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Comment by quartz | Hacker News Reader

To the folks who think this is some kind of rejection of remote work: even in a remote work era, having physical offices in cities makes a ton of sense so long as large numbers of people want to live there.

In a city like New York, living day to day life across many physical spaces is a core part the experience. In fact it's one of the major draws. The park is your front lawn, the cafe your breakfast nook, the theater your living room, and the office is... your office.

Remote work is great and all if that's not the lifestyle you want, and I think the pandemic has perhaps shown that many were living this lifestyle who didn't want it (especially if you were living the quasi-bedroom-city life of SFBay where you slept in SF but commuted out of the city daily for work), but Google embracing the deeply social and physically connected lifestyle of a functional city like New York isn't really a rejection of remote work being viable-- it's just accepting that to many, this type of city life is preferable and having a physical space to do your work provided by your employer is part of what makes that so.

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As a Googler who wants to work remote, in my personal opinion I think this makes a ton of sense. Focus on providing offices in major urban areas for people who want an urban lifestyle, and then offer remote work for people who don't.

NYC isn't for me personally, but I absolutely see the appeal for others, and I can see why Google would want to expand proportionally there.

> then offer remote work for people who don't.

the problem is that offering remote work as an isolated option isn't feasible, because the cost of living when remote is lower (presumably), and thus, either they must be paid lower, or the office-working colleagues must be paid more to adjust for said cost of living.

I feel there would be social friction caused by this market-force mechanism.

The value the worker provides to google doesn't vary with location. If someone wants to live in an overpriced urban area, that's their choice. Why should google have to subsidize it?

It shouldn't matter where in the United States you live, NYC, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, or some forsaken place like Indiana, etc.. If you get your work done, you should have the same responsibilities and benefits.

Salary already isn't directly proportional to value added, so I'm not sure where that idea comes from.

IMO, it affirms the "rugged individualism" mythos, and has a sprinkling of the fundamental attribution error.

Salaries are mostly controlled by market forces, opening up to remote work will result in a larger supply of potential employees, to include those who were previously not considered, but are good enough, and are willing to accept less than current Bay Area/coastal salaries.

Thinking salaries are governed by market forces is a fundamental attribution error

Then why does having simultaneous competing offers result always result in a higher salary? Typically higher than the "maximum" figure originally signaled

Pay differences are already a source of major social friction, but companies find ways to mitigate or avoid the problem. Why would this be any different?

I think G already has an office in NYC, don’t they? To me this means that they expect more in-person presence there over time, not less.

I think this misses the mark on the fact that we now have an aging population in the USA, and an aging population has different needs when it comes to raising families that the urban lifestyle simply hasn't evolved fast enough to support. Urban areas in the USA like NYC are still the playground of the young and unattached. I think European and Asian cities have done a much better job at this.

With two kids aged 10 and 12, I need access to a sports park for practices and games. I need space to park a car and roads wide enough to support them because I have a lot of things to haul. I need good public schools that don't break the bank to provide my kids the support and community they need.

Everything smooth and convenient about living as a single person in an urban area quickly turns into living life on Hard Mode for families. As our working adult population ages, cities need to evolve to meet these needs, or expect people to move out as they outgrow the lifestyle.

I'm sure there are folks who live in places like SF with families and ride around in heavy urban traffic with 2 kids on an electric cargo bike, but that's just not for many of us. We're happier and way more stress free in the suburbs or even in the rural areas working remotely.

"Why We Won't Raise Our Kids in Suburbia (and moved to the Netherlands instead)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98

"Who else benefits from the Dutch cycling infrastructure" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSGx3HSjKDo

"Why Great Cities Let You (Easily!) Cycle to IKEA" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgvYgxo6UY8

"8 to 80, people of all ages cycling in the Netherlands" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swqaAIkGtpA

As you can see, you don't need "wide roads". Quite the opposite, in fact. When safe cycling infrastructure is present, traffic shifts to cycling, because it's faster, cheaper and more pleasant. This makes roads less congested for your car trips. Widening roads does not have this effect, as additional lanes simply fill up with more traffic if there is no faster, safe alternative. Also, wide lanes encourage high speeds, and you don't want that around your kids.

> When safe cycling infrastructure is present

This is debatable. Tokyo lacks widespread European-style cycling facilities and still has quite high bike mode share.

