Any company that thinks remote work isn’t the future is going to suffer dramatically over the next decade unless they adapt.
My company has an interesting strategy. We’re mainly hiring people local to our office (closed the others), but no one is required to go in. Hell, I’ve been told a few times, “You ordered $thing and no one was there to receive it. Can you check from now on?”
This way, if we want to pull a team together for a minute, we can. Most folks know each other, if even from a brief visit, and that works out better. Lemmy bags on in-person relationships, psychology be damned. 🤷🏻♂️
But if we ever mandated a return to the office? LOL no. Our top talent would walk and we’d be left with the dregs who can’t find a better job.
Co-located but remote does sound like a good combination
Kind of how I thought wework would be a good model with remote work.
Our top talent would walk and we’d be left with the dregs who can’t find a better job.
Yuuuuuuup. This is exactly what’s happening at my job right now, after they mandated at least three in-office days per week. Only the top people are leaving, too; the chaff and the bums love it, because they no longer have to produce, rather they just have to be seen.
That’s sounds like a great model. I’ve been working remotely for about a decade. One of the reasons is because I can tap into a larger job market than if I stuck to just local companies.
While I would love to have a job where I could meet up in person with coworkers for the day, there are just so many more opportunities with remote companies.
You really found a great sweet spot between remote and in-person!
My job was in person until the pandemic hit. I was sure I’d hate remote working, but it turns out that I love it and I’m way more productive than I was in the office. (No coworkers stopping by to chat for one thing.) My job has now moved to the parent company which is about 10 hours away from me so I now permanently work from home. No expectation that I ever come into the office. (There’s no way I’d do that commute!)
A few times, I was unsure of my job’s future stability and looked around. Being a web developer shifting technologies while at 48 can feel really unstable. You’re too old for many people. You don’t have deep experience with specific technologies. It’s frightening to think that I could age out of my job two decades before retirement.
My local job market isn’t great, but work from home means that I can look nationwide (or further if I want) if need be. It gives me a lot more options and doesn’t mean I have to uproot my family and travel halfway around the country just to have a job. (Something that I couldn’t do for various reasons.)
My job was in person until the pandemic hit. I was sure I’d hate remote working, but it turns out that I love it and I’m way more productive than I was in the office. (No coworkers stopping by to chat for one thing.) My job has now moved to the parent company which is about 10 hours away from me so I now permanently work from home. No expectation that I ever come into the office. (There’s no way I’d do that commute!)
A few times, I was unsure of my job’s future stability and looked around. Being a web developer shifting technologies while at 48 can feel really unstable. You’re too old for many people. You don’t have deep experience with specific technologies. It’s frightening to think that I could age out of my job two decades before retirement.
My local job market isn’t great, but work from home means that I can look nationwide (or further if I want) if need be. It gives me a lot more options and doesn’t mean I have to uproot my family and travel halfway around the country just to have a job. (Something that I couldn’t do for various reasons.)
I just started a gig at a company that doesn’t really know how to do remote work well, but that basically told me that they were having trouble finding candidates so they had to start looking for remote.
I recently left a gig that sold their offices off so even employees in the area don’t have an office to go to anymore and everyone is remote. They’ve lost some Product/Manager people over the decision, but have otherwise seen an uptick in productivity and morale.
I just recently got laid off, and the industry I work in doesn’t have a huge presence in my city so I was pretty bummed. I was expecting a long, difficult hunt for a new job (I have zero interest in moving).
But boom, first job I applied for, I got. It’s located in the next province over, but it’s full remote. Cost of living is way cheaper here so I got a big raise and my new employers are probably still chuckling about how cheap I am. A win for everyone.
Only if enough companies offer fair remote work. If 90% of them stick to work from office culture war, what are you going to do? Not work? I can quit my job and have a new one by the end of the day. I would still struggle to find remote work in a reasonable time frame. I’m not willing to blow my savings on it so I stick with job O enjoy that offers hybrid.
