8 ms·

My guess as to what will happen, for the sake of playing along with the hypothetical simply because it’s fun. Destination cities will still be desirable, howev

My guess as to what will happen, for the sake of playing along with the hypothetical simply because it’s fun. Destination cities will still be desirable, however there will be a very slow rebuilding of demand. The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. The entire world was forced to work from home for an extended period of time, introducing those from industries that would scoff at the idea to a different lifestyle. Sure some people don’t like it, they will be the ones moving back to cities, but I think enough find it vastly favorable to the grind of commuting too and from a physical office that it will have some stickiness once social distancing can safely be stopped. This general shift in attitude will make it far more realistic to work where you actually in your heart of hearts want to live. I’m excited for this change, I live in downtown San Francisco right now and it’s not BAD— life is fine, we’re making due with the times. But I never wanted to permanently live here, and now there is this perfect chance to move out of the city, you bet your ass I’m taking it when my lease is up :)

temporalparts 6y ago
> The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. I don't believe this; very few companies are okay with permanent remote work after the pandemic is over, even though they are very notable exceptions, eg Facebook. This also assumes the population of people interested in living in destination cities is constant, but it's been growing every year the last decade except this one. COVID and the possibilities of remote work and COVID will dampen growth, but when we get through COVID, I expect demand to be higher than ever. It's not like SF will solve their systemic housing problems in the next 20 years, or our lifetimes.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  I work in oil and gas, by no means the epicenter of innovation and many of these companies are talking about a moving to a mostly remote work force to save on real estate expenses.
  - jojo2333 6y ago
    I don't buy the "cost savings" narrative. By a long shot, the largest expense for large companies in employee salaries - rent, by comparison, is a drop in the bucket. What follows is that companies should be most concerned about employee and team productivity rather then office expenses.
    - lhorie 6y ago
      Salaries do get affected by WFH policies, since if you move to a cheaper state/country, a company will often do a pay adjustment. So, from a cost savings perspective, it becomes a question of how much a company thinks being in the Bay Area brings in terms of attracting talent, vs how much they can save by having their employees work from Pennsylvania or Canada or India. I know companies in Canada that are way ahead of the curve on this: they've been consulting for American companies for years, meaning they can afford way more person hours than american counterparts given a US dollar contract size solely because of the salary gap difference.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        I am skeptical that the labor market for high quality tech talent is as large in the rest of the country or that it is that tied to COL. The US vs not US gap seems much larger than the HCOL vs LCOL for senior IC jobs.
        kelnos 6y ago
        Maybe not 10 months ago, but a lot of people have dispersed to various places in the US, and that may continue as companies relax their in-person work requirements. Talent still has its concentration points, but its less concentrated than it was, and I expect that trend to continue. The US vs. not-US gap is certainly larger, but I expect that US-based companies would much rather hire someone 3 timezones away than 8 or 12. Having to be on conference calls at 7am or 8pm gets old real quick.
        cactus2093 6y ago
- sergefaguet 6y ago
  Many of my friends who own large companies are explicitly saying they will never rent offices again. As a founder/CEO this is an obvious move.
  - notherthrowaway 6y ago
    It's also possible that after the pandemic, when it's an option again, the youngest employees will prefer to work in offices. Won't the talent drive their choice ultimately?
  - astura 6y ago
    I'd imagine that a group of employees who already work well together moving to remote work would be very different than hiring/training/integrating new remote employees.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      Different, yes, but nowhere near as difficult as I expected. We've continued to hire a lot over the past 7 months, and while onboarding people remotely took longer at first, I'm not really seeing meaningful productivity differences (due to the remote onboarding) after a month or two on the job.
  - fredophile 6y ago
    Is it an obvious move? I can work from home, and currently do, but much prefer working in an office. I'm more productive when I'm in the office. It's easier to get into and stay in a more focused headspace. There's also a lot of relevant context and info that I pick up just by being around the office that I don't have when working remotely.
    - sergefaguet 6y ago
      There are many people who feel differently. Which is enough to change the market significantly since real estate prices are highly demand-elastic.
notherthrowaway 6y ago
==This general shift in attitude will make it far more realistic to work where you actually in your heart of hearts want to live.== Will young people suddenly not want to live in close proximity to other young people? Will that become another luxury item for the well-connected?
- corytheboyd 6y ago
  I don’t think it needs to be so absolutely black and white. I just mean, if you lived somewhere for reasons other than “I enjoy living here” you’re likely going to have options that didn’t previously exist.
- quicklyfrozen 6y ago
  Some will want to stay in proximity to the young people they already know.