Low stress roads can fill much of the same gap, as long as they are well connected.

I'd say this is cultural and you won't ever get the same outcome in the USA(or Australia where I am from). Car drivers think they own the road. In Australia there is outright hostility towards cyclists on the road from the proudly ignorant.

To a degree, it's also because Japanese streets are much, much narrower.

Anglo or Japanese culture, you can't really blaze down this street at 80kph without hitting something. https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Wu_fv0DMXQ/TEbn2b8Hu4I/AAAAAAAAA...

A few towns in my area have been experimenting with "road diets" -- taking streets originally designed with only car traffic in mind, and reconfiguring them (without building new infrastructure) to reduce the primacy of cars and make other modes of transport more appealing -- with varying degrees of success. In one case, there was an observed impact of trip times _decreasing_ despite losing a lane of traffic in each direction -- the change in configuration reduced congestion at intersections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_diet

interesting. While I'm open minded to this, I have to say I am starting from a place of skepticism. I've come to view bike lanes painted on the road as a dangerous half-measure in most places. Studies show that Women do not take advantage of these types of cycle lanes at all, and many people view them as simply too dangerous to use. still interesting that there can be benefits to car traffic in the right conditions!

The biggest impact were cases where bike lanes were protected -- that is, the view of the road from the outside-in was pedestrian sidewalk, bike lane, car parking, and then lanes of traffic, so cyclists wouldn't have to worry about double-parked cars forcing them into traffic or inattentive drivers drifting into the bike lane. That said, such a change carries its own risks (cyclists need to be aware of passengers exiting cars and vice-versa), and generally requires more thoughtful design of the intersection (since cyclists turning left will have a much longer path to follow).

Segregated infrastructure is missing the point. Putting liability on drivers where it belongs, and giving priority on the shared roads to vulnerable road users, is what makes it work, in the Netherlands or in Tokyo.

> I need space to park a car and roads wide enough to support them because I have a lot of things to haul.

> I'm sure there are folks who live in places like SF with families and ride around in heavy urban traffic with 2 kids on an electric cargo bike, but that's just not for many of us.

Maybe riding a cargo bike with your kids on the back is unpleasant because the suburban lifestyle you are talking about has bled into American urban planning. If American cities were designed around people instead of cars many of the problems with urban life you are talking about would be moot.

I point this out because you thesis seems to be that getting older and having kids is orthogonal to urban life. However, historically, and in many cities outside of north America, this is not the case. If you look at the Netherlands for example, where a deliberate effort to plan cities around people has been ongoing for 50 years, many people don't own cars, their kids bike to school and use public spaces for recreation, and they can pickup furniture from Ikea on their cargo bikes while never touching a road built for cars.

Another thing to keep in mind is that europe in general and the netherlands in particular has a far more mild climate than the east coast of the united states.

As Douglas Adams said about NYC.

"In the summer it's too darn hot. It's one thing to be the sort of life form that thrives on heat and finds, as the Frastrans do, that the temperature range between 40,000 and 40,004 is very equable, but it's quite another to be the sort of animal that has to wrap itself up in lots of other animals at one point in your planet's orbit, and then find, half an orbit later, that your skin's bubbling."

Infrastructure is almost everything. Fully separated bike roads are needed for people to bike comfortably.

Highways are built with “levels of service.” There are no level of service standards for pedestrians: sidewalk availability, trees, protection from car traffic, directness of routes, etc. Bike lanes often don’t exist or are blocked by parked cars or trash. This would never be accepted for a road.

> However, historically, and in many cities outside of north America, this is not the case

Uhhhhh I think this is also what hkarthik was saying with his first paragraph.

> I think European and Asian cities have done a much better job at this.

.... Either way it sounds like we all agree, urban family life in US is subpar to our economic counterparts.

Yeah I saw that, though I found it confusing considering the complaints op had with American cities later in the post, which I was responding to.

Asian and European cities did not make themselves more hospitable to families by adding wider roads and providing parking spaces for cars like op was talking about, they did it by doing the opposite, which is what I was commenting on.

An aging population means more 85 year olds who are faced with the decision to keep driving when it’s no longer safe or to become an non-driver in a car dependent area, losing independent access to basic needs and friends. American cities have been underinvested in due to the legacy of institutional racism (redlining). Mortgages and highways were subsidized by the government and cities were left to rot. In many European countries the wealthy live in the city center and the poor live on the outskirts. Ironically when wealthier demographics move back within city limits it’s criticized as “gentrification.”

