[wubrr]

You're linking to pre-covid studies, that mention some types of benefits (for specific reasons like logistics benefits for businesses relying on physical materials/goos, or physical access to people for the purposes of networking), for some kinds of industries, and also mention that these benefits are not seen for some industries.

> Sometimes cluster strategies still do not produce enough of a positive impact to be justified in certain industries.

Let's take a step back and look at the fundamentals of a tech company who's employees are remote - what are the specific benefits of having a San Francisco office?

[JumpCrisscross]

> linking to pre-covid studies

I'm linking to studies summarising a century of work. There is no evidence Covid changed this.

Exhibit A for Covid having not changed this is the continuing supremacy of Silicon Valley (tech), Shenzhen (manufacturing) and New York (finance) as industrial clusters that others have tried to replicate (everyone, America and Miami, respectively) and failed.

> Let's take a step back and look at the fundamentals of a tech company who's employees are remote - what are the specific benefits of having a San Francisco office?

Proximity to investors. Proximity to customers. Proximity to a skilled employee pool. Proxomity to acquirers. (A lot of deals happen at cocktail parties and ski trips.)

By the way, I'm not arguing anyone needs an office. Just people physically and and proximate to the cluster.

[wubrr]

> Exhibit A for Covid having not changed this is the continuing supremacy of Silicon Valley (tech)

You mean like when China built chatgpt 4 in a weekend and open-sourced it for giggles?

> Shenzhen (manufacturing)

..or you mean how US manufacturing 'clusters' almost completely disappeared/replaced by Chinese ones?

> Proximity to investors. Proximity to customers. Proximity to a skilled employee pool. Proxomity to acquirers.

Right, cause you have to physically pet every investor on the head to fundraise, your remote employees must be in san fran cause network latency interferes with their windows remote desktop workflow, and, for some reason, you have to be physically close to your customers when you're selling your web-only llm wrapper saas.

[SR2Z]

> You mean like when China built chatgpt 4 in a weekend and open-sourced it for giggles?

DeepSeek R1 is an amazing feat. It's not at the same level as other large frontier models from American companies, just close enough to make them sweat.

> ..or you mean how US manufacturing 'clusters' almost completely disappeared/replaced by Chinese ones?

The value of goods manufactured in the US has never been higher. US manufacturing focuses on goods at the top of the value chain: jetliners, cars, semiconductors, medical scanners, and other advanced electronics. These tend to cluster in a few places - for example, Long Beach is a hub of space and avionics manufacturing, Texas has the "Silicon Prarie," and Boeing in Everett is one of the major employers in the region. Manufacturing has disappeared as a share of GDP, but that's not because we make less stuff.

> Right, cause you have to physically pet every investor on the head to fundraise, your remote employees must be in san fran cause network latency interferes with their windows remote desktop workflow, and, for some reason, you have to be physically close to your customers when you're selling your web-only llm wrapper saas.

You sound sarcastic, but YES. You do generally have to physically be present to make deals. It is obviously theoretically possible to run a world-leading software company fully remote. Despite that, most of them are in-person at least a few days a week. If you want to take advantage of SV's easy VC money, you absolutely have to be present.

Companies are not purely about the numbers. A lot of business is imprecise and heavily dependent on things like just plain LIKING the people you're in bed with, and unfortunately there is no substitute for being in the same room as someone to make a decision like that.

[com2kid]

> Manufacturing has disappeared as a share of GDP, but that's not because we make less stuff.

We assemble. The actual parts are largely made overseas.

Because location matters, assemblers in China are able to do better work at a much lower price, see every Chinese EV company, or Chinese drone companies.

Heck in China you can buy a competent Chinese EV motorscooter for less than a kids bicycle in America.

[SR2Z]

> We assemble. The actual parts are largely made overseas.

It really depends on the product and the supply chains involved. Lots of parts make trips through multiple countries, and even the US multiple times.

