I have a job with various moments where I have to wait for stuff to finish. Being bored and not doing anything in parallel, I started randomly thinking about stuff and then decided to write down as I think, and this is what came out, hence the title of the post.
Whenever one chooses where to live, there are many compromises involved. A lucky few may end up in their ideal life/place. Most do not. Almost every aspect of human existence is about compromise. One’s home is no different. Living space, jobs, infrastructure, local laws, proximity to family, climate, culture and so forth.
Due to the covid thingamajig, many a company which had the ability moved to working from home, more or less, at least temporarily. This has led to some of the more optimistic dreamers out 
there to see a world of generalized work from home, where office work is rare, the torment of the daily commute is a distant memory and everyone is happy and productive. This, like most calls of imminent change, is rather naive in my view. More realistically, already existing trends towards increased work from home may somewhat accelerate. The death of the office building in greatly exaggerated. Some claim even the opposite, people will realize they need to work from an office and nothing will change – depends on the home space and how much you like your family.
Off course, even people who want to mostly work from the office may appreciate a day or two from home. And it will depend on the job, the company and the management – some managers will want to keep seeing asses on chairs. This may or may not end up being a fundamental change. The office space real estate biz is huge. Even now in Bucharest more and more office buildings are being built. Some of them may end up with fewer tenants than expected.
Irrespective of how one may think it will go, just the existence of the conversation about it shows there is something there. People flocked to big cities because that is where the jobs were. This led to all things we know and love about big city living. Huge housing costs, noise, dirty air, traffic, congestion, crowds, and long uncomfortable commutes… and so on. It, of course, also lead to high concentrations of bars, restaurants, theaters, museums, galleries and so forth. Many of these things require a critical mass and this may be pretty numerous. Some people flock to the cities for the nightlife, the walkable neighborhoods with hipster restaurants of every imaginable culinary tradition, the museums and art galleries and live music and theater. But these people suffer nonetheless from the overcrowding. And the spread of the commuting radius around cities shows that most people are not there to live in the center of things, because they cannot. Work from home may lead to smaller pressure on city real estate while keeping some critical mass of people, with a much larger and cheaper commuting range, where it is uncomfortable to do it every day, but bearable 2 days a week. And when one can pop over to the city for an event they really want to attend.
I think, myself, 2 days a week in the office is plenty. Enough to socialize with colleagues without commuting every day. Others prefer full time office, others full time home. But this got me thinking. I always considered myself a city person, born and raised in the biggest city in the country. But I also had plenty of country experience, 3-4 months a year when young. I see the value in both. I am not a very social person, so I do not take anywhere near full advantage of what the big city offers as socializing and cultural activities. But, for some reason, I like the things to be here, nearby, just in case. Or maybe I thought I did.
As I got older, I noticed that while I still don’t mind the city itself, I mind the noise and in Bucharest the horrible air quality. And visiting my mom’s house with a garden by the lake, I would like more open space next to my home. So I started thinking, what would my ideal home be? Let’s say Pie get 100 million US moneys, so economics is no constraint. Where would Pie live?
I don’t think a 0 compromise solution exists. I like a nice clean lake and I like mature trees/forests. So an ideal place would basically be near a lake surrounded by forests. A clean lake so, in the warm months, I could just swim in the lake from my property. A lake large and deep enough to swim and mess about in a canoe or a boat. So Pie’s ideal yard would have at least one side to the lake and one side to the forest. The other two sides matter less, but a road nearby would help.
Size wise… I don’t like to do much gardening, so it would mostly be trees and grass that needs no regular mowing. Size is a problem if too much work goes into it, otherwise not so much. But I would like to have at least 20-30 meters to the neighbor on the non-forest/lake side, so I assume a couple of your acres would do, with a house and a bunch of trees.
Ideally this would be reasonably close – under 100 kilometers – to a large city, with restaurants, theaters and an international airport for easy travel. Closer, under 10 kilometers and preferably under 2-3 to be able to easily walk, a smaller town but large enough for essentials, with a good bakery, a good butcher, a nice hipster coffee shop and a bar/bistro/diner/restaurant. Maybe a village with a community of 100 or so families of people who are well employed eventually working remote could support the commercial part, so no need for a town.
Climate wise for me would be rarely to never over 30 C, rarely to never under -10 C. Nighttime lows under 20C in summer. Basically a place where in summer the highs are about 25-30 and lows 15, where I would not need much AC and would be able to sleep with the window open. I cannot do this now because it is too warm and too noisy. But in my ideal place there would be little noise and clean, fresh air. In Europe, climate and location wise, this would be probably in Switzerland, around Geneva/Lausanne. Although culturally I am not sure how I would fit in. In Romania somewhere towards the mountains from Bucharest. I know of no place with both a clean lake and nice forests, but there must be one or two.
In the end, all this is basically an introduction to a glib question round, so I would ask three questions to the audience. Where do you think work from home will be in 10 years? How much of it do you want to do? Finally, what is your absolutely ideal place of residence (and how close are you now to it) ?
Work from home will be dead, as all your jobs will be outsourced.
Ideally I want someplace where other people won’t interfere with my reclusion.
And I don’t need lakefront property. I’d be okay with just trees, but with enough lawn that I can shoot anything that tries to approach the house.
Like city dwellers looking for reparations?…..
You are a bad man!
It’s coming raight at me!
*blam**blam**blam**blam**blam*
You need to practice more or you need a larger caliber rifle.
There’s no such thing as overkill. I don’t care if the first shot reduced the torso to chunky salsa, I’m making sure it ain’t gonna keep moving.
try land mines
I am with you…
I have seen them zombie & vampire movies, and until you blow away the head, fill the mouth with holy wafers, and then burn it all, you are not done…
I’m a fan of Claymores, myself . . .
“Front toward enemy.”
I prefer the original. You get a more visceral experience (literally).
as all your jobs will be outsourced. – given the quality of outsource work I doubt this. My company has offices in India and is not hiring much there
Quality? The indian employees who got my job were less than a quarter as effective in simply processing incoming work and had a far lower problem resolution rate, but they still got the work and I was laid off because they were cheap-cheap. If it looks good on a quarterly report, it’ll get outsourced. When this kills the company the managers will have already gotten their bonuses and jumped ship.
yes it happened and is happening but many companies are wising up that it is not a good idea
I’ll believe it when I see it.
