5 ms·

- Finding space in an urban area of the Bay Area that comfortable can fit 8,000+ people is near impossible - Tech company employees have a near equal distribut

by flyt 14y ago

- Finding space in an urban area of the Bay Area that comfortable can fit 8,000+ people is near impossible - Tech company employees have a near equal distribution of living in either SF or the south bay, with some folks in the east bay. Having an office in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, or Mountain View is a good compromise on commute time for all of these groups. - Individual offices require much more space per employee, and isolate people. Facebook has chosen to build offices on open plan, which they see as better for their culture, collaboration, and internal communication. - Putting an office in a downtown area requires parking, and most of the Bay Area "downtowns" can't cope with 6000+ cars from a single company without major parking expansion. - Keeping all of this in mind, renting office space in a downtown area would require either purchasing an entire building to fit enough people (if such a building even exists), renovating it, providing parking for 6000+ people, plus all of the other logistical issues that come with working in a downtown area. SF/Bay Area isn't NYC and isn't optimized for non-car commuting. - Office parks provide many other benefits for companies like Facebook, Apple, Google, etc. They can keep all of their employees (and their NDA-covered communications) absolutely private. They can provide many services at the campus that subtly convince employees to stay at/near the office longer. They can provide large food service areas, keeping employees at the office for lunch/dinner, and keeping their conversations within the businesses walls. Building out an office park provides easy access to freeways, lots of (free) parking, cheaper utility costs, and easier construction/modification costs. Renovating an office park is going to be less expensive, in general, that completely gutting and renovating a skyscraper. - At a company the size of Facebook an office park is the only thing that makes sense.

lexande 14y ago
- There are certainly high rises in downtown SF that comfortably fit 8000+ people. - Tech company employees live in the south bay mostly because that's where the tech companies are, not the other way around. - Reaching SF from the east bay is much easier than reaching Mountain View/Palo Alto from the east bay; in general SF seems like a better compromise for commute access from the whole region. - Not requiring parking was kind of the OP's point. Put the office somewhere with actually decent transit access, and build no parking at all. - Skyscrapers work fine for big finance companies even more paranoid about their secrets than Apple and Facebook. - Plenty of companies larger, smaller or of comparable size to Facebook find that a skyscraper in a real city makes sense. I think the real answer to the OP's question is mainly that the extreme power of NIMBYs in California makes it nearly impossible to build new tall buildings, so truly urban office space is in very short supply. Indeed, it can be difficult to build much of anything in California that isn't more or less in the middle of nowhere -- Facebook and Google are both practically in the Bay! The development of SoMa may prove something of an exception to this, and it will be interesting to see if many tech companies move into the new office space planned there.
dredmorbius 14y ago
Agreeing with most of lexande's points, only to add: Bay Area populations are essentially tri-centric. There's San Francisco, there's the South Bay, and there's the East Bay. The Peninsula is relatively sparsely populated (single-family detached homes, small apartment complexes), very expensive, exceptionally poorly served by transit, and has horrendous traffic (101, 280 south of Page Mill and north of Burlingame, and various South Bay expressways (Oregon, Lawrence, Middlefield, etc.). Locating offices in/near San Jose (limited tower availability due to SJO-induced height restrictions), Oakland/Berkeley, San Francisco, and possibly satellites in Walnut Creek or Pleasanton/San Ramon (many more established companies do have datacenters in these areas) would make more sense. Why do so many companies locate in/near Palo Alto? VC and founders. Headquarter location is most often dictated by the CEO. Where's Mark's house again?

by flyt 14y ago

lexande 14y ago

- There are certainly high rises in downtown SF that comfortably fit 8000+ people. - Tech company employees live in the south bay mostly because that's where the tech companies are, not the other way around. - Reaching SF from the east bay is much easier than reaching Mountain View/Palo Alto from the east bay; in general SF seems like a better compromise for commute access from the whole region. - Not requiring parking was kind of the OP's point. Put the office somewhere with actually decent transit access, and build no parking at all. - Skyscrapers work fine for big finance companies even more paranoid about their secrets than Apple and Facebook. - Plenty of companies larger, smaller or of comparable size to Facebook find that a skyscraper in a real city makes sense. I think the real answer to the OP's question is mainly that the extreme power of NIMBYs in California makes it nearly impossible to build new tall buildings, so truly urban office space is in very short supply. Indeed, it can be difficult to build much of anything in California that isn't more or less in the middle of nowhere -- Facebook and Google are both practically in the Bay! The development of SoMa may prove something of an exception to this, and it will be interesting to see if many tech companies move into the new office space planned there.

dredmorbius 14y ago

Agreeing with most of lexande's points, only to add: Bay Area populations are essentially tri-centric. There's San Francisco, there's the South Bay, and there's the East Bay. The Peninsula is relatively sparsely populated (single-family detached homes, small apartment complexes), very expensive, exceptionally poorly served by transit, and has horrendous traffic (101, 280 south of Page Mill and north of Burlingame, and various South Bay expressways (Oregon, Lawrence, Middlefield, etc.). Locating offices in/near San Jose (limited tower availability due to SJO-induced height restrictions), Oakland/Berkeley, San Francisco, and possibly satellites in Walnut Creek or Pleasanton/San Ramon (many more established companies do have datacenters in these areas) would make more sense. Why do so many companies locate in/near Palo Alto? VC and founders. Headquarter location is most often dictated by the CEO. Where's Mark's house again?