But yes, I agree that agglomeration matters a ton.

[wubrr]

> It's not at the same level as other large frontier models from American companies

Cool story

> The value of goods manufactured in the US has never been higher... Manufacturing has disappeared as a share of GDP, but that's not because we make less stuff.

You're seriously going to try to argue how US manufacturing (which was the greatest share of global manufacturing by far) didn't decline, to support a point about how China (Shenzhen) is apparently an unreplicable manufacturing hub due to 'cluster effect'? It's funny that you don't see the contradiction. For the record, US manufacturing as a share of global manufacturing has significantly declined over the years. [0][1]

" > The United States' share of global manufacturing activity declined from 28% in 2002, following the end of the 2001 U.S. recession, to 16.5% in 2011

> China displaced the United States as the largest manufacturing country in 2010

> Manufacturing output, measured in each country's local currency adjusted for inflation, has been growing more slowly in the United States than in China, South Korea, Germany, and Mexico "

> You do generally have to physically be present to make deals.

If you need to be physically present for a meeting, you make a trip. There is absolutely zero benefit to living in close proximity to investors the rest of the time.

> It is obviously theoretically possible to run a world-leading software company fully remote.

It is obviously not just theoretically possible, and many companies do so.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_St... [1] https://www.bcg.com/press/21september2023-north-american-com...

[SR2Z]

> Cool story

I am not going to link you benchmarks or revenue numbers. You can find those yourself, if you actually care about being right.

> It's funny that you don't see the contradiction. For the record, US manufacturing as a share of global manufacturing has significantly declined over the years. [0][1]

Yes, because China is _cheap_ and _dense_ and has a billion newly-minted middle-class members. Do you expect them to import everything from the US and just ignore the vast labor pool within a few metro stops of any given factory?

> to support a point about how China (Shenzhen) is apparently an unreplicable manufacturing hub due to 'cluster effect'?

The Pearl River Delta, which Shenzen is part of, has almost 90 million people and a world-class transit system. It's across the water from Hong Kong, a global financial center, and is bordered by factory-filled cities on the other side.

Yes, that makes it nearly impossible for other places to become Shenzen. Even within China it's special.

> If you need to be physically present for a meeting, you make a trip. There is absolutely zero benefit to living in close proximity to investors the rest of the time.

Right, because if you're doing business you can get by with a single investor meeting a year, right? There's no downside in time lost, money spent, ease of access, etc.? You think there's no benefit to, say, playing tennis on weekends with your buddy from college who now works at a VC?

> You're seriously going to try to argue how US manufacturing (which was the greatest share of global manufacturing by far) didn't decline

Why the hell does it matter what percentage of global manufacturing is done in the US? You cannot ask the average American (one of the wealthiest people in the world) to work in a sweatshop making T-shirts. You cannot ask the average American to work for minimum wage tightening screws in iPhones.

You can, as it turns out, ask them to work a robotic assembly line to build a car or weld on a jetliner - because you can pay them much more, and because there are enough of them in an area to run a factory. Aggregation benefits are even more important for manufacturing than they are for software.

[wubrr]

> Yes, that makes it nearly impossible for other places to become Shenzen. Even within China it's special.

You're skipping n = 1 and jumping straight to k. How did modern Shenzen become what it is? Through specific reasons like infrastructure investment, or because it was always a 'manufacturing cluster'? By your logic Shenzen must have been the manufacturing hub of the world since before the dawn of time... since it's 'impossible for any place to become Shenzen'.

> Right, because if you're doing business you can get by with a single investor meeting a year, right?

Because the only way to meet and communicate in 2025 is in person?

> There's no downside in time lost, money spent, ease of access, etc.?

All of these are better remote/digitally in most cases.

[uvaursi]

> You mean like when China built chatgpt 4 in a weekend and open-sourced it for giggles?

Link?

[fragmede]

It's hyperbole, but they're referring to Deepseek-r1.