  - throwaway4715 6y ago
    The ones that want that already do.
    - onecommentman 6y ago
      All of them? Your response suggests that. I’d counter that many young people permanently leave their “hometown” for financial opportunities that are currently only available away from that “hometown”. For privileged young folks who are “amenity migrants”, your statement would be admittedly true. It might be a bit classist to extend that assumption to all young people.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        I'm not convinced that most people will want to move back to their hometown after being away for any non-trivial amount of time. I certainly wouldn't. My old high school friends are different people who I don't know anymore (save for a few who who I'm still close with, who coincidentally also don't live in our hometown and wouldn't move back). My friends are mostly people I've met in my new town, and I wouldn't want to leave them without good reason. Sure, people who grew up in $COOL_PLACE but moved to $OTHER_PLACE for a job might want to (and be able to) move back to $COOL_PLACE now, but I don't think that generalizes to most of America.
lukeschlather 6y ago
WFH is fine. Bothers me not at all. I hate not being able to breathe the same air as my friends. It makes so many things impossible - things that are also impossible unless my friends mostly live within 30 minutes travel of me.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- juniper_strong 6y ago
  Have you made your last friend or could you make different ones if you moved somewhere else?
  - lukeschlather 6y ago
    Moving to a rural area is even worse. In principle I can maintain friendships with people separated by any distance from me, but there's no substitute for being in a highly populated area in terms of making new friends. And the more highly populated the better.
    - juniper_strong 6y ago
      I think the last friend I made by first meeting them in person was in the early 90's - people I knew from my home town. Every one since then was someone I knew online for many years first.
rgbrenner 6y ago
The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. The US is expected to add 80m people in the next 30 years. So that seems very unlikely, even if there is a shift in behavior. Edit: reduced the population estimate with newer numbers from the census bureau.
- irrational 6y ago
  But those 100m are going to grow up in a world where remote working is the norm.
  - rgbrenner 6y ago
    Even during the lockdowns only 40% of the US workforce worked from home. Here’s another stat: only 33% of the us population has a bachelors degree or higher. Step out of your bubble and think about all of the people making the goods you order, maintaining your roads, construction workers that fix your home, the workers at the grocery store, the person that delivers your packages, the warehouse workers, etc etc etc. The world runs on people being physically present working jobs that can’t be done from home... that must continue so that you CAN work from home. Until robots can do those jobs, it'll always be the minority that works from home.
    - iso947 6y ago
      Vast majority of those jobs don’t rely on the network effects of major SF/NY/Seatle hubs. There’s little difference To prospects to someone working as a plumber in a town of 30k people vs a city of 3m people.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        Sure, but you need a lot more plumbers in a city of 3M people than you do in a town of 30k. And those plumbers create demand for housing.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Vast majority of those jobs don’t rely on the network effects of major SF/NY/Seatle hubs. If you reduce the need to maintain both a worksite for people and a home, while you will increase the need for labor to maintain/service the home and supporting infrastructure somewwhat, it will probably be less than the reduced demand for labor to maintain and service the worksite. The initial effects of a large scale shift to telecommuting is going to include a lot of net physical service/maintenance/support jobs lost.
georgeecollins 6y ago
>> The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. Growth of cities and the increase of wealth of cities is 5,000 year trend, that includes in its history pandemics and plagues.
- throwaway1777 6y ago
  People really do need to zoom out a little bit. Yes, we may see negative or slow growth in some cities over the next couple years, but in 50 years? I would bet NYC, SF, and other big cities will be stronger than ever.
  - hal9000-tng 6y ago
    .. except there will probably be more pandemics within the next 50 years. Given that we've had multiple localized epidemics or global pandemics in the last two decades alone (SARS, Ebola, Swine Flu/H1N1, etc), the likelihood of more seems increasingly high. Perhaps it doesn't even matter whether the next one will have a higher CFR; whether large cities prosper depends not only on whether people believe it will, but also on how well the cities do in many other respects, such as crime, taxes, pollution, trash, homelessness, etc. SF is not only suffering because of the pandemic: the pandemic just put an extra sense of urgency on the snowball effect that was already happening. When cities are safe, healthy, clean and beautiful, they're great and everyone is happy to live there, but now? Not so much.
    - Zanneth 6y ago
      Are suburbs any different? I’ve visited at least a dozen suburban areas during the current pandemic and they are all as equally affected by the pandemic as cities are. It’s important to note also that sanitation, preparedness, and scientific knowledge will all continue to improve over time. Pandemics may become more common but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be as deadly or effective as the current one.
- _4570 6y ago
  How much of that history includes jobs that can be done remotely? I'd say that's a significant change for certain cities that have a significant such workforce.

