[julianeon]

I live in SF & read these articles, which all have a tone of “What is to be done?” They seem reluctant to draw unpopular conclusions, even if those conclusions are inevitable. So here, I’ll tell you what’s going to happen.

Downtown as a healthy fully occupied business district is dead. Cause of death: remote work. You can wait 50 years if you want and see if it comes back, but it never will; there’s no going back.

You can’t harangue workers into reversing that, and you can’t browbeat business owners into paying for space that goes unused.

If you assume a lack of business renters being able to occupy the space or live off the people coming do business there, there’s only one customer base left: residential.

“But it’s hard to retrofit”, “we’ll have to redo the laws”, etc. Well, ok. You can wait to see if things will change, but they won’t. Eventually the property owners, and a city in need of tax revenue, are going to have to come to terms with the new reality.

When they do, even if it’s three decades from now, there will be more housing in that area. It will keep the streets filled, it will keep crime down, and it will bring in tax revenue… eventually. It’s anybody’s guess how long that will take, however.

[greggman3]

I agree. I don't know what it would take to retrofit but don't NYC and LA have lots of old office buildings turned into tready lofts?

The Financial District and especiallyunion square area could be amazing if it was zoned for residential with commercial on the first floor. Parts of it could easily rival some of the nicer neighborhoods in Europe. For the larger buildings, make every 6th floor a shared space, put a restaurant/bar/clubhouse on the roof for residents to use and rent.

I have a friend who lives here

https://www.ariake-mid.jp/

the top floor has a restaurant with nightly entertainment, party rooms to rent, tennis court, pool, gym, outdoor patio

[walrus01]

There are already a number of office building to condo retrofits in midtown Manhattan. And some of the largest oldest office towers in the financial district such as 70 pine are fully residential now

[mgsouth]

The site seems to have a very odd sprinkling of English headings and words. Not enough for a non-Japanese reader, and no visible option to switch to an English version of the pages, so clearly targeted Japanese-only. Is this common?

[jinto36]

Yes- very, particularly in advertising, presumably because it stands out. The longer answer is that Japanese has a few different writing systems, and one of those is already used most often for transliterated "loanwords" that came from other languages. There are a ton of English words that get written in katakana and are used quite frequently, like hamburger (ハンバーガー) and premium (プレミアム). For some of the English words that are likely to be the most well-known, it's not a crazy step to use the latin character set instead to write them, for extra emphasis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gairaigo_and_wasei-eig...

[zdragnar]

I've been watching a number of the Taskmaster spinoffs in other countries- Norway, Portugal, Croatia, Belgium, etc- and one thing they all share in common is a tendency to randomly blurt out English words or phrases- most frequently in an exclamatory manner even though the show isn't targeted at an english audience and the people aren't native english speakers.

I haven't watched much Korean TV, but iirc it's not exactly uncommon in Korean music either.

I assume it's "cool" given the prevalence of English media, probably varies quite a bit by region.

[rootusrootus]

> Cause of death: remote work

It seems premature to say this with confidence, though. Last time I saw the stats, remote work overall is down to 10% and still dropping pretty fast. Yes, prevalence is higher in the tech world, but still, we should wait until it stabilizes (especially with an incoming recession) before proclaiming that two years of remote work has changed the world.

[88913527]

It might be premature, but it seems like the cat is out the bag, especially if it means lower operating costs for businesses. Everything in the near future points to cash-flow positive businesses being the Wall Street darlings. Being unprofitable is no longer in vogue, which is a pretty seismic shift for the bay. If you don't need the office space, you're going to get undercut by your competitor who goes without. Besides staffing costs (which also go down when you hire technologists from outside of Bay Area), your second biggest software company cost is going to be office space.

[beebmam]

I think the comments on Hacker News tend to suffer from Selection Bias of the most Online engineers. I wouldn't trust the highest voted comments as an accurate depiction of reality. In the same regard, I wouldn't trust any comment as an accurate depiction of reality.

[908B64B197]

> Besides staffing costs (which also go down when you hire technologists from outside of Bay Area)

That's not what I've seen. Top talent still commands SF salaries, no matter where they happen to be located.

