"Workers cooped up in a two-bedroom in Long Island City, Queens, might prefer moving to the suburbs or even farther away, and save on rent. [Harvard economist Edward] Glaeser studied surveys tracking companies that allowed their employees to work from home at least part of the time since March. Over one-half of large businesses and over one-third of small ones didn’t detect any productivity loss. More than one in four reported a productivity increase. Moreover, the researchers found that about four in 10 companies expect that 40 percent of their employees who switched to remote work during the pandemic will keep doing so after the crisis, at least in part. That’s 16 percent of the work force. Most of these workers are among the more highly educated and well paid. Will they stay in the city if they don’t need to go to the office more than a couple of times a week? Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago, argues that people will always seek the kind of social contact that cities provide. But what if their employers stop paying enough to support the urban lifestyle? Young families might flee to the suburbs sooner, especially if a more austere new urban economy can no longer support the ecosystem of restaurants and theaters that made city life attractive.... [E]mployers might be better off, paying lower wages and saving on office space. And workers might prefer a state of the world with somewhat lower wages and no commute..... Smaller cities might benefit. If they don’t have to go into the office more than a couple of times a year, highly skilled workers in places like Seattle or Los Angeles might prefer Boulder or Vail."
From "Coronavirus Threatens the Luster of Superstar Cities/Urban centers, with a dynamism that feeds innovation, have long been resilient. But the pandemic could drive a shift away from density" (NYT).
Speaking of commuting, another article in the NYT this morning is: "N.Y. Subway, Facing a $16 Billion Deficit, Plans for Deep Cuts." So subways, in the time of coronavirus, are going to get more crowded.
It's interesting that the NYT writer — Eduardo Porter — came up with Boulder and Vail as the specific smaller cities that workers who could live anywhere would choose. I've spent a lot of time in both of those place, and I see the attraction. There must be many other locations across America that would be great and could become great with an influx of well-paid younger people, especially if they bring children into the community. (How much healthier these children can be, away from the air pollution and dangers of the city and with plentiful outdoor activities.)
ADDED: What the choice of Boulder and Vail expresses is the desire for beautiful natural scenery and easy access to outdoor athletics and pleasures. The University of Chicago economist argued that "people will always seek the kind of social contact that cities provide." But maybe that's not true. The problem of disease contagion makes the bustling crowded contact a negative, and people who live in New York City sacrifice so much of the benefits of nature and the outdoors. Why wouldn't the coronavirus experience drive people to replace the city "kind of social contact" with social contact of a more distanced kind and all the health benefits of getting outdoors and exercising?
But people need to think more widely about where to go to live this new way, not pack into already expensive and rather crowded famous travel destinations. Where can you actually live a good life?
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Boulder sucks. Never been to Vail.
I've been working at home since 1987. Editing on machines in India was a pain but the internet is a lot faster now.
There must be many other locations across America that would be great and could become great with an influx of well-paid younger people
The people involved in RE transactions we talk to tell us they're already seeing the flee. Problem is the resort/lifestyle locales attractive to these urban dwellers can't handle the growth.
But what if their employers stop paying enough to support the urban lifestyle?
Why would that have to happen when your employer is no longer supporting a hefty long term lease for class A space?
Yes, of course a writer from New York would select Vail as a place that young people who work remotely would look. No one can actually afford to live in Vail, but what the heck.
The real story is which corporations are going to stay in cities and states like Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, New York, Chicago, IL when the cost of living is out of control, crime is skyrocketing, taxes are through the roof- and more and more directed at those who produce the most. Small businesses are destroyed by rioters and the city and state leaders encourage and protect the rioters, not the actual tax-paying businesses. And the cost of living in techie towns where young people are paid way too much for their work, and go out into the housing market bidding up the prices because they have a lot of young foolish cash to do so, makes it nearly impossible for those who do not write code for Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, et. al to even consider how to start a life there.
New York, Illinois, and California have all been hemorrhaging people for years now. It will increase dramatically as the business climate has become untenable. Seattle and Portland will become shantytowns as the productive leave. At first it'll be a trickle, because it's hard for major corporations tied into so many things in the area to unravel themselves. But once they do (and they are all working on it) it'll be a mass exodus.
As usual, the NY press is obtuse about what is going on. Vail? Seriously? We'll see more young people who can work remotely going to towns in the southeast and midwest- where they can afford a nice home, and have a nice life without the harassment of a Portland, or the taxes and murders of a New York or Chicago.