temporalparts 6y ago

> The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. I don't believe this; very few companies are okay with permanent remote work after the pandemic is over, even though they are very notable exceptions, eg Facebook. This also assumes the population of people interested in living in destination cities is constant, but it's been growing every year the last decade except this one. COVID and the possibilities of remote work and COVID will dampen growth, but when we get through COVID, I expect demand to be higher than ever. It's not like SF will solve their systemic housing problems in the next 20 years, or our lifetimes.

JamesBarney 6y ago
I work in oil and gas, by no means the epicenter of innovation and many of these companies are talking about a moving to a mostly remote work force to save on real estate expenses.
- jojo2333 6y ago
  I don't buy the "cost savings" narrative. By a long shot, the largest expense for large companies in employee salaries - rent, by comparison, is a drop in the bucket. What follows is that companies should be most concerned about employee and team productivity rather then office expenses.
  - lhorie 6y ago
    Salaries do get affected by WFH policies, since if you move to a cheaper state/country, a company will often do a pay adjustment. So, from a cost savings perspective, it becomes a question of how much a company thinks being in the Bay Area brings in terms of attracting talent, vs how much they can save by having their employees work from Pennsylvania or Canada or India. I know companies in Canada that are way ahead of the curve on this: they've been consulting for American companies for years, meaning they can afford way more person hours than american counterparts given a US dollar contract size solely because of the salary gap difference.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      I am skeptical that the labor market for high quality tech talent is as large in the rest of the country or that it is that tied to COL. The US vs not US gap seems much larger than the HCOL vs LCOL for senior IC jobs.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        Maybe not 10 months ago, but a lot of people have dispersed to various places in the US, and that may continue as companies relax their in-person work requirements. Talent still has its concentration points, but its less concentrated than it was, and I expect that trend to continue. The US vs. not-US gap is certainly larger, but I expect that US-based companies would much rather hire someone 3 timezones away than 8 or 12. Having to be on conference calls at 7am or 8pm gets old real quick.
      - cactus2093 6y ago
sergefaguet 6y ago
Many of my friends who own large companies are explicitly saying they will never rent offices again. As a founder/CEO this is an obvious move.
- notherthrowaway 6y ago
  It's also possible that after the pandemic, when it's an option again, the youngest employees will prefer to work in offices. Won't the talent drive their choice ultimately?
- astura 6y ago
  I'd imagine that a group of employees who already work well together moving to remote work would be very different than hiring/training/integrating new remote employees.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    Different, yes, but nowhere near as difficult as I expected. We've continued to hire a lot over the past 7 months, and while onboarding people remotely took longer at first, I'm not really seeing meaningful productivity differences (due to the remote onboarding) after a month or two on the job.
- fredophile 6y ago
  Is it an obvious move? I can work from home, and currently do, but much prefer working in an office. I'm more productive when I'm in the office. It's easier to get into and stay in a more focused headspace. There's also a lot of relevant context and info that I pick up just by being around the office that I don't have when working remotely.
  - sergefaguet 6y ago
    There are many people who feel differently. Which is enough to change the market significantly since real estate prices are highly demand-elastic.

notherthrowaway 6y ago

==This general shift in attitude will make it far more realistic to work where you actually in your heart of hearts want to live.== Will young people suddenly not want to live in close proximity to other young people? Will that become another luxury item for the well-connected?

