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Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay
- timetraveller26 2y ago[flagged]
- monksy 2y agoEmployees will reportedly be transferred to offices in San Jose, and/or to a new engineering-focused office in Palo Alto that will be shared with xAI.
- upon_drumhead 2y agoHonestly, I think this is the main reason. They'll do some financial shenanigans and xAI is going to benefit.
- xyst 2y agoI’m surprised they haven’t fully jump shipped to a lower COL state.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- iLoveOncall 2y agoSan Jose and Palo Alto are both 30 minutes from San Francisco and in California...
- MrBuddyCasino 2y agoYou‘re right of course, I confused it with the move to Texas.
- z7 2y agoI wonder why the author omitted Musk's stated motive for the move. Wouldn't that be of interest to the reader? Like, why do this? I also notice your explanation has been censored.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y agoUsers flagging a low quality comment isn't
- bdcravens 2y agoMusk already moved Tesla, and is in the process of moving SpaceX, to Texas. It's surprising X isn't following suit.
- kredd 2y agoAccording to my friend, Tesla engineering didn't move to Texas, and he doesn't want to give up the California weather, so unlikely to make the move. If you have a routine, and enjoy year-long pretty nice weather, California will just have a natural advantage.
- bdcravens 2y agoMany companies have offices in several places. Several big tech companies, like Meta, Apple, etc, have offices in Austin, for example.
- shiroiushi 2y ago[flagged]
- anonzzzies 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- KingOfCoders 2y ago[flagged]
- dgrin91 2y agoWhy is it important until the election and not after?
- davesmylie 2y agotwitter is dying / becoming another truth. pushing anyone that has differing views from the platform is leaving it as another right wing echo chamber. It's already far from the bastion of information flow than it used to be, but still retains some visibility because of it's history and brand name. This value is dropping fast - I'm not the person that you are asking, but I strongly suspect by the time the next election rolls around, it's simply going to be irrelevant. The list of most retweeted tweets is telling - one from 2024, other than that, they are all from years ago, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-retweeted_tweets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-retweeted_tweets
- hagbard_c 2y ago[flagged]
- zo1 2y ago[flagged]
- whywhywhywhy 2y ago[flagged]
- meiraleal 2y ago> and it was too obvious when things were being forced into your algorithm feed It is funny that you say that. I never received random tweets from the previous leadership while Twitter inserts Elon Musk tweets in my feed more times than the people I follow. Only right wing nuts will think Twitter is getting better.
- _kava 2y agoI understand this is HN and many here love SF so can you explain to me how or why a company would want to have a physical location in downtown SF? It is expensive, higher tax, more regulations, all of which are often hated by a pure capitalist corporation. With the remote work push, the argument about talent pool is moot as well. IMO, moving out of SF is the correct choice. In fact, moving out of CA is also a correct choice, if profit is all a company is looking for.
- upon_drumhead 2y agoTwitter received a sweetheart deal from the city to move there https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2019/mid-market/city/ https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2019/mid-market/city/ Not sure it was worth it in the long run, but there was a lot of benefits that normal companies didn't receive.
- glimshe 2y agoSF offices are a leftover of the low interest rate cycle. It's ok when you can borrow money cheaply as a form of status symbol for your company, but it makes no sense when companies have to watch every dollar and actually turn a profit - especially with the growth of remote work. I expect that companies will maintain bay area offices for investor relations and small teams of the absolute top talent, but do most hiring elsewhere over the years.
- Hamuko 2y ago>With the remote work push, the argument about talent pool is moot as well. Isn't Elon massively anti-remote?
- yodsanklai 2y agoNot only Elon Musk. Lots of companies are backtracking on full remote work. Statu quo seems to be hybrid work for many big companies.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y agoAnd I’ll just preemptively jump in and nip this in the bud before some HNer writes their anti-RTO manifesto in the replies: Not all organisations or executives have a vested interest in commercial real estate. Especially this late in the game when plenty of orgs have had an opportunity to let their leases expire. Not all RTO action is due to some perverted desire by incompetent managers to see subordinate butts in seats, either. There is a sizeable contingent of leadership that legitimately sees in-person work as the best means of eliciting productivity from their staff, and are willing to trade off taking a hit from some staff not being happy about this, and potentially leaving. You might not agree with the strategy. You might strongly feel that it’s wrong. But the reality is that they believe it. Furthermore there is certainly a sizeable contingent of staff that would prefer a hybrid role to full WFH. I’m not talking about faceless sales leadership extroverts as techies often put it. I’m talking about ICs. I’m talking about developers. And there are certainly, certainly people that just don’t feel as strongly about it as a lot of the people here. I’d love for just one WFH-related thread to not devolve into faux-intelligent basically-xeroxed screeds about commercial real estate and dumb management.
