5 ms·

I don't get why Google and others are not going out of the valley to nearby cities like Sacramento? The difference in property acquisition is probably pocket ch

I don't get why Google and others are not going out of the valley to nearby cities like Sacramento? The difference in property acquisition is probably pocket change to the company, but I reckon the quality of life to the Googlers, Facebookers etc would be vastly different.

raverbashing 11y ago
This You can have shuttle buses between campuses from when you really need to be in one place, for example
- robk 11y ago
  Or like Intel a corporate jet to go between Folsom and Santa Clara. Works really well actually.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- st3v3r 11y ago
  What about for taking advantage of the perks of being on the main campus, though?
  - yitchelle 11y ago
    Does those perks add to your quality of life? For me, I would put perks lower than having a lower cost of living, less commute time, less stressful lifestyle. Horses for courses maybe.
  - raverbashing 11y ago
    Only if they save me more time and make me worry less than staying closer to home Most perks are only for show anyway. I'd rather not have a dog than bring it to work, or just have time to play with it by commuting a shorter distance
mtbcoder 11y ago
Why stop there though? Why not open up shop near a university town with a low cost of living? Steady supply of interns, new hires, R&D partnerships, etc. Culture in a university town, while not on par with a major city, is generally quite well too.
- ethagknight 11y ago
  As a real estate developer, I would love to see some more discussion on this thread. What would it take to get a major tech company to relocate an office or two from Bay Area to much cheaper regions. Obvious items would be network effects, primarily access to skilled labor and capital. What else? Cheap, frequent flights to the mothership? Has Google fiber and the likes had any real impact on luring tech workers out? If anyone knows of existing discussion or papers on the topic, id love to read it. I'm in Memphis TN, and cities in the area have low cost of living, some dense urban areas, etc. Oh, and 30-40 story class A office towers that are partially filled.
  - Johnnybe 11y ago
    Google already has offices all around the world. They are already doing this.
    - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
      But aren't a lot of those offices either 1. much smaller than MV or 2. not engineering offices?
  - tallanvor 11y ago
    People have to want to live there, otherwise you're very limited in your recruiting pool to people either already in that region, or possibly people from that region. As an example, I work in Oslo, and we have offices in Trondheim and Tromso as well due to the universities in those cities. Recruiting people to work in Oslo is quite easy, but almost nobody is willing to move to Trondheim or Tromso unless they were looking to move back there anyway.
  - 11y ago
financedfuture 11y ago
In 2014, Google's Total Operating Expense was 49.5B. I'm not convinced going out of the Valley would be vital for them. https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG&fstype=ii https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG&fstype=ii
drewg123 11y ago
I agree. I'm an Xoogler, and before I quit last summer, our group had been slated to move from the main Mountain View campus to the new "Tech Corners" campus in Sunnyvale[1]. Before Google, I'd worked remote for 15 years, and am working remote again now. About the only thing that made working in the open-office environment tolerable was the feeling of being in the main campus where things were happening. Collaborating with other groups was a 5-10 minute walk or bike ride, rather than a hangout. I went nearly every week to TGIF in Charlies, and I went to a lot of the author talks, and to one off events (like internal job fairs, the MK fair before they got rid of it, GoogleWeen, etc), and use the urgent care clinic. Not to mention that we had zillions of cafes and food trucks to choose from, multiple gyms, multiple TechStops, etc. Once you're all the way in Sunnyvale, in-person meetings become much more difficult, and the amenities like I mentioned above drop away. At that point, you might as well be in some lower-cost area with cheaper housing and a better commute. Or working remotely :) [1]The new building was a new-style REWS abomination with impressive public spaces to walk through on the way to totally open offices with no cube walls (as opposed to the 4' walls around the 12 person cubes in the building I was in). So there was a lot of resistance in my group..
kyrra 11y ago
The opinions stated here are my own, not necessarily those of Google. Google has offices all over the country, everyone just focuses on MTV as it's the biggest. In the US there are already large offices in Seattle, NYC, and Chicago. They are also expanding in other cities. Boulder CO is building a new building that can house up to 1500 people. In Austin, TX they are leasing 200,000sqft of office space downtown. There are definite advantages to having all your people on the same project be in the same area. Remote offices are nice and all to attract talent that doesn't want to be in the Bay area, but there are downsides about distributed teams.
st3v3r 11y ago
How many of their employees would like to move to Sacramento? While I'm sure the number is not zero, I doubt it's big enough to warrant doing such a thing.

