15 ms·

We didn't switch to allowing remote work but started remote and always been remote. We had an office space at Pier 38 that was closed by the city in 2011[1], so

• rocky1138 9y ago
  Why not offer dorms for people to live there on a daily to weekly basis? It looks like a fantastic place to work but it seems like not a lot of people live near there. It would be totally awesome to get a group of developers together and hack away at stuff not having to worry about going home for a few days.
  • elliotec 9y ago
    Because that's an extremely expensive project that nobody would use in addition to the already super expensive space that they are closing because nobody uses it.
    • elliotec 9y ago
      Also I can't imagine many people want to be at work for days at a time and not go home
      • marcuskaz 9y ago
        There are also city regulations against using office space as living space. The downside of working remotely all my days are at work, or is it all my days are at home :-)
    • mcescalante 9y ago
      Not only is it expensive, it's often difficult and cumbersome to deal with zoning and occupancy laws in a office or area that was set up mainly for business use
  • athenot 9y ago
    Most places have zoning restrictions where commercial property is not authorized for use as a dwelling. I would imagine they would need a fight a zoning variance battle to set up something unconventional like that.
  • foolfoolz 9y ago
    > It would be totally awesome to get a group of developers together and hack away at stuff not having to worry about going home for a few days. lol to me this is the opposite of "totally awesome" "work for us, never go home, leave your family behind"
    • cookiecaper 9y ago
      Yep, company dorms, company stores, etc. have been tried before. We've made labor rules prohibiting them because we realized that the line between dependence and outright slavery blurs more quickly than many expect. It's a trap. Sadly, this gung-ho "for the company" attitude, which arises from a combination of naivety and boredom, is one of the essential characteristics that VCs want to see in prospective founders. It's one of the biggest reasons they push the "You must be young and pure to be an innovative founder!" angle, although most people aged 25+ can see pretty clearly that experienced founders would be a great benefit to any company. That experience threatens the VC game, so they keep it as far away as they can.
      • godzillabrennus 9y ago
        Research indicates that older founders perform better: http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2010/05/the-anatomy-of-an-entrepreneur http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2010/05/the-anat...
    • thearn4 9y ago
      You and me both, but there was a time when I would have been perfectly fine with this, because I lived it. Well, it was the military, and you'd have to replace "hack away" with "non-stop exercise and dumb chores", but the analogy still fits I think.
      • dasil003 9y ago
        At least in the military you stay fit!
  • creepydata 9y ago
    I take it you are young and don't have a family? Most people over 25 want to go home at the end of the day to their friends/family and don't want to live in dorms.
  • MiddleEndian 9y ago
    I would rather be unemployed than in that situation.
  • db48x 9y ago
    There are apparently plenty of large Japanese companies that own apartment buildings for their employees to live at, simply because the economies of scale make that cheaper than paying them extra so that they can all rent from hundreds of different landlords. I doubt many in the US would go for it; can you imagine if your boss was also your landlord?
  • kdamken 9y ago
    This is cool when you're in college, or maybe like one year out of it. Older adults (aka anyone over 23) typically prefer to have their own space. And many people, surprisingly enough, don't want their job to be the sole focus of their existence.
• 23443463453 9y ago
  It's what I don't get about the whole outsourcing, tech sector debate; if bay area tech employees are so expensive, why not hire people that are equally or at least sufficiently as qualified in other parts of the USA, where you could get away with paying them less even though it would provide them with wildly higher quality of life than they would get anywhere in the Bay area from most perspectives. Essentially the question is why the heck outsource to places like India, where people don't speak proper English and the technical skills are lower in many ways, which is only compounded by communication issues, let alone why hire H1B visas from, e.g., India at Silicon Valley rates; when you could have hired net far better Americans in the long run. Western and American society suffers from a shortsightedness that will end up destroying not just the USA, but the advancement of all of the rest of humanity through that kind of mentality. You can only live on the inertia of others for so long before momentum ceases.
  • pc86 9y ago
    It sounds like there would be a huge competitive advantage in starting your own company and doing just that. You can pay much less, get much better work, and rake in the profits as you shut down your idiot competitors one by one.
    • dhd415 9y ago
      That's probably overstating the case a bit. If you're hiring remote workers from other parts of the USA, I'd say you can pay somewhat less, get roughly equivalent work, and reap the profits so long as you have the skills to manage a distributed team.
    • seanp2k2 9y ago
      Because many of the workers who are "good" come to the Bay Area for the money, the lifestyle, the location, and the job selection. If you could, why would you not want to live in an excellent climate by many of the US tech companies and make 3-8+x what you'd get elsewhere? You also typically get to work on "cooler" stuff since the companies out here can afford to make bigger and riskier bets. There aren't too many AI/ML positions around the rest of the country, but it's hot right now here.
• jimmywanger 9y ago
  In my experience, remote work is like a work tax you have to pay, and you have to weigh the tradeoffs. If you have a completely remote team, you're paying at least something in productivity, because training people to be open to hop on a VC or chat at a moment's notice and documenting everything through email or a shared document is not trivial, especially when you're not used to doing things that way, and the costs are not zero. Or you could do everything asynchronously to deal with time zones, but then you're introducing an inevitable lag based on overlap of working hours. For a healthy, functioning organization, it might be worth it. However, if your team is already dysfunctional, having remote workers exacerbates the problem. (I have first hand experience)
  • pg_is_a_butt 9y ago
    awww... look at the ancient office manager grasping to keep their job. sad.
  • collyw 9y ago
    You have to factor the fact that offices are very distracting and full of interruptions. I personally feel that i get close to double the work done when I work from home.
    • odonnellryan 9y ago
      Homes can be distracting, too! Working alone isn't "natural" for a lot of people, I feel.
      • Cymen 9y ago
        Some people start a family and working from home dramatically lowers the hassle, they still get things done yet get to see their kids. It just depends on the situation and the person. For some people it's great, for some okay, for some horrible. Luckily, there are a wide range of employment options so you can chose employment that fits your needs/desires.
    • jimmywanger 9y ago
• therealdrag0 9y ago
  Maybe there just aren't any pictures here, but is there real work space too? Standing desks? External monitors? A place to put my own keyboard and mouse and leave them there. Why would I go into an office that isn't ergonomically friendly. I don't care how hiply aesthetic it is, I want function.