Housing prices have gone insane

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would imagine it’s quite frustrating to buy a house far out for a “lifestyle choice,” but then end up feeling isolated and also missing out on all the appreciation that those with close-in properties have seen. We actually appreciate our location in a close-in suburb more, not less, since we started working mostly from home. It’s easy to run errands and we still feel connected in ways that wouldn’t be the case if we were in some far-out location.

“I would imagine it’s frustrating to see people on a forum where 90% of the people come from closer-in overhype the value of living in an closer-in. I mean, we aren’t biased at all and our little cohort is totally objective and how everyone in the entire DMV thinks even though the statistics show the exact opposite.”

“Outer-burbs” have seen 5-10% increases in median HHIs over the last 3 years, whereas most inner-burbs saw below 2% increases. People in outer areas aren’t “isolated,” you’re just ignorant and have never been to any of these places. You guys have no culture, you’re like any other gentrified northeastern suburb full of transplants. Greenwich, Wellesley, Bethesda, McLean, etc. They’re all the same and all extremely bland. This is why nobody likes people from inner-areas. It’s because you guys are over-pretentious and have an over-heightened sense of importance, and you make assumptions about “outer” areas you’ve never been to. Your validation for where you live almost entirely comes from whatever USNWR says and almost everything else you do in life depends on whatever Forbes says is the top 10 thing to do. You guys also live in your echo chambers and sound completely sheltered from reality, thinking you’re middle-class with $300k incomes, and you lack sympathy for others. That’s why you guys see these prices as normal, because you can afford them and it’s your houses appreciating to unrealistic levels. But screw everyone else, right?

Can’t quite tell - does this poster just have a big chip or is it the small shoulders? Maybe both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I know about FB and twitter, but Apple, Google, Microsoft - none of them have plans for FT remote permanently, and they employ a lot of people.

"Microsoft Will Let Employees Work From Home Permanently"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlypage/2020/10/09/microsoft-will-let-employees-work-from-home-permanently/

If you work in tech you will understand how this works - in order to remain competitive for talent, every tech employer will need to offer work from home positions. The demand for talent is too intense to lose any % of the talent pool to competitors.

“Microsoft said it will allow employees to work from home freely for less than 50% of their working week, but has said that managers will be able to approve permanent remote work if staff request it.”

Yes we will all have days where we work at home doing admin work or answering some email or what not. But there will still be plenty of days in the office when meetings and real work happen.

You are a crackerjack lone wolf developer, who never mentors less experience employees or interfaces with other systems sure you can burrow in at home. But most software is collaborative development, and GitHub and Slack are great once a design is in place but getting there requires innovation zoom can’t support.

I work with the HR/workforce management team at a FANG type tech company.

We've completed multiple internal focus groups and employee surveys over the past 3 months. Employees are split into about equal 3rds: those who want permanent work from home, those who want to come in 4-5 days/month, and those who want to come into the office routinely. There are some correlations - software developers want permanent wfh at a higher rate (over 50%), for example. Younger people tend to want permanent work from home at higher rates also but many intend to travel more (nomads) so we've termed it "work from anywhere". We had to dig into the details for this because for certain international employees, longer stays in certain countries can create tax implications. We also don't want to keep a 3,000 desk office if we'll only have 1,000 people on site daily. We can downsize that and save a bundle. (Cafeteria and related services alone saves almost $1m/month when you drop from 3k to 1k employees served.) The whole Fortune 500 world is setting up infrastructure to handle this now. Keep an eye on office space renewals to watch the downsizing.

Software developers call the shots in the tech world. They are the scarce resource that we have to cater to. Any one of our software developers can set a flag on LinkedIn that they are "open to new opportunities" and our competitors will automatically have interviews scheduled with them in less than a week. There was never any thought of telling people they had to come back to an office or be fired. It wouldn't work and I think any exec who suggested it would be at risk themselves. There are some exceptions of course, usually top secret projects where everybody is not only on site but in their own secure building. But these people are a small minority and are insanely well compensated.