A company that can move its workforce to home will not only reduce their footprint in the office park, it will reduce their need for support staff, security, maintenance. The coffee bar in the lobby and the sandwich place on the corner will go away. This can be a major hit to those people who have made their living supporting these companies. The NYT one-sentence dismissal of these folks ("People with lower incomes, including the young, can again afford to live in town.") is ignorant and condescending.
But what if their employers stop paying enough to support the urban lifestyle?
That's a big question.
Another big question is schools. My whole adult life (in the US) we have paid more for a house and more for property taxes to live in excellent school districts. What does no school do to that lifestyle/way of thinking?
The company I work for has hundreds of millions of dollars worth, billions maybe, of real estate holdings. Most of it is outside the big cities. The company leases space in the cities. This city space is allocated mainly for the local sales organization. Many of these folks travel, as I do, or work from home quite a bit. There is a subset that are inside sales professionals that go to the office every day (or did). These people tend to be young, less experienced that benefit from the in person interactions in an office. They've adjusted to working from home for the past few months, I don't think their productivity has suffered. I can see the work from home regime continuing (the company has not announced a plan to reopen) and the company allowing those city leases to expire. Suburbs may be attractive, but Boulder and Vail seem like silly, affected examples.
Do you like water sports, mossy oaks, barbecue and beaches? Hate those cold winters?
Come on down. It's flat. It's hot. It's home. We look up and see y'all Yankees poking around our neighborhoods looking at what you can buy for what you spent for a two-bedroom flat up there. We have excellent connectivity.
You may even learn to like grits for breakfast once you learn how to cook them properly.
Wherever I’m not, please. Those blue city clowns have ruined their own cities; let’s not encourage them
to bring their BS to the rest of the country.
This is why I think the teachers' unions are playing a very dangerous game by demanding classrooms go online. If classes are online, why is my child learning French from a teacher who grew up in Ococomowoc instead of a teacher from Paris? Maybe there are some mathematicians in Mumbai that want to earn extra cash by taking on an online class.
Once we do this, the globe becomes our classroom.
We will not put this genie back in the bottle. I do think it's ironic and hilarious that the teacher's unions will be the ones to strike the coup de grace to the public education system.
If the work can be done remotely from the suburbs, it can be done remotely from Mumbai.
Young families might flee to the suburbs sooner
Or simply flee the state. I've met a number of refugees from California. The techies left when they had children -- the California public schools stink -- the rest left to find work. Colorado has too much traffic for my taste.
I work for an IT Services company. We've all been working remote since the COVID started. Not too much loss of productivity. My boss and I have been discussing what the future may hold. If a job can be done remotely, it can be done in Mumbai or Delhi as easily as in Vail or Boulder. And a lot cheaper. I'm retiring next year so I'm not worried, but people should be worried.
“Dangers of the city? You realize this is racist don’t you?
Sounds racist to me.
Boulder has less than 1% black population. Vail even less.
What exactly are they saying in this article?
White folks get out? Segregate to white areas?
John Henry
Remember the olden days?
Everybody was going to live downtown, and bike to the grocery store?
If you needed to go further, you'd rideshare or take mass transit
What ever happened to those days?
I think it's hysterical that someone thinks Boulder and Vail are significantly cheaper than NYC.
Remember, you'll need a car in both places.
-XC
I live in downtown Austin. I can see 9 cranes, including one for the “Google building”, from my living room. I wonder if we will soon have an abundance of unused office space and unsold condos. I would think that office and home vacancies would be snapped up by folks fleeing other parts of the country, but thanks to our city council we have tents pitched on our city sidewalks and under overpasses. So I now I’m not so sure.
Little visited bits of natural beauty in CA, and economically stagnant -
Northern California, North Coast. Humboldt county.
Eureka, Arcata and therabouts. Fortuna, Fernville, etc. along the Eel River.
Not far from the redwoods.
Anderson Valley (Booneville, etc.) in Mendocino.
Around Clear Lake, Mendocino.
Fort Bragg, Mendocino.
"Wherever I’m not, please. Those blue city clowns have ruined their own cities; let’s not encourage them to bring their BS to the rest of the country."
Ditto.
There are reasons why certain businesses cluster together — most recently in technology companies. Propinquity, prosperity, and innovation often go together. The real hard chargers will gravitate to Sand Hill Road, Midtown Manhattan, the City of London, etc.
