There’s an assumption here that remote work can always replace in person work amongst high paid professionals. This isn’t always true. I’m one of those high paid professionals in Boston biotech, and I’ve been going to work every day during the pandemic, because my work requires a laboratory! I can’t do lab work remotely, and we can’t manufacture and QC a therapeutic remotely, either. So I need to live in commuting range of Boston to do my job.
I would guess that another sector resistant to becoming remote is elite education. And healthcare, of course: you can’t treat patients remotely. These three sectors sort of define Boston.
It’s possible that the folks working in offices that support the functioning of labs, hospitals, and lecture halls could all work remotely, but there’s definitely a core of high paid professionals that will continue to come into Boston and Cambridge every day.
At risk of sounding like the Detroiter that I am: I feel like Matt is really underselling Detroit’s great winter amenities, like being able to cross country ski out of the front door of your house and directly onto the abandoned property around you because the city doesn’t plow side streets. Come join me, we have plenty of houses and space. 😎
As a Bostonian, I think the universities (Harvard and MIT in particular) and to some extent the elite hospital complexes will always serve as in-person bulwarks that won’t meaningfully shift to remote in a similar way to the federal government in DC.
Biotech cannot work 100% remotely. Some managers doing generic management work can (and have, during shutdowns). But most things that are actual biotech are wet-lab work done in the lab in person. So the forces that made car manufacturing agglomerate in Detroit 100 years ago still apply to biotech, making it difficult for Moderna to move to Nowheresvile, TX.
So ... what should we do in Cleveland? Just make it a complete party town? Bars don't ever close? Legalize brothels? When you can work anywhere, why not do it with a hangover in Cleveland!!
I live in Seattle, so maybe I'm biased, but I think you underrate Seattle's amenities. It's one of the only proper cities in the US with easy access to spectacular hiking and camping. That draws in a lot of young people who enjoy the outdoors.
The one thing your analysis leaves out about why people might move post pandemic is for family. I have a good friend who has been trying to move back to Cleveland from the DC burbs to be closer to family (he also really likes Cleveland) but hadn’t been able to find a job there. He finally found one that he started remotely and will then move in the spring, but had been planning to ask his old job to
Let him work remotely permanently if he didn’t. I could see lots of people moving to places that had been losing population for employment reasons to get some of them back as people look to be closer to family. Lots of people aren’t looking for great amenities at all. They’re looking for family help raising kids, or to be near old friends, or a little nostalgia. If the housing costs are cheap, so much the better. Lots of people these days seem to not like much change and this would also be a way to hang onto the past a bit.
I live in Seattle and I think agree that Seattle's status as a Superstar City probably won't stick. Like Matt said in the piece, it really is an outlier among those other cities in terms of its size, and as a transplant here about 7 years ago I've always felt like Seattle lacks a sense of ambition, vision and civic pride that I think other Superstar Cities share. It's a provincial place at its core and Seattle really belongs in the tier of American cities that are healthy, perfectly pleasant, and certainly not declining; but not really going anywhere on the global stage either. Places like Minneapolis, Denver, and our little brother Portland, OR. Whatever category those cities fit into, that to me is what Seattle is.
I also think this is really tragic for Seattle. I'm someone that loves big dynamic places and I admire NYC and LA for their pride and ambition. There are fundamentals in place in Seattle that could set it up to vault ahead of its kissing-cousin cities: A global port; a large research university; an important anchor employer in Boeing that complements the tech sector; a pretty natural setting. I've been really disappointed in the lack of ambitious civic leadership in Seattle that looks to sieze on these fundamentals and do things like celebrate our pace of growth and revise our land use laws to absorb more and more people.
I'm not going anywhere and I do have some hope that Seattle will break out of the prevailing "Make Seattle Great Again" mindset. But that would be a big shift. In the very near term I think we have a super important Mayoral election this year. The candidates so far are all pretty small-ball in my opinion, and I truly hope someone joins the race who is bold and audacious in their vision for the City.
