[temporalparts]

> 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Do you know of any remote-first tech company that pays Bay Area salaries regardless of location?

I haven’t heard of one, and I would think this would be a huge selling point so anyone doing it would want to advertise it to engineers.

On the other hand there are plenty of companies transparent about their policy to match pay to cost of living, for instance gitlab publishes their conversion percentages for different cities. Many places in the US they pay ~60% of Bay Area.

[whimsicalism]

There's like a $25k difference between Google L4 in the Bay vs in Boulder and with considerably less average years of experience. That's less than the COL difference.

https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&s...

https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&s...

[yourapostasy]

> companies should be most concerned about employee and team productivity rather then office expenses.

Can companies measure productivity of knowledge workers to that granularity?

Office expenses make a relatively small fraction of employee overall expenses. Say 10% to be extremely generous. NYC five-borough average back in 2015 was around $15K per year [1]. A fully-burdened employee expense is around 2X base salary, so a $100K salary position clocks in around $200K fully-burdened, or around 7.5% of that 2015 NYC average figure. I don't currently see companies wholesale changing employment strategies for 10% differentials.

I'm not sure companies can measure productivity down to that expense detail level for knowledge workers.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-much-your-compan...

[kelnos]

True, but if giving up that office also means you're more amenable to hiring employees in LCoL areas for 30% less, then you start to see some savings. Ditto if some of your existing employees move somewhere cheaper and you cut their pay a bit.

[lawnchair_larry]

It seems like this argument is easily dismissed when you look at the push away from offices and cubicles into cramped tables with no visual separation. Fitting more people into less space has been the trend for a while, despite study after study demonstrating that it’s less productive.

[JamesBarney]

It's very difficult for a corporation to measure changes in employee or team productivity in many white collar professions ..specifically software development.

I personally don't know of any large corporations that track it well enough on a corporation wide level to be able to tell you if any change significantly affected developer productivity.

But the check they write every month for rent is very easily measured and reduced.

Also I was specifically told by the VP who was in charge of making the decision for his division why he was doing it, and it was costs savings.

[sergefaguet]

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.

[fredophile]

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]

There are many people who feel differently. Which is enough to change the market significantly since real estate prices are highly demand-elastic.

[fredophile]

I'm aware that there are people who feel differently than I do. However, I believe there are a reasonable number of people on both sides of this. That's why I don't think going completely remote is an obvious move. Not having offices will eliminate some people from the applicant pool. Not offering remote positions will eliminate other people from the applicant pool. It's okay for a company to do either of these but I don't agree that the choice to go remote only is obvious.

[astura]

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]

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.

[notherthrowaway]

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?