I have misplaced my Pants is on the same wavelength as I am. When blue voters leave they take their voting pattern with them. It helps the Dems electorally to have their voters spread out.
But people need to think more widely about where to go to live this new way, not pack into already expensive and rather crowded famous travel destinations. Where can you actually live a good life?
I left Seattle 22 years ago. Commuted there for 17, but now I work remotely. Live on 2.5 acres with 6 kids who are free to run, climb, whatever. Would never go back to an urban life. I can take a 45 minute boat ride into downtown any time I might want to. Certainly there is no need for famous places. We have beaches, hiking trails, woods, short, uncongested drives to lakes and mountains. I hope lots of other people can do the same now (but not in my town!)
Stay out of my state! We have enough damn liberals that have brought their crap ideas with them.
“Yes, of course a writer from New York would select Vail as a place that young people who work remotely would look. No one can actually afford to live in Vail, but what the heck.”
I have been struggling for better than half a century trying to figure out the allure of living in Vail. Compared to much of the Colorado mountains, it has a lousy view. You are at the bottom of a valley of mixed aspen and pine trees. Nice in the fall, when the aspens turn. And the aspen glades make great skiing. But otherwise, you can’t really see much in terms of scenery. Down valley, it opens up a bit, and you see much more mountains. Farthest East in the Eagle Valley that I would live would be maybe Avon. But it is still far from what you see driving up the Roaring Fork to Aspen, then over Independence Pass (summer and fall). Of course, the Roaring Fork valley, and Aspen, are even more expensive than the Eagle River valley and Vail. My preference though (not having the millions it would take to live even meagerly in Aspen), is East of Vail Pass in Summit County. Far better views. From Dillon, you can look East to the Continental Divide, rising to 14k, and the start of the 10 Mile Range to the west, while looking down onto Dillon Lake/Reservoir. Breckenridge is at the other end of the 10 Mile, and has 14K peaks by it too. The area is much more open, which means more recreational opportunities. The county has the longest ski season in the state, running from maybe Halloween many years through Memorial Day, though A Basin has stayed open a couple years until the 4th of July.
I will admit my prejudices here. First visited Dillon in the early 1960s, on a Boy Scout trip, while they were still filling Dillon Reservoir. Ski raced for A Basin in HS from maybe 1965-68, then worked on the crew that cut the original trails at the Keystone ski area in 1970. That was the first of several summers I spent there while in college. Then spent a couple years after college as a ski bum. This summer marks the 50th anniversary of having a PO Box there. Spent a couple years back there earlier in this decade, but my partner doesn’t do well in the CO mountains in the winter. She is a self avowed desert rat, and doesn’t really ski, or at least those of us who grew up skiing don’t consider her a skier. Somewhat nostalgic - my next brother bought the family pace there from my father’s estate a bit over three years ago, so for the first time in almost a half century no longer have a place there.
Boulder has always been crazy. A half century ago, when I was in college, the best place to score drugs in the state was on The Hill (just west of CU) in Boulder. Real estate prices were already out of sight a decade later when a good friend was finishing his PhD there. Only gotten worse since then. My kid finished their PhD there a couple years ago, and the housing stock had, if anything, degraded since then. The PRB (People’s Republic of Boulder) has been trying to control growth for most of that half century since I would visit in college, and the result has been that a large percentage of the houses are at least that old. Which means that they tend to be smaller, with smaller rooms, than you can find in the surrounding communities, at much more reasonable prices. Traffic is horrible, made worse by giving bicycles priority. Rated one of the fittest cities in the country, everyone bikes, hikes, runs, skis, etc. First year in grad school had 5 of them living in a small apartment, with 13 bikes, at least a dozen pair of skis, etc. My kid loved their 5 years of grad school there, but was ready to leave after that. They got a job in one of the nearby cities, but chose to live down by Golden, where housing costs are still almost realistic.
Well, all those people bitching about the "gentrification" of urban black neighborhoods will have their wishes answered. In '80's DC, it was gay men who were the urban pioneers. They'd buy lovely, but rundown old houses in bad neighborhoods - areas women and married couples with children avoided because of the danger. Gay men would brave the danger for the chance to turn a cheap, decayed propety into House Beautiful. After enough gays did that in a given neighborhood, you'd see coffee shops and chic little restaurants and boutiques start to pop up. And then came the gentrification complaints.
