[TeffenEllis]

I’ve been a remote engineer for over a decade, but only recently switched to a hybrid schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays. IMO, these two days are effectively useless for any kind of productive technical work. There are simply too many visual distractions, interruptions, and a complete lack of comfort in an office.

…But I do enjoy these in-office days for what they make up for in remote work: Face to face chats; Real time human bonding; A sense of place. The office is just a socially accepted excuse to get everyone out of their homes and together for a few hours.

I’m especially grateful that our cofounders understand why we should actually be at the office, and that any expectation of “being more productive” is nothing more but a polite fiction. Ironically, our two days in the office are mostly spent just outside the building. Technical chats over lunch, 1 on 1 meetings as a walk around the neighborhood, and drinks in the evening. That’s what hybrid should be. I’ll send my pull requests at 3 am while in my comfy chair at home.

As for the commercial real estate market, I truly believe they’re fucked in the long run. There aren’t enough jobs like my Montessori arrangement that justify all the buildings in their portfolio. Hell, we couldn’t even go back to full-office because our team is so distributed!

Personally, I think this is commodification coming back to bite short-term economics applied to financial districts. We don’t need a Chipotle on every corner. We don’t need another $20 box salad store.

We need neighborhoods that people want to be in for reasons other than work!

I’m guessing that in the coming months there’s gonna be talks of a real estate bailout. Investors have entwined their holdings into everyone’s retirement plans, and will no doubt appear on the nightly news wearing a vest made out of dynamite. They will threaten to take us all down with them.

Such a shame that they’ve over-leveraged their position. Did they forget that we already have nothing to lose? The irony will be lost on them.

[gochi]

>We need neighborhoods that people want to be in for reasons other than work!

Every other reason eventually boils down to this very point.

Turns out, specialized districts were a massive city planning mistake.

[jnwatson]

Dunno. I don’t need a cement plant on my block.

[bobthepanda]

At this point single use zoning in the US has departed a long, long way from ‘exclude harmful to health’ uses from residences.

And these days state laws and building codes do much to prevent these anyways.

[nkrisc]

No, but a restaurant and grocery store around the corner would nice.

[phpisthebest]

Nope I prefer cheap food and a large selection at a Large Kroger or Walmart then expensive food and limited options from a corner NYC style "bodega"

as do most people that live in the suburbs which is why suburbs are not "walk-able" because people leave the cities to escape walkablity

I dont want to walk anywhere but from my front door to my car

[nkrisc]

> a Large Kroger or Walmart then expensive food and limited options from a corner NYC style "bodega"

There’s a lot in between those two extremes.

My favorite neighborhood I’ve lived in was on the Northside of Chicago where I had a medium-sized, independent grocery down the block on the local arterial road and a neighborhood of single family homes in the blocks surrounding it. The arterial roads have commerce, and the side streets have homes. You can walk, you can drive, take transit.

> I dont want to walk anywhere but from my front door to my car

I’m sorry for you.

[pavel_lishin]

This is a false dichotomy. You can have reasonably priced food you can walk to.

[phpisthebest]

Basic economies of scale disagree,

Neighborhood stores will not have the volume to support a 100-300,000 sqfoot store, with all the selections I get at my local supermarket that services many many neighborhoods

[anotherhue]

I politely suggest you might be under scoring your body's needs and how they affect your life.

[phpisthebest]

I politely suggest that zoning is not the proper regulatory framework to score, assess or influence what by body needs.

[lotsofpulp]

Grocery stores around the corner do not work in spread out neighborhoods because the Krogers/Costcos/Albertsons/Walmarts will be able to offer lower price due economies of scale, and anyone with a car will choose to drive 10min, or stop on their way home, to save money rather than go to the higher priced grocery store around the corner.

[rhaway84773]

Do you think larger grocery stores don’t exist in city downtowns?

I searched for Whole Foods locations and they seem to have about 13 in Manhattan itself. There’s a Costco in Manhattan. And there are several other major grocery stores some unique to New York. There are also large independent grocery stores and independent online grocery stores that will do hourly deliveries (the 15 mins deliveries thankfully seem to have largely died out).

And that’s before you get to the hundreds of farmers markets.

And how about all the butchers, seafood stores, cheese shops, spice stores, etc.

And then you get the international grocery stores with Korean, Japanese, Indian, Chinese grocery stores.

Ah, and you have 24/7 bodegas on newrly every corner if all those don’t work for you.

[phpisthebest]

Clearly you did not read the parent comment.

They work in Manhatten because of population density, the grand parent clearly said they do not work in "spread out neighborhoods"

So now we are shifting the goal posts from "walk-able neighborhoods" to walkbale high density neighborhoods. Not only do I oppose walkablity I also oppose High Density, I like my Single Family home on .75 acres of land or less.

I do not want to live stacked on top of others, if you want that stay in NYC. thanks

[andrei_says_]

I think it’s clear that this conversation is about business office districts and not cement manufacturing?

I don’t see any cement plants in Manhattan and I don’t think many cement plant employees work remotely.

