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There 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
by hintymad 2y ago
There 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.
- jacobolus 2y agoSF is a great place for kids of all ages. But housing is indeed very expensive, as is childcare. Families in rent-controlled apartments who want more space without significantly higher expense don’t have a lot of options; several such families we know ended up moving out of the city (sometimes to elsewhere in Northern CA but often across the country to be closer to family). I don’t know anyone who moved because they thought their kids were having a bad time in the city.
- saagarjha 2y agoYes, but surely those people are not moving to the South Bay (which is just as expensive).
- nimbius 2y agoi concur. I think a lot of this is just sound business acumen. Twit-er...X, isnt raking in cash like it used to. Musks changes like reinstating hate speech accounts and the blue check fiasco had a direct negative effect on advertising revenue and accelerated already downward subscriber trends. Leaning out the physical side of the already agile digital side was a good idea im not sure twitters old guard would have considered. San Francisco has seen a talent exodus after the global pandemic. no senior SRE with 20 years of experience --whos also made to show up to the office five days a week-- is going to entertain San Francisco's traffic, crime, homelessness, or general congestion for even a minute.
- wisconsiway 2y ago[flagged]
- jrflowers 2y ago“You mentioned that bringing back nazis killed the site but curiously you did not at any point in any way imply that it is the world’s biggest platform… The argument you’re making solely in my head isn’t very consistent!”
- throw4847285 2y agoJust in response to your second point, I do think that's specific to you and your circles. I know multiple retired or semi-retired people who have moved towards the center of a city. Without work to keep them occupied, they want the hustle and bustle, which means something to do. And driving has become more of a hassle and a barrier to the kinds of lives they want to live. These are east coast or midwest cities, so maybe there is something about SF that's different, but that's my experience.
- danielhep 2y agoAlso, a lot of older people don't want big houses, and having easy access to amenities and socialization is more important than having extra empty bedrooms.
- hintymad 2y agoVery true. At least to me, a modest condo will be more than enough, as I've learned long before that tidiness brings more pleasure than large space.
- throwaway2037 2y agoI will get downvoted for this comment: Size of living area does seem to be highly influenced by gender. I hear many more men say they would be happy living in a smaller place. I never once heard that from a woman under 50. (After the kids are gone, they may wish to downsize.)
- antisthenes 2y agoMen are just content to have less, usually. Also, are these single men with hobbies that don't take up a lot of space like gardening or woodworking?
- Elinvynia 2y agoLet me be the first one then - I am fully content on living in a 40-60m2 space with my partner and two cats. Considering we never lived in anything bigger this size is perfect for us, easy to clean and still enough space to live.
- gumby 2y agoBack in the early 90s my wife and I moved to SF because it had a thriving art and music scene and more interesting culture than the 'burbs of palo alto. But as you say, the long commute to SV was a killer and we moved back down. Back then SF was a bedroom community for SV with no tech sector. Businesses up there were banking (Wells Fargo, BofA, Crocker etc), retail, the local stock exchange, and a bunch of manufacturing. Nowadays there's a bland sameness -- barely any music or other art much less much craziness. You can't imagine anything like the psychedelic scene appearing in SF much less Palo Alto these days, and most of what's left is in Oakland. Sigh.
- red-iron-pine 2y agothey went to Santa Cruz, man. Go Slugs!
- gumby 2y agoThe Taiwan of the countercultural Bay Area.
- fantasybuilder 2y agoDepends on one's interests. It sounds like my preferences would be more in alignment with yours - music and art - and yes, SF is almost completely lacking that today. But if one were an active part of the LGBT community - SF is a buzzing option. They have various festivals and events almost daily. Oakland music scene isn't particularly inspiring either. Definitely more independent music events in run down houses, but quality and inventiveness is too often of questionable value.