I’m ok with the current status quote. The problem with fully remote work is there’s always someone cheaper, whether by skill, experience, desperation, or cost of living. It will be another race to the bottom, like the first few decades of outsourcing, and high cost of living cities would be hardest hit
Because I’m partly remote and have to be located near an office, I still get the pay structure of where that office is. I still enjoy my Boston area high cost of living pay. If we were fully remote, would they really pay that? What happens to high cost of living cities, much less any city? While I like to think I have excellent skills that are worth the extra pay, there’s no way I can claim to be worth, say two similar guys in Austin, or four in Alabama. There’s no way I can live where i do if I were paid like a lower cost of living area …. And that’s before you even consider the rest of the world.
This is what I don’t hear discussed as often as I’d expected. When you make a solid case for 100% remote, bargaining power is lost - or at least the COLA is harder to defend.
It depends. Full remote means that companies could recruit nationwide, but that cuts both ways. There’s a few hiccups in having employees in multiple states that opens a company up to employment rules in many states, so some companies may want to avoid certain states until they are big enough to handle the complexity. It also means every company has to compete for employees with all the other big companies, not just whoever is within about 50 miles of them.
Full remote means that companies could recruit nationwide
Depending on the industry and ROI, I’d submit it’s worldwide.
Maybe. Going international is another big step in bureaucracy for a company. Time zones also become a problem, you can’t really have a team made of people farther than about 4 timezones, you need separate teams at that point, which adds complexity. Language barriers also start to become an issue as you expand, even English speaking countries have vast differences, and English as a second language adds more difficulty.
You look for remote work while currently employed. That’s ideally how you switch jobs in general.
I think it also depends on your amount of experience and if you have a unique skillset. If you have truly rare skills that a company needs, it’s hard for them to not give into your demands.
Also, with the older style managers and CEOs retiring, dying off, etc, I think remote work will continue being more common than you’d expect.
With that said, it always helps to have some bargaining power.
I want it to be true but I also see the world. In my line of work in my country (science and not exactly commercial) the consensus seems to be “remote work was a disaster, let’s not” up to explicitly forbidding remote/hybrid seminars.
Good. Aren’t we supposed to be excited at the “free market” at work?
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¢urse$
Not like that /$
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No, we need a rescue fund right now! It can’t be true that the elite has to suffer under the tyranny of the working class!
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Good. Fuck the commercial real estate industry.
Fuck the realestate industry period. It shouldn’t be commodified to the point where there are more empty houses up for rent, airbnb, or sitting empty as “investments” than there are homeless. Foreign companies are allowed to buy up realestate and literally extract wealth from the country for something that’s supposed to ultimately be owned by the country (hence no escaping property taxes or eminate domain)… It’s such a limitedly regulated mess that any such “free market” cannot responsibly control.
We should ban foreign nationals and corporations from owning real estate here, with reasonable exceptions.
No exceptions except immigration. Your corporation needs a factory? Fine, the land and building will be owned by the US and you will pay to rent it.
Remember that not every unit the census counts as vacant can have someone move into it. Their definition is honestly kinda weird. Some units are under construction or repair. Some are legally tied up in a divorce or estate sale. Some actually have people in them, such as non-dormitory student housing or housing for seasonal workers.
According to the census, 14.5% of vacant units for rent are vacant for less than a month, and 20.6% are vacant for more than one month but less than 2. The median vacancy has been on the market for 3.7 months, and less than 20% of vacancies have been on the market for more than 1 year.
Having a lot of units on the market for a month or two is a good thing; it means people can move to an area and find housing. You’re not going to house homeless people by sticking them into an apartment for a month or two between paying tenants.
It’s also a good thing because low vacancy rates are associated with rents going up. And the rent being too damn high increases homelessness.
Do you think those houses would’ve gotten so run down if there was soneone living in them to see the need and do maintenance?
Those houses are still in-flux instead of occupied. Do you even listen to yourself? Those houses are livable and not occupied… In factm houses in turnover is BAD because that means prices going up for renters and tax increases for owners.
It is BAD to run housing like we do. Full stop. What I said is factuallu true abd you think those houses being in turmoil is better than being owned?!
Why is having housing in flux a bad thing?
The goal should be to have affordable housing and low homeless rates.
Why should my goal be for each apartment to be moved into the day the previous occupant moves out? What’s the point?
Do you think those houses would’ve gotten so run down if there was soneone living in them to see the need and do maintenance?