1) It's not clear to me that "liking to visit a place" and "wanting to permanently move there" are strongly correlated, or at least I'd need that demonstrated. I love going skiing for a day or two, but am absolutely not looking to live at the foot of a mountain. People blame "labor market unworkability" for not moving to Maine, but is that just what they SAY, and the reality is it's really nice in the fall when the leaves are changing but cold/boring the rest of the year, but they don't want to bad-mouth the place they're standing in?
2) On Seattle in particular, I think you have to account for climate change. I grew up here, moved to LA for 15 years, and then moved back, and it's very clear that the weather is better than when I was growing up. Go out 10, 20, 30 years and you're looking at an absolutely prime climate for exactly the kind of lifestyle attraction you mention.
As usual, though, high-skill immigration and building more housing would help, whatever the details and gripes are.
I think the overall frame is right but I think there are two missing pieces in the analysis that make it a little bit too harsh on Seattle.
First, lifestyle amenities are much more than just nationally apparent fun things to do. College-educated people want to move to places like Seattle so they can meet similar people to socialize with and date. Yes, the weather is a drag but you have good restaurants, etc. in addition to relatively good schools and public services (sort of like Des Moines). So a more all-encompassing view of lifestyle amenities makes a place like Seattle look a lot better and Miami look worse.
Second, the labor market situation may matter less, but I think people will still want to go to a place that has some pre-existing industry presence for their industry. Pre-pandemic, the top remote working locations are not really places like Miami (which is essentially entirely based on tourism) but were more secondary tech cities like Portland, Denver, Raleigh, etc.. https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/cities-with-the-most-remote-workers
Finally, on the Seattle/Miami point specifically I suppose the point was to be somewhat provocative. But I think it is pretty hard to overstate how strong the draw of Microsoft and Amazon are going to be for the next 10 years. These aren't just two huge companies, they are also the two dominant cloud service providers. Cloud is going to grow and other companies are going to want to co-locate to poach their people and plug in to those networks, unless proximity truly does not matter. By contrast, the only large companies located in Miami are a gas distribution company, Lennar homebuilding, Ryder trucking, and Office Depot. I think that proximity may matter less in the next decade but I'm still betting on Seattle to continue to do great.
Boston/Cambridge should be less affected than most. Biotech labs can't work from home, as we've seen during this year, unless you happen to have a clean room in your house. Many of them have instead gone to 2nd and 3rd shifts to allow for more spacing.
Also on NYC, you appear to believe that NYC = Manhattan, but 82% of people in NYC live other boroughs. I can't imagine the less fashionable parts of Brooklyn and Queens will maintain their allure entirely.
I'm sceptical of companies truly going fully remote. Rather, I suspect they'll reduce their office footprint by having fewer required days in the office per week, but still have periodic "team days" where your in the office with the rest of your team for planning and collaboration, similar to Google's 3/2 workweek plans.
This might make long commute suburbs more appealing, and free up commercial office space for retail and housing in urban cores, but I don't think it will necessarily free work from particular metros.
Are we missing a large piece of the employee picture here? I know a lot of people at my company are very eager to get back to the office and meet in person. Companies may find cost advantages in WFH but if talented employees want to have access to a live workplace, companies who can afford it may have to keep providing urban-centered offices.
Just a tangential thought on remote work ... it's so hard. I have the same conversation with all my peers. We can't wait to get back into the office. In just a work context, it's so challenging to hire, onboard, build trust, track productivity, brainstorm, collaborate, etc. There's no way this is sustainable. We're burning out our middle management layers. They're taxed just keeping track of their teams and their individual goals are falling behind.
As an organization, you need to go all in (e.g., https://basecamp.com/ ... Jason literally wrote the book). Everyone else stuck in these hybrid operating models which just suck.