raverbashing 11y ago

This You can have shuttle buses between campuses from when you really need to be in one place, for example

robk 11y ago
Or like Intel a corporate jet to go between Folsom and Santa Clara. Works really well actually.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
st3v3r 11y ago
What about for taking advantage of the perks of being on the main campus, though?
- yitchelle 11y ago
  Does those perks add to your quality of life? For me, I would put perks lower than having a lower cost of living, less commute time, less stressful lifestyle. Horses for courses maybe.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  Only if they save me more time and make me worry less than staying closer to home Most perks are only for show anyway. I'd rather not have a dog than bring it to work, or just have time to play with it by commuting a shorter distance

mtbcoder 11y ago

Why stop there though? Why not open up shop near a university town with a low cost of living? Steady supply of interns, new hires, R&D partnerships, etc. Culture in a university town, while not on par with a major city, is generally quite well too.

ethagknight 11y ago
As a real estate developer, I would love to see some more discussion on this thread. What would it take to get a major tech company to relocate an office or two from Bay Area to much cheaper regions. Obvious items would be network effects, primarily access to skilled labor and capital. What else? Cheap, frequent flights to the mothership? Has Google fiber and the likes had any real impact on luring tech workers out? If anyone knows of existing discussion or papers on the topic, id love to read it. I'm in Memphis TN, and cities in the area have low cost of living, some dense urban areas, etc. Oh, and 30-40 story class A office towers that are partially filled.
- Johnnybe 11y ago
  Google already has offices all around the world. They are already doing this.
  - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
    But aren't a lot of those offices either 1. much smaller than MV or 2. not engineering offices?
- tallanvor 11y ago
  People have to want to live there, otherwise you're very limited in your recruiting pool to people either already in that region, or possibly people from that region. As an example, I work in Oslo, and we have offices in Trondheim and Tromso as well due to the universities in those cities. Recruiting people to work in Oslo is quite easy, but almost nobody is willing to move to Trondheim or Tromso unless they were looking to move back there anyway.
- 11y ago

financedfuture 11y ago

In 2014, Google's Total Operating Expense was 49.5B. I'm not convinced going out of the Valley would be vital for them. https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG&fstype=ii https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG&fstype=ii

drewg123 11y ago

I agree. I'm an Xoogler, and before I quit last summer, our group had been slated to move from the main Mountain View campus to the new "Tech Corners" campus in Sunnyvale[1]. Before Google, I'd worked remote for 15 years, and am working remote again now. About the only thing that made working in the open-office environment tolerable was the feeling of being in the main campus where things were happening. Collaborating with other groups was a 5-10 minute walk or bike ride, rather than a hangout. I went nearly every week to TGIF in Charlies, and I went to a lot of the author talks, and to one off events (like internal job fairs, the MK fair before they got rid of it, GoogleWeen, etc), and use the urgent care clinic. Not to mention that we had zillions of cafes and food trucks to choose from, multiple gyms, multiple TechStops, etc. Once you're all the way in Sunnyvale, in-person meetings become much more difficult, and the amenities like I mentioned above drop away. At that point, you might as well be in some lower-cost area with cheaper housing and a better commute. Or working remotely :) [1]The new building was a new-style REWS abomination with impressive public spaces to walk through on the way to totally open offices with no cube walls (as opposed to the 4' walls around the 12 person cubes in the building I was in). So there was a lot of resistance in my group..

kyrra 11y ago

The opinions stated here are my own, not necessarily those of Google. Google has offices all over the country, everyone just focuses on MTV as it's the biggest. In the US there are already large offices in Seattle, NYC, and Chicago. They are also expanding in other cities. Boulder CO is building a new building that can house up to 1500 people. In Austin, TX they are leasing 200,000sqft of office space downtown. There are definite advantages to having all your people on the same project be in the same area. Remote offices are nice and all to attract talent that doesn't want to be in the Bay area, but there are downsides about distributed teams.

st3v3r 11y ago

How many of their employees would like to move to Sacramento? While I'm sure the number is not zero, I doubt it's big enough to warrant doing such a thing.