7 ms·

Once again — why everyone needs to be in Bay Area to work productively? From the SF employers' perspective, if on the one side is "hire locally and pay exorbita

Once again — why everyone needs to be in Bay Area to work productively? From the SF employers' perspective, if on the one side is "hire locally and pay exorbitant salaries to cover exorbitant costs of rent and everything else", and on the other is "hire remotely and get the best of both worlds", why the first option is ever chosen?

TulliusCicero 10y ago
There are logistical issues to distributed teams. It can definitely work, but I think it's context dependent. It's not a panacea to high housing/labor costs; if it was, you'd already see the big tech giants like Google/Facebook/etc. predominately hiring in cheaper places, which they're not doing.
- atemerev 10y ago
  This is what I am asking. Why they are not doing it? And if there is a compelling reason for FB/Google, is it valid for everyone else?
  - tamana 10y ago
    Throwing your life away to work for these companies is a show of commitment that you don't get from someone who sacrifice to get a job.
  - TulliusCicero 10y ago
    Coordinating teams remotely is harder (and gets harder the larger your company is), and makes for slower software development. For highly profitable tech companies, it's worth the premium to have people on-site.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  Moving signals commitment and "us"-ness.
HarryHirsch 10y ago
why everyone needs to be in Bay Area to work productively Could this have to do with the state of the safety net in the country? If you lost your tech job in 2007 and lived in Austin or Dallas you could look at nine months or a year of unemployment. In SF you'd be looking at three to six months until the new job. The attraction of SF isn't the quality of jobs, it's the concentration, the phenomenon is jobseeker-driven. And if you are a landlord you profit handsomely.
- mattkrause 10y ago
  The same dynamic affects couples. Both partners need jobs that are no more than two reasonable commutes apart. If you both do something fairly specialized, a lot of smaller places just aren't viable. My SO and I both have fairly technical jobs. We occasionally talk about moving, but there is a surprisingly short list of cities where we are confident that we could both work. I find interesting jobs in out-of-the-way places (GE has some medical imaging stuff in Schenectady, for example), but without some incredible luck, it would tough-verging-on-impossible for us to make somewhere like that work. In the US, universities (which are often in the middle of nowhere), sometimes try to compensate by hiring both partners. Power couples where either individual would be a catch in their own right have it easiest, but hotshots can sometimes land their solid-but-not-meteoric spouse a tenure-track job. I've even seen a few spouses hired into non-academic jobs in the university's accounting or legal departments. Do any companies do something similar? It seems like it would be a huge boon to recruiting, especially outside of huge cities.
sokoloff 10y ago
Because you don't "get the best of [all] worlds" that way. There's very much a hurdle to building a strong team of remote workers and while some places manage to do it, it's neither automatic nor even the most common outcome. I have productive teams in 3 cities across 3 continents. It takes real effort to get to that state, and all else being equal, I'd readily take my teams all in one place. And this isn't even "remote worker" but rather "remote offices". Remote individual workers would be even harder, IMO.
jseliger 10y ago
Once again — why everyone needs to be in Bay Area to work productively This has been answered by the field of economic geography; if you keep asking the question, read Glaeser's Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier for a definitive answer (https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healthier/dp/0143120549 https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healt...).
- nine_k 10y ago
  So, let's make Bay Area a city, instead of an endless suburb sprawl?
kps 10y ago
I hate to be cynical, but… no, wait, I love being cynical. The people — from mid-managers to VCs — who reject remote work are, in general, heavily invested in the SV housing bubble.
superuser2 10y ago
>"hire remotely and get the best of both worlds", why the first option is ever chosen? Because while you and many others may believe you don't lose anything of significant value by giving up an office, lots of us disagree.

TulliusCicero 10y ago

There are logistical issues to distributed teams. It can definitely work, but I think it's context dependent. It's not a panacea to high housing/labor costs; if it was, you'd already see the big tech giants like Google/Facebook/etc. predominately hiring in cheaper places, which they're not doing.

atemerev 10y ago
This is what I am asking. Why they are not doing it? And if there is a compelling reason for FB/Google, is it valid for everyone else?
- tamana 10y ago
  Throwing your life away to work for these companies is a show of commitment that you don't get from someone who sacrifice to get a job.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  Coordinating teams remotely is harder (and gets harder the larger your company is), and makes for slower software development. For highly profitable tech companies, it's worth the premium to have people on-site.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
Moving signals commitment and "us"-ness.

HarryHirsch 10y ago

why everyone needs to be in Bay Area to work productively Could this have to do with the state of the safety net in the country? If you lost your tech job in 2007 and lived in Austin or Dallas you could look at nine months or a year of unemployment. In SF you'd be looking at three to six months until the new job. The attraction of SF isn't the quality of jobs, it's the concentration, the phenomenon is jobseeker-driven. And if you are a landlord you profit handsomely.

mattkrause 10y ago
The same dynamic affects couples. Both partners need jobs that are no more than two reasonable commutes apart. If you both do something fairly specialized, a lot of smaller places just aren't viable. My SO and I both have fairly technical jobs. We occasionally talk about moving, but there is a surprisingly short list of cities where we are confident that we could both work. I find interesting jobs in out-of-the-way places (GE has some medical imaging stuff in Schenectady, for example), but without some incredible luck, it would tough-verging-on-impossible for us to make somewhere like that work. In the US, universities (which are often in the middle of nowhere), sometimes try to compensate by hiring both partners. Power couples where either individual would be a catch in their own right have it easiest, but hotshots can sometimes land their solid-but-not-meteoric spouse a tenure-track job. I've even seen a few spouses hired into non-academic jobs in the university's accounting or legal departments. Do any companies do something similar? It seems like it would be a huge boon to recruiting, especially outside of huge cities.

sokoloff 10y ago

Because you don't "get the best of [all] worlds" that way. There's very much a hurdle to building a strong team of remote workers and while some places manage to do it, it's neither automatic nor even the most common outcome. I have productive teams in 3 cities across 3 continents. It takes real effort to get to that state, and all else being equal, I'd readily take my teams all in one place. And this isn't even "remote worker" but rather "remote offices". Remote individual workers would be even harder, IMO.

jseliger 10y ago

Once again — why everyone needs to be in Bay Area to work productively This has been answered by the field of economic geography; if you keep asking the question, read Glaeser's Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier for a definitive answer (https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healthier/dp/0143120549 https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healt...).

nine_k 10y ago
So, let's make Bay Area a city, instead of an endless suburb sprawl?

kps 10y ago

I hate to be cynical, but… no, wait, I love being cynical. The people — from mid-managers to VCs — who reject remote work are, in general, heavily invested in the SV housing bubble.

superuser2 10y ago

>"hire remotely and get the best of both worlds", why the first option is ever chosen? Because while you and many others may believe you don't lose anything of significant value by giving up an office, lots of us disagree.