There’s an assumption here that remote work can always replace in person work amongst high paid professionals. This isn’t always true. I’m one of those high paid professionals in Boston biotech, and I’ve been going to work every day during the pandemic, because my work requires a laboratory! I can’t do lab work remotely, and we can’t manufacture and QC a therapeutic remotely, either. So I need to live in commuting range of Boston to do my job.
I would guess that another sector resistant to becoming remote is elite education. And healthcare, of course: you can’t treat patients remotely. These three sectors sort of define Boston.
It’s possible that the folks working in offices that support the functioning of labs, hospitals, and lecture halls could all work remotely, but there’s definitely a core of high paid professionals that will continue to come into Boston and Cambridge every day.
At risk of sounding like the Detroiter that I am: I feel like Matt is really underselling Detroit’s great winter amenities, like being able to cross country ski out of the front door of your house and directly onto the abandoned property around you because the city doesn’t plow side streets. Come join me, we have plenty of houses and space. 😎
As a Bostonian, I think the universities (Harvard and MIT in particular) and to some extent the elite hospital complexes will always serve as in-person bulwarks that won’t meaningfully shift to remote in a similar way to the federal government in DC.
Biotech cannot work 100% remotely. Some managers doing generic management work can (and have, during shutdowns). But most things that are actual biotech are wet-lab work done in the lab in person. So the forces that made car manufacturing agglomerate in Detroit 100 years ago still apply to biotech, making it difficult for Moderna to move to Nowheresvile, TX.
So ... what should we do in Cleveland? Just make it a complete party town? Bars don't ever close? Legalize brothels? When you can work anywhere, why not do it with a hangover in Cleveland!!
I live in Seattle, so maybe I'm biased, but I think you underrate Seattle's amenities. It's one of the only proper cities in the US with easy access to spectacular hiking and camping. That draws in a lot of young people who enjoy the outdoors.
“Seattle doesn’t even have an NBA team!“
Do you say things like that just to hurt me?
The one thing your analysis leaves out about why people might move post pandemic is for family. I have a good friend who has been trying to move back to Cleveland from the DC burbs to be closer to family (he also really likes Cleveland) but hadn’t been able to find a job there. He finally found one that he started remotely and will then move in the spring, but had been planning to ask his old job to
Let him work remotely permanently if he didn’t. I could see lots of people moving to places that had been losing population for employment reasons to get some of them back as people look to be closer to family. Lots of people aren’t looking for great amenities at all. They’re looking for family help raising kids, or to be near old friends, or a little nostalgia. If the housing costs are cheap, so much the better. Lots of people these days seem to not like much change and this would also be a way to hang onto the past a bit.
I live in Seattle and I think agree that Seattle's status as a Superstar City probably won't stick. Like Matt said in the piece, it really is an outlier among those other cities in terms of its size, and as a transplant here about 7 years ago I've always felt like Seattle lacks a sense of ambition, vision and civic pride that I think other Superstar Cities share. It's a provincial place at its core and Seattle really belongs in the tier of American cities that are healthy, perfectly pleasant, and certainly not declining; but not really going anywhere on the global stage either. Places like Minneapolis, Denver, and our little brother Portland, OR. Whatever category those cities fit into, that to me is what Seattle is.
I also think this is really tragic for Seattle. I'm someone that loves big dynamic places and I admire NYC and LA for their pride and ambition. There are fundamentals in place in Seattle that could set it up to vault ahead of its kissing-cousin cities: A global port; a large research university; an important anchor employer in Boeing that complements the tech sector; a pretty natural setting. I've been really disappointed in the lack of ambitious civic leadership in Seattle that looks to sieze on these fundamentals and do things like celebrate our pace of growth and revise our land use laws to absorb more and more people.
I'm not going anywhere and I do have some hope that Seattle will break out of the prevailing "Make Seattle Great Again" mindset. But that would be a big shift. In the very near term I think we have a super important Mayoral election this year. The candidates so far are all pretty small-ball in my opinion, and I truly hope someone joins the race who is bold and audacious in their vision for the City.
