Economist Robert Shiller predicts ‘revolution’ by workers over remote work

> How could anyone stay at their current job having to commute

I expect lower market rates for remote work, because it's harder to differentiate ourselves from anyone else in nearby timezones. If RTO is the way to continue Bay Area comp, I will, as much as I may complain about open plan desks.

Cities are great but the skyhigh cost of living isn't.

Cities are great IF you can maintain good public infrastructure and more importantly the discipline required to maintain and prevent trouble makers.

I would love to leave the city, or move to a smaller, less expensive city, but I stay here because I grew up in a small town, and I want my children to have the opportunities that I didn't. Even with the Internet, I don't think they can truly get as many opportunities if they can't surround themselves with peers with similar interests, and I think the best place to do that is in large cities.

I love living in the City. Only problem is high rents.

I've been thinking of moving to Vienna that has a lot of socialized housing and other housing programs to keep prices affordable.

Cities with good public infrastructure are pretty nice for young-middle aged people I would say. It's just not something that exists in America. I've been to NYC, it was not at all a city I would put on my top list of cities I'd like to live in.

I think it's better to think of what cities can be when you think of Europe, cities in Spain, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, etc. these are extremely comfortable places to live in.

House prices are a good proxy for where people want to live. And turns out they want to live in New York, Seattle, San Francisco. If they want more space they move to cities like Austin or Phoenix.

I moved to the boonies for my kiddo to be near his remaining family.

I miss the city very very much. Really, it's the food.

I mean, if all you like is hamburgers and bar food, yeah, the boonies are great.

Sell all your stock in any company that is trying to force in-office. I guarantee you they are rapidly losing anyone vaguely competent, let alone top talent.

If you’d like help unionizing to keep wfh as a right, email in profile. I have no economic incentive, I only want workers to have higher quality of life and agency. Empathy over income and wealth. Like a hacker, one must understand systems and then find their points of leverage to encourage desired outcomes.

NLRB is halfway toward Joy Silk doctrine in force after the last week or so.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37269909

The climate argument really doesn’t track for me.

If remote work does lead to people abandoning cities en masse, the climate is a huge loser. All of a sudden you have people who are moving to more remote places, who will likely be driving instead of using public transit, buying bigger homes with extra work rooms, and so on.

Instead of reversing the 1960s trend of suburban developments, wfh will only accelerate it. No climate concerned person would cheer that on.

The one good thing about remote work is that it does reduce business travel. Maybe that’s enough to make remote work climate neutral, I don’t know.

For companies, rent is just the beginning of their cost savings.

Consider all overhead in aggregate: utilities, enterprise-tier Internet connectivity, computing devices and network infrastructure for all of them, break rooms and their kitchens, bathrooms, physical security for facilities, fire and liability insurance for everything, maintenance costs and staffs for all of the above, including your janitorial, security, and IT/desktop support team. More of which I haven't mentioned.

Companies worldwide should absolutely leap at the chance to slough off these costs. Remote workers, amazingly are also leaping at this chance to take on all associated costs of that overhead for ourselves, and of course these costs come with no subsidies or measurable wage/salary increases, so we get to absorb it simply as the cost of living.

The employer, meanwhile, is rewarded with all the drawbacks of consumer-tier, rather than enterprise-tier infrastructure, such as poor/slow Internet connectivity, devices and LANs that are difficult or impossible to support, LPL-friendly front doors, employees taking a few minutes on the clock to clean the kitchen or bathroom, and all the rest. It's definitely a paradise for us!

> 5. Family- If you have a family, remote work is much greater for you. Especially if you have kids, a baby or someone ill or old to take care to.

Isn't this supporting the belief of many employers than when WFH, employees work less in part because they use some time to run errands? If WFH benefits you because you have to take care of the baby that means eg if the baby cries and your partner is busy, you can check up on him during work time. And if you do this and omit it from the employer it's not a stretch that you won't work extra long to make up for it either....

The theory of "revolt" isn't about workers for whom remote work is an option per se, it's about jobs/roles that could be remote but employers are dictating otherwise. Covid exposed that flexibility is possible but employers are now insisting otherwise. The friction from that disconnect certain has the potential to trigger pushback.