- fooker 2y agoGood riddance. That part of San Francisco has been worse than the risky areas of most third world cities for the last 3-4 years. I don't understand how this beautiful city was let to deteriorate so fast.
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago>I don't understand how this beautiful city was let to deteriorate so fast. Didn't people vote for this?
- mplewis 2y agoSort of. San Francisco residents voted to recall the one mayor whose policies were having a positive impact on the city.
- cdchn 2y agoHmm Twitter wasn't able to single handedly rejuvenate the Tenderloin when they moved to 10th & Market like they were crowing about?
- knowaveragejoe 2y ago> worse than the risky areas of most third world cities for the last 3-4 years You can just say that you never leave well-to-do regions of the US in less words.
- fooker 2y agoI am from a second tier city in a third world country, and have traveled extensively around South Asia and Africa.
- rabuse 2y agoYou don't understand? Seriously? The terrible policies that are broadcasted everywhere online, through both text and video, isn't enough to understand?
- fabian2k 2y agoDoing this on a few weeks notice seems rather insane to me. Unless you have very good remote work options this is very disruptive for employees.
- anonzzzies 2y agoI cannot understand why anyone would work there, especially in office. but each their own.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DevX101 2y agoI have him blocked but the CEO has 200 million followers. Even assuming 20% are real people, I'd imagine there's quite a few of those who'd love to work at his company.
- loceng 2y agoWhy do you have him blocked, and just not following him?
- JohnMakin 2y agoI don’t know if you’ve been on X lately but even if not following him you can receive push notifications from his tweets. Tested this on multiple accounts now, he’s unavoidable unless blocked and sometimes not even then because of all the bootlicker accounts that screenshot and repost his tweets. Frankly it’s made the platform unusable to me, almost nothing he posts is interesting or worth reading.
- Aeolun 2y agoWhy be on X in the first place? I lost all reason to be there about around the time of the rename.
- blueboo 2y agoConsider the savings to add 15hr/wk of commute time to the onsite workforce. Yikes
- LadyCailin 2y ago[flagged]
- uxp100 2y agoWhy assume everyone is living in SF? I can’t imagine Elon actually asking his employees and taking there opinions into account, but my experience is that people are commuting in every direction in the Bay Area. This will be closer for some people without a doubt.
- bdcravens 2y agoDoes any employer factor this in? That's the employee's time/expense, not the company's. After all, SF is one of the cities with the worst traffic (to say nothing of the cost of living)
- next_xibalba 2y agoYes, I’ve been at two companies that changed office locations and both took into consideration the effect of a commute change on employees.
- lrvick 2y ago[flagged]
- anonzzzies 2y ago[flagged]
- piyuv 2y agoFree speech is not without consequences. It’s just that the consequences you face are reverse proportional to your wealth.
- anonzzzies 2y agoNot for Elon or Trump? Say more insane things (which gets normies banned), get more money.
- hnlmorg 2y agoThat’s the “reverse proportional” part of the GPs comment.
- anonzzzies 2y agoah yes, I read something different. yep, agree.
- numpad0 2y agoThat's not free speech, that's just might makes right principle which don't need a fancy name. Free speech, at least on the Internet, means say what don't get the majority nod and enjoy getting harassed to literal suicide, death, mental health consequences, or all of above. Right makes might, not the normal way around. IOW, free speech do come with consequences, and it's super-proportional on the Internet.
- rwmj 2y agoThere's free speech and there's amplification of speech. When Musk talks about "free speech" being denied what he's really complaining about is his views aren't being amplified. Obviously he can create a webpage somewhere and write whatever he wants on it (free speech), but that wouldn't be amplified so that's not what he wants. This is presumably also the reason he set fire to so much money buying Twitter.
- zknill 2y agoI don't know US commutes, or US geography too well. But it seems these two locations are about 45mins-1hr drive from each other. Where do folks actually live in those areas? Is it that a 30min drive north to San Fran becomes a 30min drive south to San Jose?
- htrp 2y agoMore like the easy commute you had in San Francisco on muni (the bus and subway network of San Francisco) becomes an annoying hour and a half-long commute on bart (The regional train system) with 2-3 transfers
- loceng 2y agoUntil Boring Company sets up multiple pickup points with Loop and Hyperloop tunnels; then will arguably be a max 20-30 minute ride. The dynamics of travel will dramatically change multiple industries, save for if the status quo establishment and industrial complexes through regulatory capture prevent the rapid expansion of the paradigm shift in transport that Boring Company is rapidly developing; the technology of which Elon needs for his Mars colony, and so it'll happen and be developed as far as is determined to be necessary to maximize its utility and safety.
- ebabani 2y agoHow big is their network so far?
