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US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt

theguardian.com

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Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt

#81

Post by deanCommie »

Animats wrote: post #23
softwaredoug wrote: post #4

It’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 homelessnes…

> 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. Right. In which case you may as well meet at an airport hotel with good meeting rooms. Maybe there is a market for that. Repurpose under-utilized indoor malls as business conference centers where teams meet once or twice a week. Malls have plenty of space,…

> In which case you may as well meet at an airport hotel with good meeting rooms.

I'm not finding in-office work productive for the in-office meetings. Those are just as productive remotely.

It's for the hallway conversations, for pair-programming at someone's desks, for grabbing lunch with another senior technical leader on another team and finding out what they're up to, and bonding such that the next time we need to integrate we are automatically looking to fast-track helping each other out.

This requires a sense of place, comfortable vibes, and a pleasant lunch location with good food.

Call me spoiled, but an airport hotel and a buffet table just won't cut it.

Our industry's problem is that the low-EQ engineers have no interest in any of the human elements that make teams and organizations productive. And the only ones around with high-EQ are the VC's who are blinded by the dollars and cents of it all.

So noone REALLY has a vested interest in understanding what we lost when we went all remote during COVID, and what are the minimal elements from it required that are needed to be brought back.

Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt

#82

Post by latchkey »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #80
latchkey wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that isn't their only choices. It'll depend on their finances as well as the market futures. Many many buildings sit empty for ages for a whole bunch of different reasons. Can't just generalize into a binary like that.

given the choice between no money and money, most will choose money, and no amount of 'it depends' will change that the fact that some people let some buildings sit empty for some time doesn't mean most will let most sit empty for most of the time after all, the next best alternative for building owners is foreclosure or abandonment or sale at a loss, the next best alternative for businesses is 1 of a thousand differ…

> given the choice between no money and money, most will choose money

They might not have the choice. Nobody is going to rent ground floor retail space in an area with no foot traffic. It is a race to zero all around.

Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt

#83

Post by amerkhalid »

TeffenEllis wrote: post #5

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…

> 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.

They sound like great leaders. I also work for a great company which is very pro-remote work.

I have been working from home for several years before pandemic. I lived near office, so every once in awhile I would go in to take a break from programming and socialize. It is great for those purposes especially once you are out of college, it is really hard to make new friends. And this is the one aspect about office work that I miss. But it is not a company's job to provide friends.

Also I realized people who lacked real skills but were good at socializing were the ones who went to office often and they were the ones who were climbing corporate ladders faster.

And I have tried hard to understand why return to office is good for business but don’t see any point. Only explanation that makes sense to me is that people who are good at politics are having hard time playing politics in remote world. They have no other skills, technical or business. But they have already climbed corporate ladder and feeling powerless. Now they need people in offices for their personal benefits, not for company’s.

Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt

#84

Post by ozim »

zeroCalories wrote: post #6

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…

I don’t agree. There is much more to hiring even across states let alone from a different country.

Mid sized companies don’t really have experience or know how to hire internationally.

Big companies have know how and resources yes but your average Joe CEO is going to be terrified of it as he won’t have control over it and he has already enough stuff to do locally to keep company running and he can hire Elaine as HR and Jeff as manager and they will know how to deal with Ashton and Jimmy who live in the same state so our Joe CEO will have less worries - which in turn translates to less money wasted by company even if some devs would be cheaper on monthly salaries.

Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt

#85

Post by lotsofpulp »

nkrisc wrote: post #51
jnwatson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno. I don’t need a cement plant on my block.

No, but a restaurant and grocery store around the corner would nice.

Grocery stores around the corner do not work in spread out neighborhoods because the Krogers/Costcos/Albertsons/Walmarts will be able to offer lower price due economies of scale, and anyone with a car will choose to drive 10min, or stop on their way home, to save money rather than go to the higher priced grocery store around the corner.

Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt

#86

Post by softwaredoug »

ozim wrote: post #84
zeroCalories wrote: post #6

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…

I don’t agree. There is much more to hiring even across states let alone from a different country. Mid sized companies don’t really have experience or know how to hire internationally. Big companies have know how and resources yes but your average Joe CEO is going to be terrified of it as he won’t have control over it and he has already enough stuff to do locally to keep company running and he can hire Elaine as HR a…

A mid sized company doesn’t have experience directly hiring, but plenty of firms make it easy to employ a remote workforce as contractors.

Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt

#87

Post by softwaredoug »

tschellenbach wrote: post #45

There's a big gap in these trends between SF & everywhere else. - For companies in SF, rents are extremely high, local salaries are super high and the city is in bad shape so nobody wants to go there. - In most other places rents are affordable, local and remote salaries are similar, and cities are pleasant SF office space is going to get crushed. Most other places will partially recover.

Affordability, nimbyism, and chronic homelessness occur in a lot more places than SF. Yes SF is kind of the poster child, but these are issues in a lot of places

My small, east coast college town has a YIMBY oriented movement for more affordable living options.

https://livablecville.org/

(and a homeless problem https://www.cvilletomorrow.org/newsletter/the-number-of-peop...)

Our zoning is stuck in some old NIMBY ideals and is really hard to change. Development of new projects is stalled. Housing is more expensive than ever.

> Shelter workers say there are many reasons more people might be seeking shelter this year. One is that inflation is making it difficult for people who earn low incomes to afford their homes.

Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt

#88

Post by softwaredoug »

cududa wrote: post #66

In my city, an office building was converted to an apartment. The windows don’t open, given it’s an old apartment building. The AC has been out for two weeks. Not at all saying we should let office buildings stay vacant, just, never considered how much it would suck to not be able to open windows. https://fox8.com/news/unbearable-residents-in-lakewood-high-...

Are we the baddies?

> unfortunately modern HVAC systems work off a computer motherboard. Apparently, through zero fault of ours, that motherboard was fried by an electrical surge.

Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt

#89

Post by otoburb »

Animats wrote: post #23
softwaredoug wrote: post #4

It’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 homelessnes…

> 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. Right. In which case you may as well meet at an airport hotel with good meeting rooms. Maybe there is a market for that. Repurpose under-utilized indoor malls as business conference centers where teams meet once or twice a week. Malls have plenty of space,…

>>Right. In which case you may as well meet at an airport hotel with good meeting rooms.

Japan Airlines recently launched a "rent clothes" offering for overseas travelers.[1] This would dovetail nicely with your idea of meeting at an airport hotel with great conference rooms.

[1] https://press.jal.co.jp/en/release/202307/007481.html

Re: US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt

#90

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

latchkey wrote: post #82
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

given the choice between no money and money, most will choose money, and no amount of 'it depends' will change that the fact that some people let some buildings sit empty for some time doesn't mean most will let most sit empty for most of the time after all, the next best alternative for building owners is foreclosure or abandonment or sale at a loss, the next best alternative for businesses is 1 of a thousand differ…

> given the choice between no money and money, most will choose money They might not have the choice. Nobody is going to rent ground floor retail space in an area with no foot traffic. It is a race to zero all around.

> Nobody is going to rent ground floor retail space in an area with no foot traffic

of course they will, at a low enough rent, obviously, which is the point: lowering rent is indeed a choice, as is going bankrupt, abandoning the property, foreclosure, or selling it at whatever price

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