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Comment by heurisko | Hacker News Reader

One of the stories I often hear, is that people have decided to move house to the countryside, as they are now able to work remotely.

I don't know how true this is: are these people not concerned if their employer decides to reopen offices and require employees to work in the office again when the pandemic inevitably ends?

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> One of the stories I often hear, is that people have decided to move house to the countryside, as they are now able to work remotely.

This is the primary trick that journalists use in these stories: They find a couple examples of people doing something, interview them, and then pretend those people are a sample of a much larger movement. They don’t cite statistics or numbers, however easy to find, because putting a number on these movements would make the reader realize they’re nowhere near as large as the author wants you to think.

Using the “people moved to the countryside” example: Did we have a surplus of empty houses in the countryside before the pandemic? As far as I’m aware, we did not have huge numbers of empty houses just waiting for a pandemic for people to fill them up (except maybe Detroit, but I’m pretty sure people didn’t flock to Detroit).

Also, home prices and rents in cities didn’t fall dramatically during this period, which would be expected during an exodus event.

Even the stories about San Francisco population declines have been overblown, with many of the people leaving being quickly replaced by people looking for an opportunity to move in.

Journalists played up the countryside exodus stories because they’re romantic and people like to believe fantasies about people leaving the concrete jungle behind and living idyllic countryside lives, separated from their employers by miles of broadband connectivity. Yet none of the numbers support such supposed exoduses. Obviously a few people did it here and there, but pretending it was a common event and writing dramatic articles is dishonest.

A counterpoint from France: media did report that for the first time in a very long time, home prices did slightly drop in Paris proper, while suburbs and "smaller cities" have seen a bigger rise than usual.

This means there must be more than just a handful of people leaving.

However, I do agree with GP's point about companies ending the WFH arrangements, especially given France's work culture. But then again, I've always found people around here to have a tendency of thinking fairly short-term.

Before COVID there were between thirteen and seventeen million empty homes in he US, many due to foreclosure. There were (and likely still are) enough homes to house everyone, including the homeless, only the distribution is skewed so that there are few empty houses where jobs are (cities).

> Using the “people moved to the countryside” example: Did we have a surplus of empty houses in the countryside before the pandemic?

Actually yes. Before the pandemic, in the area I grew up in (Southern Appalachians) it was common for a house sale to take years, because there was indeed a surplus.

Remember ten years ago all the articles about urbanization and the young people leaving the country and suburbs to live in the city? That was real and the more remote places did in fact have a surplus of housing stock

I've personally seen one family move to the absolute boonies from a large metro and they just guessed that the breadwinner would be able to stay remote or find a new remote friendly employer if forced to move back. The latter happens

I'd probably have more anecdotes if I knew more than like five people

Maybe some people are so desperate to escape cities and endless commutes that they are willing to take the risk. My anecdata is that I spent 17 years with one megacorp because they allowed me to WFH back when there were very few places I could jump ship to and not have to move back to the Bay Area.

The small town I live in has seen a large influx of Bay Area remote workers as well. Again - all anecdata, but it is noticeable.

In my case; I found a job that was specified as "100% remote, even after COVID" - so I'm not super-concerned about that. Yes, employers lie, and in 1 year or so, they could easily come back and tell me I'm fired because I can't come on-site. (there is also a component of my job which could require me to go on customer site and work there; which I'm willing to do as long as they pay travel expenses).

I get that I'm very lucky to have landed such a gig. I hope many more do. Because when a worker has to bear the personal cost of sitting in traffic for 2+ hrs per day (burning gasoline and polluting the world while doing so), because his boss is uncomfortable with not being able to physically scrutinize his underlings - that's bullshit.

I imagine a lit of these people have gotten permission and made arrangements with their employers in advance.

That being said, this is not necessarily easy even for large employers, because until now there wasn't a need to clarify if workers were subject to the income, payroll etc. taxes and employee protection, health insurance contracts of their working or resident state. It is totally possible to be a large Fortune 500 company in the US and not be set up to do paperwork in, I don't know, Alaska or Wyoming or Idaho.

I guess that's an issue if you move states. I'm in the UK, and I know someone who moved 8 hours away to a different part of the UK. Would never have even been considered pre-covid, but the evidence that they could work productively from home was there: they'd been doing it for a year already! They're a manager too, so regular collaboration is a given. It's just all online now.

Keep in mind that 11 US states by themselves are larger than the entirety of the UK; Oregon, for example. I don't know if tax is assessed differently for say Scottish rather than English residents, and 32 US states are larger than England.

This is going to be an issue if you move anywhere within a country with a federal system of government. For EU residents I imagine this also gets tricky for people who decide to WFH from other countries.

Yeah, that was kind of my point. There's plenty of room to move within a US state without running into these issues. FWIW I believe the income tax system is the same across the UK. There might be different local taxes in Scotland, but your employer wouldn't need to concern themselves with those.

No, Scottish income tax is different, so the employer does need to deal with it. (Though I imagine most UK payroll systems have such options.)

Scotland has a different legal system than England. It seems unlikely that wouldn’t have an effect on remote work?

As someone navigating this right now - it's a mess. Business is in a no-income-tax state, I moved to 4% state, and it was deemed easiest to be personally responsible for paying quarterly estimates so the business isn't on the hook for paying business taxes to a state it doesn't do any business in. Some states, however, decided now was a good time to declare a single remote worker in their state means that company has a nexus there, and thus owes all corporate taxes to that state.

Judging by my coworkers and my company's Blind: lots of people did this; they're anxious but cautiously optimistic that the company will cave. If it doesn't, they think it's likely enough that they'll find different remote jobs.

anecdotally, I think there is a fairly widespread belief that people can move to the country side for X years during covid then switch the property to AirBnB afterwords.

I'd also bet that many individuals are making long-term bets that they can continue working remote even if it means (slightly) less pay.

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