- CalChris 2y agoI lived in San Francisco in the very late 70s through to the 00s. My first apartment share was $50/mo. The late 70s had the dying embers of the Beat Generation and San Francisco was a sleepy town. San Francisco was great in the 80s with a ton of theater, music, dance, art, everything. It was good in the 90s although the late 90s dotcom boom pushed/priced artists out. The 00s became pretty boring and compressed. I moved to Oakland. I would say that San Francisco is quite nice now, great bones, although too expensive for interesting people to live.
- madcaptenor 2y agoThat seems reasonable - even if companies aren't moving based on where their employees are, employees are taking into account where the company is when they decide which jobs to take, and are probably more likely to leave a job if they find their commute too long.
- CaliforniaKarl 2y agoThe mentioned South Bay locations are xAI's Palo Alto office, and an office in Santana Row. Both locations likely have connections to Caltrain. I don't know where xAI's Palo Alto office is, but transit in the corporate Palo Alto office are generally good. If xAI is in the Stanford Research Park, you'll be taking a shuttle that runs only during commute times, and takes 15-30 minutes, depending on where exactly you get off. Santana Row is more confusing. You'll travel either to Santa Clara or San Jose and take a bus. From Santa Clara, the bus is ~15 minutes. From San Jose, the bus is faster, but you've got a half- or one-mile walk.
- saagarjha 2y agoThe Santana Row office is miserable to get to via Caltrain. You're going to want to bike or scooter and even then it's a trip on Stevens Creek/San Carlos, which is exceptionally busy at all times of day due to the two malls next to it and also it drops bike lanes for some portion of the road.
- shortn 2y agoSantana Row will start charging for parking. https://www.ktvu.com/news/santana-row-is-charging-parking https://www.ktvu.com/news/santana-row-is-charging-parking
- saagarjha 2y agoI feel like this was the case already? Maybe not for 2 hours but I do distinctly remember that when I popped into the Twitter offices for a bit I was able to park there for a few hours but after that it would charge me
- throw8383833jj 2y agoand let's not forget the increase in crime that SF has experienced. Even department/CVS/etc stores have had to close due to the increase in crime. Suburbs on average have less crime. i wouldn't say that south bay is ideal but it's better than SF.
- weitendorf 2y ago> 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. IME this is definitely true and it's often very intentional. One of the major reasons SF stole the startup scene from SV is that younger startup employees wanted to live in SF. As a startup founder you are very strongly incentivized to go where the talent is (or wants to be). When I was considering where to set up my startup a few months ago this was a huge consideration. Not quite at the level of HQ, but there's a reason Google has offices in both SF and South Bay as well, or in both SLU/SLU-area Seattle + across Lake Washington. > 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. I don't think it's about more vs less as much as matching the demographics of your typical employee. Eg experience levels, pay, work culture, personality, mix of job roles
- saagarjha 2y agoGoogle has offices in San Francisco but it also has offices in South San Francisco, San Bruno, Redwood City, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and San Jose. And probably some other cities I forgot. The "reason" Google has an office anywhere has to do more with "why not" rather than anything else.
- zamfi 2y agoAcquisitions.
- weitendorf 2y agoNot the case with the main Google SF office (except now some buildings are indeed the results of acquisitions) but definitely for San Bruno and varied for the other ones.
- 2y ago
- jjav 2y agoNot relevant to any current actions by Twitter, but an interesting historical perspective is that it was very rare for a tech company to be in San Francisco. Approximately all tech companies were in Silicon Valley proper (thus named) which is about (depending on who was drawing the boundaries) about 30-60 minutes south of San Francisco. When Twitter opened in San Francisco I distinctly remember how weird it was to see a tech company up in SF. Then found it was due to tax breaks SF was creating for these companies and then lots more tech companies started showing up in SF.
- quesera 2y agoThis is not correct at all. When Twitter was launched, SF was overflowing with startups on every corner. In fact it was the second wave of SF startups, being a handful of years after the dot com crash. The only thing even slightly surprising about Twitter's location was that they were way down in South Park instead of more solidly in South of Market. They moved to the Tenderloin building in 2012.
