[HN Gopher] The rise of remote work may reshape college towns
___________________________________________________________________
The rise of remote work may reshape college towns
Author : remt
Score : 160 points
Date : 2021-06-04 13:26 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chronicle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chronicle.com)
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| The lamest thing about college bars is it's full of younger kids
| that don't work. The culture is a lot of "I'm invincible" instead
| of "I'm just another number." In my experience, people in the
| former are snobbish and think their shit is really good to eat.
| The latter is filled with people who lived and just wanna kill
| time or have a bit of fun.
| m1117 wrote:
| Lol look at Berkeley or Palo alto. "More affordable"? Get out of
| here! Disclosure: wasn't able to read the article because it
| blocks adblocker.
| breadzeppelin__ wrote:
| Disabling javascript all together with the 'quick javascript
| switcher' browser addon worked for me.
|
| Same for Boulder CO. I work for UC Boulder and definitely do
| not see people moving here for any sort of affordability
| reason.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| Here, I'll help in case you don't want to click on one of the
| two links in this post that bypass the paywall.
|
| > At least two colleges -- Purdue University and West Virginia
| University -- are supporting programs for these remote workers
| duped wrote:
| Urban or suburban universities are entirely different than
| "college towns" particularly in the midwest and southeast.
|
| Berkeley and Palo Alto have very little in common with these
| places - it would be more like Madison, Ann Arbor, Champaign
| and Urbana, Iowa City, Bloomington, Normal, etc.
| v_london wrote:
| This is super interesting and something I've been thinking of for
| some time. As an engineer who can clearly do my job just as well
| remotely as in person, why should I pay high rent and live in
| cramped flat when there are rural mansions with acres of land
| that cost less?
|
| The big difference is community, of course. The city has my
| friends, living alone away from everyone else would be lonely.
| But new communities can be built. I've recently started to
| realise how strange it is that in the West, we don't build new
| cities or towns any more. What's stopping a small group of
| engineers (perhaps backed by VCs) from buying a big plot of land
| a few hours of drive away from London / NYC / SF and building a
| small village with large houses and a community centre? Water and
| electricity would be difficult for sure, but I'm sure its not an
| unsolvable problem.
|
| Of course, new communities like this couldn't just house
| engineers and other wealthy folks, but you would need health
| services, plumbers, delivery workers and so on. But I think it's
| strange that nobody is even thinking of something like this as an
| option. Festivals like Burning Man and the ubiquity of hiking as
| a hobby show that there is a need of better connection to nature
| amongst people who live in big cities.
| jonfw wrote:
| You're more or less describing a country club
| qntty wrote:
| Surprised not to read anything about offering classes to people
| who choose to live in these remote-work communities. That's the
| only reason it would appeal to me personally. I think a lot of
| people would like to take some graduate classes while working,
| maybe even get a degree out of it.
|
| Our education system for things like computer science seem to be
| out of sync with the way that people actually learn. Not because
| they are too theoretical, but because there are some things, like
| computer science, where it's really impossible to internalize the
| practical lessons of learning about different kinds of software
| systems if you don't have some experience building software
| systems yourself. And this kind of experience takes years of
| working to develop.
| jrumbut wrote:
| Some of the online CS master's programs allow you to take in
| person classes if you want, so when work is busy you can make
| progress online and you can pick the in person classes that
| really interest you. The program you're talking about exists,
| though it may not be marketed that way.
|
| I did this a few years ago and highly recommend it.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Very good point. This is similar to stiff you do in business
| school, where you sure can talk about why BetaMax, but you
| can't experience it. Similarly you can be told that it's a good
| idea to think about your abstractions when coding, but if you
| don't get enough time to build a ball of spaghetti, you might
| not get it straight away.
|
| I think a lot of uni stuff is like this actually.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Does it matter? If remote working is completely viable, I don't
| see why remote part time formal education wouldn't be. I'm not
| sure why someone who preferred WFH full time would otherwise
| decide that in person classes were important.
| politician wrote:
| Computer Science is not Software Engineering. That's my
| conclusion after the degree and two decades of professional
| work.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| Weightlifting isn't football. But if you get huge enough,
| your size from weightlifting predicts success in football.
|
| Even if CS doesn't directly translate, if you can jump
| through the mental hoops, it likely predicts success in
| software engineering. You will likely do well in S/W
| Engineering if you have a high IQ and you have attention to
| detail. Since it is illegal to filter people by IQ in the
| USA, you have to jump through an expensive hoop to prove you
| have a high IQ, which also happens to vet for attention to
| detail and ability to focus on tasks. There is no reason that
| s/w engineering couldn't be taught using an apprenticeship
| model after doing an IQ test, but the later is illegal.
| dml2135 wrote:
| I'm not aware of it being illegal to use IQ as criteria in
| hiring in the USA, do you have a source for that?
|
| I'm sure the reason it's not done is because it would be an
| extremely bad predictor of success in a job, not because it
| isn't legal.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| For some reason, there are a few parallel IQ tests that
| are allowed to continue, despite the Supreme Court ruling
| against IQ tests. The NFL still uses the Wonderlic test
| and the US military has IQ tests. If the Wonderlic test
| did nothing, might not the NFL drop it? As a single
| number, the IQ test has indeed been found to be a
| fantastic predictor of the success of a person, despite
| objections. People hate on it all day long, and perhaps
| their reasons to hate it are correct, but it remains an
| extremely useful as a _heuristic_, if you're allowed to
| measure it. The alternative seems to be 4 years of
| schooling that saddles the student with crushing and
| increasingly-crushing amounts of debt.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderlic_test * https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_General_Classification_Te... *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient
| [deleted]
| bumbledraven wrote:
| https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/woke-institutions-
| is-j... :
|
| > ... in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) [1], ... the
| Supreme Court ruled that intelligence tests, because they
| were not shown to be directly related to job performance,
| could not be used in hiring since blacks scored lower on
| them, and it did not matter whether there was any intent
| to discriminate.
|
| > [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
| novok wrote:
| A lot of software writing jobs don't require a degree
| although in the the usa.
| Mastermindy2g wrote:
| Those tend to be primarily web development roles (i.e
| HTML/CSS) or doing some basic scripting not for "full
| stack" devs creating complex web applications.
|
| I do agree though that somebody wanting to enter a
| software development role might as well skip the CS
| degree and learn the basics to enter these 'entry level'
| dev jobs while learning the more complex stuff in
| parallel to level up
| jl2718 wrote:
| Off-topic, but I've known a few people that went pro, and
| in all cases, the causality definitely went in the opposite
| direction. They all hardly ever touched weights until they
| were told they'd have to for the combine. And then they got
| very good at it, but I'm not sure it made them any better.
| We also had a guy that set a youth world record in the
| deadlift. He was pretty good, but no pro. The agility tests
| are supposed to be better, but I've never seen an instance
| of anybody getting a whole lot better at them through
| training. The basketball combine is even harder to analyze.
| One thing that stood out as predictive was the slope of the
| unweighting curve prior to motion. Good luck training that.
| They lift weights mostly for injury prevention.
|
| Not saying there's any relevant analogy to CS.
| ambicapter wrote:
| > the slope of the unweighting curve prior to motion
|
| What in the dickens is that? A graph of instantaneous
| force production?
