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Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

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Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#791

Post by reissbaker »

vecinu wrote: post #132
tjr225 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiking/cycling/camping can be crazy socially distant and probably one of the best things you can do for your own mental and physical health right now. A ride up Tam isn’t going to be any more or less dangerous than it was before. Outside of a few extremely popular spots it is not restricted in Washington, at least to my knowledge. If it is in the Bay/CA then it is news to me. In any case, that stuff will still be the…

Hiking in the Bay Area is extremely difficult right now. You have to wear a mask EVERYWHERE outside where you are near people. On trails with 90+F weather you have to put your mask on every 30 seconds with how many people there are, it's a mess. My mental health is not improving when there are a million people all trying to do outdoor activities in the limited space we have nearby.

This really doesn't reflect my experience. I live in the Bay Area and have gone hiking every weekend since quarantine started, both in local spots in and around the Bay and excursions to relatively-nearby Californian parks like Sequoia National Forest.

In my experience, you bring a mask with you when you hike, and occasionally put it on for maybe twenty seconds out of every five or ten minutes (or even rarer intervals when hiking in the more remote areas like the national parks) when you pass by someone on a trail and can't maintain distance. You hardly ever have to wear it.

And aside from this past weekend, it hasn't cracked 90 in the Bay Area pretty much all summer IIRC, and rarely even gets over 80.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#792

Post by lr4444lr »

selimthegrim wrote: post #405
lr4444lr wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've already had that option for many years. Mass outsourcing of U.S. high skill IT just never materialized. I suspect there's a much greater managerial gulf between Bangalore and New York than between Dubuque Iowa and New York.

Did you pick Dubuque because of the IBM shop there?

No - because it sounds like middle-o-nowhere. Pretty cool that it was an apt choice. ;-)

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#793

Post by mav3rick »

baron816 wrote: post #447
akavi wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> right between those two neighborhoods So, in the tenderloin? Suddenly not a great deal.

Not quite the Tenderloin. It’s technically Civic Center. Yes, there’s plenty of homeless around, but that’s just SF, right?

You're probably at Argenta, Fox Plaza, NEMA or 100 Van Ness. It's a fine place very central to most cool spots. Keep your wits about you and it shouldn't be a problem. I find 4th to 8th St to be the worst of it.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#794

Post by Bombthecat »

koolba wrote: post #430
justchilly wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen the same. The misconception is that people are leaving because the housing is too expensive and its not worth it anymore. Almost everybody I know that moved out had no problem affording housing (high earners / home owners / rent controlled). People are leaving because quality of life has fallen dramatically and the only thing keeping people in SF was their offices. About half of the tech people I know have…

> The misconception is that people are leaving because the housing is too expensive and its not worth it anymore. Almost everybody I know that moved out had no problem affording housing (high earners / home owners / rent controlled). People are leaving because quality of life has fallen dramatically and the only thing keeping people in SF was their offices. Whether something is too expensive is not just a function of…

You think the stay home order stays that long?

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#795

Post by Bombthecat »

wwweston wrote: post #722
m_ke wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Brooklyn and have seen 2-3 business close a week around me. At this point almost every other storefront is vacant (many of which have been since before the pandemic). My hope is that this will bring down commercial real estate prices down significantly and create an opportunity for a lot more small businesses in a year or so, most of which I assume will be restaurants and other "experience" based shops. The…

> My hope is that this will bring down commercial real estate prices down significantly I'm going to predict that this will not happen. More specifically, that it will be unusual in general for rents or prices anywhere to drop any more than 10%. There's something odd going on and my best guess is that there are (a) accounting/tax practices that provide incentives for vacancy with certain nominal values and (b) real e…

Money printer goes brrrr. To save your money, land and houses are your best bet. (even in or after a civil war)

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#796

Post by angarg12 »

Less dramatically, I'm planning to move to a more rural part of England, where I will be able to rent a 2 bed house with garden for almost half of what I'm paying now for a 1 bed flat.

But I'm fully aware this will be a temporary move, lest I give up most of my career prospects. Job opportunities, networking, contacts... all of them are way lower in the countryside compared to the big city. Also I do believe that remote workers are at a disadvantage in terms of career progression compared with collocated workers.

Unless company cultures change significantly and it is possible to have the same career success fully remote, I won't be moving away for long anytime soon.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#797

Post by blunte »

angarg12 wrote: post #796

Less dramatically, I'm planning to move to a more rural part of England, where I will be able to rent a 2 bed house with garden for almost half of what I'm paying now for a 1 bed flat. But I'm fully aware this will be a temporary move, lest I give up most of my career prospects. Job opportunities, networking, contacts... all of them are way lower in the countryside compared to the big city. Also I do believe that rem…

What I did occasionally as a long-term remote worker was live someplace lovely (and cheap), an then visit some meetups periodically to stay in contact with people.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#798

Post by jodrellblank »

jdkardia wrote: post #646
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great four months a year, but what about the rest of the year? No one can eat outdoors in 20F, or bike to work in the snow and ice. SF does have the advantage of year round biking weather.

I would beg to differ. 3 season biking is easy as pie, and 4 season with just a little effort. there was only maybe a month out of the year I couldn't bike to work in Minneapolis or Chicago, all it takes is infrastructure and the right gear.

As easy as pie, all it takes to bike to work is all the tarmac and smooth roads of a car world, all the parking space of a small car world, all the maintenance of a small vehicle, and a car/bus/taxi/train system for when you can’t bike, and their infrastructure, parking and maintenance.

Do bikes have the largest amount of unmentioned externalities of any form of transport?

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#799

Post by rorykoehler »

justchilly wrote: post #174
captaincole wrote: post #102

I am living in SF now and this confirms a very clear pattern that I have seen emerging, particularly of tech workers. I would say that >50% of the people I know who were living in the city have left, or are in the process of leaving. Some examples (there are countless): 1) All three of the roommates that I had are choosing to leave either permanently or temporarily. 2) A friend who works for google who is going on a…

I've seen the same. The misconception is that people are leaving because the housing is too expensive and its not worth it anymore. Almost everybody I know that moved out had no problem affording housing (high earners / home owners / rent controlled). People are leaving because quality of life has fallen dramatically and the only thing keeping people in SF was their offices. About half of the tech people I know have…

>Almost everybody I know that moved out had no problem affording housing (high earners / home owners / rent controlled).

How are we supposed to reconcile this is all the insanely wealthy people saying they will move out of California because of a wealth tax they can easily afford without even noticing it?

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#800

Post by rorykoehler »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #580
ssalazar wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the bars, restaurants, and smaller cultural institutions will be gone. The larger, well-funded museums and nature will stay of course. But much of what is interesting about a city comes from the people who live there and shape its culture. The San Francisco of today is very different from 10 or 20 years ago, and will be very different 10 years from now. This is recoverable, sure, but its not guaranteed, and i…

Absolutely, I totally agree. It's going to be really sad when we're out in a year (or two or three) and all those places that we went to and remember are no longer there because of this pandemic and ensuing lockdown. But I think about the places (bars, restaurants, clubs, galleries, small shops) I visited almost a decade ago now when I first moved to SF and a bunch of those disappeared in the good times! They were di…

Sounds like an opportunity to create something new tbh.
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