So far everyone I've seen try to implement Geo-adjustment magically had to carve out "special" deals for most engineers. They won't talk about it openly of course.

[daxfohl]

I mean, most of the jobs went to the suburbs in the 90s because of cost and convenience, then boomeranged back to the city for (culture? fun? actually idk why; I liked suburbs better). So, no reason history won't repeat itself.

[steveBK123]

A lot of urbanists overlook the way online culture and modern logistics have brought so much of the "culture" (good ethnic cuisines and food trends) to the suburbs and even exurbs in weeks/months instead of the 10+ years trends used to take to travel.

Anyone who grew up in the burbs in the 70s-90s and goes back today can observe this.

Anecdata - I have a sibling who lives in fairly rural MAGA country outer exurbs and yet has both bubble tea & pho shops in driving distance.

Similarly "well everything is so far in the burbs".. ok well, I've lived nearly 20 years in NYC and my average commute has been about 40 minutes. All my friends live all over the 5 boroughs, most of which are a good 30-40 minutes by uber or subway. We mostly see each other weeknights after work in midtown/downtown since thats closer.

Remote or even 2-day in-office hybrid work makes the trade offs of being 30~60 miles outside the city much more attractive.

The city has many conveniences and also a ton of inconveniences, it doesn't take a lot to put the balance out of whack and make you question why you pay so much for it.

[more_corn]

Go walk around SoMa and report back. Return to office is not going to happen there. It was too expensive, too crowded, too unpleasant. Everyone took the opportunity presented by the pandemic to peace out.

It’s never coming back. Companies that know have been shutting their SF offices. Once it starts it’ll become a positive feedback loop. And it’s well underway.

An added wrinkle is that the city is addicted to spending. When income drops they’re in for a rude awakening. Already dysfunctional government offices will cease to function entirely. SF is headed for some dark times.

[eklitzke]

The article has data showing that the number of access card swipes in buildings in downtown SF is 30% of what it was pre-pandemic. Whether or not the 10% statistic you cited is true, it's definitely not true in downtown SF.

[abakker]

Yeah…and while prices are still so high and the state of downtown is still so poor, it’s a tough sell for residential, too. SF isn’t worth what it thinks it is, and that’s the trouble.

(Bias: I moved out in 2020, even though I was rent controlled at 2012 prices. The city was great at 2012 prices, but we knew leaving meant never coming back. Even so, QOL has improved a lot since leaving.)

[kelnos]

> SF isn’t worth what it thinks it is, and that’s the trouble.

Isn't that by definition false? If living here was worth less, rents and home prices would drop. Sure, rents dipped quite a bit during the pandemic, but they've recovered somewhat, possibly completely. Home prices didn't change much. And yes, I know that these costs are propped up by things like zoning, the city planning process, NIMBYism, etc., but that doesn't really matter: there's still -- somehow -- enough demand to keep prices as high as they are.

(Bias: I bought a condo in the Dogpatch in 2020, right before the pandemic hit. I've been really happy with our QOL since moving, even during the pandemic. The neighborhood has mostly recovered, with only a few businesses closing permanently.)

[abakker]

I mean, I'm not shorting SF real estate, but no, valuation can be wrong and also not tautological. There are lots of reasons in SF that prices don't adjust - e.g. rent control and the tax advantage of unoccupied buildings vs accepting a permanently lower rent. There's lots of reasons that value doesn't adjust quickly.

[sammalloy]

> Downtown as a healthy fully occupied business district is dead.

You’re right, and it’s been true for a long time. Remember, it took the city approximately 30 years to remove the Embarcadero Freeway, even though its removal was first proposed in 1963. And the only reason they fully executed on this plan was because the damage from the Loma Prieta earthquake forced their hand in 1989.

[inamberclad]

Not to mention that the Embarcadero freeway was a horrific blight on the walkability of the city and our use of the waterfront. Now that it's gone, absolutely nobody misses it. The same might be said in the future about revitalizing downtown around residential life, but that's not enough to get a city to take major action. I don't know what my point is here, except that positive change can be slow.

[wolverine876]

> Downtown as a healthy fully occupied business district is dead. Cause of death: remote work. You can wait 50 years if you want and see if it comes back, but it never will; there’s no going back.