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| This is almost universally true in hockey. Promising
| prospect makes the NHL, disappoints in his first season,
| hits the gym and packs on 20lbs, comes back and lights it
| up.
| politician wrote:
| > There is no reason that s/w engineering couldn't be
| taught using an apprenticeship model after doing an IQ
| test, but the later is illegal.
|
| This is literally how Software Engineering is taught. The
| IQ test is the brain teaser questions that you get from the
| interviewers, and the apprenticeship is the 2-3 years of
| work that you do for the company before you bounce to the
| next place for the pay raise.
| kbenson wrote:
| > Weightlifting isn't football. But if you get huge enough,
| your size from weightlifting predicts success in football.
|
| Yes, but I imagine most people that got (some theoretical)
| degree in weight lifting or physical science wouldn't
| lament that it didn't teach them all the things they
| expected it to about being a good football player, but
| that's exactly what we get with Computer Science and
| Software Engineering.
|
| A good foundation helps with some aspects of good software
| engineering, or helps steer some decisions, but by no means
| does it necessarily teach good software engineering (some
| programs might have some classes). I doubt that keeps the
| students from complaining about how they aren't actually
| being taught specifically to program, just like they did
| when I was in a CS program a couple decades ago.
|
| I wonder if the training colleges that teach programming
| actually focus more on good software engineering practices?
| If so, they might actually come out of those institutions
| better prepared for the low end of the market than CS
| grads. For the middle of the market, a CS degree might give
| a leg up. For the high end, I imagine personal drive to
| learn and aptitude has long surpassed whatever advantage a
| CS degree gave. From what I've seen, the most knowledgeable
| and respected and accomplished people don't seem all that
| heavily weighted towards having a CS degree over another
| one.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| My first undergrad degree was in another engineering
| major that wasn't CS -- you can guess which from my name.
| Wall Street was heavily recruiting from my major, despite
| us being taught absolutely nothing about finance or even
| business and only having the basics of CS teaching. The
| reason they were doing this is because we were smart and
| knew how to decompose really hard problems. We basically
| knew nothing about financial tech, but they wanted us
| because if you can do X, then you can probably do Y.
|
| Even in my other engineering major, the complaints were
| the same. Everybody complained that You Aint Gonna Need
| It (YAGNI) for many classes and that _real_ industry
| wouldn't use it. However, if you can learn and use these
| really hard concepts, you can probably learn and use
| these _other_ really hard concepts in industry.
| baq wrote:
| absolutely, my alma mater even has separate tracks for them
| (also for at least two decades, even if I only graduated a a
| bit over a decade ago)
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Famously, computer science isn't a science, nor is it about
| computers.
| _wldu wrote:
| Is math a science? My CS education was largely math
| classes. Algorithms are definitely math.
| weaksauce wrote:
| I would say no. STEM is science, technology, engineering,
| math. compsci is a math degree.
| _wldu wrote:
| Maybe math is a tool/framework used by scientists?
| Physics is another example that is largely math.
| nicky0 wrote:
| Math is both a philosophical enquiry (pure math) and a
| tool (applied math & statistics).
|
| Physics as a science uses math as a modelling and
| analysis tool.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Physics : Engineering :: Computer Science : Software
| Engineering
| mbrudd wrote:
| Pursuing this question is quite the rabbit hole, but
| doing research in mathematics makes me believe that math
| is a science: you have questions, you collect evidence by
| exploring examples (i.e., conducting experiments), and
| you formulate hypotheses as conjectures. If you're lucky,
| your conjectures are correct and you prove them! Proofs
| are even better than the accumulated evidence on which
| theories in other sciences depend, in that proven
| theorems are immune to falsifiability within the
| axiomatic system in use.
| shagie wrote:
| Philosophy of Computer Science [pdf] (
| https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/phics.pdf )
|
| And the HN post about it -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20912718
|
| There more than a few thoughts in there about what computer
| science is and isn't.
| kongolongo wrote:
| I guess not a physical science (although there was some
| crossover last year between some results in quantum
| computing and physics, there's probably lots other examples
| that I'm not familiar with too) [1] but it fits squarely in
| the formal sciences (which includes math, logic, etc). And
| it doesn't concern any particular physical computer, but it
| does have topics on what an idealized/ theoretical computer
| could do haha
|
| [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/landmark-computer-
| science-pro...
| andorov wrote:
| computer science is applied math, and software engineering
| is applied philosophy
| giovannibonetti wrote:
| Following that reasoning, wouldn't any type of
| engineering be applied philosophy?
| dehrmann wrote:
| Hence doctors of philosophy.
| refactor_master wrote:
| If what you're doing isn't research it isn't technically
| philosophy. The more applied a field is, the less
| philosophical it is, because a general "way" of doing
| things has been established. That's why you can have an
| entire undergraduate about "solved problems", and only
| after that do you start advancing the field by tackling
| unsolved problems.
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| What would be a better term for it? Maybe "the mathematics
| of computation"?
| giobox wrote:
| Some UK institutions (including some pretty respected
| ones) adopted the term "School of Informatics" and confer
| Informatics degrees instead of using the term Computer
| Science.
|
| I suspect the university marketing teams will eventually
| change this to Computer Science much like "Natural
| Philosophy" evolved into "Physics" at many places
| though...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics
|
| https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics
| waterfowl wrote:
| KCL was Informatics and it was broadly classed w/
| maths/'natural sciences' when I was there 10 years ago -
| according to a younger colleague they have since
| rebranded to CS.
| onorton wrote:
| In the UK, the A level I took was called "Computing". My
| university called it that as well and treated it as an
| MEng rather than an MSc, but most UK universities still
| call it Computer Science I think.
| qntty wrote:
| My point is that the current system isn't even that great at
| teaching academic CS. Even learning a version of CS which
| doesn't pretend to be SE well requires developing practical
| skills which many students don't have the opportunity to
| acquire until after they graduate. This isn't a flaw that's
| specific to CS, it's true of many disciplines. In fact, in
| some ways CS is less guilty of it than others.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's wild that there are towns in America that will literally pay
| you to move there, while college towns in California like Davis
| and Chico have some of the most dysfunctional housing markets in
| the world.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| Much of the economic wealth of the last 40 years has gone to
| the coastal states, while draining from the middle of the
| country. The loss of manufacturing in the path towards
| financialization of the economy really hollowed out
| opportunities in states like Indiana and West Virginia. (Though
| West Virginia has always kinda been on the shitlist)
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Property owners always want the housing market to suck for
| everyone else, especially in California. Pure selfishness at
| its finest.
| kaltuer wrote:
| Many remote work opportunities have arisen during this time, and
| it allows a lot of companies to become creative and flexible in
| their services. It's a good thing that people are starting to
| become accustomed to this new normal, and I hope many people will
| realize that remote work and modern technology will greatly
| affect the world's workforce.
| spoonjim wrote:
| The "rise of remote work" is a greatly misunderstood phenomenon.
| At the high end, the most talented slice of software engineers
| will be able to define the terms and location of their employment
| to an extent never seen before. On a much larger scale, corporate
| drones like those seen in "The Office" will lose their jobs to
| people in Argentina or the Philippines. We are just not going to
| move to a world where a substantial part of the workforce is
| living in Wyoming with a view is Grand Teton pulling down $600k a
| year.