- loceng 2y agoI haven't looked into it recently, however their Las Vegas network is going and expanding; 40 million people per year travel to Vegas, a great testbed and for exposure.
- philipwhiuk 2y agoWhy is the number of people in LA relevant when the ridership peak is 1,355 an hour.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DonHopkins 2y agoDid San Jose agree to let them use their incredibly obnoxious blinking X logo eyesore? ‘SHUT IT OFF!!’ Disruptive new ‘X’ logo removed in San Francisco: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/31/twitter-x-sign-headquarters-logo-taken-down/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/31/twitter... >Construction crews dismantled the giant, blinking ‘X’ logo after 24 complaints were logged with the city San Jose is much more permissive than San Francisco when it comes to shitty public art: San Jose’s Quetzalcoatl: The story behind much-ridiculed poop statue: https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/23/san-joses-quetzalcoatl-the-story-behind-the-statue-we-love-to-mock/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/23/san-joses-quetzalcoat...
- chuckadams 2y agoThe new HQ should have a giant neon poo emoji for a sign.
- DonHopkins 2y agoMade out of real poo!
- EricE 2y agoThats why they are leaving SF
- DonHopkins 2y agoI'm pretty sure Elon Musk runs around San Francisco late at night shitting on sidewalks himself, just so he has something to complain about.
- ionwake 2y agoAs a UK chap, can someone give me their opinion on if San Jose is a more pleasant place to live than San Fran these days?
- draw_down 2y ago[dead]
- dboreham 2y agoReally depends what you are looking for. And are you asking about the two cities themselves, or south bay vs north bay?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hellisothers 2y agoAside from how you define “pleasant” there is a considerable vibe difference, SF feels more cosmopolitan and SJ more metropolitan. No judgement either way, pros and cons to both.
- ulfw 2y agoBoth are quite boring mid-size cities that are heavily overpriced for what they offer. SF is more exciting/prettier yet less safe than SJ.
- citizenkeen 2y agoThe 17th largest city in the US is mid-sized?
- jeffbee 2y agoSan Jose has this problem where instead of acting like a top 20 city they act like Lubbock.
- presentation 2y agoFrom my perspective living in Asia I’d place it on par with a small rural village
- JS-Sound 2y agoProbably to do with less rent, less feces, less mentally instable people, less drugs, and also Elmo's weird thought chains.
- christkv 2y agoThey say moving to existing office spaces so just saving money i guess. Lease probably due and not wanting to renew it?
- francisofascii 2y agoSo he's not moving X to Texas? Or is this just the preliminary move?
- dmix 2y agoHe said they want to move all the HQs to Texas, which implies they could still have offices in California just maybe smaller. This may be part of the plan. They are also opening a new Palo Alto office for xAI where they could move a lot of engineering talent as well. Which is likely the other big reason.
- mistrial9 2y ago[flagged]
- triceratops 2y agoRight?! What moron would hire intelligent, hard-working, attractive people? /s
- julianeon 2y agoThere is a mile of difference between "person in the Army" and "West Point graduate." Also I want to clarify that the Master's Degree isn't like an online grift, it's really Stanford's graduate program (see link). https://knight-hennessy.stanford.edu/ https://knight-hennessy.stanford.edu/
- mistrial9 2y agogranted on the West Point part, but it was not very many years ago that Stanford did not even assign grades to class credits.. the vast majority of undergraduates were simply uniformly without flaw?
- washadjeffmad 2y agoIf he does, he should announce it doing a cover of "All My X's Live in Texas".
- nmeofthestate 2y agoI thought this wording was funny: "the famous Twitter sign ... [was] summarily removed" - extra-judicial signage removal! Musk is out of control.
- bcx 2y agoIt’s been a while since we had sf offices, but back when we did sf had a pretty aggressive additional payroll tax and gross receipts taxes. I’d imagine this is likely a factor in the decision. I know for a while they were waiving some of these taxes for companies who set up offices in certain parts of the city. E.g. zendesk got a big tax break for its market street location near the tenderloin. As for commutes, I’d be pretty curious to know how many folks who work at Twitter actually show up to their offices every day, especially in eng roles. Even with a return to office mandate I can’t imagine this not becoming more hybrid over time (of course I’ve never worked for musk or his managers — but I’d assume that if folks are high output he would not care how often they were in the office). Even commuting within sf can be kind of a pain it took our folks 50 minutes from both areas in the mission and Menlo Park to get to an office in South Park. I’d be curious to know: - how folks who work at X think about this move? - how much remote work will be allowed? - tax savings. - lease savings. I’d bet getting rid of sf tax nexus was a key piece of the reason.