[tpmoney]

>…But I do enjoy these in-office days for what they make up for in remote work: >Face to face chats; Real time human bonding; A sense of place. The office is just >a socially accepted excuse to get everyone out of their homes and together for a >few hours. > >I’m especially grateful that our cofounders understand why we should actually be >at the office, and that any expectation of “being more productive” is nothing more >but a polite fiction. Ironically, our two days in the office are mostly spent just >outside the building. Technical chats over lunch, 1 on 1 meetings as a walk around >the neighborhood, and drinks in the evening. That’s what hybrid should be. I’ll >send my pull requests at 3 am while in my comfy chair at home.

I feel like these sorts of things are part of "being more productive" though. Having a good rapport with your co-workers, having a chance to talk about side things, having a chance for people whose domains don't normally cross to hear what's going on elsewhere. These are all parts of being a well functioning and productive team. It's a real shame that larger organizations tend to lose sight of that, but it's also a shame in my opinion that this whole fight over remote vs in office work has gotten the workers pretending that nothing but the numbers matter. This really feels like a "be careful what you wish for" moment.

[klodolph]

> I feel like these sorts of things are part of "being more productive" though.

Yeah.

There are some things which can be more difficult when you’re remote. Working through a design—it’s so much better when you have two people in a room with a whiteboard or paper. Onboarding. Going through a gnarly code review (where you really want some major changes to the code before it gets shipped). Debriefing after a meeting, where you and your teammate know that the meeting was a complete waste of time, but you need a chance to kvetch about it offline and off the record.

[eek2121]

Our company does regular meetups throughout the year. No need for a hybrid schedule really. We are all located throughout the US. The company pays for all expenses for those that choose to visit on site. This is without limits or restrictions. It STILL costs them less than maintaining a large office in a popular metro area. I see my coworkers a total of maybe 4x a year. We also have regular 'shoot the shit' Zoom meets. That is honestly enough interaction for me.

As an autistic person with ADHD, office environments are 'difficult' to say the least. Thankfully I've been fully remote for about a decade as well. Wouldn't go back, and thankfully I don't need to. There are plenty of remote jobs available and I don't see that changing short of some type of short-sighted government regulation.

Smaller companies have realized that office space and the infrastructure to support it is a huge money sink compared to just having employees work from home.

[latchkey]

> We don’t need a Chipotle on every corner. We don’t need another $20 box salad store.

These are the only types of business that can afford the rents though. Even if you get another lower cost place in there, they have to cut corners on quality and end up going out of business or just being really bad food. How do you overcome that?

[lotsofpulp]

Lower the rent.

[latchkey]

Easier said than done. Limited space == Higher rent.

People are downvoting me, but not really understanding what I'm saying. Even if there is more empty space, what is happening is that landlords are leaving them empty, which keeps the rents higher because there is still limited effective availability. They aren't going to rent to a small business because they don't want to get locked into a 5-10 year lease on a small business when they can potentially wait a bit and rent to a larger business who will pay more and likely survive longer.

[evilduck]

Space may be limited but it's not utilized. In my local metro's business district around 60% of storefronts are sitting vacant and yet rent for these spaces is still astronomical. And it's been that way since 2020. The push for a return to the office is a clear cash grab.

[latchkey]

That's because we are in a game of chicken right now.

[lotsofpulp]

I think it is because property (specifically land value) taxes are far too low.

The under taxation of land results in land owners squatting on it without doing anything that society benefits from.

[wewtyflakes]

Isn't the main thrust of the argument that supply has outpaced demand in commercial real estate?

[profile53]

Isn’t the problem that there is more empty space than needed now so the rents *should* fall?

[latchkey]

Retail != Office

Retail rent will fall because nobody is in the offices. Retail business will close because of less traffic, and thus there will be more space.

But, retail leases are typically 5-10+ years. Why would a landlord lower the rent now to a small business and get stuck in a long lease, when they don't know if the office space will recover and the big businesses will want to come back?

It is a game of chicken.

[profile53]

A lot of those five-year contracts were negotiated before Covid and I suspect they will expire in the next year or two. After a certain point, the building owner will have to choose between lowering rents, or having the building foreclosed on due to having no tenants.

Also, at the beginning of Covid, several big businesses just refused to pay retail rent as a negotiating tactic. It would not surprise me if that happens again.

[bluecheese452]

That is the point right? There isn’t limited space as evidence by those areas sitting empty.

[eftychis]

Well the space is not limited anymore, as the commenters suggest. The natural progression is for rents to go lower.

The problem is that would mean that the valuation of the real estate would need to change, which would imply debt repayment, and given higher interest rates: default or finance under onerous terms or being cash rich already.

At the end (as the Fed expects): defaults => lower real estate value ^ rents => cheaper food options.

And that is where usually executive is going to come in to save Government Supported Real Estate (GSE), and throw a wrench to Feds approach.

tl;dr: the government supports this situation it will come to make it worse once again /s.

[EMM_386]

> How do you overcome that?

It will lower itself naturally.

Less people in office buildings means less foot traffic to stores, which means less fewer stores will be enticed to rent.

If nobody's renting, eventually the owners and investors will have to realize some rent is better than no rent, even if it means they are going to take a loss.

Then rents start dropping back to earth.