My Swiss masters have reversed outsourcing – quality matters too much. We are “insourcing” lots of functions – even with the understanding that short term costs may rise.
*squints skeptically*
We know the real story! They are pulling back because the Chinese and Indians have commited the one great sin in Switzerland!
You can rape, murder, commit genocide, and even engage in wrong thinking and still work withthe Swiss, but you cannot adulterate Gold!
My spousal unit’s former company’s doing the same thing — many of their customer service functions are moving back from places like the Philippines to mid-sized Canadian cities where the cost of living and wages are lower, but everyone speaka da language and are in similar time zones.
Turns out, that’s important.
Eh, when I was in Big 4 accounting the India outsourcing was in the second or third year of trial. It was not good work, but by the time I left they were pretty competent enough, probably more so than first year accounting grads from the US.
I had to interact with the indian agents in the futile attempt to train them. I swear they found the dumbest people on the subcontinent.
Actually they hire anyone with a modicum of skill and the most rudimentary of English skills, then pass them off as qualified as an expert after a 2 week crash course on computer basics. They charge a shit more than that talent is worth, but still less than what an employer considers the cost of a full time employee (the big selling point is no benefits and the ability to fire at will) and most of these people will be liabilities for whomever brings them in. A few work out, but these will leave immediately for better pastures….
I’ve worked with the whole spectrum of Injuns. The ones here on visas are better than the ones 9½ hours away. Hell, my new/old boss who I’ve worked with for 10 years is one and I have nothing but good things to say about him….
By the time that the asshole manager would be called to account for the massive technical debt his move to outsource causes, he expects to be far away from the position, and if possible, in charge of holding whomever now has to deal with the fucking giant shit sammich he created by outsourcing, so it is no loss for him. He gets to bag a big bonus, a big raise, and even a promotion. The system around him implodes, and someone else is left to deal with the mess. I believe they got this practice from watching how government works.
“Where do you think work from home will be in 10 years?”
I don’t know, but much of the tertiary economy is bloat.
“Finally, what is your absolutely ideal place of residence (and how close are you now to it) ?”
My ideal place of residence would be on wheels, built on a medium truck chassis, so it could carry 100 gallons of water, and won’t fall apart after a few years. I’m not close to it at all because that would cost about twice as much as my home now.
Only 100 gallons? That’s not a whole lot.
That’s 834 lbs. It’s way more than a typical motor home. Some expedition vehicles can carry more.
Get a tanker trailer.
Shitty fuel mileage.
Here you go.
https://mpora.com/outsiders/23-extreme-off-road-camper-vans-that-can-handle-anything-2
The one at the top of the article, looks like it could pave the road with a lot of antifa. Great feature.
“Where do you think work from home will be in 10 years?”
More people will be working from home. They walked right into it. Now they will lie in that bed.
More people working from home really is a good thing, for those who can. Less traffic on the roads for one thing. And as a happy camper work from home person, your smart reply is ‘But we want to save the planet! Why can’t we work from home, we’re killing the planet with all these cars on the road!’. /WIN
Count Potato’s new digs.
https://twitter.com/Super70sSports/status/1306725346385985536
LOLOLOL
that is ancient
this is an older meme but it checks out.
My ideal residence would be a log home in the mountains, one of those ones with a big stone hearth in the living room and big windows looking out on the scenery. Lots of property, no one else within a mile or so.
Working from home is not ideal for me, particularly when the kids are still not going to school. Too many distractions. I miss the quiet of my office, where I can close my door and enjoy the silence.
well look who has a private office….
Open space no kids large apartment living alone… work from home is quiet
I want this one, I love the style and the views.
Desert Home
My wife said too many cacti and there’s not any trees. Just after she’s been complaining here for years, that there are too many trees. Wiminz!
Wouldn’t mind that either. I kind of liked Arizona when I lived there.
I had something like this in mind. Which I could actually afford! Unfortunately, I can’t think of how I might make a living in Buckhannon, WV.
Across from a church and on the corner of Vegan Road?
You should look at SC. I only have a few states on the radar, SC, AZ, maybe FL, or TN. I had settled on SC and you will see a lot of homes like the one in that picture, the log cabin type homes are very popular there near Greenville.
My wife was like ‘I don’t like SC!’. So I started to looking at FL. My wife, ‘gators! No!’. So I started looking at AZ and she’s like ‘No, I want SC, look at this one!’.
My only real gripe with going south from here (VA) is how goddamned hot it is. My tolerance for muggy humidity, never high, gets lower as I get older. I can’t stand walking outside and instantly being drenched with sweat.
Greenville in higher elevation so it will be a little cooler than most of SC. Warmer than Baltimore still, but a little warmer, the winters are milder, summer a little hotter. I’m fine with that. I don’t want cold.
My wife wants seasons, but I’m afraid she’s not getting much of that farther south from here, unless it’s on top of a mountain. North Carolina gets some winter in the higher elevation areas.
My tolerance for cold is getting less as I get older. Now, if it’s less than 40 F, I’m freezing. And I think my wife can handle the heat, since where she grew up the climate is equatorial.
I wouldn’t have to move too far to get to WV. If it was near Haper’s Ferry, I could still drive to the office. I have thought about that too. It’s the only state in this area that is even acceptable, since they ruined VA.
Southern PA would be OK, but the property taxes are insane.
Shepherdstown is an amazingly awesome little hamlet that might be worth considering. Some of the smoothest corn liquor I’ve ever tasted was crafted in a barn thereabouts.
Where do you think work from home will be in 10 years?
I think it will be even more widely accepted
How much of it do you want to do?
I currently have been WFH for the last 5.5 years. My office is 5 hours away by car so I go in once or twice a year if that.
If I lose my present job and still want to work, I’d prefer it to not be at an office.
Finally, what is your absolutely ideal place of residence (and how close are you now to it) ?
I currently live in a small town (because internet outside of town sucks..good internet is necessary for WFH) surrounded by farms. Its pretty close to what I want, but ideally I’d be farther west in the US with greater access to mountains and trails, and camping wherever you feel like plopping down a small camper or tent.
I’ve worked from home since 2002. My office is in Denver, and I haven’t set foot in the place in 5 years. You know how it’s fun to daydream about what you’d get done if you had an extra hour every day? Not commuting is getting that extra hour.
