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I think in time this will bite Apple. Case in point is Google v. Amazon v. Microsoft in the Seattle area. Google: buildings in a funky neighborhood with lots o

I think in time this will bite Apple. Case in point is Google v. Amazon v. Microsoft in the Seattle area. Google: buildings in a funky neighborhood with lots of amenities. Amazon: buildings just north of downtown in cool neighborhood. Microsoft: commute to suburban Redmond where things get... blander. I meet lots of go-get-em younger engineers who cross Microsoft off their list of potential employers on the basis of being in Redmond. Microsoft has to bus the hipsters from Capitol Hill. For better or for worse, a more suburban kind of campus will likely scare off younguns in favor of older, more family-oriented, more car-dependent employees.

swartzrock 15y ago
Oh cmon, this is minutes from the rest of the Apple buildings in the area, they aren't moving to a suburban campus, they are consolidating their suburban campuses.
- kabdib 15y ago
  I spent a bunch of time in "outlier" Apple buildings (Bubb 5, and something way out near Moffet Field after the Loma Prieta earthquake took out Apple's main engineering building). While being off campus is good for secrecy, it's terrible if you need to cooperate with other parts of the company. You really need colocation to make things work. I expect two things out of this building: First, it will improve a bunch of Apple's internal processes. Second, they will run out of room sooner than they think, and I'd put money on them not even releasing leases on many outlier buildings.
  - glenra 15y ago
    I worked in the main Apple complex (R&D5 on Infinite Loop) and it seems like they're just doubling down on what worked well before. It was really nice in there to have a little private park interior space to lie on the grass or have parties and it was really practical to be able to park underneath (when there was space) and to be able to subdivide slices (at some level of granularity) to let members of different groups have a floor or a building to themselves. So this will be just like that but on a bigger scale and with more parkland to relax in and on, a more size-appropriate meeting space and not so much located in the middle of a vast sea of parking lot. This will take a long time to build and move into, but once they do, I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually manage to buy out that "missing piece" and incorporate it into the plan. One step at a time...
rhubarbquid 15y ago
Don't forget that Google's headquarters is in a sprawling campus near the suburbs in Mountain View... with a small Microsoft campus near by. Your hypothetical "hipster" choosing between Google, Microsoft, and Apple in the bay area is choosing between bland suburbs and bland suburbs. Google also buses people in from San Francisco... which you have to admit beats the hell out of having them all drive in... or even take up seats on public transit for that matter.
- peatmoss 15y ago
  Bay Area Google sounds a lot like Microsoft in terms of bussing people in from SF. And good point--I guess most of the super big tech players in the valley are located in the bland suburbs.

swartzrock 15y ago

Oh cmon, this is minutes from the rest of the Apple buildings in the area, they aren't moving to a suburban campus, they are consolidating their suburban campuses.

kabdib 15y ago
I spent a bunch of time in "outlier" Apple buildings (Bubb 5, and something way out near Moffet Field after the Loma Prieta earthquake took out Apple's main engineering building). While being off campus is good for secrecy, it's terrible if you need to cooperate with other parts of the company. You really need colocation to make things work. I expect two things out of this building: First, it will improve a bunch of Apple's internal processes. Second, they will run out of room sooner than they think, and I'd put money on them not even releasing leases on many outlier buildings.
- glenra 15y ago
  I worked in the main Apple complex (R&D5 on Infinite Loop) and it seems like they're just doubling down on what worked well before. It was really nice in there to have a little private park interior space to lie on the grass or have parties and it was really practical to be able to park underneath (when there was space) and to be able to subdivide slices (at some level of granularity) to let members of different groups have a floor or a building to themselves. So this will be just like that but on a bigger scale and with more parkland to relax in and on, a more size-appropriate meeting space and not so much located in the middle of a vast sea of parking lot. This will take a long time to build and move into, but once they do, I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually manage to buy out that "missing piece" and incorporate it into the plan. One step at a time...

rhubarbquid 15y ago

Don't forget that Google's headquarters is in a sprawling campus near the suburbs in Mountain View... with a small Microsoft campus near by. Your hypothetical "hipster" choosing between Google, Microsoft, and Apple in the bay area is choosing between bland suburbs and bland suburbs. Google also buses people in from San Francisco... which you have to admit beats the hell out of having them all drive in... or even take up seats on public transit for that matter.

peatmoss 15y ago
Bay Area Google sounds a lot like Microsoft in terms of bussing people in from SF. And good point--I guess most of the super big tech players in the valley are located in the bland suburbs.