- gmerc 2y ago[flagged]
- drewda 2y agoThat SF's payroll tax exemption was specifically created for Twitter: https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/twitter-will-get-payroll-tax-break-to-stay-in-s-f-2375948.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/twitter-will-get-pa... Here's one summary of it as of last year: > The infamous "Twitter tax break" provided by former Mayor Ed Lee to lure companies, including Twitter, to mid-Market by exempting them from a portion of their payroll taxes, had its sunset in 2019. Many argued that it did little to revitalize mid-Market — and certainly Twitter former fancy cafeteria didn't help in terms of workers spending money at local businesses — and it just ended up costing the city about $10 million a year in lost revenue. > https://sfist.com/2023/02/09/mayor-london-breed-announces-tax-breaks/ https://sfist.com/2023/02/09/mayor-london-breed-announces-ta... When the Twitter tax break expired in 2019, the Chronicle also did a pretty thorough survey of the mixed effects: https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2019/mid-market/ https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2019/mid-market/
- standardUser 2y agoTwitter was given a famously sweet deal by the city to occupy that troubled stretch of Market St. In the time I lived nearby (until the pandemic) the area never really improved. San Francisco has an odd tolerance for the tent communities, no just that it largely allows them, but that it allows them in and around the busiest and most publicly-utilized transit hubs and the city center.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- davedx 2y agoWhat do you think the city should do with the tent communities?
- standardUser 2y agoDesignate areas outside of the densest neighborhoods for tent communities to exist and clear out areas that have the highest public utilization.
- notfried 2y agoFor starters, tents shouldn't be allowed in the downtown area, which is the heart of business, shopping and tourism in San Francisco. It is one of the most expensive areas to live, so just like most residents cannot afford to live there, it is only fair that homeless people don't live there as well.
- next_xibalba 2y agoRemove them. It is an abuse of the commons that creates a vicious cycle that will only exacerbate the problem. And for your next question, San Fran already spends $141k per year per homeless person. That’s 7x LA. It isn’t working because of the lack of accountability and oversight in the use of those funds and San Fran’s lax (even favorable treatment) of public drug use, public camping, and general lawlessness. Send them to a shelter, treatment, or jail. “Harm reduction” doesn’t work. Full stop.
- keepamovin 2y agoIMO, San Jose has been nicer than downtown San Francisco for about 10 years.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jeffbee 2y agoWhich would be relevant if Twitter HQ was in downtown SF.
- keepamovin 2y agoHa! :) smh. Nah, it's relevant. What, you don't think it's in Downtown? Embarcadero's the only downtown for you?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bob_theslob646 2y agoI'm puzzled by this move. The more and more I read about a business being political the less I want to support it. I have been a long time twitter user for 15 years (some years daily and some years weekly) and I just made a threads account.
- nox101 2y agoI don't know about the move to San Jose specifically but 9th-10th and Market in SF is arguably not a nice place currently. This is 2 blocks away https://www.ktvu.com/news/report-workers-at-sf-federal-building-told-to-work-from-home-due-to-crime-concerns https://www.ktvu.com/news/report-workers-at-sf-federal-build... This is 2 blocks away https://sfstandard.com/2024/07/15/sideshow-crash-market-street-bike-shop-closing/ https://sfstandard.com/2024/07/15/sideshow-crash-market-stre... This is 1 block away https://sfstandard.com/2023/04/10/downtown-san-francisco-whole-foods-market-closing/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/04/10/downtown-san-francisco-who... I hope SF can fix itself but it's arguably on the government to make the city safe and clean. I wouldn't be begrudge any company leaving it currently. I'm not that's not the only reason they're leaving and if they wanted to say in SF there are probably some other locations, maybe Mission Bay, they could have picked. But, SF is ridiculously expensive and downtown still seems like it's got further to fall. There will need to be huge changes in zoning and lots of investment for it to recover.
- bob_theslob646 2y agoBut you don't think that will change with the executive order from newson to remove homeless camps? Does Elon think that the talent he has in SF will just magically move? That's why I'm puzzled
- nox101 2y ago> But you don't think that will change with the executive order from newson to remove homeless camps? I don't remember there being homeless camps on Market but maybe I missed them. I saw them in other places around SF though. So unless there's more to it I don't expect just cleaning up the homeless camps to be enough to fix SF. > Does Elon think that the talent he has in SF will just magically move? How much talent does x/twitter require? Facebook/Apple/Amazon/Google/Microsoft have 20-30-50-100 different products each, some of those products with 50-100 teams for different parts of the product. X seems like it has 1 product with 4-ish features. Posts, Ads, Video, Direct Messages. Is there more?
- talkingtab 2y agoYet another petty tyrant rants. In this time of cult of personality how is that newsworthy or unexpected? But this is "fortune.com", a corporate rag, so perhaps it is interesting to them.
- silexia 2y ago[flagged]
- dmix 2y ago[flagged]
- BugsJustFindMe 2y agoLast entry of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills."