It will take years for all this to shake out but the foundation is absolutely being laid right now. It seems like a win win for everybody except commercial real estate owners and others who benefit from traffic/previously long commute times (can't say I am sorry for their loss).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I know about FB and twitter, but Apple, Google, Microsoft - none of them have plans for FT remote permanently, and they employ a lot of people.

"Microsoft Will Let Employees Work From Home Permanently"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlypage/2020/10/09/microsoft-will-let-employees-work-from-home-permanently/

If you work in tech you will understand how this works - in order to remain competitive for talent, every tech employer will need to offer work from home positions. The demand for talent is too intense to lose any % of the talent pool to competitors.

“Microsoft said it will allow employees to work from home freely for less than 50% of their working week, but has said that managers will be able to approve permanent remote work if staff request it.”

Yes we will all have days where we work at home doing admin work or answering some email or what not. But there will still be plenty of days in the office when meetings and real work happen.

You are a crackerjack lone wolf developer, who never mentors less experience employees or interfaces with other systems sure you can burrow in at home. But most software is collaborative development, and GitHub and Slack are great once a design is in place but getting there requires innovation zoom can’t support.

I work with the HR/workforce management team at a FANG type tech company.

We've completed multiple internal focus groups and employee surveys over the past 3 months. Employees are split into about equal 3rds: those who want permanent work from home, those who want to come in 4-5 days/month, and those who want to come into the office routinely. There are some correlations - software developers want permanent wfh at a higher rate (over 50%), for example. Younger people tend to want permanent work from home at higher rates also but many intend to travel more (nomads) so we've termed it "work from anywhere". We had to dig into the details for this because for certain international employees, longer stays in certain countries can create tax implications. We also don't want to keep a 3,000 desk office if we'll only have 1,000 people on site daily. We can downsize that and save a bundle. (Cafeteria and related services alone saves almost $1m/month when you drop from 3k to 1k employees served.) The whole Fortune 500 world is setting up infrastructure to handle this now. Keep an eye on office space renewals to watch the downsizing.

Software developers call the shots in the tech world. They are the scarce resource that we have to cater to. Any one of our software developers can set a flag on LinkedIn that they are "open to new opportunities" and our competitors will automatically have interviews scheduled with them in less than a week. There was never any thought of telling people they had to come back to an office or be fired. It wouldn't work and I think any exec who suggested it would be at risk themselves. There are some exceptions of course, usually top secret projects where everybody is not only on site but in their own secure building. But these people are a small minority and are insanely well compensated.

It will take years for all this to shake out but the foundation is absolutely being laid right now. It seems like a win win for everybody except commercial real estate owners and others who benefit from traffic/previously long commute times (can't say I am sorry for their loss).

Very interesting and well stated. But do you have a sense of what % of DMV workers work for FANG type companies? I would imagine the majority of white collar employees in the region are feds, in politics, or in the periphery that revolves around those things (lawyers, contractors, etc.). Those jobs will never be 100% wfh.

[Anonymous]

I think it is BS and your ass will be back at work. I worked next to World Trade Center during 9/11. A few weeks later I was actually doing a dead persons job and flew on 12 business trips shortly after 9/11.

I like to eat. I guarantee you if all FANG type companies said back to work or be fired that will be it. That was the case on Wall Street after 9-11 back to work or be fired. No exceptions all firms agreed. Guess what no severance or unemployment either as called job abandonment.

Time to stop coddling the children

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would imagine it’s quite frustrating to buy a house far out for a “lifestyle choice,” but then end up feeling isolated and also missing out on all the appreciation that those with close-in properties have seen. We actually appreciate our location in a close-in suburb more, not less, since we started working mostly from home. It’s easy to run errands and we still feel connected in ways that wouldn’t be the case if we were in some far-out location.