No worries now. The restaurants and boutiques and coffee shops will be bankrupted, either due to lockdowns or riots, urban homeowners will get rid of their properties (at a loss), and those neighborhoods will return to Hobbes state of nature. Good job, lefties!
Wow. $16 Billion deficit for the NY Subway system. Who is going to bail that out?
There are a lot of small cities that have been struggling for decades which could launch a renaissance of they aggressively promote/recruit those thinking about fleeing the megalopolises. Yeah, your $1.5 million house in Manhattan may only sell for $1million, but you'll pick up a nice three bedroom ranch in Erie, PA, Kalamath Falls, OR or Emporia, KS for $100k
We live in a small mountain community in Colorado. You wouldn't want to live here. Miserable endless cold winters with 40 feet of snow or more. Summers only last a couple of months and then its back to winter.
Vail has one of the highest Wuhan virus infection rates in the state thanks to all of the foreign visitors. Boulder is infested with SJW, a virus of the worst kind. Why would anyone want to live here?
"[P]eople will always seek the kind of social contact that cities provide." Otherwise known as "street crime," "being coughed on," and "living in the same building as a thousand other people you studiously ignore." Ask Kitty Genovese about it.
Have Misplaced My Pants said...
Wherever I’m not, please. Those blue city clowns have ruined their own cities; let’s not encourage them
to bring their BS to the rest of the country.
That's why Boulder would be a good choice.Their politics are already screwed.
The obvious choice for a Chicago exit would be the small cities of Illinois, like Bloomington. Unfortunately, the Democrats have bankrupted Illinois too.
" If a job can be done remotely, it can be done in Mumbai or Delhi as easily as in Vail or Boulder. "
This has already been true for nearly two decades. In the last 8 years or so I have worked with several Indian and a few European contractors and vendors.
Problems, there are many. In a few cases it was expertise, though that is getting better. Often it is communications, and its not just a matter of accents. Many times the time zone issue really hurts, as in getting hold of people (virtually) when you need them, especially in emergencies. And there are cultural matters of expectations, initiative and the preference for action.
But from what I can see everyone in the tech fields are converging on American defaults on these things. The joker here is that India seems to be running low on talent, and tech salaries are rising fast there.
Frank Lloyd Wright once predicted the end of cities. He thought we would live in scattered homes and small communities through the land. I thought it was a silly, utopian fantasy.
You have no idea how many times I've had this conversation with a black businessman/woman at some professional function in the DC area:
HIM: Where are you from?
ME: I know I don't sound it, but I'm from Alabama.
HIM: You're a southern boy?! You know, I miss the South. I've got lots of family in (some Southern State). Let me tell you, if I could make a most of the money I make up here down there, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'd really much rather raise my kids, especially my boys, down there rather than here. There's just too much trouble around here for them to get into. I'm here for the jobs, not out of love for this area.
Pretty much any exurb/rural college town would be a reasonably pleasant place to telecommute from (assuming you want some kind of social interaction with a somewhat cultural bent and a shot at decent schools). Also reasonably assured of decent IT support. If you just want a pretty place to live find a lake a couple of hours from a decent sized city and set up shop. Might have to put up with weekend vacation traffic, but otherwise there will be enough people around to keep you connected/supplied.
PA is crawling with quaint, slowly rebuilding, old coal and mill towns and other communities with great access to rural amenities. Schools can be iffy, but if on-line charters may get good enough to cover that. There is a similar variety of college towns (same is true across most of NE and the Midwest).
Does leave you with all the usual challenges of small town living though, which does matter. Would still expect young singles to be drawn to urban areas just for the range of possibilities.
To everyone saying Mumbai and Delhi would be the remote places, well ... Mumbai is Hollywood/Los Angeles, and Delhi is Washington DC.
Hyderabad has an entire section called "High Tech City" (though they whimsically spell it "Hitec") and Bengaluru is "the Silicon Valley of India."
So the remote work would be (and actually already is...) more done in Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
"Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago, argues that people will always seek the kind of social contact that cities provide."
Funny thing, Erik Hurst looks a lot like Andrew Sullivan. Some contacts are more social than others.
"taxes to live in excellent school districts."
Move to the right place and you will no longer have to play the "good schools" game.
"Another big question is schools. My whole adult life (in the US) we have paid more for a house and more for property taxes to live in excellent school districts. What does no school do to that lifestyle/way of thinking?"
"Excellent school districts" is realtor code for "few Black people". And it was well worth what you paid for it, whether you knew it or not.