Remote work reduces demand for downtown office space, but where is evidence that it reduces it below supply?

Demand was very high - downtown office space was very expensive. Many businesses that would love to open up or move downtown previously couldn't. Now they can.

Cheap inputs like office space, in a great city with great transit, etc., with proximity to other businesses and services, is a perfect place for entrepreneurs and startups. This economic change could unexpectedly, at the height of SV costs, create a low-cost community of startups right in SF.

It's speculative, but so is the doom and gloom. The first who see the opportunity when everyone else is wailing and gnashing their teeth will be the ones to cash in. Maybe me!

[JumpCrisscross]

> Cause of death: remote work

Plenty of office space is being used nationwide. I’m fine going into my New York or Mountain View offices. I would not want to commute into or around San Francisco.

[acchow]

If there's enough demand for it (and risk appetite), change can happen swiftly. Just see how rapidly the Mission transformed (particularly Valencia-Dolores and adjacent) over the past decade.

[sammalloy]

> If there's enough demand for it (and risk appetite), change can happen swiftly. Just see how rapidly the Mission transformed (particularly Valencia-Dolores and adjacent) over the past decade.

Valencia-Dolores was just fine before the gentrification. A better analogy would be the comparatively quick tear down and demolishment of the Embarcadero Freeway, which had formerly been a blight on the city for decades and blocked the beautiful waterfront. Once it was torn down and that area redeveloped, hardly anyone can imagine a good rationale for ever building it in the first place. That’s one of the greatest success stories of modern San Francisco, and it’s likely the downtown area can benefit from the same approach. People didn’t want to hear that about the Embarcadero Freeway and fought against bringing it down for years, but in retrospect, everyone now knows they were dead wrong.

[Fatnino]

Those residential units would be full of people remote working so the satellite businesses (cafes and what-have-yous) could theoreticaly stay in business.

The reality is that a building owner doesn't want to lower the asking rent because it will devalue the building. They make more money owning a building with high rents than they lose having it sit empty. Nobody actually checks if these "high value" real estate properties on paper are actually occupied.

[acchow]

How does a real estate owner make more money by not collecting rent?

[tootie]

Honestly this seems like unmitigated blessing that there's so much spare real estate to alleviate the monstrous shortage of housing. SF was a vibrant, thriving city with a ton of character before it became the new Babylon of the technology era. It could stand to lose 50,000 tech bros and let some families and earnest weirdos move back in.

[zeruch]

As someone who has been in tech for ages, and yet also knew SF before its current state..I'd be happy with an influx of families and earnest weirdos. I feel the same about San Jose too.

[bushbaba]

There’s still a risk of being the next Detroit. Those office spaces didn’t need schools. Didn’t need showers, laundry. As you retrofit the cities cost goes up and tax revenue might decline further. Leading to a slow death event.

Sf would be smart to make deep cuts now to free up budget. Going as far as putting a ballot initiative to end maybe prior proposition earmarks.

[xnx]

No chance. The weather and access to nature make it a paradise compared to most of the country.

[bushbaba]

For the bay area and California at large sure. However the city of SF could still be depressed, especially since it offers a worse quality of life.

[diogenescynic]

>Honestly this seems like unmitigated blessing that there's so much spare real estate to alleviate the monstrous shortage of housing.

It's pretty unlikely that office space/buildings will be retro-fitted for residences.

[tootie]

Sure it's going to take a lot of political will and some cultural shift, I'm just saying it's very possible if they seize the opportunity.

NYC is in a similar boat although seemingly less severe. The mayor is just saying "go back to the office" so it's certainly an uphill battle.

[spoonjim]

LOL see what happens to those free dog and cash for the homeless programs when the tech bros move out

[hintymad]

> Cause of death: remote work.

Is this contradictory to the reason that startups are funded in S.F proper? I remember many articles and social media posts were saying along the line that people chose to work in S.F because they loved bustling city life. Yet the city is doomed because people wanted to work remotely en masse?

