-site workers -> less motivation for better equipment -> even worse equipment -> even fewer on-site -workers...
...repeat ad nauseam.
Also, slightly tin-foil-hat-like (however I bet many will relate), but in the country I'm currently living in (UK), the government sold off all of the transport services to private soulless demons and political cronies, causing a runaway price surge that means a yearly pass for one ~30 minute route is >£5,000 (around $6,000?).
So, yeah, each on-site for me equals getting scammed by profiteering demons, having my back eviscerated by the knock-off-of-a-knock-off of a Herman Miller that has foam crushed into a slab of diamond, spending 30 minutes finding a HDMI/whatever cable, and of course losing 1-2 hours of my life to transport there and back.
Nah.
EDIT: What would make on-site a viable possibility for me would just be: Nicer transport (e.g. >70% chance of seat, instead of 1E-300% chance at the moment), cheaper transport, and better equipment.
EDIT2: I forgot biggest on-site downside of them all: bad tea and coffee :P
I’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…
>We need neighborhoods that people want to be in for reasons other than work! Every other reason eventually boils down to this very point. Turns out, specialized districts were a massive city planning mistake.
Hm ... how about we tax work from home? Like, tax homes for doubling as office space. I think it's a brilliant idea
SF office space is going to get crushed. Most other places will partially recover.
Business owners are adapting just fine. Commercial real estate owners are in big trouble.[1] That article says that most office real estate is leased for five years with an option to renew. Many of those renewals are not happening. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimscheinberg/2023/07/26/dont-l...
"For an office landlord, abandoning a building can be the best of bad options. Commercial mortgages on offices are usually structured as “nonrecourse” loans, which means that only the building is forfeited in a default. "
https://www.curbed.com/article/nyc-office-real-estate-rechle...
This is a great article on the situation in New York, I highly recommend it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>We need neighborhoods that people want to be in for reasons other than work! Every other reason eventually boils down to this very point. Turns out, specialized districts were a massive city planning mistake.
Dunno. I don’t need a cement plant on my block.
And these days state laws and building codes do much to prevent these anyways.
I 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…
It depends on the type of business you're in. If you're working for a large multinational that's doing "commodity web" type work, then yes, remote work probably does make you more replaceable. Fortunately this is not the totality of the job market, although, their monopoly status does seem to help make them the majority of it.
There 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.
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I’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…
> We don’t need a Chipotle on every corner. We don’t need another $20 box salad store. These are the only types of business that can afford the rents though. Even if you get another lower cost place in there, they have to cut corners on quality and end up going out of business or just being really bad food. How do you overcome that?
It will lower itself naturally.
Less people in office buildings means less foot traffic to stores, which means less fewer stores will be enticed to rent.
If nobody's renting, eventually the owners and investors will have to realize some rent is better than no rent, even if it means they are going to take a loss.
Then rents start dropping back to earth.