In the 90s I was writing a lot of contracts for capital construction work in the petroleum refining industry. Contractors like Brown & Root, Jacobs or Parsons usually did that work on a cost plus basis. There was always pressure to hold the total cost down. When the Internet became fully functional, a lot of the back office engineering work on those projects was moved offshore--some to Canada, but a bunch to India. That worked okay for things like drawings and calculations. Still the senior engineers, the sales people, and the executives stayed in the USA.
The NYT picked Boulder and Vail because they are woke white liberal strongholds. God forbid that smart young people should move to somewhere they might meet actual conservatives, or see how places function that aren't run by Democrat machines and public employee unions.
Blogger Temujin said...Yes, of course a writer from New York would select Vail as a place that young people who work remotely would look. No one can actually afford to live in Vail, but what the heck....As usual, the NY press is obtuse about what is going on.
You nailed it. This shows how much of a bubble the NYC/NYT folks live in, or at least they've had their heads up their ass to the same effect.
What was stopping the "tech giants" from creating new cities in the heartland if they wanted to? since they took to outsourcing overseas with alacrity for cost saving.
"If the work can be done remotely from the suburbs, it can be done remotely from Mumbai."
That train has left the station. Multi-nationals have employees all around the world. I have "attended" tech meetings at 9:00 AM in Hillsboro, where I could hear a dog barking at the darkness outside a colleague's window in Bangalore. Good guy, Shrinivas.
I've noticed my kids who live in large cities are starting to think out loud about moving somewhere else. One of them has even set a deadline for himself. So, I wouldn't be surprised if you see an exodus of young adults from the cities. Why would anyone want to live in the post-COVID/BLM riot cities?
D.D. Driver said...
,,,,
We will not put this genie back in the bottle. I do think it's ironic and hilarious that the teacher's unions will be the ones to strike the coup de grace to the public education system.
-----------=============
it is more like they succeeded in putting the choke hold on children education and now education is finally dead and we have left with idiot children
From what the wife tells me, home prices in Santa Cruz County are skyrocketing.
Wow! The choice of Boulder and Vail as the examples to where the urban hipsters can decamp says a lot about the mental blinders of this particular writer. Seriously, Vail is a place with a low cost of living?
tcrosse said...
"If the work can be done remotely from the suburbs, it can be done remotely from Mumbai."
I have made this exact comment, right down to the "Mumbai", multiple times over the last few months whenever this subject comes up. It isn't precisely true- see Stevew above as a salesman- but it is true enough for teaching, accounting, and every HR person working from home today.
I work for an IT company that has long embraced remote working. It saves om office expenses, makes recruitment easier, and makes for happier employees. I can live in Maine and work in my pajamas.
It's great.
I can envision situations where that would not be such a boon. For people doing data entry, for example, I could imaging some kind of keystrokes per minute counter that would make people into robot slaves.
Bend Oregon has become a suburb of Silicon Valley
Blogger Narayanan said...
What was stopping the "tech giants" from creating new cities in the heartland if they wanted to? since they took to outsourcing overseas with alacrity for cost saving.
Simple. The class of tech giant employees are much too high to ever live in one of your shithole states.
We’ve been watching properties outside of Tyler, Texas for a while. There is a lovely blue farmhouse with outbuildings and a pool + cabana on 25 acres for $625,000. Tyler is a cute small city with low crime, a UT campus, a regional medical center, and a regional airport that American flies into. After a 45 minute flight you are ready to connect to anywhere through DFW. And speaking of DFW it’s two hours from Tyler for your cultural, medical specialist, and shopping weekend needs.
I’m sure the country is full of such places. Problem is that the Blue Tribe is going to figure that out and I want the Blue Tribe confined to places where I don’t live so I have some hope of being left in peace from their constant and unrelenting bullshit.
xlnt choice. Boulder and Vail are high on the list for urban renewal.
I expect I will like to see a longer-term ( than just next quarterly reporting ) of productivity loss. In addition, having remote workers means, very little after hours brainstorming, NO completely candid discussions ( it's in the cloud baby ) and almost no serendipitous ahha moments, they will all be reserved and monitored for the later to be released video.
To be honest, I call bullshit on this one as well.
And as someone said if it can be done that remotely, then vietnam,india are primed locations for that type of work.
Blogger D.D. Driver said...
This is why I think the teachers' unions are playing a very dangerous game by demanding classrooms go online. If classes are online, why is my child learning French from a teacher who grew up in Ococomowoc instead of a teacher from Paris?