| Swizec wrote:
| If US developers saw the level of talent interviewing from
| South and Latin America, they would start campaigning against
| remote work immediately.
|
| I'm sure there's selection bias at play, but I did a huge
| interviewing stint recently and US engineers were on average
| bad and entitled, LATAM were amazing and eager. Guess who
| interviews better?
| shagie wrote:
| There are a lot of jobs and companies where they don't want
| to go through the additional effort of hiring an individual
| from another country that has different tax laws, worker
| protection, insurance requirements, infrastructure
| availability... along with the implications of the company
| having a presence in that country.
|
| There are sufficiently many companies in the US that don't
| even like doing this across state lines - much less
| international boundaries.
|
| ---
|
| I won't argue with the "bad and entitled" aspect. I've seen
| that when doing interviews myself. There's a bit of "if
| you've got 1000 applications for three different positions,
| 900 of them are the same across those positions that are
| having difficulty getting hired". From
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/06/finding-great-
| deve...
|
| > Astute readers, I expect, will point out that I'm leaving
| out the largest group yet, the solid, competent people.
| They're on the market more than the great people, but less
| than the incompetent, and all in all they will show up in
| small numbers in your 1000 resume pile, but for the most
| part, almost every hiring manager in Palo Alto right now with
| 1000 resumes on their desk has the same exact set of 970
| resumes from the same minority of 970 incompetent people that
| are applying for every job in Palo Alto, and probably will be
| for life, and only 30 resumes even worth considering, of
| which maybe, rarely, one is a great programmer. OK, maybe not
| even one. And figuring out how to find those needles in a
| haystack, we shall see, is possible but not easy.
|
| There's an entire thread to head off on for the why this is
| the case.
|
| I will claim that for places where the salary isn't tech
| company stratospheric, the average entitlement goes down a
| bit.
| leoc wrote:
| I asssume (I'm very much not an expert) that there have to
| be security considerations too, particularly if you're
| hoping to hire from the sorts of countries where Google or
| Adobe wouldn't consider opening an office and hiring
| developers for in-person work. And in the kind of places
| where Google or SAP or whoever _is_ hiring for local work,
| presumably you 'll have to compete with those locally-based
| opportunities.
| Swizec wrote:
| I believe the typical solution for the paperwork problem is
| hiring people as freelancers/contractors. From the
| company's perspective they're a vendor that sends an
| invoice, from the worker's perspective they're a business
| handling their own taxes and whatnot.
|
| This works extremely well and everyone is happy. Even a low
| US salary is often huge by local standards and more than
| makes up for the overhead of running yourself as a
| business.
|
| Some countries even incentivize this. In Slovenia for
| example (where I started my career with this exact model),
| your effective income tax is 5% if you're a solo business
| making under $100k/year. Typical local engineering salaries
| are $30k by comparison.
| grumple wrote:
| I've heard this before. Recently discussed on HN relating to
| US CS skills vs major nations we outsource to:
| https://www.pnas.org/content/116/14/6732
|
| Outsourcing is not new. Many companies have tried it. Not
| just in CS, but extensively in CS.
|
| Not only are US CS skills higher, but communication is the
| most important skill in the industry. Good communicators add
| more value and do it faster than people with whom you
| struggle to communicate. People that don't understand that
| now will understand it after a few years of working with a
| company in a different time zone without a native grasp on
| English.
|
| Another problem you'll face is that outsourcing means that
| another company (since you usually just contract with a
| foreign company) is gaining expertise in your product,
| domain, and tech stack. That knowledge gained doesn't stick
| with your company. If you're unhappy with that company or
| they fail to perform in the future, you have to train a new
| team from scratch.
|
| A common pattern I've seen is that companies will outsource
| as a fledgling startup then move to insourcing after the MVP
| is up because it's easier to work with an internal, local
| team, and the initial team falls short once you get to the
| hard stuff.
|
| I do suspect there's selection bias. Most US devs are
| employed and well paid already. It's hard to get the good
| ones to apply for new jobs because tech hiring is a pain in
| the ass. Imagine having a full time job, family, life, and
| taking a day off for interviews (while working! what, we're
| supposed to take PTO?), or spending your weekend on a coding
| challenge? Most of the remaining applicants are probably the
| lower end of the talent pool - younger or bad. Your
| individual sample size is also likely too small to make broad
| judgments about entire nations.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There's certainly bias. If for no other reason, because an
| entry level salary on some FAANG is often larger than most
| senior developers can dream on receiving in Latin America.
| MrRiddle wrote:
| Exactly. As a person living in Eastern Europe, I welcome WFH
| movement, it will open up a number of possibilities and level
| up the play field.
| davewritescode wrote:
| The rise of remote work is 100% misunderstood. Good software
| engineers can work anymore but I haven't met many engineers
| that can mentor well remotely.
|
| If you're Netflix or Google and can afford to only hire senior
| engineers it's fine to let everyone work from home. Most
| organizations need to organically level up talent via
| mentorship and in house training.
|
| Basically, work is going to get more flexible but the idea that
| nobody ever needs to interact with humans in real life again is
| insanity. People may spend fewer days in the office but in the
| end, most of us will be back in offices at least a few times a
| week.
| dboreham wrote:
| I don't understand how mentoring via slack and zoom is any
| different than mentoring leaning over tha back of an aeron.
| Actually I do: I think the slack/zoom way is significantly
| better.
| abakker wrote:
| As a consultant, I have to say that this is true of our
| industry as well. Our company has always been full remote due
| to the "on site" nature of our work. Given that, it has
| always been a pain point to spend time mentoring and
| training. many hours of zoom calls for training just doesn't
| foment the kind of quick Q&A than in person does. For us, the
| net effect has been that the people who do well tend to be
| autodidactic to at least some degree.
| okareaman wrote:
| I worked at home for a small startup that was saving money on
| an office. It worked out so well that we kept doing it for
| many years later after we became successful. We would find a
| spot to spend the day together once every two weeks. I
| started as a junior programmer and felt I was mentored
| effectively. One of my favorite programming memories occured
| when my mentor, a senior, introduced me to exceptions, which
| he had implemented in assembly language. I learned a lot from
| him, and never felt that not being in an office everyday, all
| day, with him was a detriment to my learning.
| nine_k wrote:
| FWIW, Google hires a lot of bright graduates straight from
| universities, who cannot yet work as senior engineers, even
| after 2-3 years of being interns before that. Mentoring plays
| a huge part here.
| nucleardog wrote:
| > Basically, work is going to get more flexible but the idea
| that nobody ever needs to interact with humans in real life
| again is insanity.
|
| I still find this assumption baked in to a lot of the
| criticisms of remote work. I'll give the benefit of the doubt
| here that you don't thing remote = never talking to people,
| so the assumption would seem then to be that video
| conferencing and text chat is not "interacting" with people.
|
| It very much is, and a lot of people have made it work in a
| lot of different contexts for a long time. Most of the
| drawbacks that still exist in certain situations are things
| that, given time, we'll solve.
|
| Already in the past year, we've seen at least one report
| showing WFH productivity increasing 46% relative to the
| productivity in offices.[0] I can't think of any reason why
| this trend wouldn't continue--we're still at a stage where
| there's a _lot_ of low hanging fruit.
|
| [0] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28461/w
| 284...
