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

Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 394 posts

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#151

Post by TulliusCicero »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #78
umeshunni wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a classic chicken and egg problem. Companies don't want to establish new offices in cities where they cannot attract new talent or there isn't a large existing base of talent. This limits large new offices to large metro areas (5M+ people) People don't want to relocate to cities where there aren't multiple job possibilities - you lose your job/hate it and don't want to have to relocate to find a new job or you w…

> Companies don't want to establish new offices in cities where they cannot attract new talent or there isn't a large existing base of talent This seems especially silly. There are almost limitless people who would like to get one of the FAANG co's on their CV. They'd gladly relocate and benefit from reasonable property prices for a year or three. Google or Netlix are hardly going to struggle to attract talent if the…

No there aren't. It's the kind of move that sounds highly desirable until you actually start considering it seriously. Notably: what happens when you get tired of your current work, or you get laid off, or something else comes in between you and your current company? If there are no comparable companies around the area, you're stuck accepting shittier work, or uprooting your life.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#152

Post by TulliusCicero »

iainmerrick wrote: post #112
Xcelerate wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry about this as well. I wouldn't be surprised if SF, NYC, and DC encompass the majority of the country's wealth in a few decades. It genuinely amazes me that remote tech jobs haven't taken off. I just can't fathom why—unless companies have honestly found that it doesn't work for some reason unknown to me. What other incentive could there be? You get good workers at a fraction of the cost. And with companies lik…

Speaking as someone who does a fair amount of remote working, yes, videoconferencing is awful. I’ve worked at several different companies of different sizes and it’s always awful. The video quality is bad, audio is terrible, getting a meeting started takes forever. These aren’t insurmountable problems, you just have to get used to a different way of working. It’s not remotely the same as working in the same office. B…

> Google is one of the few companies with the resources to try to drastically improve the technology and fix this problem, but they instead decided just to double down on consolidating their staff in big offices. Obviously works for them but it’s a shame.

I'm a googler, and this is completely wrong. Google absolutely wants to fix the remote work issue. Nearly every meeting room in the company is equipped with videoconferencing equipment, and "dialing in" is an accepted practice, with people occasionally dialing in from home being quite common. Hell, they sell their videoconferencing stuff to other companies even, so the monetary incentive is certainly there.

But fully remote work also introduces organizational problems that current tech, at least, does not overcome.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#153

Post by sincerely »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #113
ramraj07 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a tech worker in NYC and none of my firends (except one idiot) pays more than 2500 for their studio apartment within Manhattan. I share a super fancy apartment in a hirise in Brooklyn and pay less than 2K. If you're okay living in Queens you can get a 2BR with less than 1h commute. And this is not even talking about distant Brooklyn, Bronx or jersey (also less tax)

You can also get a 2BR less than one hour's commute away from San Francisco for under $2000 / month.

where?

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#154

Post by justtopost »

nostrademons wrote: post #101
i-am-that-i-am wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Des Moines favors people that want to settle down and have a quiet, comfortable suburban life. I'm 24, but that is definitely what appeals to me. The mere thought of working in NYC or other tech hubs is nauseating. I'd feel totally out of place culturally.

FWIW, when I was 24 my dream was to move to a small house in the woods of Vermont, and I was sure I'd never leave New England (I grew up in a small town between Lexington and Concord). Moved to Silicon Valley because I also wanted to found a startup and the Bay Area is realistically the only place for that, and besides, Google had just offered me a job and was paying for my relocation. Don't underestimate how much yo…

Did you just explain why his feelings and culture are wrong with 'you can change'?

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#155

Post by saalweachter »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #120
closeparen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can live in many places that are not New York City and have a reasonably timely public transit commute into it.

New York City is huge though. To live in a place that isn’t NYC while still in state means Yonkers or White Plains. Reasonable commute is like an hour, maybe more.

