You are paying for the land. While building might cost a little more in the city due to permits, and labour's cost of living, in general it is mostly land. All this article tells us is: If land is cheap, you can buy a lot of it and built large structures on it.
This is why, to me, it is surprising that so few companies offer "remote only" jobs. On the face of it there seems to be downsides (worse communication, VoIP costs, etc) and few upsides. But just because you could employ people from lower cost of living areas (who would accept lower pay), you'd save enough on salaries to make the venture worth considering.
For example, let's say you're based out of NYC. You have to pay people in that area in the $80K+ ballpark so they can even make rent. However if you remain in NYC and employ people from Mississippi, Tennessee, or Idaho you could pay people in the 60K range and they'd have the same or better living standard than the 80K people in NYC.
> This is why, to me, it is surprising that so few companies offer "remote only" jobs.
Politics. Politics. Politics.
How do you prove, as a manager, that you are doing your job when nobody can see half of your employees?
As a side note, there are also good reasons to have your technical team co-located. It's sometimes really hard to drill into difficult technical problems without everybody standing in front of a whiteboard.
> How do you prove, as a manager, that you are doing your job when nobody can see half of your employees?
I don't know if I buy it. How do you prove, as a manager, that you are doing your job when everyone can see all your employees? I fail to see how the visibility of you employees helps you prove that you're doing your job.
It's all perception. The manager talking with employees, having meetings with them etc gives the appearance of "work". This same thing causes interruptions to developers all day long. "Hands off" managers who hire people they trust to do their job are far more productive, but not the middle of the curve.
I think people can make lack of whiteboards work. The issue I have seen is when your team is partially co-located and partially remote -- the co-located people do the whiteboarding without bothering to involve the remote people, or the remote people do a lot more one-on-one discussions with other remote people. I think remote can work well, but the entire team needs to be remote to ensure communication.
And yet, I live in Vancouver and am looking only for remote work from the US... precisely because Vancouver companies don't pay enough to support Vancouver cost of living. If a US company just offered me Vancouver rates, I'd turn them down in a heartbeat.
You are paying for the land. While building might cost a little more in the city due to permits, and labour's cost of living, in general it is mostly land. All this article tells us is: If land is cheap, you can buy a lot of it and built large structures on it.
This is why, to me, it is surprising that so few companies offer "remote only" jobs. On the face of it there seems to be downsides (worse communication, VoIP costs, etc) and few upsides. But just because you could employ people from lower cost of living areas (who would accept lower pay), you'd save enough on salaries to make the venture worth considering.
For example, let's say you're based out of NYC. You have to pay people in that area in the $80K+ ballpark so they can even make rent. However if you remain in NYC and employ people from Mississippi, Tennessee, or Idaho you could pay people in the 60K range and they'd have the same or better living standard than the 80K people in NYC.