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I haven't met many engineers who can mentor well, period. My
| guess is your perception is biased. I know SDEs who prefer
| conversations remotely. An extreme example would be that
| there's no chance of physical harassment on Zoom. Another
| would be the "raise a hand" button seems to be more
| acceptable to use than actually raising a hand in a meeting,
| with the result that voices are heard that would otherwise
| not be.
|
| And just fundamentally, think of the site you're on. How
| unimaginative. How big is your data set? Why can't your
| sample mentor well remotely? Are there bigger data sets or
| published analyses? What can you do to improve your model?
|
| Or is it just that you prefer to work in an office, or you
| don't trust your employees?
|
| Your argument is the "Think of the children^H^H^H interns"
| argument from the Cathy Merrill's Washingtonian op ed. [1] It
| doesn't hold water with anyone seriously trying to improve
| the productivity and happiness of a diverse workforce
| comprised of people who have different preferences for home
| or office; in person or zoom.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2021/05/07/cathy-
| merril...
| tayo42 wrote:
| No one hires junior engineers anyway, getting that first job
| is miserable. Everyone only wants armies of experienced
| workers.
| mapgrep wrote:
| >I haven't met many engineers that can mentor well remotely
|
| Aren't there engineers who grow and evolve through the sort
| of "mentoring" (ad-hoc or otherwise) they get through remote
| open source contributions? To the extent that a github
| presence is increasingly a prerequisite for certain
| engineering jobs I wonder if this shift isn't already under
| way.
|
| I'm not saying it's a direct or even desirable replacement
| for IRL mentoring, but it does seem like there is at least a
| rough framework in place for helping people grow as engineers
| outside of a workplace. It's a little more self directed and
| rough and tumble, but then work in general seems to be going
| in that direction over the last few decades.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Good mentors are rare, but I don't think being remote is much
| of a hindrance. IME, the world-class tooling for frictionless
| remote pair-programming built into VSCode is actually an
| improvement over peering over someone's shoulder in a shared
| office. And most mentoring is naturally more async than that.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| IDK maybe I've never had good mentors, but I honestly can't
| think of much that I've learned to "level up my talent" from
| the people I work with. I do learn from reading code and from
| books by experts in whatever areas I'm involved in.
|
| Sure I learn where the bathroom is, what the specific local
| dev workflow is, etc. but in terms of fundamentally improving
| my skills as a developer that has always been to a very large
| degree due to my own efforts at seeking out knowledge.
| aeoleonn wrote:
| I agree. I don't know that skill growth can be provided by
| "mentorship". At most, I think mentorship can provide (or
| is perhaps conflated with providing) direction & guidance.
|
| I've never been in the situation where someone can
| magically grow my skills for me, or download information
| into my brain for me.
|
| Sure, there's exposure to ideas regarding programming
| frameworks, ways of doing things, system design ideas to
| receive from colleagues & supervisors. And communication &
| leadership knowledge & experience gained as well.
| samkater wrote:
| > The rise of remote work is 100% misunderstood. Good
| software engineers can work anymore but I haven't met many
| engineers that can mentor well remotely.
|
| Absolutely this. I love working remotely and will probably
| not go back to an office until at least the kids are out of
| school. But both being new and training new people are skills
| that are just _different_ from being in the office.
|
| Open offices were not a good fit for me, but one valuable
| thing from a past job was sitting close to both my manager
| and their manager. That was a way to learn "Oh, that's how
| you talk to <client A, department B, etc>" without having to
| be told "this is how you talk to these people." Training a
| remote new person requires so much more intentionality that
| most people are not accustomed to.
| bsder wrote:
| > Open offices were not a good fit for me
|
| Open offices are not a good fit for _anybody_.
|
| IBM studied this back in the Dinosaur Age. Bell studied
| this back in the Dinosaur Age. Dedicated offices with a
| door are the most productive. Period.
|
| What open offices _are_ is "cheap".
| jmfldn wrote:
| I think it will have an impact but not as much as you're
| implying.
|
| Where companies can offshore, they may already have. If a
| massive saving could have been made offshoring, there was
| nothing to stop them before. Maybe those companies that were
| reluctant because of the worries about remote workforces may be
| influenced by the success of the WFH experiment so I concede
| that point. I think this will have an impact but I predict it
| won't be massive.
|
| The other constraining factor on this is that offshoring often
| doesn't work that well whenever I've seen it applied to
| software at least. Maybe it's just my own experience but in
| certain professions it seems it's good to have a majority of
| the workforce being fluent or near-fluent in the company's main
| language and relatively integrated into the culture. This can
| be achieved with people in different countries but its not just
| a straight forward question of replacing people.
| ska wrote:
| I think it's a mistake to assume that 'offshoring' as
| understood for the last few decades and 'wfh' as currently
| understood are fundamentally the same thing.
|
| I'm not sure what will happen, but it's quite plausible that
| the dynamic has changed.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I think this year has proven that a lot of people simply
| aren't missed when they aren't in the office.
| Tarsul wrote:
| yeah but the real question is how is remote work reshaping
| where people work. And by that I mean on a more granular level:
| How many of those jobs in big cities will go elsewhere and
| where to exactly? And that's why I like the idea of this
| article in that it does make sense that people who study for
| 3-x years in a city and learn to love it want to stay there
| after their studies. Remote work makes this easier. Also, what
| I'm interested in is how much of remote work will be outsourced
| within one country and how much will be outsourced to different
| countries. I suspect that many typical roles that go "100%
| remote ok" will first say "but please in this country" before
| they say "yeah, another country is fine as well" but maybe the
| latter will happen more often soon. There have been studies for
| Europe (from Ernst&Young etc.) that say something along the
| lines of "you have to offshore 50% of your workforce
| [developers] to stay competitive" (well, that is for Germany
| and other high-labor-cost-countries.) although I'm a little
| suspect about these studies but well.. that's what management
| of some international companies is listening to...
| stinkytaco wrote:
| I see a further class divide between people who work from home
| and those that need to work at a place, either blue collar or
| service jobs or white collar jobs that require some public
| interaction (banks, teaching, etc.). This isn't a reason not to
| shift to remote work, it's just a problem we need to be aware
| will occur. Workplaces will divide along "office" and "home"
| lines (they already are, in my observation, with a fair amount
| of resentment tied in on both sides), and service jobs will
| shift to where people are living.
| r00fus wrote:
| > On a much larger scale, corporate drones like those seen in
| "The Office" will lose their jobs to people in Argentina or the
| Philippines.
|
| It's not going to be so dramatic. What will happen for sure is
| that groups will start hiring in lower cost countries and hire
| less in the US. That offshoring trend has been going on for 2
| decades+.
|
| The big issues with offshoring are culture and timezone, and
| the first can be rectified to some measure, but the 2nd can
| only be mitigated (could be a benefit for support centers,
| etc).
|
| That Wyoming posting will be for folks who have decided that
| maybe pulling $2-300k instead of $600k may be an acceptable
| loss for an ongoing lifestyle.
| kbenson wrote:
| > That Wyoming posting will be for folks who have decided
| that maybe pulling $2-300k instead of $600k may be an
| acceptable loss for an ongoing lifestyle.