corytheboyd 6y ago
I don’t think it needs to be so absolutely black and white. I just mean, if you lived somewhere for reasons other than “I enjoy living here” you’re likely going to have options that didn’t previously exist.
quicklyfrozen 6y ago
Some will want to stay in proximity to the young people they already know.
- throwaway4715 6y ago
  The ones that want that already do.
  - onecommentman 6y ago
    All of them? Your response suggests that. I’d counter that many young people permanently leave their “hometown” for financial opportunities that are currently only available away from that “hometown”. For privileged young folks who are “amenity migrants”, your statement would be admittedly true. It might be a bit classist to extend that assumption to all young people.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      I'm not convinced that most people will want to move back to their hometown after being away for any non-trivial amount of time. I certainly wouldn't. My old high school friends are different people who I don't know anymore (save for a few who who I'm still close with, who coincidentally also don't live in our hometown and wouldn't move back). My friends are mostly people I've met in my new town, and I wouldn't want to leave them without good reason. Sure, people who grew up in $COOL_PLACE but moved to $OTHER_PLACE for a job might want to (and be able to) move back to $COOL_PLACE now, but I don't think that generalizes to most of America.

lukeschlather 6y ago

WFH is fine. Bothers me not at all. I hate not being able to breathe the same air as my friends. It makes so many things impossible - things that are also impossible unless my friends mostly live within 30 minutes travel of me.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
juniper_strong 6y ago
Have you made your last friend or could you make different ones if you moved somewhere else?
- lukeschlather 6y ago
  Moving to a rural area is even worse. In principle I can maintain friendships with people separated by any distance from me, but there's no substitute for being in a highly populated area in terms of making new friends. And the more highly populated the better.
  - juniper_strong 6y ago
    I think the last friend I made by first meeting them in person was in the early 90's - people I knew from my home town. Every one since then was someone I knew online for many years first.

rgbrenner 6y ago

The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. The US is expected to add 80m people in the next 30 years. So that seems very unlikely, even if there is a shift in behavior. Edit: reduced the population estimate with newer numbers from the census bureau.

irrational 6y ago
But those 100m are going to grow up in a world where remote working is the norm.
- rgbrenner 6y ago
  Even during the lockdowns only 40% of the US workforce worked from home. Here’s another stat: only 33% of the us population has a bachelors degree or higher. Step out of your bubble and think about all of the people making the goods you order, maintaining your roads, construction workers that fix your home, the workers at the grocery store, the person that delivers your packages, the warehouse workers, etc etc etc. The world runs on people being physically present working jobs that can’t be done from home... that must continue so that you CAN work from home. Until robots can do those jobs, it'll always be the minority that works from home.
  - iso947 6y ago
    Vast majority of those jobs don’t rely on the network effects of major SF/NY/Seatle hubs. There’s little difference To prospects to someone working as a plumber in a town of 30k people vs a city of 3m people.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      Sure, but you need a lot more plumbers in a city of 3M people than you do in a town of 30k. And those plumbers create demand for housing.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Vast majority of those jobs don’t rely on the network effects of major SF/NY/Seatle hubs. If you reduce the need to maintain both a worksite for people and a home, while you will increase the need for labor to maintain/service the home and supporting infrastructure somewwhat, it will probably be less than the reduced demand for labor to maintain and service the worksite. The initial effects of a large scale shift to telecommuting is going to include a lot of net physical service/maintenance/support jobs lost.

georgeecollins 6y ago

>> The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. Growth of cities and the increase of wealth of cities is 5,000 year trend, that includes in its history pandemics and plagues.

throwaway1777 6y ago
People really do need to zoom out a little bit. Yes, we may see negative or slow growth in some cities over the next couple years, but in 50 years? I would bet NYC, SF, and other big cities will be stronger than ever.
- hal9000-tng 6y ago
  .. except there will probably be more pandemics within the next 50 years. Given that we've had multiple localized epidemics or global pandemics in the last two decades alone (SARS, Ebola, Swine Flu/H1N1, etc), the likelihood of more seems increasingly high. Perhaps it doesn't even matter whether the next one will have a higher CFR; whether large cities prosper depends not only on whether people believe it will, but also on how well the cities do in many other respects, such as crime, taxes, pollution, trash, homelessness, etc. SF is not only suffering because of the pandemic: the pandemic just put an extra sense of urgency on the snowball effect that was already happening. When cities are safe, healthy, clean and beautiful, they're great and everyone is happy to live there, but now? Not so much.
  - Zanneth 6y ago
    Are suburbs any different? I’ve visited at least a dozen suburban areas during the current pandemic and they are all as equally affected by the pandemic as cities are. It’s important to note also that sanitation, preparedness, and scientific knowledge will all continue to improve over time. Pandemics may become more common but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be as deadly or effective as the current one.
_4570 6y ago
How much of that history includes jobs that can be done remotely? I'd say that's a significant change for certain cities that have a significant such workforce.