So what about the population aging—there will always be people in their 20s and 30s and older single people too. Cities will still appeal to them. The point of the op is now people have a choice of which city to live in. Lots of folks will choose NYC and commuting because that’s the lifestyle they want. Lots of others will choose to live in the suburbs and have kids. The thing now is that your lifestyle doesn’t have to correspond directly to your job.

The number of people over 65 living in the USA is expected to double over the next 40 years:

https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...

I have to assume at least a few of those folks will be New Yorkers!

For what it's worth, though ... I'm not sure Google buying a building it already leases means anything other than perhaps they are bullish NYC real estate?

There's also quite a lot of old New Yorkers still resident there, though.

Pluses of living in New York include not needing to drive, most things being close by, and generally more widespread things like elevators. Old people can become less able to drive cars over time, or climb the stairs in a suburban home, or carry an SUV's worth of groceries.

Lot's of aging and retired people opt to live in NYC. There's many benefits for them including:

They can walk to do their errands and meet friends.

They have an abundance of access to world-class medical care and specialists.

They have plenty of options for culture and entertainment.

There's no need to worry about shoveling a driveway or house/yard maintenance.

Listen, this is going to be a very rude-sounding comment, so feel free to not read, but:

>With two kids aged 10 and 12, I need access to a sports park for practices and games.

[0] Park access is WAY higher in US urban areas vs. the suburbs. I think having a car and driving skews your view of this.

>I need space to park a car and roads wide enough to support them because I have a lot of things to haul.

Again, I think you just like driving.

>I'm sure there are folks who live in places like SF with families and ride around in heavy urban traffic with 2 kids on an electric cargo bike, but that's just not for many of us. We're happier and way more stress free in the suburbs or even in the rural areas working remotely.

Yeah, you just like driving. Which is fine, but don't shit on our cities because of it. It's the driving that's the PROBLEM.

[0] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/08/21/parks-m...

Is there a chance you're misreading sports park to be a more general park, versus what the OP is referring to such as a facility with 10 soccer fields or baseball diamonds?

Check out a satellite photo of central park! So many baseball fields. I'm in a small city (denver) and have tons of 'sports' specific fields within walking distance.

No. That’s just not how the concept of density works.

For example, A 5 mile radius city has x baseball diamonds in it. That’s x per every 78.5 square miles.

Let’s say the suburbs of that city are a ring of width 25 miles with y baseball diamonds in it. That makes the baseball diamond density of the suburbs y per every 1885 square miles.

I’ll spare you the math x=24y give or take.

Then I encourage you to go to google maps and look at America’s most notoriously crowded cities like nyc, sf, Boston, Chicago. There are dozens if not hundreds of baseball fields in city limits. Central park’s 26 fields alone would need to be offset by 624 in the suburbs to achieve equal density.

The “problem” is that most of those diamonds are difficult to drive to and park at, which is why OP considers them non-existent.

I think a lot of people confuse "need to" with "like to" and assume the way they live is the only possible way. People are surprisingly adaptable to many life conditions and its quite easy to get away with not using a car. With the money you save not driving, you can pay for delivery of all that stuff you would have moved yourself and still come out on top.

So from a city dweller perspective - it sounds like you actually have it on "hard mode" in comparison. That is, needing to actively take your kids to\from places and activities.

Basically everything that I needed as a kid was in walking distance. So from about the age of 7-8 I rarely needed to rely on my parents for anything, school/sports/friends/etc was all a less than a 30 minute walk away, and in turn, my parents never needed to plan around my schedule.

The caveat is that I didn't grow up in the US, where cities are usually sadly quite pedestrian hostile.

What you want is the manhattan model: a huge park surrounded by extremely high density residential towers. You'd have near-immediate access to needed free outdoor fields.

The manhattan model is so strikingly effective that the rich have basically monopolized it. What needs to happen in many urban areas is to replicate this. Of course that would mean huge numbers of buybacks of individually owned blocks of city, an almost impossibility in US legal system practically speaking, even with eminent domain.

Cities are also a nightmare if you want to get into a lot of hobbies. For example I like building and modifying cars, and you can forget about renting a private garage at a reasonable price in most large cities. The same goes for woodworking, machining, most motorsports, boating, RC airplanes and drones, etc.

