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Animats·

The article notes that the US overall office vacancy rate is 23%. Seattle is 37%.

Have we reached "peak office" at last?

How many people in offices does society really need, anyway?

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Could be Seattle tax/revenue policy. Bellevue WA, the only nearby comparable but smaller tech hub city, has 25% vacancy and expected to drop below 20% - according to Fable.

A lot if it wants to do interesting things.

Are you saying we need to be in the office and not remote to do interesting things?

Or are you misunderstanding the context and talking about employment or something?

Yes. I think remote works for a lot of people, but at a societal level we need real-time in person collaboration among a large swath of society to accomplish interesting tasks. I say that as someone who works entirely from home and really enjoys it.

I'll only disagree that it's not large swaths. I've never met my coworkers in person and we're doing immensely interesting things, anecdotally. And we're moving so much faster than my last in-person workplace. But my perspective isn't just based on that.

Or maybe "large swaths" is too imprecise to quibble over. Certainly some industries are better in person, but who can say how many? I think my precise point is that I don't think the industries that have gone remote are worse for it and don't need to to back, and many more can afford to go remote.

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