Pie is an appropriator! That beautiful lake picture is Slovenia, not Romania.
the feature picture was not of my choosing. I always forget to add one and assume TPTB add one of their choosing. I don;t even know who edits my posts these days. Probably SP
[insert generic beautiful European landscape]
I’m past the point of concern with future work, remote or otherwise. Now the perfect retirement location, that is another matter.
*Sings off-key*
I gotta get out of this place…
I don’t have any change
I don’t think work from home will ever by 100%, but it will increase a lot. It just saves a ton of money, makes the available talent pool a lot bigger, and productivity is either the same or greater. It’s a lot easier if you don’t have kids, or your kids are in school.
I got a new job in October, 100% work from home and I love it. I don’t miss the office at all. So when the lockdowns hit, and everyone was adjusting to work from home, I was all “meh”.
Mrs. TOK and I have always talked about living in the Caribbean. We both like warm weather and the ocean. We live in Indiana now mostly because both our families live here. But I also love playing hockey, and I wouldn’t get that in the Caribbean. So for now, we live on the edge of suburb and rural, and we do like it here.
I’m fairly happy with the neighborhood I’m in now. Suburban area with neighbors that leave me alone, one gets somewhat rowdy some weekend nights, but not too bad. Easy access to lots of good butchers and bakeries (specializing in eastern European items), about 10 miles outside of Cleveland proper, and very easy access to a large network of parks (two blocks south of me is a feeder into them).
As it currently stands, I’ve got over a dozen breweries under 15 miles from my house with the closest being ~3 miles away.
I love the West Side Market. I had a few to many at Great Lakes once then went across the road to the Market and spent way to much money.
Two of the butchers in my area also have stalls at the West Side Market. West 25th has become a brewery district at this point. Off the top of my head, there’s Hansa, Great Lakes, Nano/Market Garden (same owner), Bad Tom Smith, and Bookhouse. With another half dozen less then a mile from the street itself.
I think WFH will go back to roughly pre-covid levels.
Zero WFH for me.
A castle. Something tasteful, like the Limestone castle. Just one winning powerball ticket away.
Why no buy Count Dracula’s castle?!?
the traffic getting there…
While seclusion is not everyone’s tea bag, I can hear my neighbors’ dogs barking and hear them shooting, that’s enough. Don’t need a big city, the local cafe is fine, my privacy is way more important. It ain’t Wolverton Mountain, Glibs can still get in.
I worked in bigger cities back in the day, couldn’t wait ’til I could get out of town on Friday. The 3 hour drive to and fro was well worth the sanity. I wound down going north, prepared my week heading south.
I can go to almost any museum via the ‘net but that no longer has any attraction.
It’s hard for most Europeans to understand the vastness of the US but also how big some metro areas are.
Even as an American I cannot believe the vastness of Houston, fer gawdsakes.
Well, there wa sa lot of nothing around, so it was easier to build out.
1) those that can work from home, probably will. Unfortunately, my job is too hands on for WFH.
2) want; 100 percent. Can; 0 percent
3) my ideal home is about 3 miles from where I currently live on the Butler chain of lakes. Unfortunately I didn’t become a golf superstar and makes millions of dollars. I love Orlando. All the perks of a metropolis with a quarter of the population. Close to lakes, rivers and beaches, but inland enough to be safe from hurricanes.
Oh come on, you can remotely gas people.
It worked in Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis
a quarter of the population
For now.
IMO:
Work from home in ten years: Assuming that society stays generally the way it is, and absent any major natural catastrophes or wars, etc., I would think it will increase, above the pre-COVID situation. I can see offices going to two- to three-day work weeks, with the remainder spent remotely. I think that extremely remote work may decrease. For instance, people living on the East Coast and working on West Coast will not be as much of a thing, as people will have realized that there truly is a benefit to close collaboration, and, if political trends continue, commercial air travel will likely become quite expensive due to environmental regulations, so they will need to live within a reasonable drive of the office.
Many of us in the manufacturing industries will still be tied to urban or industrial areas, since the work often depends on being present at a physical plant, and those types of jobs require skilled labor and a vibrant labor pool, which is usually concentrated around urban areas.
For me, I am fortunate enough to be able to do a lot of remote work. I already did before COVID, but my remote work was at various company facilities, and has simply moved to the home, with occasional site visits. I’d be happy with this trend continuing, but I do prefer plant work to office work, so I would try to make sure that I was at one facility or another for a few days each week.
My ideal residence? Within a 15 minute drive to an airport or with a private runway, moderate temperatures, within driving distance of good skiing, within a couple hour flight to the beach (quiet, not crowded beaches), sunny skies (mostly), and with enough property and few enough nebby neighbors so that I can set up and use a shooting range at the house.
Good stuff, Pie. I’ve been thinking about many of the same things.
A few years ago I think I had my ideal. I could work from home, but chose not to 95% of the time because the office was only 6 miles from the house. Easy commute.
But things change. The area by the office started seeing enough activity where rents were going up to the point that the company decided to move the office. So now it’s a 13-mile commute. So I work from home more now. As my job has evolved, I have little need to go to the office beyond just getting out of the house. I don’t have the best office setup at home, and as I get older I find I don’t need all the neighborhood amenities. So I’ve been thinking about a more rural area. Mostly for the lower taxes. I’ll probably miss the ability to walk to four grocery stores and have to drive ten minutes to the one grocery, but if I’m retired I’d have the time to drive 30 minutes to other stores when I feel like it. Part of aging, I guess. When I was younger I loved having tons of choices, as I get older I pretty much have settled into what I like and don’t care about trying new things as often.
I hope to be retired in ten years so I don’t care much about how office/WFH plays out. My guess is office rents will eventually come down to where companies find it makes more sense to have people in the office. Perhaps instead of one big office in the metro hub, they’ll have one smaller office in the hub and a couple satellite offices. But it will depend on where populations end up. I think hour-plus commutes are the problem for a lot of people, I know some people that enjoyed a 50-mile commute as long as traffic flowed, but a 60-minute commute where you get aggravated instead of relaxing is what most people want to avoid. WFH has more distractions for me than work at the office and I find that office chit-chat sometimes helps me unexpectedly solve problems (and find others). If the commute wasn’t stressful I’d be OK with living rural now and making a 2-hour commute once a week to work and WFH the other days.