“I would imagine it’s frustrating to see people on a forum where 90% of the people come from closer-in overhype the value of living in an closer-in. I mean, we aren’t biased at all and our little cohort is totally objective and how everyone in the entire DMV thinks even though the statistics show the exact opposite.”

“Outer-burbs” have seen 5-10% increases in median HHIs over the last 3 years, whereas most inner-burbs saw below 2% increases. People in outer areas aren’t “isolated,” you’re just ignorant and have never been to any of these places. You guys have no culture, you’re like any other gentrified northeastern suburb full of transplants. Greenwich, Wellesley, Bethesda, McLean, etc. They’re all the same and all extremely bland. This is why nobody likes people from inner-areas. It’s because you guys are over-pretentious and have an over-heightened sense of importance, and you make assumptions about “outer” areas you’ve never been to. Your validation for where you live almost entirely comes from whatever USNWR says and almost everything else you do in life depends on whatever Forbes says is the top 10 thing to do. You guys also live in your echo chambers and sound completely sheltered from reality, thinking you’re middle-class with $300k incomes, and you lack sympathy for others. That’s why you guys see these prices as normal, because you can afford them and it’s your houses appreciating to unrealistic levels. But screw everyone else, right?

You realize not every inner suburb is Bethesda right? Like we have a modest priced townhouse in Silver Spring, don't make half of $300k, and don't even know what you're talking about with Forbes telling people what to do. I'm glad you like like wherever you live, I like where I live, I don't get the hate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Annapolis poster may be harsh, but they are the ones with the most objectively true talking points. I live in Bethesda, but I have a second home on the water in an outer-burb (Lake Shore in Pasadena). Most of my colleagues live in Loudon County, Fairfax, Howard County, and certain parts of Anne Arundel. I would never commute to DC from Pasadena, even if it was just once a week, but commuting from Davidsonville is hardly any worse than commuting from Rockville, and the schools there are really good. I also agree that describing Howard and Anne Arundel as being "further out" in a general sense is also misleading because they're central to DC/Baltimore/Annapolis/Ft. Meade, and these days the vast majority of professional couples in the DMV are split between those areas for work, so a more central location is becoming increasingly important to most couples than being close to DC is. There are lots of vibrant areas with culture in "outer" burbs.

If my job was 100% WFH and my second home was assigned to Severna Park, Broadneck, Arundel, or South River HS, I would absolutely sell my Bethesda house and just make AA my permanent place to live. Sometimes I consider selling both houses and then buying a new waterfront home in one of the better school pyramids, but I don't want to chance the possibility of having to commute to DC from Severna Park. But most I know would be willing to do it, and already doing it. WFH will definitely dent home values in the inner-burbs, and I honestly don't care because I bought my Bethesda home awhile ago and didn't pay current day prices for it anyways.

Their assessments of the culture in inner-burbs is spot-on, whether we like to admit it or not, but there are drawbacks to the culture in outer-burbs as well. Annapolis is very preppy and somewhat conservative (especially compared to MoCo), and there are two contrasting divides: There's the very rich and preppy waterfront group in the touristy areas, and then the poor communities of color that the city tucks away in the background. Even in the most exclusive areas of MoCo, I see people of different colors and nationalities, but AACo is so damn white that even BCC and WJ would be some of the county's most diverse high schools if they were in AACo. There are still a lot of problems with very blatant racism in Pasadena in 2020. Howard County is culturally similar to Montgomery County, but it is a bit too generic for me. Hopefully, AACo diversifies and becomes more progressive in the future.