- GaggiX 2y agoHacker News turning into Reddit, something that has not been said for more than 15 years now.
- lossolo 2y agoThere is a thesis in your question. I'm not a terminated Twitter employee. I follow him on X and see exactly what he writes, the amount of disinformation he retweets, his manipulation tactics and what he does. That's enough for me to be "anti-Elon." It wasn't always like this—a few years ago, I was pro-Elon.
- CydeWeys 2y agoNo. He's legitimately done a terrible job the last few years across most of his businesses.
- silexia 2y agoMeasured how?
- CydeWeys 2y agoYou could start by looking at stock price. TSLA is flat since 2020, and their only release in a long time is the Cybertruck which is frankly terrible. They've also lost a huge amount of marketshare. Oh, and Musk's outspoken political opinions are toxic to most EV buyers and have massively turned off a large part of the fanbase that originally propelled him to success. Twitter is a complete dumpster fire (revenue down 80% since he acquired it, and is now making only around 10% of the money required to even service the debt from acquisition). Basically every company he's involved with is doing terribly, except for SpaceX, which fortunately has Gwynne Shotwell at the helm. But even SpaceX isn't doing so well with their latest rocket, Starship; the upper stage is simply way too big and heavy for most uses, and will require up to 15 (!!) additional refueling in-orbit refueling launches to fully refuel a single Starship for missions beyond LEO, like the upcoming lunar missions. This is a huge liability that casts doubt on the overall architecture. Contrast with the Saturn V, a smaller rocket that could nevertheless do an entire self-contained lunar mission with a single launch. I was a huge Elon fan for many years, but everything he's been doing recently has been a swing and a miss.
- vt85 2y ago[dead]
- PM_me_your_math 2y ago[dead]
- Eumenes 2y agoWay easier to recruit/attract talent in South bay. More senior/staff level engineers. SF talent pool trends more junior, more single, less experience, etc.
- anon291 2y agoRealistically, X is better than its ever been; community notes have been a game-changer in terms of fact-checking. Higher quality and much more balanced.
- timeon 2y agoNor really. It used to work for all people with browser now it is only for logged-in.
- brabel 2y agoThat was already the case before Musk bought it.
- AlexandrB 2y agoWhat? No it wasn't! You used to be able to view entire Twitter threads without being logged in. It was also possible to go to someone's account page and see their posts in reverse chronological order. The latter went away shortly after Musk took over. The former took a little longer, but is now gone as well. In many cases you can't even view a single tweet without the site trying to get you to log in.
- brabel 2y agoI clearly remember it wasn't, they would pop up with a login page as soon as you scrolled down.
- throw-away_42 2y agoMaybe for you, but not for most of the rest of the universe. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/30/tech/twitter-public-access-restricted/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/30/tech/twitter-public-access-re...
- 998244353 2y ago
- randerson 2y agoClever! Give a thousand+ high earners a reason to buy a car. Install Superchargers in all the best parking spots to reserve them for Teslas. Most X employees are loyal to Musk, so that is probably $50M in additional revenue for TSLA, and he gets people to show up early if they want to charge at work. /s
- dang 2y agoAll: can you please not post low-quality angry/snarky junk comments to HN threads? They're tedious and have nasty effects. I realize this story is a cluster of divisive topics but that's why HN's guidelines say "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site to heart, we'd be grateful.
- carabiner 2y agoFun fact: There are 3 "south bays" in California. 1. SF Bay Area 2. Los Angeles Beach Cities 3. Orange County
- jiveturkey 2y ago4. Eureka
- ljsprague 2y ago5. San Diego https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Bay_(San_Diego_County) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Bay_(San_Diego_County)
- ADeerAppeared 2y ago[flagged]
- theGnuMe 2y agoI thought X/Twitter had stopped paying rent in SF.. so maybe this is related to that?
- robxorb 2y agoWhy is the title of the HN post changed to read "Twitter", when the linked article title states correctly "X", and is otherwise identical?
- dang 2y agoI did that because I don't know anyone who doesn't still call it Twitter.
- awb 2y agoX (formerly Twitter) is how I’ve seen it cited elsewhere.
- dang 2y agoThat's the safest, but it runs up against HN's 80 char limit on titles and also feels clumsy and formalistic.
- TigeriusKirk 2y agoIt's pretty common in my circles to call it X now. Things change, most people adapt.
- robxorb 2y agoWell, when I got up this morning I didn't think I'd be doing this today: > please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
- dang 2y agoBoth names are linkbait. I think 'Twitter' is less misleading than 'X', so it wins the guideline on points. Not saying it's a strong case, just that it tilts that way. Others would call it differently and that's always the case with a close call. Just because you buy something doesn't mean you get to change popular usage by decree. There's a whiff of corporatism about that which sticks in my craw. (I am not, god help us, making any implicit point about the muskwars.)