[duped]

Startups are founded in Northern California because of easy access to VC money and an extremely strong talent base. I don't know what the numbers are but I would be surprised if there are more startups in SF proper and not San Jose and its suburbs (the real economic heart of the Bay Area, honestly) and out in the East Bay.

San Fransisco is fun but a big pain in the ass to get to and live in, even compared to the rest of the area.

[bsder]

> Startups are founded in Northern California because of easy access to VC money and an extremely strong talent base.

And the illegality of non-competes. And the fact that your off-hours IP is yours.

One thing that tech people are forgetting is that California law may not apply to them in remote situations and there are a bunch of protections that you get when you are subject to California law.

If you don't think the corporate lawyers are already working this angle, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you ...

[duped]

I mean that just plays into the talent pool - people who are willing and able to join or found a startup.

While I think what you're talking about is a big deal and the biggest mistake every state that wants a tech industry fails at (yet New York, Massachusetts, and DC/Virginia seem to do ok), a bigger one is the fundamental culture of Californian tech. Most other parts of this country, people are too scared to take the risk to leave the "good" job for a startup. It's a negative feedback loop that dampens any chance of growth. California is the one place where people feel safe enough to ditch a good job for a cool one, and it pays in spades for the state.

[hintymad]

This explains why the Bay Area attracted so many startups, but does not necessarily explain why in the past 10 years more startups were founded in the SF proper instead of in the south bay.

[ironmagma]

People got a taste for how good remote work can be. That changed people’s priorities. Before, we were (mostly) blissfully unaware, or at least partially sold on the idea of office life being preferable.

[teaearlgraycold]

Perhaps half of SF office workers were commuting in before the pandemic? Too lazy to research the numbers but certainly some large chunk just doesn't want to bother driving in every day.

[refurb]

My prediction is remote work won’t last. Maybe for specific workers and tech must be the last, but other office jobs? They’ll be a slow but growing expectation to be in the office and the folks that show up will be the ones getting the desirable projects, the promotions and raises.

It might take a few years until we get there, but we will.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

I’ll take an office job when by travel time is taken off my work week/fully paid (including car/bus/w/e costs). But that job would also have to have affordable and desirable housing commensurate with the compensation.

What we’re actually going to see is a division better highly skilled people going to companies that understand what humans need and lesser skilled or otherwise problematic employees settling for the less desirable jobs with backwards looking management and worse total compensation packages/work life balances. These regressive companies will slowly implode due to cancerous cultural issues that will blossom wonderfully when toxicity is given the fertile ground of desperate and problematic staff coerced into interacting in bullshit jobs.

[refurb]

I would also take a job that pays me a salary but requires no work, but that’s not going to happen.

But sure, people with negotiating power will likely keep WFH and people without will have to come in.

[blagie]

My prediction would have been different 2 years ago. Pre-COVID, I worked on a few 100% remote teams, and it worked great.

COVID didn't do what I expected. Instead of online learning moving into the mainstream, we got emergency crappy online learning, and the world burned out on online learning. Everyone now believes it can't be done.

All the businesses I worked with switched to WFH, equally poorly. In my current job, working from home, I feel isolated and asocial. I hate it. That's true of many coworkers as well. It's not the fault of remote work, but it's the fault of the very poor implementation of remote work at my employer.

I don't think my employer is unique here.

I now share your prediction.

[zdragnar]

I don't really know anyone who (openly) believed that online learning was going to be successful.

Online learning is fine for adults who have developed sufficient mental discipline and focus, especially college style where you're in classes only a few hours a day.

Expecting 7 year old kids and teenagers to sit in front of a computer screen and suffer through what effectively amounts to 7 hours of meetings is asinine- they can barely do that in person, where the number of distractions is far fewer.

OTOH, I will never go back to an office, full stop. The commute isn't worth it, and being in person more than a handful of times a year (tops) isn't worth it. I'm a fairly introverted person by nature, though, and my dogs and wife are home during the day, so I don't really get any sense of isolation.

[sofixa]

> Online learning is fine for adults who have developed sufficient mental discipline and focus, especially college style where you're in classes only a few hours a day.

And even then. Do you remember in the early 2010s with the rise of edX, Coursera and co when one of the founders was predicting that in 20 years almost all learning will be online, universities will ho bankrupt and close with less than 50, including the online ones, remaining?