I don’t think you understand that category of vacancies. Vacancies under repair isn’t “long term vacant buildings that needs repairs to become livable again”, its “any building currently being repaired or renovated that doesn’t have people actively living in it”.
My sister’s house, for example, was vacant for a couple months when she renovated her kitchen. It was owner- occupied just before the renovation and just after, but it was vacant during the renovation because she temporarily moved in with my parents.
After natural disasters, there’s often a lot of housing that’s vacant under repair.
If you don’t understand the fundamental difference between a house that is rented and one that is owned, I really do not know what to say. You do not care if people own their own value. Sad.
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Not society, but rather a bunch of detached money pushers
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You just wrote what they wrote, but blamed “society” instead of the actual assholes making the profits
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Good.
This is great! Only the rich suffer!
They surely won’t find other ways to make up this loss of wealth. And they surely won’t take it out of our hides.
Trickledown economics only flows up.
Maybe they’ll start investing in single family homes instead
They’ll extract everything they can from us under all circumstances.
At least this way they get less.
Good.
Let’s buy one and convert the entire building into one giant laser tag arena.
Can part of it be skatepark laser tag?
Yeah that’s on the 2 levels below the Blade vampire nightclub Laser tag floor, above the bouncy castle kingdom.
It’s be more useful to turn it into an apartment complex, but way more fun to turn it into a giant laser tag arena
We’ll just buy the building next door and turn that into apartments.
We can compromise and do both. It’s definitely big enough for both.
I can’t say for this specific building but sadly for many office buildings it would be cheaper to knock them down and build an apartment building than convert them. I know it is dumb but true.
I’m riding the high of my hometown converting an ol office building that is a historical part of our skyline into a shopping center on the bottom floors and apartments above it.
I get that this isn’t always feasible but I’m feeling optimistic
That’s awesome!
I’d live in a place with laser tag downstairs, the profits go toward upkeep.
Just keep two levels of storage between to buffer the sound.
Or a giant indoor maze that takes multiple days to finish. Elevator to the top, pack in a backpack or supplies. Complete challenges for coins that can be used at ‘trading posts’ or too unlock levels. Have trick stairwells and stuff, levels that dead end where you have to go back up and find amother way down.
imagine the maintenance costs, staffing, pee in corners, insurance policies, people freaking out, fighting, etc
Good.
Convert it to vertical indoor farming.
Or maybe housing or both
The hard part will be water lines for so much active water use. A sink and a few toilets is one thing but rigging an irrigation system that also has drainage for leaks or overflows requires space and lots of upfront renovation costs that will be paid back over a very long time. It’s a difficult financial proposition.
You’re not running showers out whatever that needs fresh water and the goal would be to reuse that water over and over. You only need to get the water in there to begin with, then your pumps will move it around.
The problem is a constant fight against gravity. You’ve still got to pump the water effectively to the top of the building every day. And there’s still the issue of getting sunlight to the plants.
The question really becomes whether it’s more economical to just use traditional irrigation techniques upstream and ship the produce in vs converting a skyscraper into a very inefficient farm space.
Vertical farming usually uses LED lighting, not direct sunlight. And I think the idea is that once the water is present on a given level it gets recirculated and reprocessed there, so it wouldn’t need much additional pumping.
Vertical farming usually uses LED lighting, not direct sunlight.
That’s one method of bringing"sunlight" to plants. Another would be to grow them outside.
And I think the idea is that once the water is present on a given level it gets recirculated and reprocessed there, so it wouldn’t need much additional pumping.
Even if all you do is pump all the water from the floor of each level to the ceiling of the respective level, you’ve done the exact same amount of work as pumping all the water for the top floor back to the roof in the first place. Only you’ve done it with a hundred pumps and a hundred times the points of failure and repair rate as a single pump for the entire building.
You’d be so much farther ahead to just install a reservoir on the roof that gets filled by a single pump and let gravity feed the lower floors. Much the way we already do for flat farming.
And then you’ve got to make up for the inefficiencies lost in planting and harvesting. Vertical farming brings nothing to the table except a smaller footprint in a world where that’s not a real advantage.
A far better use of empty office buildings would be to convert much of the space into full-time living space.
I think you’d be surprised to learn that vertical farms do actually exist already. The problems you’re imagining have all already been overcome. Having a hundred pumps actually isn’t a big obstacle to having the system function well.