- janalsncm 2y agoHad a recruiter call with Twitter a few months ago. Mandatory in office 5 days per week. Among other things, an hour commute both ways to work was not acceptable. Maybe they will have better luck in Santa Clara. I don’t buy any of the flamebait reasons for leaving SF. Reason 1 is money and reason 2 is talent pool.
- sleepybrett 2y agoI mean reason #1 is probably that they are getting evicted right? Didn't elon stop paying rent?
- warkdarrior 2y agoPaying rent is a woke mind virus, so Elon would never go for that. Fight the oppression!
- SlightlyLeftPad 2y agoLike just buy twitter, then you won’t have to pay rent. - Elon probably
- seizethecheese 2y agoI’ve had several meetings, either in Twitter office or around it, and the street scene is very bad in that part of SF. If the claim is that this is a motivation for the move, it certainly passes the sniff test for me.
- JS-Sound 2y ago[flagged]
- bastardoperator 2y agoSo you've been able to gauge life and the street scene in SF based on several meetings? That's super interesting. I would argue the Embarcadero is fairly nice and I live here, but what do I know.
- cuteasD 2y ago[flagged]
- debacle 2y agoDoes Elon still dislike/disallow remote work? Seems like that would be a competitive disadvantage.
- bboygravity 2y agoBut then, like with all of Elon's companies, the question is: who's the (serious) competition? Rethorical question... There is none.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoThere are plenty of people who have no problem working from the office 5 days a week, and even some who prefer it. On HN some people are vocal about insisting on remote work, but outside the bubble here people aren't so adamant. Your average person would prefer remote, but isn't going to refuse a job offer based only on that one factor.
- meowtimemania 2y agoIt's also becoming increasingly difficult to get a remote job with a bay area salary.
- rvz 2y agoI have to say, the anti-elon meltdown vs the elon simps is quite entertaining to watch and it goes both ways. Why are you getting so upset, angry, emotional and screaming over someone that doesn't care about you? Very unhealthy folks. but regardless, until the next time you will talk about Twitter / X again.
- wonderwonder 2y agoI'm pretty surprised that they elected to stay in CA at all. Would have expected him to move the company to Austin.
- hintymad 2y agoThere is a famous paper about the location of company headquarters: they get as close as possible to the residence of company CEOs. If we don't consider the CEO's influence, I'm actually curious if the location of company headquarters has to do with the average age of the employees in the Bay Area. As the employees start to have families, they most likely move to the south bay for better or for worse, and I have a hard time imagine that they'd enjoy commuting via BART or Caltrain for more than an hour every day. And this is probably just me or my circles, a city's hustle and bustle becomes a distraction or at least increasing irrelevant as I age. I increasingly enjoy ample parking space, tranquil suburbs, being able to step out and start jogging in woods or huge parks, and certainly not having to deal with the craziness on SF streets. If more people are like me who prefers living outside of the city proper, then I'd imagine a company will have access to more talent by moving its headquarters to the south of SF.
- beacon294 2y agoWhat did you mean by "move to south bay for good for worse"? I just couldn't parse your meaning.
- hintymad 2y agoMy bad. I meant "for good or for worse". That is, I was trying to be neutral to the merit of moving from SF to the south.
- asveikau 2y agoThey seem unaware that a lot of SF based people go to the east bay. But it's not inevitable that families move to suburbs either. Commenter is partly perpetuating a 1960s era "white flight" kind of stereotype, where cities are said to be terrible for families. I happen to have two kids in SF. Additionally, a lot of what drives people out of SF specifically is the expense.
- philsnow 2y ago> Twitter — which at the time was threatening to move to Brisbane Wow, that does not seem like it would jive with the local character for Brisbane, from what little I know of it.
- BobAliceInATree 2y agoBrisbane, California not Australia.
- philsnow 2y agoI know -- the only people I know who live in Brisbane (the tiny town ~7 miles to the south of San Francisco) enjoy its insularity
- paulsutter 2y agoThe issue is the San Francisco gross receipts tax, which becomes problematic for any payments company because it applies to the payments volume Twitter is planning to become a payments platform
- BluSyn 2y agoCorrect. Surprised more people aren’t aware of this. Twitter literally can’t launch it payments service while still having SF as HQ.
- cbsmith 2y agoThere might also be a thing about being millions behind on rent...
- dehrmann 2y agoSince a gross receipts tax hits anything other than small, local stores inconsistently, I'm not sure what behavior it's trying to drive. It also taxes revenue rather than income, so yes, it makes anything ulta-low margin like a payments platform DOA.
- acchow 2y agoIt seems the objective is to disincentive companies that have business outside the city borders.