BCC and WJ for a large part of county are extremely diverse. Before I moved here my kids 1,000 person high school has tops 2 Indians, 3-4 Chinese and 2-3 Black kids. Judging from kids I see as I drive by in parts of country that is a scary school

Quoted poster here. My kids go/went to Walter Johnson, and I wouldn't call it diverse for MoCo standards, but it would definitely stand out as being diverse among schools in Anne Arundel County. There have been times over the summer where I went an entire week without seeing any PoC in Pasadena, it's insane. Excluding Old Mill and Annapolis, Anne Arundel County high schools are either majority-white or majority-Black (Meade High) and barely anything else. Schools in the Arundel and Crofton pyramid are quite diverse, but they're still pretty white for MoCo standards. The highest percentage of Asian kids at any hs in Anne Arundel is 6%. The county also has A LOT of issues with racism, especially in areas like Pasadena, which is partially why I could never see myself permanently living there. It feels like a lot of the people are super conservative and have a mindset that is stuck in the dark ages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very interesting and well stated. But do you have a sense of what % of DMV workers work for FANG type companies? I would imagine the majority of white collar employees in the region are feds, in politics, or in the periphery that revolves around those things (lawyers, contractors, etc.). Those jobs will never be 100% wfh.

There are far fewer FANG-type employees in the DMV today, but the issue is that the labor pools are connected. If Booz, Deloitte, Accenture, etc want to be able to hire and retain even B-level developers, they have to match the same perks as the "B tier" tech companies who themselves have to match FANG (in benefits, not salary), so it all trickles down.

It's hard to overstate how difficult it is to hire, retain, and motivate the top 25% of technical talent out there. Between internal costs and external HHs my company spends almost $50k per hire to fill software development roles. We pay them a fortune and bend over backwards, and just hope they stay for at least 3 years before they job hop to somewhere else. Anyone who thinks we will let a sizeable % of these employees walk out the door because they don't want to return to an office is delusional. I think the problem is that the employee-employer power dynamic has become totally flipped in favor of the employee in tech, but remains heavily in favor of the employer in most other fields, and that extreme differential is hard to appreciate until you've seen it first hand.

I have no idea how the Feds will recruit. When you can make $150k + some stock options on a 35 hour/week very flexible work from home/work from anywhere schedule, why would you ever take a job that required you to commute and be in an office for much less money? I don't know the details of Fed pensions, but it's hard to believe they make up for that. Which makes me think the Feds will hire the worst talent (scary) which simply builds up technical debt that is more expensive to fix later on -- or farm more and more of the work out to the Booz Allens of the world, who turn around and offer the competitive pay/benefits in a way that the Fed salary schedule doesn't allow. I've love to hear more from anyone who has to hire this type of talent for the Feds, if they lurk around here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I know about FB and twitter, but Apple, Google, Microsoft - none of them have plans for FT remote permanently, and they employ a lot of people.

"Microsoft Will Let Employees Work From Home Permanently"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlypage/2020/10/09/microsoft-will-let-employees-work-from-home-permanently/

If you work in tech you will understand how this works - in order to remain competitive for talent, every tech employer will need to offer work from home positions. The demand for talent is too intense to lose any % of the talent pool to competitors.

“Microsoft said it will allow employees to work from home freely for less than 50% of their working week, but has said that managers will be able to approve permanent remote work if staff request it.”

Yes we will all have days where we work at home doing admin work or answering some email or what not. But there will still be plenty of days in the office when meetings and real work happen.

You are a crackerjack lone wolf developer, who never mentors less experience employees or interfaces with other systems sure you can burrow in at home. But most software is collaborative development, and GitHub and Slack are great once a design is in place but getting there requires innovation zoom can’t support.

I work with the HR/workforce management team at a FANG type tech company.

We've completed multiple internal focus groups and employee surveys over the past 3 months. Employees are split into about equal 3rds: those who want permanent work from home, those who want to come in 4-5 days/month, and those who want to come into the office routinely. There are some correlations - software developers want permanent wfh at a higher rate (over 50%), for example. Younger people tend to want permanent work from home at higher rates also but many intend to travel more (nomads) so we've termed it "work from anywhere". We had to dig into the details for this because for certain international employees, longer stays in certain countries can create tax implications. We also don't want to keep a 3,000 desk office if we'll only have 1,000 people on site daily. We can downsize that and save a bundle. (Cafeteria and related services alone saves almost $1m/month when you drop from 3k to 1k employees served.) The whole Fortune 500 world is setting up infrastructure to handle this now. Keep an eye on office space renewals to watch the downsizing.

