New York City’s Empty Offices Reveal a Global Property Dilemma | Hacker News Reader

New York City’s Empty Offices Reveal a Global Property Dilemma

bloomberg.com

36 pointsmfiguiere25 comments

The transition to remote working and the Great Resignation has allowed corporations to cut costs on unprecedented levels. Both operational, overhead costs such as utilities and maintenance for facilities, as well as capital costs for renting offices, purchasing furniture and appliances for them, and outfitting employee spaces.

The corporations are now able to invisibly offload those costs onto their workers like never before. Remote workers love sitting at our kitchen counter with a laptop, and being able to go pick up the kids or do laundry in-between shifts with no commute, but in reality, we're now paying for the plumbing, to keep the lights on, to push bits through our Internet connections, and we're the ones purchasing office chairs and webcams.

Employers now get a free ride on all such outlays, and they're going to be quite unwilling to set up equitable expense accounts or arrangements whereby they resume paying for this stuff themselves. Remote workers need jobs and so we're going to reluctantly pick up the tab.

Unfortunately, business-class accommodations have advantages of quality, stability, and maintenance that will be unmatched by consumer-grade equivalents. Your Internet connection is designed to watch Netflix and play video games. You're technically not allowed to conduct business or commerce on it, that's against your TOS. Your ISP doesn't care if your connection goes down, but your employer does. Good luck lighting a fire under your ISP's Tier 1; you don't have the clout or the SLAs to complain about outages.

https://youtu.be/TNjMBY_6vm0

But, I have to pay for plumbing, electricity, and chairs anyway. Remote work means you don't have to commute which is an insane difference.

I can understand people who want an office to separate their work and home life, or to have a quiet space, or because they prefer working in person. I absolutely can't imagine wanting to go into the office for the sake of saving a few dollars on electricity or reducing the load on your pipes.

I see it as a trade-off. You get more flexibility but at the cost of a home office (not to mention it could be expensed or factored into the salary somehow). I'm more worried about the perception of remote workers and how that will affect promotions in the long run.

It's moving the other way from what I've seen. It's becoming absurd / unheard of to work in the office at least in early stage startups, and those expectations are carrying through series A/B and beyond and larger companies are really feeling the pressure. I hope we divy up all these useless skyscrapers into a public good like free high quality public housing :)

> Unfortunately, business-class accommodations have advantages of quality, stability, and maintenance that will be unmatched by consumer-grade equivalents. Your Internet connection is designed to watch Netflix and play video games.

Our home connection, used for business, is somewhat flakey (wireless, line of sight to a distant hilltop). But outages are no big deal, the raspi gateway is simply switched across to mobile hotspot.

Yes I can see a problem if you're streaming gigantic media files, but otherwise close enough is good enough for business purposes (zoom, software dev, AWS admin etc)

I feel like much less of a wage slave as a remote worker

My company has a deal with spectrum business- employees can get “business class” internet for $50/month. In the rare case it goes down, I have a hot spot on my phone. If that’s also down I could still get touchdown space at remaining offices we have or in other markets go to a Regus/wework setup.

Yeah, it’s be cool if my employer picked up my internet and cell bill, but in reality my internet/utility costs are basically the same as before FT remote and my transport and childcare costs went way down.

Even if your daily commute was a 15 min walk each way, that's half an hour per day, or 10 hours per month.

I'm guessing the median employed HN reader values their time at over $45/hour. If so, that saved time is worth $450/month.

$450/month is enough to pay for:

- 2 separate internet connections costing $100/month each (more than enough in most US cities, even those with little competition like SF)

- a new office chair every year ($1200, or $100/month)

- $100/month towards electricity

- a new webcam, mic and arm every year ($600, or $50/month)

What? This kind of logic only makes sense if working an additional hour gives you an additional 45 dollars

Or if you're comparing jobs with different travel times and salaries, or an employer figuring out benefits.

And if you don't value the commute time. I'd love to have a 15 minute walking commute each way. It has diminishing returns though.