- sagz 2y agoInteresting. How does Stripe and other SF based payment platforms handle it?
- newsclues 2y agoThis is the result of prop c 2018?
- tzury 2y ago[flagged]
- lawn 2y agoBecause X is a really bad name and the Twitter brand is so strong that most people still use it despite the rebrand.
- webstrand 2y agoBecause Twitter is not a person, it doesn't have feelings. X is extremely ambiguous and I appreciate the poster using an unambiguous name.
- julianeon 2y agoThis is a special case because Twitter famously located its offices in downtown San Francisco, and using the old name here shows the continuity.
- rapatel0 2y agoI lived for about 12 months in telegraph hill (got lucky with a solid apartment). I had my wife and 1 year old son. Despite it being a really nice and affluent neighborhood, there was a weekly mugging outside my house. Any packages or items left outside were basically taken if left out for more than 1 hour. My neighbor’s car parked in front of the house was stolen, taken for a joyride and left in a random part of the city. On top of that the schools were bottom of the stack in terms of scholastic achievement compared to where i grew up (upstate ny). Bottomline, when you have a family you don’t have the luxury of tolerating political nonsense at the cost of elevated risk. Moved out. Only things I miss is the natural beauty and outdoors of California, and the technical community. Nothing like it elsewhere.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoWhile SF is a nice place to visit, but the sheer numbers of unreasonable, lemming-like people who will spend and do anything to cling to live there as some sort of Promised Land™ make it a hellish place to try to live a sustainable life for almost everyone who isn't already a multimillionaire. Keeping a car parked in SF to as far south as San Mateo on the street is a recipe for catalytic converter theft. Visit the de Young museum's observation tower. It has a spectacular vantage point. The other things California have are: less annoying creepy crawlies, more variety of scenery and microclimates, weather, food, and relatively cheaper property taxes.
- not_alexb 2y agoCalifornia is massive though, and I would argue there is nothing in the rest of California that resembles the Bay even a little bit. Redding is nothing like the Bay; Joshua Tree is nothing like the Bay; Orange County is nothing like the Bay; Big Bear is nothing like the Bay. None of those regions are anything like the other, too. Hell, the difference inside 10 miles of Los Angeles is enormous. Compare Venice Beach to East LA for example.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoAbsolutely. There is variety in CA. Unfortunately, there aren't many safe and economical places to live and too many rich people gentrifying everything that was good. LA is a s-hole requires driving in absurd and crazy traffic because it's purposely spread out and its public transportation is terrible.
- gumby 2y agoI have always had mixed feelings about silicon valley expanding into San Francisco -- I felt there was a strong negative impact, though to some degree SF acted as a honey pot for those just interested in money. I wonder if this will be a harbinger of a retreat or shrinking of the size of the overall "tech" sector, or if it will remain a one-off. I guess that when the blockchain and ai bubbles really burst we'll see. They have a higher concentration up there for some reason.
- scyzoryk_xyz 2y agoMy understanding is that that part of Market street never quite recovered from BART construction few decades back. That building was abandoned and was beautifully restored for Twitter HQ. I vividly remember it opening and then the neighborhood improving gradually. Sad for SF - the final blow to one of the few once optimistic and truly SF-based utopian social media companies…
- collinmanderson 2y agoI recently learned about Elon showing up to a Sacramento datacenter on Dec 22 2022 and personally moving server racks out of the datacenter, when his employees said it would take 6 months. "Elon Musk moving servers himself shows his ‘maniacal sense of urgency’ at X, formerly Twitter" https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/11/elon-musk-moved-twitter-servers-himself-in-the-night-new-biography-details-his-maniacal-sense-of-urgency.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/11/elon-musk-moved-twitter-serv... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37470110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37470110
- stevetron 2y agoI'm probably not a favorite amog the moderators here. I don't mean to sound snarky, but if Twitters moves out of San Francisco, will the no-nudity ordinance in San Francisco get repealed? I had understood it was the influx of the tech companies that caused the fiasco thet resulted in it being passed in the first place.
- sub7 2y agoI saw a guy get shot on Mission and 6th after picking a fight with the car in front of him at the light. Lucky for him, there was an ambulance already on the block loading up a tweaked out junkie.
- thih9 2y agoIs the constant stream of flamebait (this action and other recent changes) helpful for twitter, or part of some larger strategy? To me the service seems increasingly unreliable and unprofessional. Then again, I no longer feel like I'm the target audience. The numbers seem bad too; revenue was 22% down in 2023[1]. Also, "global active daily users of X via mobile apps had steadily declined during the year after Musk acquired the company, down 16% by September 2023"[2]. I'm puzzled. [1]: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_under_Elon_Musk#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_under_Elon_Musk#Statis...