|
| Which in itself will affect the market and how much those
| positions pay in general. You can't have a large chunk of a
| workforce decide that they're willing to take a 20%-50% pay
| reduction for other benefits and expect it not to affect the
| entire workforce.
|
| I don't think that means people in and around SF will have to
| work at the same pay rate as those working remotely
| necessarily, but I do think it might result in lowering the
| high-end of the scale, and spreading the distribution quite a
| bit.
| ajuc wrote:
| As a developer from a Poland - yes, both on national and
| international level the salaries in IT will equalize. It's
| already happening and it's not a slow process. I'm on the
| growing side so far but it's a matter of time. Already my
| company outsources to Ukraine.
|
| I expect trade unions and calls for mandatory certification in
| next decade.
| kbenson wrote:
| > I expect trade unions and calls for mandatory certification
| in next decade.
|
| That makes sense. Certification, or more specifically
| licensing, is ever the go to tool for people protecting their
| industries from what they see as encroachment by others.
|
| Planet Money had an interesting episode on this long ago,
| which used Hair Salons as an example.[1]
|
| 1: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/524007928
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > On a much larger scale, corporate drones like those seen in
| "The Office" will lose their jobs to people in Argentina or the
| Philippines.
|
| Not really. Too many companies have been _badly_ burned by IT
| outsourcing clusterfucks, additionally as soon as customer data
| is handled stuff like GDPR and whatever the US plans to follow
| suit (and they will have to, in order for a successor to the
| Privacy Shield deal to pass the EU court system) come into play
| which makes outsourcing "drones" ... not really worth the
| time.
| initplus wrote:
| Outsourcing to budget contracting houses in India is a very
| different experience to hiring individual remote employees
| from overseas.
| avz wrote:
| I think the presence of international standards like the one
| potentially being established by GDPR makes outsourcing
| easier, not harder.
|
| It would make little sense for an Argentine developer to
| learn the intricacies of Slovenian data protection
| regulations. It makes a lot more sense for her to learn the
| intricacies of GDPR (and whatever the US comes up with).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Even if there are international treaties (which is not
| going to come soon, given the state of global diplomacy)
| one day, the core principle of GDPR is to minimize data
| holding and transfer.
|
| Saving a couple dollars on wages for corp drones? I highly
| doubt this reason is going to fly well under that
| principle.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I would absolutely apply to a program like this at the right
| university. Most of the amenities of city life (including the
| all-important broadband internet) without all the downsides of
| urban life.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know about these specific programs, but a lot of
| college towns generally are appealing choices. There's some
| level of culture, dining, infrastructure, and other activities
| while often being fairly rural but not too isolated. I'm fine
| with where I live but I would absolutely consider various
| college towns and small cities if I were looking for somewhere
| to move to/retire to.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I've visited places like Missoula, MT; Bloomington, IN;,
| Urbana-Champaign, IL; Flagstaff, AZ; Eugene, OR; Santa
| Barbara, CA; Durham, NC and similar and would consider most
| of them.
| [deleted]
| subpixel wrote:
| I think the interesting question is: will there be college towns
| like we know them in a decade or two?
|
| I'm not thinking of places that are essentially also (or adjacent
| to) large metropolitan areas. Austin and Durham will be fine. I'm
| thinking of towns where the college is basically the number one
| attraction and employer.
|
| And I'd put my money on many of those towns being on the wrong-
| end of the remote learning trend, while only nominally on the
| right-end of the remote working trend.
|
| Fewer people will be attracted to your once-attractive college
| town when the student population shrinks dramatically and the
| businesses they kept alive start to die off (restaurants, movie
| theaters, performance venues, etc.).
| lumost wrote:
| Alternately, many college towns may become more appealing for
| non-college students as demographics shift. Boston proper peaks
| at ~30% of its population being students, the main student
| neighborhoods are infrequently visited by those who aren't
| students.
| subpixel wrote:
| A thriving city that is also home to major universities is
| not a college town.
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| And all towns
| apozem wrote:
| There is a downside to living in college towns. I lived in a
| small Southern college town for three years while my now-wife got
| her second degree.
|
| It's harder to find friends for people who aren't 19. You hang
| out with other graduate students, locals, or university employees
| your age, but the pool tends to be small.
| _wldu wrote:
| They are a lot like beach towns. People come and go and there
| are a few locals who stay forever.
| learn_more wrote:
| And what friends you do make end up leaving.
| slashdot2008 wrote:
| everything in life is temporary. just enjoy the people in the
| place at the time when they are there
| tolbish wrote:
| That's just life in any small town. You would be singing a
| different tune if you had lived in a college town like Boulder
| or Tuscon.
| tkojames wrote:
| Lol Boulder and tuscon are not college towns in my opinion...
| I think of college town as a small town where almost all the
| population is directly related to the campus. I went to UC
| Davis. Davis is a college town. About 65k population and 30k
| of students. It was fun stayed for few years after school but
| then left. As it was not a real town it was some kind of
| bubble from the real world sometimes.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| This poster is being unfairly downvoted. Having a college
| in your city does not make your city a "college town" by
| the colloquial definition most people would use in casual
| conversation. The term is generally reserved for cities
| that only exist outside of the rural land around them
| because of the state university that got placed there.
|
| No one would ever refer to Miami Florida as a college town
| despite there being a major university, USF, there. Same
| with Tampa Florida where UCF is. But Gainesville, where UF
| is, would be a giant watermelon farm if the college wasn't
| there so it's referred to as a college town.
| tkojames wrote:
| This. My rule is if the the college never came would this
| place even exist? I saw someone saying Berkely is college
| town.. I guess people just have wildly different
| definitions of college town.
| duped wrote:
| USF is in Tampa, not Miami. The major Universities in
| Miami are FIU and U of Miami, but the latter is in Coral
| Gables, and is a lot like some other college towns like
| Cambridge, Berkeley, or Evanston.
| tolbish wrote:
| Boulder has a population of 99,000. It is very much a
| college town even if tech has moved there this decade.
| powerlogic31 wrote:
| Can't read anything :(
| babkayaga wrote:
| ... but probably won't
| pfdietz wrote:
| The housing market in Ithaca, NY (where Cornell is) has become
| very tight.
|
| One sad thing about university access these days is that so much
| library content is electronic, and not accessible to the general
| public, even if they walk into a physical library on campus.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >so much library content is electronic, and not accessible to
| the general public
|
| This is an irrationally huge deal to me. There's so much
| material one has student access to at a decent college library.
| I, as 'Joe Public' am locked out of almost all of it and am
| forced to scrounge around on less-than-legal websites for books
| and papers. It's infuriating. Hell, I'd _pay_ to have that
| access, but many universities adamantly refuse to provide it,
| even at cost.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| > Hell, I'd pay to have that access
|
| If it's a public university then your tax dollars already do.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| Most vendors license based on students served, not public
| that pays taxes. If a university is licensing content based
| on the number of students or faculty at the university,
| it's likely that they are not allowed to offer it to tax
| payers. I understand your point is that you _are_ paying,
| but that will not mean you can walk into a university and
| demand access. They would need to renegotiate with the
| vendor.