Eh, you can get to dense suburbia in about 45 minutes, sparse suburbia in like 1 hour, and if you're willing to commute 90 minutes, maybe two hours, you're out in what city slickers would call "rural".

Also don't forget Long Island, the Other In State.

(I'm one of the idiots who commutes ~2 hours from near Poughkeepsie, which is (a) still on commuter rail [the super-express Hudson line train takes ~90 minutes, plus the time to get to & from it] and (b) where half of the food you find in NYC farmer's markets comes from. I kinda like it.)

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#156

Post by gxigzigxigxi »

givinguflac wrote: post #146
mac01021 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would have to happen for one of these giant companies to start hiring remote employees?

Older people with outdated visions of “butts in seats” need to stop running things.

I wouldn’t consider myself an “older person” with “outdated visions.” But I still wouldn’t want to work with or be managed by someone working remotely.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#157

Post by abalos »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #152
iainmerrick wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who does a fair amount of remote working, yes, videoconferencing is awful. I’ve worked at several different companies of different sizes and it’s always awful. The video quality is bad, audio is terrible, getting a meeting started takes forever. These aren’t insurmountable problems, you just have to get used to a different way of working. It’s not remotely the same as working in the same office. B…

> Google is one of the few companies with the resources to try to drastically improve the technology and fix this problem, but they instead decided just to double down on consolidating their staff in big offices. Obviously works for them but it’s a shame. I'm a googler, and this is completely wrong. Google absolutely wants to fix the remote work issue. Nearly every meeting room in the company is equipped with videoco…

Agreed. There's something fundamentally different about contacting someone via a video conference versus the organic nature of a quick chat about something.

This puts remote workers behind quite a ways. My old team was partially located in NYC and partially located in the Bay Area. There was a major difference in inter and intra location interactions and it affected the team in some negative ways.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#158

Post by abalos »

claydavisss wrote: post #41
taurath wrote: post #4

This coupled with the Amazon news is starting to get distressing. With the amount of companies that copycat them it’s like the rich are getting richer and the economic benefits are still going to be concentrated only in the most affluent cities. The rest of the country desperately needs real industry and good paying jobs - and will go to huge lengths to try to get them but it appears nobody can come up with a busines…

95% of Googlers in NYC will be lifetime renters just like they are in the Bay Area. Hardly the gilded class

My plan right now is to rent in the city, buy a cabin or getaway house upstate for 200k and move there when I get older. Hard part is just finding somewhere that doesn't suck.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#159

Post by esotericn »

taurath wrote: post #4

This coupled with the Amazon news is starting to get distressing. With the amount of companies that copycat them it’s like the rich are getting richer and the economic benefits are still going to be concentrated only in the most affluent cities. The rest of the country desperately needs real industry and good paying jobs - and will go to huge lengths to try to get them but it appears nobody can come up with a busines…

This has been the case in the UK since, well, forever. In every field I can think of, London has the top tier jobs.

It surprises me that the US was ever different. I'm wondering whether it's a young country effect.

I don't think it's "Elysium" as claimed. It's more like - if you're competitive and want to be the best in a field, you're probably (not always) going to move to London.

If you want to live a life, raise a family, buy a house, etc, the status game isn't that relevant, and you don't need to bother with it.

It's the same on a global scale too - if you're playing that game, there's a hierarchy of 'best paying, most status-giving' _countries_. The most keen will move across the world.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#160

Post by barry-cotter »

closeparen wrote: post #102
C1sc0cat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also for those with kids you have to think about them i.e. what opportunities will they have living in this area when they leave school.

Why would a kid stay in the same area after leaving school? That was categorically out of the question for my graduating classes.

It’s a social class thing. Most Americans live very near where they grew up.

www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/387736/

> Of all respondents, about 54 percent said that they lived in close proximity to where they grew up.

nypost.com/2018/01/11/a-shocking-number-of-americans-never-leave-home/amp/

> 11 percent of survey respondents have never traveled outside of the state where they were born.

Post reply on HN