Software developers call the shots in the tech world. They are the scarce resource that we have to cater to. Any one of our software developers can set a flag on LinkedIn that they are "open to new opportunities" and our competitors will automatically have interviews scheduled with them in less than a week. There was never any thought of telling people they had to come back to an office or be fired. It wouldn't work and I think any exec who suggested it would be at risk themselves. There are some exceptions of course, usually top secret projects where everybody is not only on site but in their own secure building. But these people are a small minority and are insanely well compensated.

It will take years for all this to shake out but the foundation is absolutely being laid right now. It seems like a win win for everybody except commercial real estate owners and others who benefit from traffic/previously long commute times (can't say I am sorry for their loss).

You say this is about keeping talent happy, but when that talents productive plummets b/c challenging work doesn’t fit in the bandwidth of zoom windows and slack chats.

Sure right now maintaining and updating existing products can happen in the WFH world, but once productivity drops their value will drop and coming in to actually earn that bananas salary will happen. So I would recommend keeping seats until you can prove me wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very interesting and well stated. But do you have a sense of what % of DMV workers work for FANG type companies? I would imagine the majority of white collar employees in the region are feds, in politics, or in the periphery that revolves around those things (lawyers, contractors, etc.). Those jobs will never be 100% wfh.

There are far fewer FANG-type employees in the DMV today, but the issue is that the labor pools are connected. If Booz, Deloitte, Accenture, etc want to be able to hire and retain even B-level developers, they have to match the same perks as the "B tier" tech companies who themselves have to match FANG (in benefits, not salary), so it all trickles down.

It's hard to overstate how difficult it is to hire, retain, and motivate the top 25% of technical talent out there. Between internal costs and external HHs my company spends almost $50k per hire to fill software development roles. We pay them a fortune and bend over backwards, and just hope they stay for at least 3 years before they job hop to somewhere else. Anyone who thinks we will let a sizeable % of these employees walk out the door because they don't want to return to an office is delusional. I think the problem is that the employee-employer power dynamic has become totally flipped in favor of the employee in tech, but remains heavily in favor of the employer in most other fields, and that extreme differential is hard to appreciate until you've seen it first hand.

I have no idea how the Feds will recruit. When you can make $150k + some stock options on a 35 hour/week very flexible work from home/work from anywhere schedule, why would you ever take a job that required you to commute and be in an office for much less money? I don't know the details of Fed pensions, but it's hard to believe they make up for that. Which makes me think the Feds will hire the worst talent (scary) which simply builds up technical debt that is more expensive to fix later on -- or farm more and more of the work out to the Booz Allens of the world, who turn around and offer the competitive pay/benefits in a way that the Fed salary schedule doesn't allow. I've love to hear more from anyone who has to hire this type of talent for the Feds, if they lurk around here.

Why would 2nd and 3rd tier developers be making $150k? Once you open up a global WFH workforce, the pool of talent is very very deep. It’s like Hollywood or rock music, top talent win the lottery, everyone else fights over scraps doing wedding cover bands.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why would 2nd and 3rd tier developers be making $150k? Once you open up a global WFH workforce, the pool of talent is very very deep. It’s like Hollywood or rock music, top talent win the lottery, everyone else fights over scraps doing wedding cover bands.

I wouldn't call the global talent pool "very very" deep but it definitely helps. The latest batch of talent we've found is Eastern Europe but they're already up to $75k+ USD for top developers, and there are logistical and management challenges involved. If there's a secret pool of cheap talent still out there, please clue me in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very interesting and well stated. But do you have a sense of what % of DMV workers work for FANG type companies? I would imagine the majority of white collar employees in the region are feds, in politics, or in the periphery that revolves around those things (lawyers, contractors, etc.). Those jobs will never be 100% wfh.

