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Moving offices is really disruptive to people's lives, and causes a huge amount of turnover in your workforce. A brief excerpt from Peopleware[1]: "The typical

Moving offices is really disruptive to people's lives, and causes a huge amount of turnover in your workforce. A brief excerpt from Peopleware[1]: "The typical person being moved today is part of a two-career family. The other half of that equation is probably not being moved, so the corporate move comes down hard on the couple’s relationship at a very delicate point. It brings intolerable stress to bear on the accommodation they’re both striving to achieve to allow two full-fledged careers. That’s hitting below the belt. Modern couples won’t put up with it and they won’t forgive it. The company move might have been possible in the 1950s and 1960s. Today it is folly." They also cite a case study of a major project at Bell Labs which was moved from New Jersey to Illinois. The authors interviewed the former manager of that project: "I asked him what he saw as his main successes and failures as boss. “Forget the successes,” he said. “The failure was that move. You can’t believe what it cost us in turnover.” He went on to give some figures. The immediately calculable cost of the move was the number of people who quit before relocation day. Expressed as a percentage of those moved, this initial turnover was greater than the French losses in the trenches of World War I." (FWIW, that's just one of many insights from that book - I highly recommend it.) [1] https://amazon.com/dp/B00DY5A8X2/ https://amazon.com/dp/B00DY5A8X2/

Tade0 7y ago
Isn't South San Francisco just 10 miles from San Francisco? For some cities this would equate to moving to another part of the same city.
- myelin 7y ago
  South SF is far less accessible than Stripe's current location in Townsend St (Soma, SF). I'm curious to see how many people leave because of this move. Tech workers in SF tend to live in Soma or the surrounding neighborhoods (FiDi, Mission, Dogpatch), which means for a worker without a car, their commute was previously a short bike, Muni, or Uber Pool, whereas to get to SSF they'll be looking at this (to get to a BART station), a BART ride, and probably a shuttle at the far end, because Oyster Point isn't near transit. I worked for a company that moved its HQ (due to an acquisition) to Brisbane -- slightly closer than South SF -- and ended up buying a car to commute, because the walk + BART + shuttle combination took so long.
  - kelp 7y ago
    This. The major reason why I live in SOMA, and put up with all the significant downsides of that neighborhood, is because it means my commute is very short. It also means I have significant job and networking opportunities within a 30 minute _walk_ from home. When I was last looking for a new role, I didn't even consider anything outside of SF.
    - Tade0 7y ago
      I mulled over this for a while and figured that I should be grateful. This whole situation appears to be lifting IT salaries all over the world. I'm currently in the middle of switching jobs and found that I sneer at positions that pay less than ~$50k (in Poland at that) or don't offer fully remote work. So, I guess, thank you?
      - randycupertino 7y ago
        Polska! I am Polish (3rd gen removed) and was recently in Krakow for a work/fun trip and fantasized about moving there for a year or so and working remote for a while to learn the language and explore the country. Could keep my Bay Area salary as long as kept US hours for conference calls etc. We hire remote IT as well- lmk if you're interested in connecting!
        Tade0 7y ago
        Sure - how can I reach you? If you want to reach me try: hand at wringing.it My GitHub handle is the same as my HN handle.
        Grzegrzolka 7y ago
        Hey! I'm in Krakow, personally I'm React/C# guy, buy have couple Java friends that would love to work fully remotely. Can give you my contact www if ur willing to network
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kerkeslager 7y ago
That's all true, but assumes a quick move. A move strategy could be as simple as, opening up an office in a cheaper location: 1. New teams are created at the new location. 2. New hires on existing teams are placed at the new location, with exceptions if teams have a strong need to be in the same place. 3. Make it clear that you'll help people relocate to the new office if they choose to--some people will take you up on it. Eventually, the original office will shrink and remaining staff can be allowed to work remotely (which should be a big part of a culture anyway, IMO). Turnover is already high at tech companies, but in this case your turnover facilitates the move--as people leave at the old location you replace them at the new one. There will still likely be some turnover caused by even the slow move, but that turnover already exist with any move--even the move to south SF will probably cause some turnover because the location is just less convenient for some people.
- the_watcher 7y ago
  Bay Area companies are actively trying to do this. Stripe's Remote HQ is an example, but so are the emerging second HQs in Seattle. But the fact remains that there is a huge glut of talent in the Bay Area, and if you want to recruit from the FB/Apple/GOOG HQs, you need a strong Bay Area presence.
- alexhutcheson 7y ago
  Any examples of a big company actually doing a gradual move this way? It doesn't seem like it would work. Satellite offices are tough to do right. It's very hard to build trust between individuals at the different offices without regular face-to-face contact. In the absence of this, you end up with negative relationships between teams at different sites: "The team in Springfield doesn't care about quality" vs. "Those Shelbyville engineers are always dragging their feet and never launch anything". Communication bandwidth between sites is also much more limited - you need to minimize how much a team at site A needs to communicate with teams at site B to get their job done. Another issue is how to get the satellite office going from a cold start. Do you re-assign projects that are already being worked on in your existing office? Most of those employees aren't going to move, and they're going to be upset that their project was yanked away from them. You've also set the project up for failure because everyone on the new team has to ramp up on the necessary domain knowledge from scratch. So you think "Ok, I'll leave existing projects at the current office and start new efforts at the new office." Now you have an office exclusively working on things that were deemed to be either too low-value or too risky to work on before - not a recipe for success. Leadership is another major issue. If your senior leadership moves to the new office, they're going to be constantly flying to the larger original office to supervise things there. More realistically, they're going to stay in place, because their time is better spent at the bigger office. This creates problems as leaders move up the ranks at the satellite office, because eventually they hit a point where their career stalls unless they move to the "head office". Teams at the "head office" are at a permanent advantage in project selection, etc. due to proximity to senior leadership. In short, it's not as easy as your list makes it sound, and it's particularly difficult to grow a satellite office to a similar scale as the original office.