[latchkey]

That doesn't mean the people will come back to support those businesses though. In the case of SF, since there is only office space downtown and almost zero housing, this is going to be a problem of finding tenants than it is about lowering rents. Who's going to want to open a retail space where there is no foot traffic?

[HWR_14]

The usual solution to that is that someone (maybe the owner of many buildings in an area) finds several tenants to open at the same time, and thus tries to produce a retail destination. So no one wants to open a bar near 30 empty offices, but if I tell you I am getting 4 restaurants, 3 art galleries, another bar and a theater to all open in the same area than you all can feed off each other. Or instead of a lot of little things, tries to get one big draw to open. You can imagine that opening a bar next to a movie theater is better than not near one.

[latchkey]

I opened a night club on a block in SF that had lots of other bars. Unfortunately, we also picked the one spot on the block that was also next door to a liquor store.

I can't tell you how much that cost us because people would just go next door, get a small bottle of something for cheap, down it while they were out on their smoke break and then come back to the show in my place.

It really sucked honestly.

[fragmede]

Which one? Butter? The moves California ABC made during Covid were interesting.

[HWR_14]

I can see how that's bad placement. Did you try a cover with no-reentry to at least cut down on that?

But, yeah, it can be harmful like that or positive in that maybe there are restaurants next door where people eat before they come to your bar for drinks and a show.

[amerkhalid]

> I’m especially grateful that our cofounders understand why we should actually be at the office, and that any expectation of “being more productive” is nothing more but a polite fiction.

They sound like great leaders. I also work for a great company which is very pro-remote work.

I have been working from home for several years before pandemic. I lived near office, so every once in awhile I would go in to take a break from programming and socialize. It is great for those purposes especially once you are out of college, it is really hard to make new friends. And this is the one aspect about office work that I miss. But it is not a company's job to provide friends.

Also I realized people who lacked real skills but were good at socializing were the ones who went to office often and they were the ones who were climbing corporate ladders faster.

And I have tried hard to understand why return to office is good for business but don’t see any point. Only explanation that makes sense to me is that people who are good at politics are having hard time playing politics in remote world. They have no other skills, technical or business. But they have already climbed corporate ladder and feeling powerless. Now they need people in offices for their personal benefits, not for company’s.

[andrei_says_]

Not being forced into an office n times per week has allowed me to work from different parts of the country including Hawaii for over a month. This beats face to face small talk and $25 food court lunches beyond measure.

I make sure to socialize on zoom in every call, my focus is through the roof as well as my productivity.

[CharlieDigital]

When I ran a remote team on the opposite coast, I'd visit once every 3-4 weeks for a week at a time.

While we'd spend time working, we'd also plan things like field trips (hiking, kayaking, museum visits), we'd go out and get lunch and dinner, bring our Switch consoles and have Mario Kart tournaments in the conference room, and other things like celebrating birthdays, births, anniversaries, and so on.

For remote teams, using the together time to focus on productivity and work is a broken model. Glad that your founders get it!

[rwmj]

> Hell, we couldn’t even go back to full-office because our team is so distributed!

Isn't this a problem even for coming into the office 2 days a week?

My experience is that I work on a team which is really distributed. We have people in nearly every continent (including Africa and South America, but not Antarctica), so getting to an office 2 days a week is not an option. We have regular video conferences though.

[phpisthebest]

>>But I do enjoy these in-office days for what they make up for in remote work: Face to face chats; Real time human bonding; A sense of place.

Every-time I am in the office I remember a scene from the west wing where the quote is "He thinks decisions are made in meetings...." expressing that most decisions are made in informal discussions in hallways, or impromptu mini-meetings standing in someones office door. Meetings are where we tell everyone the decisions that were already made

It is hard to replicate that in a remote work environment, maybe that is better I dont know, but for I see the advantage of both

[tetha]

> I’ve been a remote engineer for over a decade, but only recently switched to a hybrid schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays. IMO, these two days are effectively useless for any kind of productive technical work. There are simply too many visual distractions, interruptions, and a complete lack of comfort in an office. > > …But I do enjoy these in-office days for what they make up for in remote work: Face to face chats; Real time human bonding; A sense of place. The office is just a socially accepted excuse to get everyone out of their homes and together for a few hours.

This is why we've switched to a full week every month, which amounts to 1 - 1.2 days per week of presence. This week is used for planning, discussions, more complex knowledge sharing. We've just found it more effective to plan some things with post-its and a whiteboard. Sure, things like Miro exist, but if you combine the friction from the wonderful video call solution teams, miro, microphones, internet uplinks and such, it becomes a real distraction.

But yeah, during these weeks, we don't do much technical work beyond keeping the lights on and pushing the simple service requests through the queue.

[gumby]

> I’m especially grateful that our cofounders understand why we should actually be at the office, and that any expectation of “being more productive” is nothing more but a polite fiction.

I presume the interactions and such you describe increase your net productivity, much as taking the time to study something does. Neither show up directly in Taylorist metrics like “PRs closed”

[gmadsen]

I'd say it's productive it the sense that creating in person relationships has a direct effect on getting things done that require large amounts of people.