There are far fewer FANG-type employees in the DMV today, but the issue is that the labor pools are connected. If Booz, Deloitte, Accenture, etc want to be able to hire and retain even B-level developers, they have to match the same perks as the "B tier" tech companies who themselves have to match FANG (in benefits, not salary), so it all trickles down.

It's hard to overstate how difficult it is to hire, retain, and motivate the top 25% of technical talent out there. Between internal costs and external HHs my company spends almost $50k per hire to fill software development roles. We pay them a fortune and bend over backwards, and just hope they stay for at least 3 years before they job hop to somewhere else. Anyone who thinks we will let a sizeable % of these employees walk out the door because they don't want to return to an office is delusional. I think the problem is that the employee-employer power dynamic has become totally flipped in favor of the employee in tech, but remains heavily in favor of the employer in most other fields, and that extreme differential is hard to appreciate until you've seen it first hand.

I have no idea how the Feds will recruit. When you can make $150k + some stock options on a 35 hour/week very flexible work from home/work from anywhere schedule, why would you ever take a job that required you to commute and be in an office for much less money? I don't know the details of Fed pensions, but it's hard to believe they make up for that. Which makes me think the Feds will hire the worst talent (scary) which simply builds up technical debt that is more expensive to fix later on -- or farm more and more of the work out to the Booz Allens of the world, who turn around and offer the competitive pay/benefits in a way that the Fed salary schedule doesn't allow. I've love to hear more from anyone who has to hire this type of talent for the Feds, if they lurk around here.

A lot of federal positions don’t have exact private sector counterparts because a lot of agency missions are not profit-based. I’m a fed attorney, but I don’t litigate or deal with clients. The closest equivalent would be policy work, but it doesn’t really translate to legal work in the private sector. Also, a lot of the IT stuff is outsourced as you mentioned. So I don’t think federal recruiters are going after the same employees as these FANG-type companies.

That said, if the private sector pushes salaries up so that housing continues to become even more expensive, then yes the government is going to have a problem. The federal workforce is very old by and large. As agencies recruit younger employees to replace them, there may be a need to increase locality pay or move some offices further out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I know about FB and twitter, but Apple, Google, Microsoft - none of them have plans for FT remote permanently, and they employ a lot of people.

"Microsoft Will Let Employees Work From Home Permanently"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlypage/2020/10/09/microsoft-will-let-employees-work-from-home-permanently/

If you work in tech you will understand how this works - in order to remain competitive for talent, every tech employer will need to offer work from home positions. The demand for talent is too intense to lose any % of the talent pool to competitors.

“Microsoft said it will allow employees to work from home freely for less than 50% of their working week, but has said that managers will be able to approve permanent remote work if staff request it.”

Yes we will all have days where we work at home doing admin work or answering some email or what not. But there will still be plenty of days in the office when meetings and real work happen.

You are a crackerjack lone wolf developer, who never mentors less experience employees or interfaces with other systems sure you can burrow in at home. But most software is collaborative development, and GitHub and Slack are great once a design is in place but getting there requires innovation zoom can’t support.

I work with the HR/workforce management team at a FANG type tech company.

We've completed multiple internal focus groups and employee surveys over the past 3 months. Employees are split into about equal 3rds: those who want permanent work from home, those who want to come in 4-5 days/month, and those who want to come into the office routinely. There are some correlations - software developers want permanent wfh at a higher rate (over 50%), for example. Younger people tend to want permanent work from home at higher rates also but many intend to travel more (nomads) so we've termed it "work from anywhere". We had to dig into the details for this because for certain international employees, longer stays in certain countries can create tax implications. We also don't want to keep a 3,000 desk office if we'll only have 1,000 people on site daily. We can downsize that and save a bundle. (Cafeteria and related services alone saves almost $1m/month when you drop from 3k to 1k employees served.) The whole Fortune 500 world is setting up infrastructure to handle this now. Keep an eye on office space renewals to watch the downsizing.