--
There should be pushes to liberate school funding for that.
That would be the quickest way to get unions all back in on back to brick & mortar. You know..for the children.
"Vail has one of the highest Wuhan virus infection rates in the state thanks to all of the foreign visitors."
It's the same in Idaho. At a little over 20,000, Blaine County has about 1.2% of the state's population but a covid case rate nearly double any other county. Why? Sun Valley.
A couple of points:
-- Commercial real estate is going to get hammered
-- If you can work from home and keep your employer happy, you can be replaced by someone in India
-- If you can work from a home in Palo Alto and do the same job as working from a home in Tupelo, there's no need to pay you Palo Alto money.
Both my sons experienced this last point. Both moved (with different companies) from the SF Bay Area to Atlanta for sales jobs. They both were (fortunately) among the first to go to set up a new branch office. Both smartly negotiated a two-year stint with the proviso that they were paid Bay Area money. The second wave of employees, no matter where they were originally based, were paid Atlanta money, about 30 percent less.
"Excellent school districts" is realtor code for "few Black people".
Let me play Tom Friedman. A couple of years ago I was taking a taxi from The Domain to the Austin airport and talking to the Ethiopian taxi driver. He said his family was looking to move from their increasingly black district because the schools were going to H*ll. It isn't just white flight.
“ The NYT picked Boulder and Vail because they are woke white liberal strongholds. God forbid that smart young people should move to somewhere they might meet actual conservatives, or see how places function that aren't run by Democrat machines and public employee unions.”
Boulder, of course. But Eagle County, where Vail is, has tended to be more moderate. Summit County to the East tends to be more liberal, as does Aspen. Partly, it was because Aspen brought in the old rich, like the Kennedys, while Vail tended to bring in new wealth, esp flashy Texas money.
Blogger Karlito2000 said...
Boulder is infested with SJW, a virus of the worst kind. Why would anyone want to live here?
You might meet Sarah Hoyt in the grocery store?
Reason enough for me.
John Henry
YoungHegelian, a black mail room guy who used to work at my place of employment retired a year ago and moved back to - Mississippi. His family couldn't wait to flee from there in 1962 and in 2019, he couldn't wait to move out of the hood and get back there. He's a very religious conservative. Didn't cast a vote for president in 2016. Told me he's voting Trump in 2020, but can't tell his friends or family.
New York, Illinois, and California have all been hemorrhaging people for years now. It will increase dramatically as the business climate has become untenable. Seattle and Portland will become shantytowns as the productive leave. At first it'll be a trickle, because it's hard for major corporations tied into so many things in the area to unravel themselves. But once they do (and they are all working on it) it'll be a mass exodus.
Remember, Detroit used to be one of the major business hubs of the country, maybe even the world.
The bigger issue is recognizing that we're about a decade away from societal/economic collapse, and none of us will have any choice in where we end up living. The current madness which has taken over Portland will spread, and with a lack of police presence it will mean everyone is on their own. There's no point in trying to envision your new digs when you may need to live under Mad Max conditions until you find a safe place to put yourself.
"If the work can be done remotely from the suburbs, it can be done remotely from Mumbai."
Let me suggest patent law then. Patent law makes that difficult. One big problem is that there are export license issues. DoC (commerce), DOD, DOE, etc all want to vet technology before it leaves the country. And that decision is typically made at the time of patent filing, which means that technology invented here cannot legally go to Mumbai first for the patents to be written. Prosecution overseas works legally, but often isn’t as effective, since. That is typically done best by those who draft the applications. Yes, big companies, like IBM, have skirted around this for a long time by keeping everything internal. It’s still illegal, but hard to detect.
The funny thing though is that people born outside this country seem to predominate on the USPTO side, where remote work has been the norm for some time now. They just have to be Americans to work there, and do the work in this country. The language issue has gotten to be a big problem. Indians are maybe the easiest, because they kinda speak English. Huge numbers of East Asian patent examiners, and their grasp of the English language, and its subtleties, is often marginal. It’s bad that they are sometimes hard to understand. Much worse when they don’t understand the language of the patent application, a legal document, or the legal arguments made during prosecution, because their native languages don’t have comparable enough constructs.
It's also much easier to replace engineers, IT folks, HR, marketing, etc. than it is a good salesperson. Sales at a high level is about who you know...who has the biggest Rolodex.