- jjav 2y ago> SF was overflowing with startups on every corner. Can you name a handful of known startups headquartered in SF in the early 2000s? I tried searching for stats on this but it seems more difficult than I have time for. So I turned to chatgpt, which (FWIW) agrees with my recollection: In the year 2000, Silicon Valley startups were predominantly located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, particularly in cities like Palo Alto, Mountain View, and San Jose. San Francisco itself was not as prominent a hub for tech startups at that time. While exact percentages are difficult to ascertain without specific data, it is generally understood that a relatively small percentage of Silicon Valley startups were headquartered within San Francisco city limits in 2000. The tech startup scene in San Francisco began to grow significantly later, particularly in the mid-2000s and beyond.
- quesera 2y agoSo many startups in SF. Most dead now of course. The first round of post-money hiring at Twitter took a few of my coworkers. There were launch parties in SF every week in the late 1990s. Often multiple per week. The startups coordinated to not conflict. It was a very active scene. The first wave ended in the early months of 2000. There were a few very slow years after that, but things were picking up again around the time of Twitter's 2006 launch (and 2007-2008 scaling). We in SF didn't consider ourselves part of Silicon Valley back then, so that might be throwing off the search results. The relabelling came later, when the never-formally-defined scope of "Silicon Valley" expanded to include SF city (but still skipping the bedroom communities between the city and the Valley proper). (Edit: sibling of GP is correct, SF was mostly internet and media startups, agencies, etc. The Valley got most of the hardware startups. Twitter was a descendant of Blogger/Odeo/Pyra/etc, so SF city was an entirely expected location)
- hindsightbias 2y agoThere’s no housing south of SF. That’s why the Menlo/PA/SC crowd originally invaded SF. It was cheap and hip.
- anukin 2y agoMP and PA(not eastern) have a shortage. Santa Clara does not. It’s still pretty cheap to buy a house in SC compared to anywhere in the belt between San Mateo to Cupertino.
- dickfickling 2y agooff topic: do you have a name or a link for the paper referenced? My company just moved to a new office that's "coincidentally" closer to the CEO's house, and I'd love to send it to him.
- zombiwoof 2y agoThis is why return to office is such a joke. It’s really “return to the office near where the CEO lives or lived at one time” Like if Tim Cook decided to move to Alabama that’s where Apple Park would be So dumb
- crystal_revenge 2y ago> if Tim Cook decided to move to Alabama that’s where Apple Park would be A current example of this is Walmart which is in the midst of trying to force a huge number of employees to relocate to Bentonville, AR. I can see why someone would move to NYC or SF for a job, since there are plenty of other options for career development, but you have to be pretty committed to Walmart for life (undoubtedly their intention along with workforce reduction) to decide to move your entire family to Bentonville.
- ericjmorey 2y agoWalmart has always been headquartered in Bentonville, AR so that's a huge difference from the other examples here. People in well paying jobs move all the time though so it's not the commitment or strategic retention plan you seem to imply unless you think everyone in NY or CA is so pretentious that they couldn't believe that Walmart employees are worth poaching despite their IT and analytics department being bigger bigger than most tech companies.
- prmoustache 2y agoI guess not everyone working at Walmart headquarters are in well paying jobs though. Relocating wasn't such a big deal when most family models were single income and women were basically all slaves and would follow their husband without having any say on the matter. These day, any relocation involve a discussion between 2 parties on the merit of relocating and possibility of career development for both. It is much more difficult.
- Rinzler89 2y ago>Like if Tim Cook decided to move to Alabama that’s where Apple Park would be What a dumb take. Tim Cook lives in California because Apple was founded there over 40 years ago. And Apple will stay in California because most of the talent Apple needs to succeed is already there. And since Apple will stay in California so will their CEO. You must be on some really good shrooms to think Apple will uproot itself just to move to wherever Tim Cook would move.