Software developers call the shots in the tech world. They are the scarce resource that we have to cater to. Any one of our software developers can set a flag on LinkedIn that they are "open to new opportunities" and our competitors will automatically have interviews scheduled with them in less than a week. There was never any thought of telling people they had to come back to an office or be fired. It wouldn't work and I think any exec who suggested it would be at risk themselves. There are some exceptions of course, usually top secret projects where everybody is not only on site but in their own secure building. But these people are a small minority and are insanely well compensated.

It will take years for all this to shake out but the foundation is absolutely being laid right now. It seems like a win win for everybody except commercial real estate owners and others who benefit from traffic/previously long commute times (can't say I am sorry for their loss).

You say this is about keeping talent happy, but when that talents productive plummets b/c challenging work doesn’t fit in the bandwidth of zoom windows and slack chats.

Sure right now maintaining and updating existing products can happen in the WFH world, but once productivity drops their value will drop and coming in to actually earn that bananas salary will happen. So I would recommend keeping seats until you can prove me wrong.

So far our data shows no drop in productivity overall. It can vary by manager (some teams drop, some teams actually increase) so we're trying to identify best practices and help scale those out. As I said, some teams have to be in person (the TS apple projects, autonomous driving, Google moonshot type work).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I know about FB and twitter, but Apple, Google, Microsoft - none of them have plans for FT remote permanently, and they employ a lot of people.

"Microsoft Will Let Employees Work From Home Permanently"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlypage/2020/10/09/microsoft-will-let-employees-work-from-home-permanently/

If you work in tech you will understand how this works - in order to remain competitive for talent, every tech employer will need to offer work from home positions. The demand for talent is too intense to lose any % of the talent pool to competitors.

“Microsoft said it will allow employees to work from home freely for less than 50% of their working week, but has said that managers will be able to approve permanent remote work if staff request it.”

Yes we will all have days where we work at home doing admin work or answering some email or what not. But there will still be plenty of days in the office when meetings and real work happen.

You are a crackerjack lone wolf developer, who never mentors less experience employees or interfaces with other systems sure you can burrow in at home. But most software is collaborative development, and GitHub and Slack are great once a design is in place but getting there requires innovation zoom can’t support.

I work with the HR/workforce management team at a FANG type tech company.

We've completed multiple internal focus groups and employee surveys over the past 3 months. Employees are split into about equal 3rds: those who want permanent work from home, those who want to come in 4-5 days/month, and those who want to come into the office routinely. There are some correlations - software developers want permanent wfh at a higher rate (over 50%), for example. Younger people tend to want permanent work from home at higher rates also but many intend to travel more (nomads) so we've termed it "work from anywhere". We had to dig into the details for this because for certain international employees, longer stays in certain countries can create tax implications. We also don't want to keep a 3,000 desk office if we'll only have 1,000 people on site daily. We can downsize that and save a bundle. (Cafeteria and related services alone saves almost $1m/month when you drop from 3k to 1k employees served.) The whole Fortune 500 world is setting up infrastructure to handle this now. Keep an eye on office space renewals to watch the downsizing.

Software developers call the shots in the tech world. They are the scarce resource that we have to cater to. Any one of our software developers can set a flag on LinkedIn that they are "open to new opportunities" and our competitors will automatically have interviews scheduled with them in less than a week. There was never any thought of telling people they had to come back to an office or be fired. It wouldn't work and I think any exec who suggested it would be at risk themselves. There are some exceptions of course, usually top secret projects where everybody is not only on site but in their own secure building. But these people are a small minority and are insanely well compensated.

It will take years for all this to shake out but the foundation is absolutely being laid right now. It seems like a win win for everybody except commercial real estate owners and others who benefit from traffic/previously long commute times (can't say I am sorry for their loss).

You say this is about keeping talent happy, but when that talents productive plummets b/c challenging work doesn’t fit in the bandwidth of zoom windows and slack chats.