If you work for a company that is located in New York State, you are still on the hook for New York State taxes even if you don't set foot in New York State. You do get to avoid New York City taxes.
Over one-half of large businesses and over one-third of small ones didn’t detect any productivity loss. More than one in four reported a productivity increase.
**********
Can relate. A lot of us in professional services are in 'billable hour mode' - that billing clock is ticking whether at home or the office. With no reason to get up and walk around - I have to set a timer on my phone to remind myself to move.
I was commuting into Seattle from Lakewood - a sprawl city south of Tacoma. We have bus and train service to Seattle - but it is an epic commute. Getting 4 hours a day back is pretty substantial. A house down the road from us sold for around $245,000. Yes you read that right. Many small bungalow type SFHs in the area ripe for first time home buyers under $300K. A great deal for anyone looking to buy that can swallow the long trip once in a while. Will be interesting to watch our local real estate market in the next few years.
buwaya: Northern California, North Coast. Humboldt county. Eureka, Arcata and therabouts.
Yeeeeesssss! I loooove Arcata and not merely because Humbolt county is the spiritual home to us potheads. Lovely community - would move there in a heartbeat!
The current madness which has taken over Portland will spread
No. It won't.
It'll be put down by people who aren't willing to put up with it. And it ain't going to take a decade. It may only be months.
I would LOVE to live in Boulder or a similar place. Considering their bizarre tolerance of terrible left-wing behavior and politics, though, it seems like all the desirable places are lock-step blue.
I have an in-law, now retired, who was a high-placed administrator in UC-Boulder. He is so frackin' liberal that he refuses to even say Trump's name! BUT--but--he left that job after several years because he said that the daily incessant energetic wide-spread protests made his job a nightmare. Too blue even for him. Jeez.
You might meet Sarah Hoyt in the grocery store [in Boulder.]
I thought Hoyt lived in CO Springs or Castle Rock or some other politically conservative city. Did she move to Boulder? I can't imagine.
Vail has to be one of the most boring cities in the US. I can't imagine anyone voluntarily moving there to live full-time. Vail's median single-family home price is $1.3M, Boulder's is $900K. I don't think employees fleeing Manhattan or Chicago's North Side could afford to live in either place if their employer cut their pay.
Don't all be rushing to Vail without your oxygen tanks...It's over 8,000 feet elevation.
Went to a wedding there a couple of years ago. I have relatives in CO who live at 7,000 feet and that is tolerable for me, not that I do too much running, etc. But 8,000 feet is another ballgame. My wife, who is very healthy, had a very hard time. Yes, you might get used to it, but until you do you will be feeling very bad.
One more thing...most of the town is a driver and a pitching wedge away from a major highway, and you can hear the traffic noise ALL OF THE TIME.
Anybody watch "Hometown" on HGTV?
You can have a really nice home in Mississippi, fully remodeled, for mid-100s. Same is true all over the South. The idea that living near the big cities and paying so much more -- well, it just doesn't make sense.
And all those artisans who manufacture the finishings for those remodeled homes, and the local grocers, and so forth, will develop self-sufficient economies. These days you just need a box box store within an hour's drive. Or a delivery service.
@ALP
Those small towns in far Northern California are heaven if you like peace and quiet, open spaces, and not a lot going on. They are the type of towns where everybody knows everybody. But if you're not a local the people tend to be very friendly. They are mostly libs, but in a libertarian way. Sure, you see the usual signs you'd see in Berkeley, but most people are too stoned to care one way or another...just some virtue signaling.
And it is 'Big Weed' country. We were at a coffee shop in Mendocino for breakfast just before the 'vids hit. In the tip jar were all 5s, 10, and 20s. I commented on that and the barista mentioned that 'farmers' tend to be generous : ) Also, lots of brand new pickup trucks driving around.
As a bonus you're close to southern Oregon and Banyan Dunes if you're a golfer... All in all my kind of place, but my wife doesn't like to be that remote.
I left Boulder when they started having rush hours. Sheridan, WY is what Boulder was 40 years ago. Great outdoors, no state income taxes, and your word's your bond.
I just returned from Redmond, OR. I'd consider moving there or therabouts. Good weather, lots of outdoor activity, restaurants and breweries, just the right amount of redneck. I'll probably go check it out some more to see if my first impression still holds.
@Me 3:04PM
..."Bandon" Dunes...duh! And I'm a golfer... (being a terrible typist is my only excuse) : )
The entire millennial generation will just move to Austin.