> The corporations are now able to invisibly offload those costs onto their workers like never before. Remote workers love sitting at our kitchen counter with a laptop, and being able to go pick up the kids or do laundry in-between shifts with no commute, but in reality, we're now paying for the plumbing, to keep the lights on, to push bits through our Internet connections, and we're the ones purchasing office chairs and webcams.

You mean to tell me you don't have a desk and computer and chair at home? What kinda nerd are you? lol.

All of those things are sunk costs for me, whether I work at home or in the office. The cost of a little extra electricity and water is PEANUTS compared to what I was paying driving every day. I have far better workstation equipment at home than what my employer offered in the office, so .. with pleasure I use my own stuff. Plus if my chair wears out, I can buy another of my own choosing immediately. I don't have to file a facilities request and use some jank old chair my coworker was farting in for years. lol.

Seriously though, how much are you expecting your water bill to increase? Do you not take a shower and clean your house? Sure if I'm in the office for a full day I'll probably use the bathroom 3-5 times.

You're really exaggerating on how expensive it is to work at home. Don't forget the opportunity costs of being able to handle home chores during your breaks, or depending on your scheduling, being able to take a nap easily and conveniently mid-day. Or eating while working at your desk... (not allowed at my workplace's offices)

I drove a company car to the office, didn't cost me a cent. Just heating my home office this winter and running the laptop and monitor will easily be €10 a day. It's worth it for the extra time and increased comfort to me but it's costing me hundreds of euro's a month.

Most people don't have a company car, especially not one they aren't fuelling themselves.

Ahh you must be one of the execs that makes these kinda decisions. What about the regular joe that has their desk in their living room or bedroom and shares the house with others?

Not to mention most offices didn't have the nice 32 inch monitor setups I have now. And no boss looking at people with space thinking how can we squeeze more in here.

> The corporations are now able to invisibly offload those costs onto their workers like never before.

The cost of commuting (train tickets or petrol, wear and tear on cars), the time it takes, and side costs like sometimes purchasing a coffee or lunch all outweigh the extra utility costs by working from home (WFH). And people can often claim some WFH expenses on their taxes.

The ability to work flexible hours, and spend more time with family, as well as running small errands/chores during the day is also worthwhile.

Commuting costs me 25€ each day. So if I can stay home 3 days a week I can save 300€ each months covering big part of my utility costs. In terms of salary it’s ~7000€ plus what in my situation is not doable anymore as salaried employee.

I really don’t mind my employer giving my desk for the rest of the week to somebody else. There are no colleagues in my group who want to sit 5 days a week in the office anymore.

For landlords it is a massive shift, many of these office jobs are simply not coming back. I know companies who have downsized office space after the pandemic, and others who wish they would have done that since they have a ~10-20% occupancy rate on a weekly basis.

It is really too bad that zoning and the construction of the towers prevents them from being transformed into housing, be it affordable/subsidized or not.

> It is really too bad that zoning and the construction of the towers prevents them from being transformed into housing, be it affordable/subsidized or not.

Yeah, America is actually crazy with it's zoning. It's interesting to think how different and more healthily laid out the country would be if zoning didn't constrain every single building. But pretty soon all real estate will be owned by BlackRock and Berkshire Hathaway, so who knows what the future of land use and ownership is going to be like.

But pretty soon all real estate will be owned by BlackRock and Berkshire Hathaway, so who knows what the future of land use and ownership is going to be like.

What ?

A lot of land in America is slowly being concentrated into the portfolios of large multinational corporations. And unlike more traditional entities, these corporations have no reason to sell except total bankruptcy.

It's actually the tax write offs for vacancy which have shelled out American cities. I wouldn't expect them to go away anytime soon though.

What would be pretty cool if having housing and office space in one building.

So I could go to level 2 for work and live on level 14 for the views and hit the gym in the basement.

The office on level 2 might be my be my own personal office but yeah :)

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