Sure right now maintaining and updating existing products can happen in the WFH world, but once productivity drops their value will drop and coming in to actually earn that bananas salary will happen. So I would recommend keeping seats until you can prove me wrong.

So far our data shows no drop in productivity overall. It can vary by manager (some teams drop, some teams actually increase) so we're trying to identify best practices and help scale those out. As I said, some teams have to be in person (the TS apple projects, autonomous driving, Google moonshot type work).

Right now productivity is maintained b/c pandemic means we have nothing better to do. People are WFH more hours than they will when they “have a life”.

And again, it’s only been 10 months, how many new products or services have been spun up from whole cloth in that time? I think we are still cruising on the work from the before times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That said, if the private sector pushes salaries up so that housing continues to become even more expensive, then yes the government is going to have a problem. The federal workforce is very old by and large. As agencies recruit younger employees to replace them, there may be a need to increase locality pay or move some offices further out.

I liked the idea of relocating agencies within the US. Where are the non-tech, non-lawyer junior employees supposed to live on <$100k salaries? Do you really want them commuting 1 hour/day or moving far out and selecting wfh where they can't meet co-workers and network in person? Seems bad for everybody. Keep the SES and highest ranks in DC part time but move the bulk of the workforce around the country. I understand the current folks with houses, kids in school, and so forth will resist but at some point you just have to rip the band-aid off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very interesting and well stated. But do you have a sense of what % of DMV workers work for FANG type companies? I would imagine the majority of white collar employees in the region are feds, in politics, or in the periphery that revolves around those things (lawyers, contractors, etc.). Those jobs will never be 100% wfh.

There are far fewer FANG-type employees in the DMV today, but the issue is that the labor pools are connected. If Booz, Deloitte, Accenture, etc want to be able to hire and retain even B-level developers, they have to match the same perks as the "B tier" tech companies who themselves have to match FANG (in benefits, not salary), so it all trickles down.

It's hard to overstate how difficult it is to hire, retain, and motivate the top 25% of technical talent out there. Between internal costs and external HHs my company spends almost $50k per hire to fill software development roles. We pay them a fortune and bend over backwards, and just hope they stay for at least 3 years before they job hop to somewhere else. Anyone who thinks we will let a sizeable % of these employees walk out the door because they don't want to return to an office is delusional. I think the problem is that the employee-employer power dynamic has become totally flipped in favor of the employee in tech, but remains heavily in favor of the employer in most other fields, and that extreme differential is hard to appreciate until you've seen it first hand.

I have no idea how the Feds will recruit. When you can make $150k + some stock options on a 35 hour/week very flexible work from home/work from anywhere schedule, why would you ever take a job that required you to commute and be in an office for much less money? I don't know the details of Fed pensions, but it's hard to believe they make up for that. Which makes me think the Feds will hire the worst talent (scary) which simply builds up technical debt that is more expensive to fix later on -- or farm more and more of the work out to the Booz Allens of the world, who turn around and offer the competitive pay/benefits in a way that the Fed salary schedule doesn't allow. I've love to hear more from anyone who has to hire this type of talent for the Feds, if they lurk around here.

A lot of federal positions don’t have exact private sector counterparts because a lot of agency missions are not profit-based. I’m a fed attorney, but I don’t litigate or deal with clients. The closest equivalent would be policy work, but it doesn’t really translate to legal work in the private sector. Also, a lot of the IT stuff is outsourced as you mentioned. So I don’t think federal recruiters are going after the same employees as these FANG-type companies.

That said, if the private sector pushes salaries up so that housing continues to become even more expensive, then yes the government is going to have a problem. The federal workforce is very old by and large. As agencies recruit younger employees to replace them, there may be a need to increase locality pay or move some offices further out.

But everyone will move out to the country since they can make $150k but live in a CO mountain town. That’s why house prices will plummet everywhere except Hawaii, San Diego, Boulder, beach towns etc.