I would argue the opposite. Yes, those "space demanding" hobbies are hard to get into. But there's so many other hobbies and interests people have, and having a few million people packed really close really reduces the effort required to have a niche group of hobbyists or find something niche you care about.

In other words. It's much easier to find likeminded people closeby in dense, populated cities.

In some places it's even illegal to work on your car in a private garage: https://code-enforcement.saccounty.net/Programs/Pages/AutoRe...

"Minor repair and maintenance of vehicles and similar equipment shall include brake part replacement, minor tune-up, change of oil and filter, repair of flat tire, lubrication and other similar operations."

"It shall be unlawful for any person to engage in, or permit others to engage in, minor vehicle repair or maintenance under any of the following circumstances: - Using tools not normally found in a residence;"

Ban lists of activities like this are also not exactly hard to find in suburban HOAs, though, so YMMV.

Sounds like an ordinance a "karren" would draft.

At least one of the reasons give is "not readily believable"

In a rural area you buy a cheap building and buy all the tools. In an urban area, for most of these at least, you join a makerspace. Many urban makerspaces have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tools.

Only specific hobbies mostly limited to things with large motors. They can be even more accessible for other hobbies. For a very small fee, I can get a pass to use the local makerspace down the street and get access to machinery I would never be able to buy myself. For all of my hobbies they are either the same or easier to do in the city.

Had two small kids in NYC and it was great. No driving and playgrounds everywhere. Museums to.

SF I'm with you. That city is just brutal on any family

Guess how many children live in NYC.

You don't need all that sports gear, it's an arbitrary choice. The most popular sport in the world is played with just a small ball.

Well I believe you can play cricket in central park

Technically, you don't need anything. People evolved living naked outdoors, subsisting on berries.

Drawing the line of what conveniences of modern at "city apartment" but not "suburbs" is extremely arbitrary (I am also guessing you are saying that as a single city-living male, so your view is theoretical and not borne of experience - just a thought.)

I'm a New Yorker who has no desire to go back to the office. Love the park, the restaurants, nightlife, etc.

I absolutely loathe going to the office.

Just because people like living in cities doesn't necessarily equate to people enjoying going to the office.

Not really. I live in NYC and my company has an office in NYC and still never go in and don't care if I ever do. We're likely going to retain a space once our lease is up, but it's going to be modeled very differently. Our business has some physical co-location requirements for certain aspects, but no one doing tech work needs to do anything beyond meetings. And we are all 100% comfortable doing them over video. If we want a rallying spot for once or twice a year jamborees, we could do it at a hotel or a much smaller permanent space. There's no reason Google would need to pay $2B unless they were rejecting remote work.

Ah yes your anecdotal experience clearly means one of the largest companies in the world is rejecting remote work by buying an office they already lease.

It gives some insight into the worker mentality. Investing in premium office space at the height of a huge real estate bubble during a huge shift to remote work says a lot about Google's confidence in office space remaining in high demand, especially since we have on record Google execs pushing for going back to the office. I don't know if this is just Google doubling down but it's an interesting move on their part given the timing.

Either that or it just illustrates how they have so much money ($135B cash on hand and growing) that $2B is barely a drop in the bucket for them.

Yeah, considering inflation o other variables It could even be a good splurge

Google has quite a bit of headcount in NY (12,000 now, up from 7,000 in 2018 according to the article) and at that current pace of expansion they could probably still use the space even if only a percentage of employees still work in office.

More importantly, this seems like it's mostly to hedge given that office building prices in NY are reaching new lows and they've already leased space in this building for a while.

I'm not sure that last part is true. The building hasn't been delivered yet. Google did announce the lease a couple years ago, but I doubt that lease has commenced as the building is still under construction.

That being said, Google does seem to snag big properties in a down market. They bought 111 Eighth Avenue back in 2010 around the financial crisis.

Remote workers could also fly into NYC for meetings and such.

Google, Facebook, and the other monopolies are itching to get their workers back. (Little Zuck is buying buildings in San Francisco like I buy beer.)

These companies hate not having their workers under their thumb, but won't come out and say it.

They know they will never have a hard time attracting workers. The 1 out of a thousand Rockstar might be another conversation, but the run of the mill worker--no problem.

They know they will be able to do whatever they want for years. I imagine Zuck, and the Google Boys, thanking their god, the dollar, they don't live in China.