Tade0 7y ago

Isn't South San Francisco just 10 miles from San Francisco? For some cities this would equate to moving to another part of the same city.

myelin 7y ago
South SF is far less accessible than Stripe's current location in Townsend St (Soma, SF). I'm curious to see how many people leave because of this move. Tech workers in SF tend to live in Soma or the surrounding neighborhoods (FiDi, Mission, Dogpatch), which means for a worker without a car, their commute was previously a short bike, Muni, or Uber Pool, whereas to get to SSF they'll be looking at this (to get to a BART station), a BART ride, and probably a shuttle at the far end, because Oyster Point isn't near transit. I worked for a company that moved its HQ (due to an acquisition) to Brisbane -- slightly closer than South SF -- and ended up buying a car to commute, because the walk + BART + shuttle combination took so long.
- kelp 7y ago
  This. The major reason why I live in SOMA, and put up with all the significant downsides of that neighborhood, is because it means my commute is very short. It also means I have significant job and networking opportunities within a 30 minute _walk_ from home. When I was last looking for a new role, I didn't even consider anything outside of SF.
  - Tade0 7y ago
    I mulled over this for a while and figured that I should be grateful. This whole situation appears to be lifting IT salaries all over the world. I'm currently in the middle of switching jobs and found that I sneer at positions that pay less than ~$50k (in Poland at that) or don't offer fully remote work. So, I guess, thank you?
    - randycupertino 7y ago
      Polska! I am Polish (3rd gen removed) and was recently in Krakow for a work/fun trip and fantasized about moving there for a year or so and working remote for a while to learn the language and explore the country. Could keep my Bay Area salary as long as kept US hours for conference calls etc. We hire remote IT as well- lmk if you're interested in connecting!
      - Tade0 7y ago
        Sure - how can I reach you? If you want to reach me try: hand at wringing.it My GitHub handle is the same as my HN handle.
      - Grzegrzolka 7y ago
        Hey! I'm in Krakow, personally I'm React/C# guy, buy have couple Java friends that would love to work fully remotely. Can give you my contact www if ur willing to network

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

kerkeslager 7y ago

That's all true, but assumes a quick move. A move strategy could be as simple as, opening up an office in a cheaper location: 1. New teams are created at the new location. 2. New hires on existing teams are placed at the new location, with exceptions if teams have a strong need to be in the same place. 3. Make it clear that you'll help people relocate to the new office if they choose to--some people will take you up on it. Eventually, the original office will shrink and remaining staff can be allowed to work remotely (which should be a big part of a culture anyway, IMO). Turnover is already high at tech companies, but in this case your turnover facilitates the move--as people leave at the old location you replace them at the new one. There will still likely be some turnover caused by even the slow move, but that turnover already exist with any move--even the move to south SF will probably cause some turnover because the location is just less convenient for some people.

the_watcher 7y ago
Bay Area companies are actively trying to do this. Stripe's Remote HQ is an example, but so are the emerging second HQs in Seattle. But the fact remains that there is a huge glut of talent in the Bay Area, and if you want to recruit from the FB/Apple/GOOG HQs, you need a strong Bay Area presence.
alexhutcheson 7y ago
Any examples of a big company actually doing a gradual move this way? It doesn't seem like it would work. Satellite offices are tough to do right. It's very hard to build trust between individuals at the different offices without regular face-to-face contact. In the absence of this, you end up with negative relationships between teams at different sites: "The team in Springfield doesn't care about quality" vs. "Those Shelbyville engineers are always dragging their feet and never launch anything". Communication bandwidth between sites is also much more limited - you need to minimize how much a team at site A needs to communicate with teams at site B to get their job done. Another issue is how to get the satellite office going from a cold start. Do you re-assign projects that are already being worked on in your existing office? Most of those employees aren't going to move, and they're going to be upset that their project was yanked away from them. You've also set the project up for failure because everyone on the new team has to ramp up on the necessary domain knowledge from scratch. So you think "Ok, I'll leave existing projects at the current office and start new efforts at the new office." Now you have an office exclusively working on things that were deemed to be either too low-value or too risky to work on before - not a recipe for success. Leadership is another major issue. If your senior leadership moves to the new office, they're going to be constantly flying to the larger original office to supervise things there. More realistically, they're going to stay in place, because their time is better spent at the bigger office. This creates problems as leaders move up the ranks at the satellite office, because eventually they hit a point where their career stalls unless they move to the "head office". Teams at the "head office" are at a permanent advantage in project selection, etc. due to proximity to senior leadership. In short, it's not as easy as your list makes it sound, and it's particularly difficult to grow a satellite office to a similar scale as the original office.