Comment by senseamp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by senseamp | Hacker News Reader

Best thing a tech company can do to solve CA housing crisis is let workers who desire to do so work remotely from other states without taking a pay cut (beyond actual reduction in productivity, if any). Market forces will take care of the rest.

The effect will be many-fold:

- Increase in employee satisfaction and quality of life. Those who leave will have a much lower cost of living and can enjoy the extra money. Those who stay here will be here because it's worth the money to them.

- Lower real estate costs for employer.

- Reduction in employment and resulting housing demand in California.

- Increase in tech populations in other areas leading to networking effects and economies of scale, making them more attractive to work at, further reducing housing demand in CA.

- Better distribution of tech talent and benefits in the country, reducing anti-tech resentment and political backlash.

- Loss of (tens of?) thousands of dollars in income and sales tax revenue for CA, per employee, imposing a real fiscal cost for not implementing housing supply friendly policies, and creating proper political incentives.

- Loss of demand for local businesses and services, leading to a negative feedback loop to reduce local opposition to increasing housing supply.

- Opportunities for tech and other businesses that embrace and help facilitate remote work.

- Tech companies being closer to average people, aware and solving their real world problems instead of SF techies' scooter and/or food delivery needs.

Stuffing more employees into the Bay Area and throwing a few bucks to YIMBY is not a serious solution, it's a fig leaf.

Remote work would be hugely beneficial, even with a pay cut.

Cost of living adjustments are market distortions that lead to things like this housing affordability crisis. Landlords jack up rents because of high local pay, cost of living goes up, and instead of letting employees move elsewhere and work remotely at existing pay, companies increase local pay more to compensate, and landlords just jack up rent again. That cycle needs to be broken before things change. Pay people for their productivity, not how much their landlords want for rent. If someone is less productive due to less spontaneous coworker interaction, then fine, pay them less to work remotely. But if they are delivering same results, they should be paid same.

Even for new grads or junior employees?

In this day and age, it is beyond my comprehension why anyone would choose waste a major part of their day in long commutes, pay extortionate amounts to rent and be bound to a single location. Most coders are way more productive away from the usual hassle of office space and politics.

If your company believes you can telecommute, it's not a small step for them to eventually believe that you can be outsourced more inexpensively.

If being able to work for any company remotely means I have to compete with the whole world, I’m ok with it.

Would you be willing to compete wage wise? It's completely possible to find programmers that speak English for single digit hourly wages.

I wouldn't be competing with the single digit programmers, but yes. Geography still matters for remote employees (due to time zones and the need for an occasional face time) as does the level of English and obviously the level of experience. The pool of people that fit that description isn't so large that I would have to work for minimum wage from the comfort of my mountain cabin.

You either can be outsourced inexpensively, or you can't. If you can, but your physical presence in a Bay Area office is effective in stopping your employer from figuring it out, then you should probably stay here.

At least in the Bay Area, it's because, for a lot of engineers, the earnings so far outpace other places that the math just doesn't work. Believe you me, I've got a very fancy spreadsheet that runs through all sorts of models to get me out of here, but if I want to retire ASAP, it makes sense to stay.

For some. In my experience since leaving my earning nearly doubled and my cost of living took a nose dive. Plus other benefits.

I dislike working from home. I am more productive in the office, and I like having a concrete work/life balance.

Beyond that, the simple answer to your question is that most companies don't allow remote work.

I'm also much more productive at work, but I suspect I could do roughly as well at a decent co-working space in a cheap city.

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