That’s because you’re old enough and have enough work experience to have a life outside the office. They’re counting on Millenials and younger to be willing to settle for living in Nowheresville to have any paycheque with no work-life balance. However, pulling back on remote work entirely doesn’t exactly make them look like an exciting 21st century technology company for the tech savvy kids. At this point they might as well bring back the old suit-and-tie dress code.
This also brings up the issue of zoning. If a company is building a new campus or taking space in a new office park, local regulations usually make it very difficult to build residential nearby. The New Urbanist movement is trying to change this, and I suppose zoning might be looser in a more remote or rural area (then again, it might not in more hidebound places).
Except perhaps sell it to residential real estate developers who are looking to extract a healthy profit out of the well-paid (or 50% of SF but still relatively well-paid) new tech workers flocking to the area.
The better bet for revitalising these towns is small manufacturing and agricultural startups employing blue-collar workers who’ll earn more than they would at a part-time retail or service industry job but aren’t expecting anything close to a techie’s salary (which helps pay off those college loans).
Dallas was a cow town in the 19th century. It’s had more than a century to develop into an industry support hub for the regional boomtowns that surrounded it, many of which went bust. Meanwhile, all the law firms and accountants and retail outlets that serviced all those long-gone or long-acquired oil companies still survive. Your best chance for becoming rich in a gold rush is not by being a prospector but by selling goods and services to the prospectors.
The Dakotas are all-boomtown at this point (the hubs, meanwhile, remain in places like Dallas). They could easily end up going bust like the tar sands in Alberta have (for the moment). Boom-and-bust resource extraction economies are not what people should be using as models for sustainable rural revitalisation (but either way, don’t forget to hand out the tax breaks).
And speaking of the Dakotas with all that cheap land and high salaries…
What Life Is Like In Williston, The North Dakota Oil Boomtown Where Tiny Apartments Top $2,000 A Month (article from 2014)
Ten years ago Williston, North Dakota was a quiet agricultural town with a population of around 12,000.
Now, oil prices and drilling advancements have turned Williston into one of America’s biggest oil boomtowns, pushing its population to over 30,000.
The influx of workers has caused apartment rents to skyrocket. According to Apartment Guide, it’s now the most expensive place in America to rent an entry-level apartment, with 700-square-foot, one-bedroom, one-bath apartments topping $2,000 a month. That’s more than a similar apartment would go for in New York or San Francisco
Simply put, there aren’t enough apartments to meet demand from workers arriving in town, many of whom are lured by six-figure salaries.