I've been working at home since 1987. Editing on machines in India was a pain but the internet is a lot faster now.
click here
We’ll see if this virus turns out to be so different from all the other viruses, and after millennia of cities and pandemics COVID-19 is the last straw. The combined efforts of our leadership class, media, cultural and academic elite packs a punch, bangs a big drum. But is this a transformative moment in American, nay, western civilization’s history? Have the virus panickers and BLM loudmouths and ANTIFA thugs battered Americans into a new path, or are they just freaking the fuck out in command because the Dems really want to win the Senate and the presidency in 2020, and it’s as likely to be a self-destructive last gasping effortful fail as a revolution? Pshaw, kids will be back in school before Christmas, real old school, and we’ll all be pretending this didn’t really happen, regarding it hazily if at all while new outrages have captured our attention. We are in decline, maybe steeply, and our politics is broken and getting worse. But several thousand year habits don’t change in weeks no matter how hysterical Don Lemon gets on tv. It’s all power play, and mostly theater. If you buy the dip, you catch at least a dead cat bounce, or maybe it’s a zombie cat bounce, but it’s gonna bounce.
I lived in Boulder for grad school and loved it. In those days, it was expensive but still cheap enough that you could have a good time with very little money. I'm told by my friends who stayed in the area that it's now approaching Silicon Valley levels of expensive, which I have to think will eventually change the character of the town.
Vail is an odd place to think of someone moving to just because they can telecommute. It's a town built around the ski resort. The people who own the nice houses don't live there; the people who live there don't live in the nice houses. There's a big difference between vacationing in a town and living there.
“I lived in Boulder for grad school and loved it. In those days, it was expensive but still cheap enough that you could have a good time with very little money. I'm told by my friends who stayed in the area that it's now approaching Silicon Valley levels of expensive, which I have to think will eventually change the character of the town.”
Even in recent years, it’s not that bad for grad school. My kid graduated there with their PhD maybe three years ago. Their stipend (a bit over $30k/yr) covered housing (with 5-6 grad students living together in a large apartment), food, and a little left over. Everyone biked to school (even with snow on the ground), partly to save on gas, but also partly due to the insane prices for on campus parking passes. Two of them now in an apartment down by Golden, or now in a duplex, with enough money left over to replace one of their vehicles, plus a lot of travel (cut back some due to COVID-19). Finally, last week, got them off my AAA account. They are definitely getting spoiled. They moved into the duplex because the apartment wasn’t really comfortable for telecommuting. Both of them get into the office once or twice a week, and work from home the rest of the time. Works great - they definitely don’t want to go back to commuting every day.
“Vail is an odd place to think of someone moving to just because they can telecommute. It's a town built around the ski resort. The people who own the nice houses don't live there; the people who live there don't live in the nice houses. There's a big difference between vacationing in a town and living there”
To be fair, telecommuting is much more plausible down the valley a bit, from maybe Avon through Eagle or so. But you are correct about the commuting. I have heard that people commute in from as far away as Rifle, and even Parachute, west Of Glenwood Springs (ditto for low end workers from Aspen). We are talking an hour each way or worse, without traffic, in good weather. But, the ski areas depend on there being a lot of bad weather, so we are talking 4 hours of blizzard driving in the winter. What was weird, was running into bumper to bumper rush hour traffic from the top of Tennessee Pass all the way down to Minturn (just west of Vail) one evening. They all worked in Vail, and lived in Leadville. Not a commute that I would want to make every night in the winter.
I have worked remotely for several years East of Vail Pass in Summit County. Worked well. Not Eagle County expensive yet, but prices have jumped quite a bit the last couple years. I was a patent attorney, so it was mostly task work, which meant that I could schedule my work. In the winter, I would look out the window in the morning, and if it was blue sky, head to the nearest ski area for a couple hours of exercise. Maybe a little flat tracking in the evening. Summer and fall, I would either go bike a bit, or take a hike. It really was idyllic.
All good things must end though, and I had a kid in an expensive private college, so took a job at a small patent firm, right by (and below) Lake Tahoe. We were soon merged into a large firm. That was horse country. But could see one of the larger Tahoe ski areas from both work and the office. Again, I got into checking the weather, and getting a couple hours of exercise skiing in in the mornings when it was nice. It was about a mile of pleasant walking, each way for my commute during the rest of year. Again, idyllic. I actually preferred having an office to go to. I became a bit socially isolated back in Summit County, CO, working out of the house.
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