The reality is that the vast majority of adults can't be bothered to maintain their motivation and finish an online course. The stats on course completion rates are abysmal. I've been there, of course, I have enrolled into probably more than 10 different courses, all of which sounded very interesting, but none of which i was motivated to see through the end.

[blagie]

It's worth noting "the founders" were mostly figureheads who took over from the actual founders through power plays, and knew nearly nothing about online learning, or much of anything other than corporate politics.

The original founders built platforms which worked pretty well. In the end, MOOCs were videos and multiple choice questions. No one can stomach that.

The original Stanford AI course, from Norvig/Thrun, did pretty okay. Coursera steamrolled Udacity by building a massive number of crappy courses.

The first edX course, 6.002x, mis-attributed to Agarwal but mostly built by Sussman/Mitros/Terman, did even better. Within a few years, edX was run by corporate types who did massive numbers of crappy courses.

The actual founders had bold plans for how to make the platforms and courses even better, but those never panned out, due to politics, incentives, etc.

Good online can be really good.

[DantesKite]

> Downtown as a healthy fully occupied business district is dead. Cause of death: remote work.

Keith Rabois said one of the the major reasons he moved was because of crime.

[clpm4j]

Keith Rabois and David Sacks and all of the other billionaire VCs who love to whine and complain about SF on twitter are nowhere near the crime (which is totally blown out of proportion). These guys own $20-30MM homes in Pacific Heights which is one of the poshest neighborhoods in the world. They're complaining because they're used to being able to pay for perfection - perfect dinners, perfect vacations, assistants and workers who do exactly as they're told, and SF is frustrating because if you live here you can almost see how it could nearly be the perfect city, but no amount of money can make it perfect - there is no such thing in reality as perfection and these VCs are pissed that they can't throw money at it and make it so.

[infamouscow]

Chesa Boudin lost his recall election unopposed.

That's pretty damning evidence crime is bad and the people are right to dismiss strawman arguments as deranged nonsense.

[mbgerring]

> unopposed

Do you know what “recall” means

[infamouscow]

Chesa Boudin lost his recall election unopposed.

> If a majority of the votes on a recall proposal are “Yes,” the officer is removed and, if there is a candidate, the candidate who receives the highest number of votes is the successor to the unexpired term of the recalled officer.

(Cal. Const., Art. II, Sec. 15; Elections Code §§ 11381(c), 11384, 11385)

https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/recalls/recall-procedures-g...

[DantesKite]

Keith's house got broken into. I think that's fairly near the crime.

[blindmute]

One of the highest property crime rates in the country is blowing it out of proportion? It's factually, actually, truly a crime ridden shithole; as much of one as a US city can be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

[yencabulator]

Your source seems to say SF is #37 of 100, when sorted by crime per population.

Large cities with crime rate higher than SF, according to your source: Detroit, Baltimore, Memphis, Indianapolis, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix.

Your source says St Louis has a crime rate 2.9x higher.

Maybe consider that you just hate SF, for your own personal reasons?

(And your source is based on voluntary reporting, so there's huge biases there. SF sounds like the kind of place that could manage to push for more transparency..)

[blindmute]

37 is violent crime. When you sort by property crime, the type of crime I wrote in my post, it is number 4. Maybe consider that you didn't read the source carefully for your own personal reasons?

[abxytg]

Y'all need to learn to take what VCs say about this stuff with a grain of salt.

[a9h74j]

Forget retrofitting. Go SCO. Single Cubicle Occupancy.

[elcritch]

That’d make a good backdrop for a comedy / startup story or unlikely friends sitcom. Queue a bunch of young nerds living in an SCO trying to make it big. A couple cubicles over would be the crazy non-techy for comedic relief, etc. ;)

[kkfx]

Honestly, not knowing SF (European with very few visits in the USA so far) my point is for all cities build demand time, years, decades in general, things change normally not that fast but change anyway and adapting cities to different (changed) societies it's next to unfeasible.

Surely, something can be done, normally with big effort compared to the final outcome, but not more than that.