I’m not imagining any problems. The difficulties I’ve outlined are genuine issues that have to be addressed. I think you’d be surprised to learn how much difference there is between a thing existing and it actually operating efficiently.
I really don’t see much beyond “it doesn’t look perfect to me so it’s a bad idea and we shouldn’t even try” in your arguments.
Great way to grow local and buy local with next to no pesticides.
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Because there’s a massive homeless crisis in downtown LA and people need food, not to be forced to commute into the most congested area of the city to stare at hungry people. So maybe they should make food there too.
I’m not sure anyone is starving because of a shortage of food. It’s not 1980s Ethiopia.
Right and people starve due to political and logistical reasons now. The politics are “this space is for office work” and the logistical ones are where we fail to account for how people actually live.
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You don’t fix problems of food distribution or food cost, just by making production more local, especially if you’re also making production more expensive
No, not “just by”, but lack of production capacity is a huge contributor to food deserts like downtown LA.
I was just at my grocery store yesterday, looking at all the amazing and reasonably priced food choices from around the world, and I really find that hard to believe. When I go to a farmers market, I see things for double or triple the cost of grocery store produce because local farmers already can’t compete on price. What’s unique about LA that it can’t have cheap potatoes from Idaho, cheap lettuce from California, cheap oranges from Florida, cheap bananas from Nicaragua, etc? How has anyone come to the conclusion that using the most expensive land for farming, and spending hundreds of millions on a verticals infrastructure, will ever be sustainable, much less cheaper?
Where there are grocery stores, do you not have these things? Isn’t the problem more that a food desert does t have a grocery store?
It’s because people (large capital) have decided that the area is to be used for business, not for living, despite the fact that lots of people live (and suffer) there. There are a couple of grocery stores in downtown LA, but they’re inadequate to address the general societal collapse that has been Skid Row for the last 40+ years. Food deserts exist despite the fact that there are plentiful options elsewhere. That’s why they’re deserts. It’s entirely social.
Love the idea, but how much CO2 you willing to put into that project? It’s gonna cost. Big time.
Ever built or installed anything? It costs far more energy to retrofit than to burn it down and start fresh.
I don’t think a lot people would be averse to 100% working in the office if the commute was a fifteen minute walk. For most, it’s the time, hassle, and expense of commuting that is a drain on their soul. Of course there are other factors, but in my experience, gathering at the water cooler and lunch with coworkers, etc., are sorely missed. Just not enough to justify hundreds of hours of my life in gridlocked traffic.
So, if they convert a few of these buildings to homes and parks that make living in the city affordable and pleasant, I think most people would be glad to use the rest as workplaces. Imagine a park and daycare for the kids only an elevator away. Eateries and shops in walking distance. No need to own a car.
We could have that if we get our act together. Now’s the time.
Exactly. Spending 2 hours out of each day stuck in traffic for only a 20mile drive is psychotic.
LA’s transit system, hell even the idea of a central ‘downtown’, was never designed for effective mass transit. The metro rails that are expanding are better, but I know so many people that refuse to use it out of fear of being stabbed or mugged, the disgusting homeless encampments that are around the parking lots of the stations, etc…
They don’t even have to convert the entire space, just start incorporating mixed use spaces more so people have the option to live closer or in the actual building.
It’s not just the distance. I don’t want to work in an open office environment 5 days a week. I also get a full kitchen at home instead of a microwave. I can start dinner or keep an eye on a smoker while working at home. Yes it would be nice to have more social experiences with coworkers, but it’s also extremely helpful to be able to isolate from coworkers when focus is needed.
I hear that. Having children and pets is also better when you’re home.
It sounds like you want to live and work on a business campus.
Or Europe. /waves from Europe
If I ignore all the problems with company towns, it sounds perfect tbh
Mixed neighborhood ≠ business campus.
Holy fuck! Wins are rare, but they are nice to see.
Here’s hoping this is the start of a trend. Next step retrofitting.
Good.
Business is risk. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you something.
Unfortunately, these days, that usually means, “we’re willing to risk as many of our employees as we can.”
Good.
Good, fuck your commercial real estate investments, you greedy disaster profiteering fucks.
Also, how much tip would you like to leave for reading this post I wrote?
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