> I miss offices in reasonable locations. Instead they're all in the same 6-8 cities...
The majority of the US population lives in the same 6-8 metro areas; so it's "reasonable" to put offices in those metro areas. I've worked at places with offices in downtown areas (short public transit ride or walk), in close suburbs (the extent to where public transit goes), and in remote suburbs (that require driving to get there), and the further away from city centers they are, the more brutal going to them is unless you already live in or relocate to the sleepy suburb the office is in (and then you still need to spend a not-insignificant amount of time driving, even for going places that are not your office, because suburbs are not, almost by definition, navigable without a car).
> Please create small satellite offices in reasonable cities instead of mega campuses
Do a lot of large companies have "mega campuses" in city centers? That doesn't make much sense, a campus requires a significant amount of land, land which is not available in city centers. Google's "mega campus" in the Bay Area is in the suburban part of the Bay Area (in as much as the Bay Area is mostly suburban sprawl anyway), and has "satellite offices" in downtown areas because that's where a lot of the employees live. I suppose Salesforce Tower could count as a "campus" if it's heavily populated with Salesforce employees, although I don't think one thinks of Salesforce Tower when the term "campus" comes up. Maybe the handful of buildings around Salesforce Tower that contained Salesforce employees could be considered a campus in aggregate (generally, a single building does not make a "campus").
Going into a small satellite office and interacting with most coworkers remotely is not really much different than working from home and interacting with coworkers remotely. You get the burden of going into an office without any advantages of in-person interaction. However, one of the reasons I miss having a dedicated office is that I have found that having a different place to work than my house does wonders for my general heads-down productivity and work-life balance, but that's independent of the many other advantages and disadvantages of having a communal, shared space where people working on the same thing can congregate.
> The majority of the US population lives in the same 6-8 metro areas;
According to [0] that isn't true. The eight most populous metro areas make up less than a quarter of the population in the U.S. You'd need the 48 most populous metro areas, not the 8 most populous. That means including all the way down to... Salt Lake City, Utah, at just over a million people.
Thank you for pointing out this lack of accuracy and clarity. Majority is hyperbolic, but even a quarter is a big enough chunk that it motivates both employees and employers to locate in and look for each other in those areas. I guess it's less about total population, a statistic that doesn't contain enough detail, and more about population density. SLC has a million people in 110m² at half the density SF at 875k in 49m².
What's "the problem" that you contributed to? That humans are social animals and that as a group they are stronger than the sum of the individuals? I supposed by not starting your own business outside of London to cater to people like you where you came from does contribute to there not being businesses outside of London. But I'm not sure why that matters. You're only beating yourself up for not doing that and for moving to London.
All else being equal, neither the workers nor the employer has the time to wait around existing in a place where they can't get work or find employees, respectively, waiting for the other to arrive. An empty night club is just as much fun as a loner hanging out at the Circle K: no one wants to go to an empty night club, and no one is going to open a night club in a location just because people loiter there. It's about momentum, there's nothing wrong with a positive feedback cycle. The self-reinforcing is the cause of the continued and sustained congregation, because it makes it easier, more flexible, and reduces risk for all parties. Being in metro areas (traditionally) creates significant buffer and reduces risk significantly for both the employee and employer in terms of availability of prospects.
That both sides of a transaction have realized it's efficient to meet at the (defacto) marketplace (metro areas) in order to successfully and easily transact business (being employed/employing people) isn't lamentable self-fulfilling; it's descriptive of the state of how people interact and that the true value of a network is the connections, not the nodes.
The majority of the US population lives in the same 6-8 metro areas; so it's "reasonable" to put offices in those metro areas. I've worked at places with offices in downtown areas (short public transit ride or walk), in close suburbs (the extent to where public transit goes), and in remote suburbs (that require driving to get there), and the further away from city centers they are, the more brutal going to them is unless you already live in or relocate to the sleepy suburb the office is in (and then you still need to spend a not-insignificant amount of time driving, even for going places that are not your office, because suburbs are not, almost by definition, navigable without a car).
> Please create small satellite offices in reasonable cities instead of mega campuses
Do a lot of large companies have "mega campuses" in city centers? That doesn't make much sense, a campus requires a significant amount of land, land which is not available in city centers. Google's "mega campus" in the Bay Area is in the suburban part of the Bay Area (in as much as the Bay Area is mostly suburban sprawl anyway), and has "satellite offices" in downtown areas because that's where a lot of the employees live. I suppose Salesforce Tower could count as a "campus" if it's heavily populated with Salesforce employees, although I don't think one thinks of Salesforce Tower when the term "campus" comes up. Maybe the handful of buildings around Salesforce Tower that contained Salesforce employees could be considered a campus in aggregate (generally, a single building does not make a "campus").
Going into a small satellite office and interacting with most coworkers remotely is not really much different than working from home and interacting with coworkers remotely. You get the burden of going into an office without any advantages of in-person interaction. However, one of the reasons I miss having a dedicated office is that I have found that having a different place to work than my house does wonders for my general heads-down productivity and work-life balance, but that's independent of the many other advantages and disadvantages of having a communal, shared space where people working on the same thing can congregate.