In the very past was easier: rate of change was FAR slower, cities was built with rocks and some wood, the very same rocks can be "moved" to build something different and woods can be sourced nearby. The city was able to rebuild itself. Normally after some catastrophe. Modern cities tend to be steel and concrete, not easy to be "reused" especially locally. As a result modern cites need to be rebuilt from the ground today and IF we accept such enormous challenge when they'll be rebuilt will probably be not good anymore because tech and so business/needs are already changed.

In the recent past the idea of a thriving city was simply: we have living places and commerce concentrated, if tomorrow a certain family of shops became obsolete and disappear others will occupy the same places with minor changes, like we do not have anymore the need for stearic candles but at their place light bulb shops arrive, we do not have much classic restaurants and at their place small kitchen for ready-made food delivery take their place etc. That's effectively worked for a certain amount of time. Factories are outside, they have room to change, agriculture have room to change and people live in cities.

Now such model is in crisis, climate change force new kind of homes, it's not just a matter of changing windows and some appliance. New small homes are easier to rebuild, you crush the old one, build another at the same place. Tall buildings are another story and most cities are made of tall buildings especially downtown.

That's the real crisis, it's not a matter "due to remote work some offices are empty and activities around them can't survive": no one take this places because it's not anymore a simple "economical shift" in the same model.

Since we dream a future of flying cars density for economy of scale will be FAR LESS dense than now and that's give the ability to change, cities can only be small/medium and on-purpose, like classic manufacturing districts.

The really unpopular part is the fact that in such model too many will be new poor and of course they do not like such idea, we do not like that being not so sure for ourselves since even wealthy today a big shift might be hard to sustain.

[flokie]

> Cause of death: https://twitter.com/bettersoma

Why would any business set up shop in these conditions. Remote or not, plenty of safer & cleaner spots in America to do business.

[charlieflowers]

Would you say San Francisco is the new Detroit? Something like a mill town?

[pupdogg]

"2021 Downtown Detroit is cleaner and safer than Downtown San Francisco" - Peter Santenello on YouTube! I agree with him. Reference: https://youtu.be/GnFGYqj2UQA?t=272

[rmason]

As someone pre-COVID regularly travelled between Detroit and SF I'd have to agree. Rents for really nice apartments, places with doormen and gyms, are 60-70% less than really basic ones in SF. They're also less likely to raise rents for awhile as there's a ton of new apartments that will be available in the next 12-24 months downtown.

I've also never seen a tent on the sidewalk in Detroit. South of Grand Circus Park is a big startup area. To be fair I have found trying to cross the park in the evening to reach restaurants on the other side I've quite often had to deal with very aggressive panhandling homeless people. I've never encountered this problem elsewhere in the city.

Here's another video by the same guy where he meets an ex-convict who is building a real estate empire one house at a time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCmfMnXwaWw

[trashface]

In-office work can make a comeback. All big tech has to do is tell new college grads "you have to work in our office." They will agree. After a few years and all the remote workers are sidelined and not important.

[bscphil]

This strikes me as a very strange take. Isn't it like saying "The 6 day workweek can make a comeback. All employers have to do is..."

The issue is that once a particular practice in relations between capital and labor becomes ingrained, conditions of competition make it very difficult to shift the balance. You would effectively have to have a non-competition agreement between big tech companies over this clause, because highly paid workers can and will leave for perks like remote work.

[jhbadger]

Not really. It's kind of what eroded the power of US industrial unions. In the 1970s many companies started hiring (with the grudging acceptance of the unions if their existing members got to keep their benefits) new workers with less benefits and less job security than previous workers. Within a generation the expectations for health plans, retirement, and paid vacations were reduced and the new workers if anything resented the older workers rather than their employers.

[mullingitover]

This is like saying offices can make a comeback after the industry went all in en masse for open plan. The stated reason for open plan was the mythical 'organic interaction,' but in reality it was reduced seating costs.

Remote work takes that those seating costs right to zero, and it's already been proven out with ample data demonstrating that productivity suffers little, if at all. There are a plethora of multi-billion companies that are 100% remote to really drive this point home.

In-office work isn't coming back any more than personal offices with doors for individual contributor engineers are coming back.