| mbreese wrote:
| Many public universities allow public access to all
| resources when you are _physically_ at the library. Their
| licenses are broad enough (and expensive enough) to allow
| access to anyone from campus. Also, if you 're on campus,
| it can be difficult to determine who is a student /
| staff, etc...
| charwalker wrote:
| The college library in my hometown had public access via a
| paid card. It was inexpensive and about equal to the cost
| students paid in fees each year or their access. I know a few
| local authors that heavily relied on that library for
| researching their works. I bet many college libraries have
| similar programs or could be motivated by locals to add the
| option.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| University libraries will often have 40x copies of an
| essential textbook, because they know they have 40x students
| taking that course. I guess if you let random people use the
| library that becomes a problem.
| tyingq wrote:
| It's pretty rare, at least for my kids, that a course has
| an actual book you can hold in your hands. They all use a
| DRM scheme and require some Nth edition that's new (and
| probably only has a few minor changes from N-1). Sometimes
| we can find it on Library Genesis, often we can't. There's
| almost never an actual book.
|
| Somebody is rent seeking.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Does this not apply in computer science? Is it something
| you get in fields like law? When I think of the key text
| books in computer science they usually just have two
| editions max and have been set in stone for a couple of
| decades as the basics aren't changing.
| [deleted]
| tyingq wrote:
| Not sure, none of my kids are CS.
| pfdietz wrote:
| That was to inhibit resale of used books.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| That and the tests. Many teachers like the pre canned
| tests these books come with (please finish problems 10-50
| even by the next class). Now it is online run by the
| publisher. Cheating is now even more rampant than it was
| before the code thing with many sites having the answers.
|
| I would wait 1-2 weeks after class started to buy books.
| Especially if the teacher decided you need 6 of them to
| finish the class. It was usually pretty clear which ones
| they were going to use by that point.
| monknomo wrote:
| I think the traditional solution is library memberships
| that don't permit you to checkout the books, but do provide
| you with access to books and resources provided you stay in
| the library. Reading rooms and all that
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| The library of the university to which I went used to have
| one or two books out of X which wouldn't be available for
| check out, only for reading on site.
|
| Sure, if a bunch of random people show up and take them all
| at the same time, which prevents actual students from using
| them, it may be a problem. In practice, I don't remember
| ever having this issue.
|
| Access to the library was free for all, you didn't have to
| be a student or anything.
| Tycho wrote:
| I think they meant electronic sources that you can only
| access if you are a student or faculty member at the
| university.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| That has to do with licensing and copyright. Whether that
| is good or bad is not really for the university to
| decide. They have to adhere to the contract.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Don't pay 'em, join 'em.
|
| I take 1 student a year for practice placements for a month
| and the university gives me full library access.
|
| Work out a sharing system with your colleagues and you could
| get this access for 1 rotation every 5+ years.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I've considered signing up for college classes in
| retirement, not only for library access but also to get
| access to the student health plans, which are remarkably
| cheap compared to ACA plans.
|
| The only question is whether the cost of the college
| courses exceed the benefit of the cheaper health insurance,
| and whether I wish to dedicate the time to take the classes
| kar5pt wrote:
| I my opinion this helps fuel the rise of misinformation. How
| can you expect the average citizen to be informed when
| they're locked out of the most credible information sources?
| The academic publishing system is complicit in the
| disinformation age.
| cle wrote:
| In my observations, unfortunately most of the people
| spreading misinformation are not really interested in "the
| truth", but in re-affirming what they already think is the
| truth. This applies equally to "all sides". This is also
| compounded by a widespread erosion of institutional trust
| (whether justified or not).
|
| So I don't think it would really help much.
| threwaway4392 wrote:
| A friend is a faculty and says the institution online access
| to books and articles often does not work. Login issues, VPN
| issues, cookie issues if you started the VPN after trying to
| access the paywalled paper (might work in incognito mode but
| not in normal windows), and so on. Thankfully sci-hub and
| libgen are easier to get the information quickly.
| mcast wrote:
| I've noticed a trend where university libraries are being more
| closed off to the public and only students with valid IDs for
| safety reasons.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| That's incredibly unfortunate. Is this also true for local
| K-12 students? In high school I lived near universities and
| recall my parents [0] taking me to the library to do
| research/reading on various topics. Including checking out
| books. I never did that as an adult without any kind of
| school affiliation, though. Mostly because until recently I
| didn't live near a university (or near enough for it to make
| sense to drive to).
|
| [0] I didn't have a driver's license, too young at the first
| high school, and insurance was too much for my parents or me
| to afford at the second.
| ghaff wrote:
| At my undergrad school, which was pretty open for physical
| access pre-COVID (who knows what happens now), I'd need to
| pay for a borrowing card to actually check out a book. And
| electronic access seems to have been tightened up. You used
| to be able to access most of their electronic catalog from
| a public terminal on the local network but you couldn't
| seem to do that last time I tried maybe about 18 months
| ago. (It wasn't a big deal so I didn't feel like bothering
| a librarian.)
|
| And some universities will definitely require ID to enter
| the library.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even universities that are pretty open about physical library
| access tend to require credentials for electronic access. The
| one I use sometimes used to be pretty open so long as you were
| physically in a library but last I checked they seemed to have
| clamped down. I could probably get a day pass--I'm an alumnus--
| but it's definitely gotten tighter.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| that sucks, are you unable to create an account as a non-
| student?
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.chronicle.com/articl...
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| I'm super excited about this development. I hope that this is a
| stepping stone to full-blown remote work campuses like I
| commented on last month[0].
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27037859
| d33lio wrote:
| Why would any _adult_ want to live in a loud college town filled
| with children? This is candidly why I decided to take a break
| from Boston. It 's nice once and a while when you go out / do
| anything social to be able to meet people who actually have jobs,
| are your own relative age and aren't well... college students. I
| really enjoyed my time in boston as a college student, but we all
| know one weird friend in their mid to late twenties who still
| thinks it's "cool" to hang out with college kids - that's also
| really freaking weird.
|
| However, I'm also VERY excited to return to a small office / co-
| working space.
| leetcrew wrote:
| a non-trivial number of people in their mid-to-late twenties
| _are_ college students. not everyone starts college immediately
| after highschool or finishes in exactly four years. this is
| pretty common at non-elite schools. if you 're a 25 yo full-
| time college student, who tf else are you going to hang out
| with?
| bigbillheck wrote:
| College towns are good because of the kinds of adults that live
| there, not because of the students.
| zests wrote:
| Did you live on the green line?
