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Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious amongst urbanite hackers here:

How many would turn down a job at Facebook, Google, Apple or any other company primarily due to their suburban office park nature?

Could you see yourself choosing a poorer quality job from an urban company over a better suburban company?

Right now I'm a 15 minute bike ride away from my downtown employer. It'd be pretty hard to convince me to give that up. I've done a 30 minute bus commute to the suburbs and that wasn't very fun. I can't imagine doing a 1 hour plus commute.

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Urbanite here (Manhattan),

Have turned down offers/interviews at many companies because of non-urban location. FB/GOOG at least have urban offices, Apple does not, as much as I admire their products and would like to work on them.

Even when I lived in SF I'd routinely turn down interviews for peninsula/south bay companies because of the location. Fortunately there is no shortage of good quality jobs in my specialty in both SF proper and NYC, so I don't think I've ever been in the position of choosing a poor job in an urban area vs. a great job in a suburb.

The fact that it's in a suburb is less of a factor than the commute. Even with fancy-schmancy shuttle buses delivering you from the city it's still a giant pain in the ass. Right now my commute is a 15-minute walk where I can pick up coffee along the way, or drop into the gym which is midway between work and home. Spending 1+ hrs cooped up on a bus, even a nice bus, sounds downright nightmarish.

I already work full-time, I want the remainder of my time to be my own to do with as my please, as much as humanly possible, and long commutes are the antithesis of this (and yes, save the "but I'm productive on my laptop on the bus!" or "podcasts! audio books!" arguments, I've heard them all).

Forget the suburbs, people turn down jobs in Jersey City and Brooklyn to stay in Manhattan (avoiding reverse commute).

> "people turn down jobs in Jersey City and Brooklyn to stay in Manhattan (avoiding reverse commute)."

Sometimes, but also sometimes to avoid a double-commute.

I used to work in Brooklyn (Dumbo) while living in Manhattan, the reverse commute was actually really nice. The trains were mostly empty every single day, both going to work and leaving!

But it was also very restrictive in terms of where you can live to get a decent commute - for Dumbo you had to live along the F train, otherwise it's multiple transfers to get where you need to go. Not fun.

Coworkers from Queens had it worst - they had a regular old commute into Manhattan, and then a second commute out of it into Brooklyn.

There is an unfortunately pretty good reason for companies to stay in Manhattan, the transit infrastructure just isn't set up well for anything else.

Your question highlights one thing I've always found bizarre about the tech industry. In most professional industries, having an office in the suburbs is a mark of being second-rate. Can you imagine Goldman or McKinsey trading their midtown Manhattan digs for an office park in New Jersey?

Goldman does have an office in Jersey City, they put "backoffice" functions there and have a water taxi between the two. Anyhow, context is key. I think if I lived on the west coast I'd like an office campus nestled amongst nature with lots of open space between buildings. SF is not a great "big city" compared to NY. In NY I want to be in the urban core. People want the best of wherever they are.

> Goldman does have an office in Jersey City, they put "backoffice" functions there

But they'd never put investment bankers and traders out there. I have always interpreted suburban tech office parks as a hold-over from the days of engineers being considered "back office" cost-center workers, rather than "front office" revenue-generating talent.

I think another factor has been the university-campus or "research lab" type of aesthetic that companies have cultivated for engineering, especially the more prestigious parts of their engineering organization. For example the old Amoco had its clerical, business, and "regular" engineering workers in the Chicago loop [1], but the PhDs in the research division were on a separate campus, with lakes and stuff, out in Naperville [2]. I think things like the Bell Labs [3] and IBM TJ Watson [4] style of "campus" have also influenced companies like Google, who idolize the environment/culture of those research centers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aon_Center_%28Chicago%29

[2] http://grummanbutkus.com/assets/uploads/projects/232/bpamoco...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs_Holmdel_Complex

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson_Research_Cent...

Here's a NYT article about the water taxis.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/nyregion/public-may-use-ne...

I'm kind of the reverse. Went from living in Chicago and commuting within the city out to the Bay Area.

I ended up in Mountain View commuting < 10 min. and 1.2mi away via bike or car which was extremely lucky. Now I moved to Redwood City and I'm 30 min. and ~15.5 miles away, but at least I can take 280.

I definitely hate the longer commute, doubly so because I have to drive and actively focus vs. be on my phone, read a book, etc.

Barring the fact that most of those companies have urban satellite offices, I think I'd probably go to a small suburb with good job opportunities in the surrounding area over a city any day. Every time I drive up to SF, I'm reminded how much of a nightmare city driving/parking are. And I'm also reminded of how insanely safe I feel in the suburbs compared to the city (I'm in one of the nicest parts of RWC so others closer to El Camino/101 might feel differently there).

Mountain View (Googleplex) is pretty much the only large Google office that's suburban. San Francisco, New York, Dublin, London, Zurich, Tokyo, Sydney are all urban. I gather the same is basically true for Facebook as well.

I'm a 5 minute bike ride away from Facebook. Gotta choose your suburbs wisely!

It is my number one concern. If I have to drive a car, or commute for more than 45min, the answer is no. I wish recruiters could get this through their thick skulls.

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