I think work from home will become more common, but it will obviously be very industry-dependent.
My job is mixed. Most of it is individual work that can be done over VPN, and I prefer to that from home. Some of it can technically be done remotely but I have to work with other people so it’s much easier if we’re all in the office. Some of it is impossible to do remotely, so I’ll never be 100% work-from-home. If my company ever gets rid of its taliskmask policy, I’d like to go in once a week (so 75% work-from-home since we’re on a 4/10 schedule).
I’m pretty much in my ideal place of residence right now. I’m in the Atlanta suburbs, my parents, sisters, and grandparents all live 20-45 minutes away, my house has enough room for my wants, I can easily attend Georgia Tech sports, and the entrance to my neighborhood is across the street from a Publix and a Home Depot. The only downside is my husband’s commute (he works on the opposite side of Atlanta), and it looks like his campany will be a lot more flexible towards work-from-home in the future, so even that may not be too bad.
Both times I was in Georgia, I was in a traffic jam.
Once wasn’t even anywhere near Atlanta. The traffic jam started in Tennessee, ran through Georgia, back into Tennesse, and then into Alabama.
The other was merely making the mistake of driving near Atlanta at 5pm.
Sounds about right. At least I don’t have to commute inside the perimeter.
https://youtu.be/1iv2RrbWKv8
The local Census lady found me
“Two people live here”
“This won’t take long, just a few questions”
“I’m very busy, two people live here”
“Thank you”
Same here. Was getting hounded a month ago. Finally they came by while I was outside. I tried to explain that I sent the form in, they claim they didn’t get it. Chicago post office, no surprise there, but I think there were full of shit because I didn’t fill in all the demographic data they don’t need and they wanted to get it. I told them the same – I don’t have time and I have to go but I’m glad to give them the count they need. Never got hassled since.
Nice. If I get that knock on the door I’ll make sure the dogs are right there with me. “Yes, two people, and two very unfriendly dogs”
“Am I supposed to count my orphans?”
I definitely am looking for a WFH gig; Most of what I do can be automated, and my job title implies deliverables, so they’ll know I’m doing my job.
Also, as Florida Man mentioned above, Orlando is a decent metro area – we just like different parts of town. Fortunately, there are plenty of non-murder zones.
BTW, I’m a Reporting Analyst. And I’m more than happy to spend any time I’m not commuting devising new reports, even if that gives them “free” time. If they don’t inflict a commute upon me, I’d be happy to spend that waste time working for them. I don’t mind going in 2x a month or so for meetings, but I don’t see the point in having to attend every day. The reports will be no less accurate if I do them in sweat pants.
Where do you think work from home will be in 10 years?
I think that, for desk jockey jobs, offices will be purpose designed as collaboration spaces. They were heading in that direction before covid, and now there are a ton of people who aren’t gonna complain when corporate real estate gets rid of 3/4 of the office space because they’re not in the office to feel the impact.
There’s always going to be a split. Some jobs require an office. Some people prefer the office. However, there are a lot of people who are just as/more productive and are now cheaper since they’ve started working from home.
How much of it do you want to do?
100%. I want going in to the office to be like visiting a client when I was in a law firm. Rare, purposeful, and short duration. I had lunch with my wife and daughter for the second time this week rather than eating at my desk. That is up from once every other month when I was in the office.
Finally, what is your absolutely ideal place of residence (and how close are you now to it) ?
Lakeside acreage in the hills in a place with 4 actual seasons, enough rain to keep us out of annual drought conditions, and arable land. Close enough to civilization to make a day trip of it. Far enough away that I don’t hear my neighbors disciplining their kids inside their house.
I’m currently in a rental on a tenth of an acre in the suburbs of a city with 2.5 seasons and my “gardening” is done in containers and a hydro grow container. The closest lake is a 20 minute drive.
I worked from home a long time before that was cool. I have also worked in offices and cubes too. I switch back and forth.
My current job is only a mile from my house and it was pretty nice. Then the Vid hit and we are all working from home. The hardest thing about working from home is being diligent enough to not snack constantly (at least for me).
People who have jobs with easily identifiable output will do more and more WFH. For developers it is pretty easy, are they hitting all the deadlines? Other jobs where output is more nebulous, it is harder to justify WFH.
I do think that the pandemic is the end of open office spaces. How many people would be willing to go back to an office if they didn’t have to sit in an open office environment. I hope all the fuckups who pushed that concept lost their jobs during this lockdown and are never rehired to do anything.
So much this. Part of the reason my company moved was because they could get people OUT of the open space clusterfuck. Open office is only done to cut down on rent, but as office rents go down I think open office plans will go away.
fuck open office plans and their designers with a rusty fork. That shit was distracting when I was a SW engineer, and it’s a productivity killer as a lawyer.
I could see how an open office could be beneficial for some fields. My particular field (long-term care pharmacy) has a lot of communication that needs to occur between office staff, so individual offices or WFH would be very clunky to manage. There’s too much back and forth talking and frequent announcements for that.
But yea, previous jobs with open offices have been nightmares. Especially the one where I seemed to have the only job that required actual work, so I was stuck trying to focus on my job while everyone else spent the first two hours eating donuts and chatting.
At my office we have to wear masks unless we’re in a closed room by ourselves. Yesterday I noticed cubicles being rebuilt with doors and ceiling-height walls.
Nice. Employees should definitely leverage this to bring back privacy cubicles.
People are really underselling how how many industries are dramatically affected by work from home, not to mention how badly it cripples the the current regulatory state and the municipal budgets. Neither of these are capable of shifting over night and will predictably crater. This shift was going to happen but it was going to take years before we got to the point we are in now.
I’ve worked from home for 17 years. This is Mr. Mojeaux’s second stint at WFH in 14 years with the same company. He does not like this. I do not like this. Now the kids are SFH (school from home) and we are all cramped here in our basement that is now serving as the office for the entire family. XY shares my office-proper (walls, door) with me. Mr. Mojeaux and XX are in the basement commons area.
With the kids both still at home (XX has determined to be out of here on her 18th birthday), we need a house with room for all of us to work. Preferably this would be 3 bedrooms with a den/family room (besides the living room) OR 4 bedrooms.