- ojbyrne 2y agoThey are moving to San Jose, which is a city. It may not be as cosmopolitan as SF (certainly not as compact) but the differences have narrowed some in the last decade or so. Not to mention that it has a larger population than SF.
- napierzaza 2y ago[dead]
- closeparen 2y agoThe typical commuter suburbs for SF companies are in the East Bay, in my experience. South Bay is a lot more expensive.
- Onavo 2y ago> 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. The 25-35 crowd are probably the worst employees that Twitter can ask for; too experienced to "keep their head down" and too young to suffer from ageism and be tied down with families. For companies like Google and Twitter that traditionally lean left and encourage employees to speak up, moving the company headquarters is probably the easiest way to filter out activist employees (since these days the company is making a hard pivot to a privately held conservative operating model).
- patrick451 2y agoThese companies have never encouraged employees to speak up. James Damore thought that was the culture, and he got fired.
- pyeri 2y agoHere in India, it's a wide mystery why most startups prefer to headquarter in Bangalore. It made sense two decades ago but today there are several other Indian cities like Vizag, Nasik, Noida, Gurugram, Chandigarh, etc. which are more equipped, have better infrastructure and even lower cost of living. Still most folks prefer Bangalore just because it has been like that since ages and popularly called the "IT Hub". But logically, it doesn't make any sense at all!
- devTen85 2y agoIt's a chicken & Egg problem. I run a startup in Pune, and we just don't get good developers here. We are open to remote, and most of the good candidates are in Bangalore.
- elbear 2y agoWhat's the explanation? Better schools in Bangalore or something else?
- devsda 2y agoAccess to better schools is a factor in selecting a locality within the city but I don't think it has been a deciding factor in deciding the city itself. Many cities including tier-2 cities have a variation of one of those "international" schools that parents seek and there's no significant difference in the quality of education between them. Apart from the usual cycle of available talent + job opportunities, Bangalore has better weather and location wise it can attract talent from 4 states(these 4 states are major contributors to IT workforce compared to other states) while not being too far from place of origin.
- elbear 2y agoI see. So it's a matter of geography basically.
- lennxa 2y agobetter schools is not a factor at all. right out of college, or a little later most of the high quality engineers move to Bangalore because that's where the jobs already are. once people settle down a bit, they tend to be averse to move on average. it's network effect and sheer inertia. no one really wants it this way.
- Animats 2y ago> There is a famous paper about the location of company headquarters: they get as close as possible to the residence of company CEOs. Boeing. That's what killed Boeing - moving HQ from the factory in Renton, WA to Chicago. Boeing has no plants anywhere near Chicago. But Dave Calhoun, the previous CEO lived in Chicago. He previously was the head of Nielsen, the TV ratings and marketing company, which has been in Chicago for a century. It took far too long, but Calhoun is finally being eased out. Not fired outright, which would have been appropriate.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoThe move to Chicago was made by Condit. Ostensibly it was just a cover to stay far away from the wife while he kept his mistress shacked up at the HQ.
- Animats 2y agoOh, right. That was around the time of the strange merger with McDonnell Douglas. Somehow, the finance people from McDonnell Douglas ended up in charge. That didn't go well.
- fabrikam 2y agoAccording to Wikipedia, Boeing moved its headquarters in 2001, a mere two decades before he became CEO, and the nearly half dozen that preceded him.
- n_ary 2y agoYour ideal suburb describes most of the Europe(excluding few cities).
- catskul2 2y agoI wonder if cheapish EVTOL travel might make a difference here. I.e. if CEOs effective travel time is reduced, does that affect headquarter location selection.
- amy-petrik-214 2y agoThis came as a surprise to me but San Jose is actually one of the top 10 largest cities in the US. Just saying, maybe south bay isn't SF, but it ain't idyllic peaceful suburbs either