(Xi is cracking down on certain big businesses. He, and his mates, don't like the extreme wealth disparity rearing it's head. He doesn't like companies that seem to exploit people. He doesn't like the fact that houses are rising in price so quickly, only the wealthy, and companies that buy up realestate, can afford them.

Xi is worried about the amount of credit certain businesses are taking on. I heard business debt is almost 3x ours. Business leverage that is, not governmental debt. This couldn't be right?

Xi is worried his unchecked Capitalistic experiment might come crashing down.)

Ok, back to employers salivating for the day they can demand everyone show up.

I've thought about it, and don't see an out. They will drag everyone back in. It doesn't matter if the tech works.

Maybe if we started using Global Warming as an excuse to not came back? All those extra cars on the roads couldn't be good.

(Sorry about bringing China in to the mix. I'm a tiny bit jealous just how quick they can move there. I liked city life when they were diverse, and then only for awhile. In all honesty, the only thing about city life I liked was the ratio of single women to men. I said it.)

How are cities like NYC not diverse?

In all honesty, the only thing I liked about city life was the ratio of single women to men. And I know that sounds shallow. I wrote diversity out of habit? Conditioning? I tried to update my post, but the system wouldn't let me.

I knew a lot of people like city life. I didn't. They say you are suspose to habituate to noise. I never did.

Yeah, i'm sure Xi Will even find a cure for obesity...

> In a city like New York, living day to day life across many physical spaces is a core part the experience. In fact it's one of the major draws. The park is your front lawn, the cafe your breakfast nook, the theater your living room, and the office is... your office.

why would someone rather not live in a countryside with expansive views and much lower stress and work remotely? (especially when tech like Starlink are going to remove the comms friction)

Why would someone prefer something that you wouldn't? There as many answers to that question as there are people. I for one love big cities, and prefer to live in one even though I'm a remote worker.

You do you, I'll do me, and if we're lucky in life then we'll each find someone whose preferences are similar to our own to share a life with.

Because I get bored. It lacks the cultural diversity and and offerings the big cities have, which is the reason I live in one in the first place, not because of the job. Also most of my friends are here.

I love the countryside for weekend or longer trips when I'm not working and just want to relax all day or go for hikes.

Both have their exciting aspects. Both my boss and I got tired of living in Chicago highrises, even though it has a lot to offer, and my boss is living it up on an island with 10 acres of land and shoreline and wouldn't have it any other way. Me on the other hand, I moved to somewhere that's still closer to a city (so I can still enjoy all the things a city resident can) while having the luxury of a huge house with a private office, big back yard, and a garage full of toys for me to tinker with.

Completely agree. There are many different lifestyles, none inherently better than the other. I just disagree with the sentiment that the only reason to live in a big city is because of work. At least for the kind of positions people on HN tend to hold. It's not like working fully remotely was impossible pre-pandemic.

I definitely see the appeal of owning a huge house and I might well consider it in the future, especially if I have children. But for now, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I own few things of the maximal quality I can afford. Even my city apartment is viewed as somewhat spartanic by some. So I prefer renting an entire place in different parts of the country with my girlfriend or friends for a couple of days at the time meanwhile living in my favorite part of the city where most everything I want to do or need is within 20 minutes walking distance.

I've lived in NYC, SF, Boston, and now the country side.

Each have their pros and cons, just like anything in life.

For one, in NYC I liked being able to walk everywhere and not owning a car.

Because I want to be able to do things without sitting in a car for half an hour first.

My stress levels plummeted after moving from a distant suburb to a city apartment. I haven't driven a car in months. All the walking has done wonders for my health, physical and mental.

The only stressed people are the ones coming from the suburbs to the city and back again every day and almost all of that stress is in the driving / transport part.

I agree that many people end up wanting that, but certainly some see the lure of a big city and would (at first, at least) love to interact with people on a daily basis.

why would someone assume that is the superior mode of operation for every human neuro-type?

What’s the dating scene like out in the countryside?

You have a car, so you set a larger search radius and get the same number of rejections.

Rural areas tend to be more conservative and less diverse. I don't want to drive 15+ minutes just to get to the grocery store. I like having specialty shops around. I value access to museums, cultural events, and art festivals. I don't want to be an hour from the nearest hospital.

Seriously, you couldn't pay me to live in the countryside.

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