Without the kids, my ideal home is an apartment with an extra bedroom I can use as my office and if necessary, one for Mr. Mojeaux. Most of the apartment clubhouses around here have office space too. I can do that, but Mr. Mojeaux can’t (company policy). I have broached the idea of renting office space, but his company says he must work from home. An apartment comes with very little responsibility, and I am so done with the responsibility of home ownership.
Apartments come with people I don’t like. Three flats are fine but government regulations have made them not economically viable to build.
As Pie says, everything comes with a compromise. I would rather not have to a yard to take care of (as with a townhouse or duplex).
I thought most townhomes had their exterior handled by HOA. My MIL’s is that way. She does the flower garden because she wants to, but I don’t think even that is mandatory.
Not really a whole lot of “townhomes” proper, if defined as condo-like. Mostly duplexes and a few triplexes. Most of them are not governed by HOAs. You take care of your part of the lawn. I’m not interested in either mowing, which means storing a lawnmower, or paying someone to do it.
Ah, we don’t have too many duplexes/triplexes in this area. There were some in VA, but even there the main type of townhome was the 5-6 x 1 buildings, usually 3 or 4 stories tall, garage optional.
My ideal was to buy a three flat and use two floors for myself and rent out the other floor. But leftists have ensured small landlords die from unga bunga. There are some condo buildings near me that are converting to apartments because the people who were renting out their units were happy to sell for anything just so they could get out of the small landlord quagmire. One of my friends lives in a six-flat and his landlord hadn’t raised his rent in six years because they were scared shitless they would lose a good tenant and they’d have to rent to an asshole; he basically told them “I am paying you $50 more every month because you can’t survive if I don’t and I don’t want assholes moving in either.”
Yeah but on the plus side, they mostly ignore you and you ignore them. At least that’s how it works here.
That’s how it works at my house too with the wife and I.
My parents started building in a 55+ community and I’m so jealous. The houses are purpose built for couples and everything is included with their monthly fees. Landscaping, pest control, cable, internet, phone, 27,000 community center with heated pool and hot tub, craft rooms, pottery kiln, outdoors theatre, natural gas community, gigabit Ethernet. I could go on for days. Soon as I hit 55 I’m selling my house and never looking back.
Oh WOW that sounds fabulous!
Pottery kiln? *swoon*
That’s quite the set-up. Our 20-door HOA (ten duplexes) has almost nothing owned in common except a perimeter fence, and we group together fees for summer landscaping and winter snow removal duties, plus fence maintenance. We’re literally next door to the Edmonton Country Club, so about half the HOA are members there.
Mind you, our fees are minimal ($160 CDN/month).
my ideal home is an apartment – how very unlibertarian. no shooting range, neighboors [sic] no lake and boat
What you did there amused me.
My daughter and my wife are jammed into our small guest bedroom. We took the bed down and put a cheap computer desk and a folding table in there for an office. The boy and I work at the kitchen table. It is not ideal.
For my field, WFH was already decently prominent. Its just now making its way to all companies rather than just the hipster urban agencies.
Personally, I try to go to the office once-twice a week. The masks ruin it.
Ideal place to live is on 75 acres within 30 minutes of at least one race track. Used to have a goal of moving by family in Montana, but have come to the conclusion that the best way to keep the blue government away is not rural areas but plain ones. The California and New York leftys aren’t fleeing to the center of the country to vote for more shit. For someone who has to make a life over the next 50-60 years, give me farmland in the middle of the country and it might just be ok.
at least one race track – cars, motorcycles, people or horses? maybe whippets? or are you a snail racing man?
If it turns left than yes. Snail cornering speed is key.
the spoiler helps
I’d like to be your neighbor. We can wave at each other on the road once or twice a month.
Or as you pass on another on the track!
I suppose he could try to pass me.
The way my car ran this year I’ll be waving from the infield.
Who’s this crazy guy who waves at me every time I leave the house? Is he stalking me?
Ten years ago I thought I was living the dream. House and acrage in the country with no neighbors. Moderate commute to work (boss doesn’t trust WFH). I have always considered myself a small town kind of guy but lately I have been contemplating moving to a downtown city. The property upkeep is a lot of work which will only get harder as I get older.
I recently convinced my parents to downsize. They were on a 10 acre hobby farm an hour outside Jacksonville. My dad is 70 and was killing him self trying to keep up with the place. Thankfully thy are moving to Lake Nona where The medical city was built and are about 45 minutes from me.
My employer is getting people back into the office now. Next week is my week to go back, then I am home the following week, back in the week of October 5th, and then everyone is back in the following week. I was on an “alternative work schedule” before COVID, but I kinda just did whatever I wanted. Some weeks all 5 days, others WFH on a Friday. With everyone going back in, I was
told to nail down working from home two days a week. I’m not really sure why, but I guess by mid October I will be officially home on Mondays and Fridays.
That said, it’s definitely moving toward work from home. Most of my coworkers are annoyed they are being asked to return, some with good reason because of schools still not open, others because they haven’t been in since March and have still completed all of their work. They got the taste of working from home and they want more of it.
My residence right now is fine, 15 minutes for when I do in the office, rural/suburbanish.
I haven’t the faintest idea if WFH will continue. I’ve been on the hybrid model for more than 20 years now, so this really hasn’t been a change for me. I like some social interaction, but sometimes hanging out with my dog is perfectly fine.
We have had a situation you describe: out of the city, but close enough for visits. But now that the city sucks balls, I don’t really care anymore.
I really want to live in/near the mountains. My work can really be done anywhere with decent internet, but I still need to travel some. So I don’t want to be 5 hours away from the airport.
Also, nothing need be permanent. We may have a shorter stint somewhere more urban before the dream spot. I’ve already got my wife more comfortable with the idea of western SD (which is high on my list).
I’m just really ready for a change.
Fun article, Pie.
So Colorado just less lefty? Does Utah have mountains? Or Idaho? Does Montana have airports? Or Wyoming? The tundra I assume is flatland
Not less. Just different (and my kids are there). Utah has gorgeous mountains. So does Idaho. Montana and Wyoming have airports. And indoor plumbing 🙂
The tundra is where the trees end and the land gets flatter and vegetation changes. Pretty harsh. You can get tundra near the arctic, but also high in the mountains.