- jcfrei 2y agoTo me it's still useful but I exclusively read it through lists. That way it's always chronological and only consists of tweets from selected accounts and retweets from other (usually interesting) people.
- MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago> Is the constant stream of flamebait helpful for twitter, or part of some larger strategy? I don't think much thought was put into it, but I do think there will be a gradual numbing effect among the comments as people get bored of the criticism. Maybe very gradual though. Edit: It just occurred to me that you might be referring to user posts on the platform being flamebait; my answer assumed that the action (moving the HQ) was perhaps flamebait, along with other recent changes.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thih9 2y agoTo clarify, yes, by flamebait I meant the latter (this action and other recent changes). Added that to the original comment now.
- DoughnutHole 2y agoMusk’s tweets and the unimpeded use of the platform for misinformation and coordinated violence give me the impression that he cares less about turning it into a profitable enterprise and more about its use as a tool to push his agenda and affect the cultural and political changes he desires.
- ein0p 2y agoMight as well just skip all the intermediate steps and move the office to Austin. Twitter will fit right in.
- freshfunk 2y agoFor all the snark from people who dislike Elon, this is a bit of a sad ending. I remember when Twitter announced their presence in mid-market and the promises of how it would help the area. What people don't realize is that his will lead to real revenue losses for the city -- the largest companies in SF are overwhelmingly tech. Twitter is in the top 5 when it comes to how much tax they pay. Loss of revenue for the city will translate to cuts.
- WatchDog 2y agoSF public funds are horribly miss-managed. Hopefully events like this contribute to speeding up the reform that the city needs. Unfortunately the necessary austerity is going to cause more near-term pain, but hopefully results in some longer term prosperity for the city.
- snapcaster 2y agoIt doesn't matter, SF residents are so delusional and stockholmed i think they'll put up with literally anything. Even in this thread you have them acting like their city isn't a horrifying disaster to anyone not desensitized to it
- kshri24 2y agoTwitter? Isn't it X now?
- spullara 2y agoDon't you think the gross receipts tax that forced every other payments firm out of SF is also forcing X out because they are launching payments? https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1813967418383126840 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1813967418383126840
- darby_nine 2y agoI don't think Twitter realizes how much the quality of employees will crater when they trash the brand and the workplace
- matrix87 2y agothe brand is already trashed, at this point the workplace doesn't really matter. only thing that will save it now is if elon sells it
- snotrockets 2y agoYou erroneously inserted the word “will” into the above comment.
- xbmcuser 2y agoMusk might be coaching all his moves on twitter in political terms but to me the from the looks of it twitter was extremely bloated and wasting money. And Musk is doing his best to get out ahead on the money he spend to buy it. And as far as I can tell he will get out ahead. If Trump wins the presidency again I think he might get out ahead huge
- caseyf7 2y agoWhen did Palo Alto become South Bay? South Bay was always much further south.
- etse 2y agoPalo Alto is in Santa Clara County whereas Menlo Park and East Palo Alto are in San Mateo. That might be how.
- mlindner 2y agoI mean it makes lots of sense. I'm in South Bay and the amount of vacant corporate buildings around here is ridiculous. The property prices have to be falling through the floor. Lots of companies substantially downsized their footprint during covid as they're now either partially or completely work from home places now, meaning they need a lot fewer seats in the office.
- pixxel 2y ago> All: can you please not post low-quality angry/snarky junk comments to HN threads? Perhaps change the inflammatory title? “kills” to “moves” FFS.
- foreverobama 2y ago[dead]
- hit8run 2y agoI like that. San Francisco is a dirty city with bazillions of homeless people and woke activists living in their bubble. It’s insane what happened to this once beautiful place.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- zuckerma 2y agoIt's about time.
- patrick451 2y agoThe original headline says "X ...". Why was it edited to say twitter, which is not the companies name?
- defrost 2y agoSomebody solved for X I guess .. it's unknown otherwise.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- zendaven 2y ago"Musk took to the social media platform to announce that X would relocate to Austin, Texas, due to his fury over a California transgender protection law." What happened with going to Texas?
- WarOnPrivacy 2y agoJuly 16: "Elon Musk announced that ... Twitter is moving to Austin Texas" ref: https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=twitter+relocating+to+austin https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=twitter+relocating+to+austin August 7: Twitter moving to LA. What made LA more appealing than Texas?
- _acco 2y agoI live a few blocks from TwitterHQ. Mid-market is in terrible condition, worst I’ve seen it. I’d feel super bad asking employees to navigate those streets while commuting in. Not discussed enough about RTO is what a mess downtown is. And an emptier downtown is a seedier downtown, feeding the cycle.
- jounker 2y agoI wonder if Twitter is about to be evicted for non-payment of rent.