Two gripes with this one:
1) It's not clear to me that "liking to visit a place" and "wanting to permanently move there" are strongly correlated, or at least I'd need that demonstrated. I love going skiing for a day or two, but am absolutely not looking to live at the foot of a mountain. People blame "labor market unworkability" for not moving to Maine, but is that just what they SAY, and the reality is it's really nice in the fall when the leaves are changing but cold/boring the rest of the year, but they don't want to bad-mouth the place they're standing in?
2) On Seattle in particular, I think you have to account for climate change. I grew up here, moved to LA for 15 years, and then moved back, and it's very clear that the weather is better than when I was growing up. Go out 10, 20, 30 years and you're looking at an absolutely prime climate for exactly the kind of lifestyle attraction you mention.
As usual, though, high-skill immigration and building more housing would help, whatever the details and gripes are.
I think the overall frame is right but I think there are two missing pieces in the analysis that make it a little bit too harsh on Seattle.
First, lifestyle amenities are much more than just nationally apparent fun things to do. College-educated people want to move to places like Seattle so they can meet similar people to socialize with and date. Yes, the weather is a drag but you have good restaurants, etc. in addition to relatively good schools and public services (sort of like Des Moines). So a more all-encompassing view of lifestyle amenities makes a place like Seattle look a lot better and Miami look worse.
Second, the labor market situation may matter less, but I think people will still want to go to a place that has some pre-existing industry presence for their industry. Pre-pandemic, the top remote working locations are not really places like Miami (which is essentially entirely based on tourism) but were more secondary tech cities like Portland, Denver, Raleigh, etc.. https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/cities-with-the-most-remote-workers
Finally, on the Seattle/Miami point specifically I suppose the point was to be somewhat provocative. But I think it is pretty hard to overstate how strong the draw of Microsoft and Amazon are going to be for the next 10 years. These aren't just two huge companies, they are also the two dominant cloud service providers. Cloud is going to grow and other companies are going to want to co-locate to poach their people and plug in to those networks, unless proximity truly does not matter. By contrast, the only large companies located in Miami are a gas distribution company, Lennar homebuilding, Ryder trucking, and Office Depot. I think that proximity may matter less in the next decade but I'm still betting on Seattle to continue to do great.
Boston/Cambridge should be less affected than most. Biotech labs can't work from home, as we've seen during this year, unless you happen to have a clean room in your house. Many of them have instead gone to 2nd and 3rd shifts to allow for more spacing.
Also on NYC, you appear to believe that NYC = Manhattan, but 82% of people in NYC live other boroughs. I can't imagine the less fashionable parts of Brooklyn and Queens will maintain their allure entirely.
I'm sceptical of companies truly going fully remote. Rather, I suspect they'll reduce their office footprint by having fewer required days in the office per week, but still have periodic "team days" where your in the office with the rest of your team for planning and collaboration, similar to Google's 3/2 workweek plans.
This might make long commute suburbs more appealing, and free up commercial office space for retail and housing in urban cores, but I don't think it will necessarily free work from particular metros.
You make great points but overlook the key aspect that not even remote work will entice people from Boston to leave Boston.
Are we missing a large piece of the employee picture here? I know a lot of people at my company are very eager to get back to the office and meet in person. Companies may find cost advantages in WFH but if talented employees want to have access to a live workplace, companies who can afford it may have to keep providing urban-centered offices.
Just a tangential thought on remote work ... it's so hard. I have the same conversation with all my peers. We can't wait to get back into the office. In just a work context, it's so challenging to hire, onboard, build trust, track productivity, brainstorm, collaborate, etc. There's no way this is sustainable. We're burning out our middle management layers. They're taxed just keeping track of their teams and their individual goals are falling behind.
As an organization, you need to go all in (e.g., https://basecamp.com/ ... Jason literally wrote the book). Everyone else stuck in these hybrid operating models which just suck.