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Not only are there students in college towns, but there are a
| large number of highly educated faculty, administrators, and
| support staff in college towns. If you know the right places to
| go, the intellectual and artistic lives of adults in college
| towns can be very high level.
|
| Also, Boston is full of colleges and universities, but has so,
| so, so much more. It's all easily avoided if you care to.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Definitely agreed that it's weird to "go out" (even if you're
| just trying to have a nice beer at a decent brewery) in college
| towns once you're no longer of college age. I once considered
| living in Burlington VT and the college kid scene was enough to
| eliminate it from my list of options entirely.
|
| However, as someone who lives in a top-10 major US city right
| now... college towns _are_ nice. The older I get, the more I
| want to buy a house, have a lawn, a garage, etc... and not only
| is that so expensive in my city that I 'll never be able to
| afford it, I also don't trust my city to, say, prevent homeless
| folks from camping on my front lawn, breaking into my garage,
| stealing my bikes, etc. Or even bother cleaning my street once
| in a while so it isn't covered in garbage. So college towns
| seem like a more and more reasonable balance where I can work
| remotely, actually afford a house (I know they're still
| expensive, but not quite NYC/SF/Austin expensive), go on trips
| without too much traffic, and remain relatively insulated from
| crime. Plus they're walkable, have nice
| restaurants/breweries/bars/etc, and I could even adjunct teach
| as an option in the future.
| jrwoodruff wrote:
| Living in a college-adjacent town (Lansing, next to Michigan
| State University in East Lansing) has been pretty ideal.
| Somehow, students tend to stay in East Lansing for the
| obnoxious benders, but grad students and professors live in
| Lansing and the scene tends to be calmer, with nicer/cooler
| restaurants and bars. I never expected to stay around here
| for an extended time, but I have yet to be bored, and the
| small size means I have a lot of connections in the
| community.
|
| And houses are -cheap-
| ghaff wrote:
| Boston has a lot of students but it's also a major coastal
| city. I probably wouldn't live there--but that would be because
| it's urban (and expensive), not because there are a fair number
| of students there.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| I can't speak to Boston, but in the couple college towns I've
| lived in, it really depends on _where_ you go... there were
| certainly plenty of places where so-called townies frequented
| way more than the students, even in towns were the seasonal
| student population dwarfs the local one.
|
| And before anybody jumps on you, I fully agree with the
| sentiment, college students in party mode can be extremely
| annoying to deal with if you aren't in the same mindset.
|
| 6th Street in Austin is a really good example of this
| phenomenon.
| j1vms wrote:
| Ian Faith: The Boston gig has been cancelled...
|
| David St. Hubbins: What?
|
| Ian: Yeah. I wouldn't worry about it though, it's not a big
| college town.
|
| - This Is Spinal Tap
| ghaff wrote:
| It seems weird to me to call Boston a college "town" but,
| yeah, you probably don't want to buy a place next to a frat.
| In Ithaca, I'm not going to live in Collegetown (where
| there's a lot of student housing and hangouts). But in my
| experience, it's generally pretty easy to get away from
| maximum student disruption.
| StandardFuture wrote:
| Yes, Boston is far too large of a city to be classified as
| a "College Town".
|
| And the GP commenter asked a completely valid question. The
| answer is clearly that _most_ families with remote working
| parents and _most_ mature couples that can remote work are
| not likely to prioritize a college town as a place to enjoy
| their years or raise a family.
|
| Young single people who remote work seem to be the target
| of these efforts. And that is great because there are an
| increasing number of them.
|
| This could help stimulate the socialization and dating
| scene for young single adults as well. Instead of relying
| on moving where the jobs are and doing online dating with
| random strangers.
|
| Time will tell.
| ghaff wrote:
| >not likely to prioritize a college town as a place to
| enjoy their years or raise a family.
|
| Maybe. I'd probably argue that, if you want to live
| in/near a smallish town/city that isn't on the outskirts
| of a large city, you may find ones with colleges often
| better than those without. Leave aside the students,
| there is a significant group of professionals (and alumni
| visiting from time to time) that can make those towns
| more interesting than a random small town out in the
| country someplace.
|
| Of course, tourist towns can have similar although that
| comes with its own set of problems.
| StandardFuture wrote:
| > if you want to live in/near a smallish town/city that
| isn't on the outskirts of a large city, you may find ones
| with colleges often better than those without.
|
| Right the tradeoff is how much value your adult
| personality derives out of the "collegiate" side of the
| town over the "students" side of the town.
| [deleted]
| davewritescode wrote:
| There are plenty of places in Boston to avoid the college
| crowd. For the most part you won't see them in the nicer (i.e.
| more expensive) places.
|
| If you live in South Boston, Mission Hill, Allston or certain
| parts of Cambridge that's all you'll be exposed to. The South
| End, Beacon Hill, and the entire South West sections of Boston
| (JP, Roslindale) are almost completely devoid of any college
| students.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Why would any adult want to live in a loud college town
| filled with children?
|
| Most college students aren't 'children' or 'kids', they're
| adults just like you.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| They are infantilized by the colleges they attend though, to
| the point that they behave like children
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Live in the outskirts? 'College town' doesn't have to mean
| living in a house with 8 other people.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Where you live is only half the problem. The other half is
| that the modern undergrad has, apparently, unlimited free
| time. A consequence is that if I want an ice cream cone in
| Berkeley I have to stand in a line 45 minutes deep. It's
| actually sort of a big issue!
| ipaddr wrote:
| Sounds like a great place to open something
| jeffbee wrote:
| Actually it's a notoriously bad environment for retail
| businesses, with astronomical rents, high labor costs,
| endless red tape, and a thriving industry of extortion
| from "neighborhood benefits organizations" and other
| organized criminals.
| OnlyOneCannolo wrote:
| Because it's still a town? It just happens to also have a
| college in it. The transient population results in more stuff
| (industry, services, transportation, ...) than you'd get
| otherwise, minus the traffic and real estate prices. There are
| still people of all ages just like any town. You have to go out
| of your way to meet students, so just don't do that.
| duped wrote:
| The two big things that keep me from moving out to the country
| are availability of healthcare services and access to major
| airports.
|
| West Lafayette would be out of contention because of the distance
| to Chicago and Indianapolis, for example
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Presumably that means Evanston would be acceptable for you?
|
| My point is that as in everything, there will be winners and
| losers. I don't think people are implying that all college
| towns will do as well as, say, Austin, Boston, or Berkeley.
| Only that places like Ann Arbor, Eugene, Pittsburgh, and
| Madison probably have, at the least, an opportunity to take
| advantage of an obvious trend.
| duped wrote:
| I've lived and worked near Evanston and Berkeley actually. If
| you're within spitting distance there are better places to
| live, to be honest.
|
| My interpretation of this post was that it was trying to draw
| people away from major urban areas. Some of those examples
| you give are either in or on the edges of major cities.
| dehrmann wrote:
| 2.5 hours to a major airport and 1 hour to a medium-sized
| airport really isn't that bad. If you live in a large metro, it
| probably takes 40 minutes to get to the airport because of
| traffic or slow transit.
| duped wrote:
| 2.5 hours to an airport to fly direct or 1 hour to a flight
| with a connection + layover is pretty terrible if you fly
| regularly. If you live in the major metro area you can
| usually find somewhere to live close to the airport.
| klenwell wrote:
| I could only access the first of paragraph of the article, but
| this recalls a line I bookmarked in The Long Haul, the memoir of
| a liberal arts school dropout who ended up as successful trucker
| for high-end moving company criss-crossing America:
|
| _Municipal officials always seem to want auto assembly plants
| and call centers, but a real and lasting economic engine gets
| running when there 's a university in town. As far as I can
| figure, the only places left in America that can be vibrant
| downtowns are college towns and high-end tourist towns. In the
| rest of the country the downtowns were hollowed out when nobody
| was looking._
|
| HN discussion of book:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310849
| justinator wrote:
| Maybe. Living in Boulder, which has both a university and
| tourism, downtown got pretty gutted by COVID, and like probably
| everywhere, small local businesses are being replaced with
| chains (that was already happening). And it was already very
| difficult to live in the same city you work in (or really go to
| school in - people commute just to work on their undergrad), if
| you're in the service industry as you weren't given a living
| wage to do so in a city that's so expensive. That does take us
| to the present day problem of pressure from employers to
| actually do that.