Despite my handle, it’s a little too aggressive for me.
I’ve flown to/from three commercial airports in Montana. Only in California I’ve been to more airports.
I think I forgot to add no mosquitoes or similar insects to my ideal place of residence
so, Antarctica?
That leaves out Minnesota
Hopefully I will leave to see the extinction of the mosquitoes in Florida
.
Go mutant Mosquitoes!
Live, not leave
Your first statement is more likely.
NYC says “Hi!”
Was that Pizza Rat waving?
Where do you think work from home will be in 10 years?
More than before, but not as much as some people think.
How much of it do you want to do?
I’d be happy with any amount greater than “zero” – it’s a nice benefit to have, even if I believe that most white-collar jobs are more effectively done in the office. But I don’t mind a commute at all because that is when I (used to) do all my reading and listening to music. We will see what companies decide as they balance the cost of the office versus lost productivity with WFH.
Oh, and it depends on mask policy. I won’t willingly work in the office with a mask on.
Finally, what is your absolutely ideal place of residence (and how close are you now to it)?
I’m reasonably happy where I am – the edges of Metropolis – otherwise I would not have remained for ~20 years. Summers are too hot. The politics and cost of living are obviously not perfect but like you said, trade-offs. But… I am not suited to, or interested in, life anywhere else at this stage. The alternatives that appeal to me are all outside the US.
And… FedEx just dropped off a big care package from my new employer.
…
OMG, where the hell am I going to put two wide-screen monitors?!
If you can’t find the space, I could give them a good home.
I’ve been setting up a little home office in my spare bedroom that used to be for catboxes and junk. Cheapo Home Depot desk went in there – glad to get that thing out of the living room finally. With a little reconstruction effort I suppose I could make this work – I might have to remove the built-in “CD nook” which is fine because who uses CD-ROMs any more.
I keep wanting to refresh my monitor selection, but the cost and effort keeps me going “What I got is good enough”
So it hertz your wallet?
He just likes to screen his expenses
I’ve got a decent enough 27″ 1440p 60Hz monitor that I’d rather not replace, but it’s DVI-D dual link only and newer graphics cards have dropped DVI entirely. I’m sitting on probably the last graphics card with a DVI port I’ll ever be able to find just so that I don’t have to either replace the monitor or spend $100 on the right adapter.
Hardly $100 — This should do it, I think.
I appreciate it but unfortunately the “dual link” part is non-negotiable. This is a cut-rate monitor I got imported from Korea back when the best thing you could get sub-$1000 in the US was 1080p. The controller in the monitor cannot scale the display image at all. If it gets anything other than 1440p @ 60 Hz the screen will be blank. Most monitors can accept a range of input parameters, but not this one. When I bought it they refused to sell it unless they could verify that you had all the right equipment to use it, because apparently lots of people had trouble and complained (probably via chargebacks).
Originally, HDMI was directly compatible with DVI such that a passive adapter like the one you linked would work. But that was DVI single link only, and that is where passive compatibility remains to this day: 1080p @ 60 Hz. There was a plan to expand HDMI to DVI dual-link but it required a different, wider connector with more pins. That never came to pass, primarily because HDMI got widespread adoption and a new form factor wasn’t feasible anymore, but also because the HDMI people were able to achieve better resolutions and refresh rates without needing the extra wires.
So even though HDMI 1.3 and DVI dual link can both achieve 1440p @ 60Hz you cannot passively go from one to the other because they achieve it in different ways: HDMI by increasing the clock speed and DVI dual link by using more wires. That means the only way to bridge them is with an active connector, and that’s where the $100 price point comes in. It is also exceedingly difficult to find the right adapter output because almost all of them are DVI single link only. In fact, I cannot reliably find an HDMI to DVI dual link adapter at all, and can only find DisplayPort to DVI dual link, such as this one for over $100.
I realize this may sound like I’m being exceedingly difficult, but I’ve already tried the passive adapters and know they don’t work. I like the monitor but the hassle is probably not worth it long term.
I’m going to be forced to reorganize the office space if a request from one of the clients I support goes through. I’ll be up to my home computer (I prefer it for e-mail and noting the helpdesk software), my company’s laptop (needed for remote access to systems), and a third machine for a client for more testing.
“How much of it do you want to do?”
100% unless I can somehow get more than that.
Here’s a guy who should have always been working from home.
WFH is likely going to allow me to get more and better talent as I don’t have to only hire those willing to relocate. I’m mixed on the befits in general. Having everyone near each other does lead to more ideas and solutions to problems compared to everyone working in isolation or at home. It does distract sometimes, as you can’t always tune out the people bothering you with chit chat or if there is a daily BS session nearby.
Most wouldn’t bother someone at their home to ask them a unrelated question on a issue they were seeing, but this happens a lot while getting a coffee, waiting for a meeting to start, or just chatting over a cube wall. These interactions can be distracting if they are too frequent, but a lot of ideas and solutions come theses kinds of interactions. Ideally, I would like having everyone with a 1-2 day minimum in the office.
My ideal work would be as Scarlett Johannsen’s personal sex therapist, but since that’s unlikely, I’m pretty content to go on doing what I’m doing.
Can’t you do that from home already?
Define “do.”
VR needs to get better
I don’t mind the idea of bouncing around a little. Hell, ten years from now the survivors might be migrating between walled settlements, tinkering and doing seasonal labor. Who knows?
I don’t think that WFH is going to get any bigger than it is right now. I spend most of my time working on setting up and maintaining WFH infrastructure, and it’s both expensive and a huge pain in the ass. There is no way that any of my clients are not taking productivity hits. I think that working from home will continue to be popular in fields that have no real productivity metrics.
My ideal home would be a small house with a walled garden, a two-car garage, and a large open basement. It would be in a rural neighborhood, but no more than half an hour from a small city. It would be close to a large outdoor shooting range complex, of course. Some nearby hiking trails would be nice.
Internet access is an interesting question. As I get older, crankier, and more introverted, I find myself needing less and less internet access. I don’t use social media, I don’t play online games, I don’t watch television. I stream movies and music from time to time, but could do without most of that, especially given my recent insight of, “If you like it, get the physical media.” I really only need enough bandwidth to access GitHub and AWS, download free ebooks from Amazon, chat on Glibs and a few other limited-interest sites, and watch the occasional YouTube instructional. I could handle all that with a 1.5Mbps G.lite line.
