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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

Purely guessing the 75% is a little dramatic. Basing it on pre-pandemic level to an action off price. So that could be a 30% up from trend "norm" compare to current much lowered market price while auctioning at 20% discount.

Still even if it was closer to 40% it is pretty massive in terms of Real Estate.

San Francisco, or Silicon Valley / Tech is also the most vocal proponent to everything could be remote should be remote. Along with all the layoffs this could be a perfect storm for office values.

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> San Francisco, or Silicon Valley / Tech is also the most vocal proponent to everything could be remote should be remote.

Huh? Tech companies have been some of the hardest pushers of returning to the office.

Compared to which other industries? Not aware of any other industries pushing for remote

Yes some bigger tech companies are pushing back, but others are going all in. This industry is the prime example of remote working, even if some are going back

>Yes some bigger tech companies are pushing back, but others are going all in.

Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Salesforce, Twitter, Lyft, Spotify, Doordash, Snap, Uber and Ebay are hybrid or in-office.

Shopify, Dropbox, Coinbase and Airbnb are remote. Slack is as well but it's own by Salesforce so probably not for long.

So I think it's safe to say that overall tech is pushing for return to office. It's probably even more stark if you take the number of employees in these companies into account.

You left out thousands of startups across the world. The industry is not just FAANG and not just Sillicon Valley.

I believe there is space for both working modes. You take your pick. I'll take remote working for startups in the EU.

Any company offering full remote right now could easily pick a lot of talent being bled by faangs pushing for a return to the office.

Even hybrid working can reduce the need for office space significantly.

Companies that spread their employee office visits evenly through the week could achieve a reduction in office space of 20% / 40% by moving from full time office to 1 / 2 days a week remote.

It would make sense that the companies pushing for a return to office either own their buildings (ouch) or otherwise have financials (corporate or executive) coupled with the value of real estate. It’s not at all surprising or irrational.

Are they? Also seems like tech employees have been the biggest proponents of working from home, especially considering how many from the bay moved around the country to work remotely from wherever.

Tech companies != Tech employees

Within the last year I interviewed at more than a dozen tech companies and they were all remote jobs. The job I accepted had a local office but it’s entirely optional to go there.

Until they replace the people the LLM they certainly are the same thing. I know at some companies compliance with policy ranges in the 20-30% range. Are they going to fire 70-80% of the companies employees for refusing to return to the office?

Yeah, that's why I made a point of distinguishing.

> Tech companies have been some of the hardest pushers of returning to the office

Because there is even a debate to be had.

Maybe it feels that way in the Bay area because the only companies are tech companies?

In NYC, it seems that tech is the only industry that allows remote work. Finance in particular is requiring employees to show up.

Tech companies have (historically) optimized on talent acquisition and therefore have to listen to, and appear to take seriously, the wishes of labor.

Other industries don’t cater to the demands of labor. Everyone is replaceable, but not so much in Silicon Valley.

The recent layoffs have shown how untrue this is - the tech set thought they were a special class of labor, and if you were "good enough" you wouldn't be let go.

Very accomplished, productive people have been let go in the recent layoffs. Being "productive" was always a paper shield, but it's not even that anymore; I think they're trying to disabuse the tech set of the notion that they aren't labor to bring wages down.

ChatGPT makes junior devs and 1st tier support almost obsolete.

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