|
| Not to be too finger pointy, but the influx of Googlers and
| similar ilk isn't helping with scarcity of places to live or
| the skyrocketing price of rentals and buying a home. Double so
| that Boulder has a very problematic occupancy limit of three
| unrelated people that may live in a house (even if that house
| has 5 bedrooms).
|
| These problems aren't specific to Boulder, but the Uni and
| tourism aren't shielding it from these problems. It's not
| assembly plants and call centers, but it's Uber driving and
| Amazon Prime delivery.
| treis wrote:
| The cause of dead downtowns is crime and schools. As crime came
| down and schools got better people flocked (and are continuing
| to flock) to cities.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| I wonder what the attraction to attracting call centers is
| caused by. My guess is that it's a low-capital way to bring in
| lots of jobs. However, unless these are totally different call
| centers than the ones in my area, those are pretty much all
| jobs with low pay and high turnover.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I've heard a few reasons for call centers being "desirable".
| Anyone can do the work. It's "real work", not the kind of
| stuff college graduates do. It's not dangerous. It brings in
| money from outside the area.
| conductr wrote:
| Also it's quick. Converting an old factory to cubicles and
| dropping in some phones takes a few weeks.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| I wonder if there are already storys from WFH people who say
| 'they work from home' but in reality they just hire a guy from a
| cheap country.
| bitwize wrote:
| Remote work isn't rising. Soon as COVID blows over everybody will
| be expected to go back to the office. The class with all the
| cards in employment -- the business class -- gets too warm and
| fuzzy from the bustle of a busy office for it to be otherwise.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| > Remote work isn't rising.
|
| It doubled in the ten years prior to the pandemic. I will be
| very surprised if some of the changes since haven't stuck.
| paul_f wrote:
| While college towns mostly fit the bill, what I think people
| really want are vibrant, small to medium sized towns, with a lot
| of money. Places such as Ashville, which is not a college town,
| is equally desirable
| justaguy88 wrote:
| Do you have a list of such places?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I wish "college towns" would die. They're everything that's wrong
| with tourism towns but with a significant portion of the
| population not having the life experience to realize they're
| being taken for a ride whereas at least with tourism everyone's
| on the same page about it.
|
| Edit: Why is this opinion so unacceptable here?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| What do you think's wrong with them?
|
| Many 'college towns' were college towns before they were much
| else.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >What do you think's wrong with them?
|
| A largely transient population creates economic incentives to
| create and perpetuate all sorts of bad and immoral behavior.
|
| And by "bad and immoral" I'm not talking about drinking to
| excess and the bar that doesn't ID, I'm talking about running
| a predatory towing company, being a jerk slumlord landlord
| because your tenants won't be around to take you to court,
| etc. etc. Often times the local governments even try and take
| a cut by engaging in revenue policing (as if they weren't
| already in a better revenue position than the surrounding
| towns). And when you're in an economic environment like that
| the only way to get ahead is to do all the bad things
| everyone else is doing. You can't run an honest business when
| your commercial landlord is setting rates based on the
| profits of all the dishonest businesses.
| vajrabum wrote:
| OK. I got the thing about towing and the city horning in on
| towing revenue, and collegiate slumlords, but I don't see
| how that impacts commercial rents. What dishonest types of
| businesses are you referring to?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >What dishonest types of businesses are you referring to?
|
| Crazy markups at retail, over charging for services,
| exploitative labor practices against a labor pool that is
| mostly ill-informed of their rights. And it all rolls
| around in a giant cycle that nobody can break out of.
| This is basically a 1:1 copypasta from a seasonal tourism
| economy.
|
| The guy who wants to run an honest bookstore on mains
| street can't afford the rent because the rent reflects
| the money you'd make importing overpriced clothes branded
| with the town name. The commercial landlord can't lower
| the rent because the plumber and electrician know there's
| big bucks to be made so they charge accordingly. The guy
| who wants to run a landscaping service has to charge the
| plumber big bucks to grade his yard and work his
| employees to the bone because the tire shop charged him
| $2k to put $500 tires on his skid steer because he's
| being screwed by his landlord who's being screwed by his
| plumber.
|
| And this rat race where everything is inflated wears out
| and runs down the people who want to make an honest
| living (they tend to get out if they can). And eventually
| over time the only people left are the ones who drink the
| kool-aid and the ones who don't see anything wrong with
| this sort of "screw everyone as hard as you can every
| time, you win some you lose some but hopefully you win
| more in the end" behavior that becomes the default in the
| local economy.
|
| I'm sure (just like tourist towns) some college towns are
| better and some are worse depending on how much of the
| local industry money gleaned from the transient
| population represents.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Crazy markups at retail, over charging for services
|
| Students aren't exactly known for having a lot of money.
| What is it that lets you markup in a college town?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| There are enough students who have their parent's money
| and don't think twice about spending it.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| How does what you describe not apply to non-college towns
| as well? There are slumlords in large cities too, that
| corrupt the local politicians too.
| godot wrote:
| Also, anecdotally, I went to UC Davis and have not seen
| any slumlord type of housing in that city. I'm sure there
| are other college towns with slumlords. But they also
| exist in any other city.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| Boiler Up!
| [deleted]
| waynesonfire wrote:
| how is this different from the wework business model?
| goodells wrote:
| This is the situation I'm in now - I attended the University of
| Wisconsin, loved the city enough to stick around Madison, and now
| have a great quality of life working remotely for a company where
| I'm the only employee in this timezone. There are other young
| people around, college sports, educational opportunities at the
| nearby technical college (starting night classes in their
| paramedic program this fall), and decent housing costs. The
| university facilitates a lot of this by opening up the student
| unions to alumni and paying members.
| addicted wrote:
| If we do move to our glorious 100% remote future, then why should
| colleges be any different?
|
| Why should students, who unlike workers don't even earn money,
| spend a significantly higher premium than workers pay to work in
| a big city, for the buildings and other auxiliary stuff that
| colleges have, when they can just take those classes from home
| remotely, and pay a fraction of the costs.
| duxup wrote:
| Or will remote education will empty them ... ?
|
| Of all people I suspect businesses would want their fresh out of
| college students to be more likely to be local and in the office.
|
| And of all people college students are the most ready to move.
|
| More rural areas and housing supplies also aren't necessarily
| readily available / as cheap as you might think.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| I suspect remote education is only enticing to a small
| percentage of students.
| duxup wrote:
| I wonder if remote works shares similar motivations.
| jonfw wrote:
| College's social experience is much more important than
| work's for most folks
| throwaways885 wrote:
| I would not enjoy remote learning for the same reason that
| I don't enjoy remote working. It's not conducive to a good
| learning environment. Because most learning is not about
| the stuff on the whiteboard, but what you learn through
| casual conversation.
|
| Later in my career I suspect I'll feel differently.
| qntty wrote:
| https://archive.is/hTcok
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