I have always thought it would be cool to live somewhere that a boat would be viable transportation. Not like waterworld or anything, just have a dock behind my house, and use a skiff to go places. Like across a lake to a store. Or down the river to a cafe, that kind of thing. I don’t need to cross an ocean. I would still need land based vehicles most of the time. I grew up at the beach, but we never had boats. Would have been cool to float up to Santa Barbara for a day, or down to Santa Monica.
I worked out of my house for a few years and I cannot pull it off. Maybe if I lived alone. It’s really hard to manage customers, sales and parts acquisition in a residential setting. I have a small machine shop and I used to make a lot of custom motorcycle parts in there. I still mess around a little bit, but nothing serious. Working full time and commuting makes me want to relax after I get home.
Aside: I always thought it would be fun to take a jetski and go from Kansas City to St. Louis on the Missouri River.
Jacksonville is the river city. Lots of river cafes and shopping. Cost of living is low, no income tax.
I see a lot more WFH in 10 years.
I personally can’t wait to get back to the office. I was already working 1 day at home a week, I see us moving to 2 or 3. I’ll stick with 2 if I can.
My ideal home would be somewhere in Big Sur. Hidden from the road but easy walking distance along a creek to a small beach that’s too dangerous for most people to get to. I lived close as a kid (distance-wise, property value-wise I lived in another universe) but over the years I’ve managed to get 2,000 miles away.
Big Sur – you like high taxes as the US goes I see
This is fantasy land, right?
Army saw fit to station me in Monterey for a few years. That stretch from Carmel down through Big Sur (and to a lesser extent, Santa Cruz down into the Salinas Valley) might be the most beautiful place I’ve been in the US.
Where do you think work from home will be in 10 years?
More much widespread than now. There are many roles that cannot be done from home, but much of the work that is done in offices can be done from home. An outdated mindset from companies has prevented these WFH-compliant jobs from transitioning but that mindset is now being shattered by Covid.
The concern about outsourcing is legit but also overblown. I have clients from everywhere across the world, including India. There’s a reason they are not awarding work to competitors in their own countries.
How much of it do you want to do?
I’ve been 100% for years and can’t imagine ever going back to the office. My pay would have to at least be doubled, possibly tripled, to make that worth my while.
Finally, what is your absolutely ideal place of residence (and how close are you now to it) ?
I’m pretty damn close to it now. 30 acres, stocked fish pond, hiking trails filled with deer, bear, and foxes, gun range onsite, and a decent sized home.
Unfortunately, I think we’re going to have to give it up and get the hell out of VA. Fortunately, we can find a similar property in other states. Although, I think there will need to be some compromises with Mrs. SSD. She would like to live closer to a city. Not in a city but closer… maybe 30 min to a Costco instead of 1.5 hours. We’re also going to need a larger house for all of these kids. Looking at Zillow, we’re probably either going to do an updated McMansion closer to a city on less land or recreate our homestead on acreage out in nowhere again with a larger but dated house. Let’s see how things shake out over the next few years…
My ultimate dream would be acreage and a large house on a large lake, river, or the coast. I could spend hours on the beach or fishing off a dock. That’s very out of my price range though, even at remote locations far from cities or towns.
I’m thinking Bermuda
ruba, Jamaica, oh I want to take ya
Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama
Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go, Jamaica
Bermuda is very different from the others in the list.
It’s isolated, it’s non-volcanic. Low crime, excellent seafood.
It’s just really effing expensive.
Racial tensions tend to be high, for British islands. In other words, not Baltimore high, more of a polite racial tension.
Mark Twain sure liked it.
How are the hurricanes?
I like the Florida keys, but I don’t want to have to evacuate for every cat3 and above.
In the event of societal collapse or my winning the lottery, I’m seizing Ft. Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas.
What the hell is wrong with you?
Well, he IS Romanian
Turks.
Not caicos?
Sure, why not?
Tortola’s not bad. Anywhere but the US VI.
The water around Turks and Caicos is just gorgeous.
I haven’t heard a peep about the work-from-home folks in our credit union’s back office coming back to the building, so it wouldn’t really surprise me if it became a permanent arrangement. My job will never be WFH – my duties don’t lend themselves to working remotely, plus my boss discovered he didn’t like trying to work at home, and he wants me at his beck and call.
My dream home would be a house in the woods, in a clearing just big enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about leaves and limbs on the roof. If grass could even grow in that clearing, there’d be no neighbors close enough to see if it got a bit shaggy. I’d like to have water – still or streaming is negotiable, but probably not an ocean – within an easy walk, and I’d like mountains within sight. I’ve always lived in the temperate climate of SW OH or East Central IN, so I probably wouldn’t care for any place much hotter or colder.
There’s been some talk about bringing some of the groups back into the office. Of course, call center employees working from home generally shouldn’t be. At least most of the ones I’m supporting are not the most technical people. It doesn’t help that some of the support groups don’t seem to understand that if one user is having an issue connecting it’s not a problem on the server side… especially if those support people are logged into the same server.
“There’s got to be something wrong with the VoIP system.”
“The one you’re using to call me?”
“I keep getting logged out of the phone system.”
“Are you having any other issues?”
“No. I’m just getting kicked out of Citrix once in a while too.”
In Europe, climate and location wise, this would be probably in Switzerland, around Geneva/Lausanne. Although culturally I am not sure how I would fit in.
With $100,000,000 you would fit right in!
*waggles eyebrows*
Skip Genf – too crowded and full of Frenchies. Try Luzern or near Bern.
Lucerne actually seems to tick the temperature, looking at the climate data
WFH in 10 years: more than there used to be, less than people think, highly variable by industry. And let’s not forget that the majority, probably the vast majority, of jobs cannot conceivably be done from home.
Ideal place to live with $100mm: With that kind of scratch, I’d probably have more than one “home”. I really like Tucson, but I doubt one would be here. Probably one moutain retreat in northern NM somewhere on at least a couple of sections. A beachfront or nearly beachfront house; I would say in the San Diego area, but, you know, CA, so I’m honestly not sure where. The Gulf Coast and the Southern Atlantic coast is just too hot and muggy. It would take some shopping.
