4 points by alcasa 4 hours ago
Given most tech companies don't hire locally and people have to move into often quite HCOL areas for them, why don't large tech companies provide company housing? It could be a quite attractive option, especially for young graduates. Factories with large migrant workforces do it and it seems like large tech campuses could fit quite a bit of housing.
What would the incentive be? I assume that just paying out the price for an apartment as salary would be easier for the employer and preferred by the employee. Also, apartments in HCOL areas are expensive and the company might not need any additional motivator for employees to join anyway.
Barrier 1: If ClickCo provides housing for workers - even just sub-leased apartments - then it takes on both a management burden and considerable legal liability. And every problem, ever, with that housing now has some of ClickCo's name and reputation glued to it.
Barrier 2: That I'm familiar with, tax codes are not friendly to employer-provided housing. ClickCo paying >$X/month to housing Wanda Worker-Bee, when $X/month more pay would let her pick her own as-good housing, is a losing move.
Barrier 3: If you're thinking of ClickCo building housing - talk to an MBA. At scale, housing developments are mammoth capital investments, for something unrelated to ClickCo's business, with (at best) multi-year lead times and very long asset life expectancies.
Barrier 4: If ClickCo wants to scale up, or down, or shift parts of its workforce to or from a location - any housing it has built is immovable, and very slow and difficult to scale.
(In general, "migrant labor housing" implies that the workers are paid very poorly. And willing to live in something more like a refugee camp.)
I think having your home tied to your continued employment might prove troublesome for both sides.