The Gulf coast is muggy enough when you’re used to it. When you’re moving from Arizona to the Alabama shore, as I did in 2006…..oof. That was really, really unpleasant.
I didn’t understand what humidity was until I went to Phoenix for a 3 month contract and flew back to Jax. It’s true. Fish don’t know they’re wet.
Tonight is my
cheat daypsychological rebalncing by consumption of C2H5OH and unmetered food. I am sampling Pepper’s 1776 straight rye, and if it is not to my liking have a bottle of Knob Creek to sample as well. The first sip of the 1776 has a bitterness I am not sure about, so the Knob Creek may get opened. Later I will make a hill billy shepherd’s pie (ground beef, Bob Even’s mashed potatoes, canned corn, and cheese. I may withdraw from commenting if my mood does not improve under the treatment, but know that I am thinking of you, and am happy you are out there in the internet. (where you cannot drink all my booze, you reprobates!)“where you cannot drink all my booze, you reprobates!”
…
We can’t?!
*slinks away*
I’d be delighted to pour almost any of you a dram or ten!
almost any of you-
*gingerly extends battered tin cup*
There are no more than 4 or 5 commenters here presently or previously that would be excluded from that offer, and at least one of them was booted. You would be welcome. I won’t name the excluded few because in at least one case it is a personality issue and the person has not done anything that deserves being singled out I just do not care for them.
I am grateful for the snow, -40, mosquitoes and California. The leaves are changing color right now and the weather has cooled off. Those that couldn’t take those things always had CA to go to, I’m grateful for that. The rural areas are still not too crowded but zoning laws keep allowing neighbors to move into my space. Soon will be hunting season, then ice fishing, what’s not to like.
Maybe I could complete the family circuit and move to Italy, to the villages my ancestors abandoned over a century ago. I am eligible for citizenship.
Lawn care is racist.
Cutting down trees for a long house is okay, because that’s not changing nature. ?
What makes the grass grow?
KILL KILL KILL, BLOOD MAKES THE GRASS GROW!
Blood makes the grass grow.
True. And sold as a fertilizer.
“Large lots mean both high prices for housing”
Which must be why every built-up high-density area is super expensive and the suburbs are cheaper.
I grew up in the Rust Belt where the reverse was true so I was unaware of ↑ this phenomenon until I moved away.
Fair point. Urban and suburban (and rural…) costs of living are actually all over the place nationally. There might even be a correlation in the opposite direction of what I said, though if so I’ll bet it’s pretty weak. Where I live, the suburbs are cheaper than the cities, though since I live near Baltimore it’s probably worth noting there is much cheaper housing in parts of the city. But the sticker price is not even half of the monetary cost that you’ll have to fork over to live in those places, and there are non-monetary costs too (such as: truly atrocious schools, high crime rates, de facto segregation, etc.).
They should get off of my lawn. Or become fertilizer.
Look at the data.
A beachfront or nearly beachfront house; I would say in the San Diego area, but, you know, CA, so I’m honestly not sure where. The Gulf Coast and the Southern Atlantic coast is just too hot and muggy. It would take some shopping.
Not South America?
Interesting thought. My trip to Panama years ago was very enjoyable.
Well, I see Minneapolis’ descent into warlordism continues apace.
Ah yes, the old “we will fight police brutality by making sure everyone desperately wants the police to become more brutal”
There’s a comment to the effect that this is all funded by China. Funded? No, or at least not predominantly so. Encouraged as comeuppance for daring to question them on HK, the Uighurs, the Falun Gong, etc.? Definitely.
Prolly referring to this.
A city spokesperson did issue a statement that said, in part, “There is no autonomous zone in the area of 38th and Chicago Avenue, or anywhere else in the City of Minneapolis. Laws and enforcement responsibilities have not changed for any part of the city.”
The statement also said the city is in negotiations with people occupying the zone and is working toward a phased reopening of the area sometime “before winter.”
… wait, what? If you are negotiating with people to get access to an area….that sounds awfully “autonomous” to me.
How is the repsonse to open insurrection not having SWAT storm the barricades? If I barricaded myself in my own damn house and declared myself a ‘sovereign citizen’ they would gas me, then blow me away while I choked. These animals seize both public and private property, that they do not own, and the answer is negotiations? Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.
?♂️
Who’s next? Austin? What is the next most proggie city on the list?
Hasn’t Abbott threatened to assume control of policing Austin, by sending in the state police if I”m not mistaken? I don’t think this kind of shit is going to fly in Texas.
Of course, compared to most of South America, San Diego would probably seem like a rational choice.
I am running out to Happy Hour and I see no PM links, so I will drop this here.
Gauleiter Lamont heckled over Lil Rona Panic.
Pie, I think Lake Como – say, Bellagio – pretty close to checking all of your boxes:
~ 80 km to Milan
Weather is about in your range
Lake is clean and swim-able, plus plenty large for messing about in boats.
Oh, and it’s insanely beautiful.
This is assuming the $100M, right?
We are looking for a second home in that area and the prices are actually pretty reasonable.
I am not on a lake but I am on a bayou. I cant see any of my neighbors houses from mine. I can hear someone from one direction or the other target shooting every day. Daytime. In cities the only gunfire you hear is at night.
My property, except for a small yard for dogs, is wooded with mature timber.
Around here people mind their own business and expect the same from others.
The weather is a bit more extreme temp wise but Louisiana has almost everything you are thinking about Pie. North of me a couple of miles upstream is Iatt lake. It is large and half of it is wooded over with cypress trees. North of the lake is a section of Kisatchie National Forest 15×25 miles with almost no people in it. West of me is Red Dirt National Forest.
Every where around me is crawling with all kinds of wildlife. I regularly see deer in my yard, very occasionally a bear. Red dirt also has Kisatchie Bayou with is clear, clean and very swimmable.
As I mentioned once to Heroic Mulatto The bayou that I have water front on is perhaps the best bird watching location on earth.
We have very low taxes. We have very pretty girls. We have the best food in the world….dont let anyone tell. you differently.
If you win that lottery Pie, we would be glad to have you. Hell, I remember telling you if I won I would pay for you to come over. I haven’t forgotten that.
Oh…the bayou may not be good for swimming but it is excellent fishing.