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Google pays $250M for Sunnyvale offices where 3,000 could work

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Re: Google pays $250M for Sunnyvale offices where 3,000 could work

#71

Post by achow »

ethagknight wrote: post #27
mtbcoder wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop there though? Why not open up shop near a university town with a low cost of living? Steady supply of interns, new hires, R&D partnerships, etc. Culture in a university town, while not on par with a major city, is generally quite well too.

As a real estate developer, I would love to see some more discussion on this thread. What would it take to get a major tech company to relocate an office or two from Bay Area to much cheaper regions. Obvious items would be network effects, primarily access to skilled labor and capital. What else? Cheap, frequent flights to the mothership? Has Google fiber and the likes had any real impact on luring tech workers out?…

Opening office is not good enough.

The center of gravity also should move. Example, if all CXOs move then there is a chance that office will prosper and people from other parts of country would also move there even if they had no plans earlier.

Quite often I have seen that satellite office don't prosper because the center of action is still at HQ, that translates to freedom of moving between teams, opportunity to work on problems that really matter for the company, etc. Satellite office attracts only those folks who have reasons to be in those cities (usually for personal reasons, very seldom for professional ones).

Only way it can be really effective is if a company moves lock, stock and barrel to a new location - the way Boeing did in early 2000 (moved its HQ from Seattle to Chicago).

Re: Google pays $250M for Sunnyvale offices where 3,000 could work

#72

Post by VikingCoder »

569,000 square feet... 3,000 employees. That's 190 square feet per employee. I know there's waste with hallways, bathrooms, utility closets, etc... But doesn't Google also pack their employees in like sardines?

Isn't a (small) cubicle more like 80 square feet? That'd mean more than half of the space is not-cubicle, right?

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I've worked in 64 square foot cubicles...?

And I had to share a cubicle for a short time when I think I had 80 square feet.

Re: Google pays $250M for Sunnyvale offices where 3,000 could work

#73

Post by BillyParadise »

mtbcoder wrote: post #26
yitchelle wrote: post #21

I don't get why Google and others are not going out of the valley to nearby cities like Sacramento? The difference in property acquisition is probably pocket change to the company, but I reckon the quality of life to the Googlers, Facebookers etc would be vastly different.

Why stop there though? Why not open up shop near a university town with a low cost of living? Steady supply of interns, new hires, R&D partnerships, etc. Culture in a university town, while not on par with a major city, is generally quite well too.

Why stop even there - why not just build your own town and your own university to train people the Google Way - if Trump can have a university, why not Google?

Re: Google pays $250M for Sunnyvale offices where 3,000 could work

#74

Post by ycosynot »

abbasmehdi wrote: post #4

Why not East Bay or South Bay, or anywhere but the peninsula?

"A second Apple spaceship will be landing in Sunnyvale", October 2015, maybe it has something to do with it, somehow. http://fortune.com/2015/10/02/apple-spaceship-sunnyvale/ "The transaction is another sign—as if you need any more—of Apple’s tremendous expansion, potentially providing enough room for more than 3,000 workers. "

Re: Google pays $250M for Sunnyvale offices where 3,000 could work

#75

Post by rwmj »

elbigbad wrote: post #70
rwmj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people do this. I'm paying $1000/month to own a 2 bedroom house with a huge garden. I built my own office at the end of the garden, which I can guarantee you is several times bigger and more comfortable than a work cube. I work remotely for a major US software company. (My commute is 1 minute if I'm carrying a cup of tea, slightly shorter if not). Edit: picture of the office: http://oirase.anne…

Not everyone has the option to just telework. Many companies do not have this option and most jobs require face time of some sort. That's like saying you got a job at Google and asking why everyone doesn't simply get jobs at Google.

I would argue that most people in IT (which is what we're talking about here) have the option to telework.

It may be that because of technical or institutional barriers they are not able to do this, but those usually have very little to do with the nature of the work.

Re: Google pays $250M for Sunnyvale offices where 3,000 could work

#76

Post by rrrrtttt »

svantana wrote: post #54
bravura wrote: post #3

Interesting to note that this works out to roughly $700 per employee per month, over a ten month span. $250M / 10 yrs / 12 months / 3000 employees = $700 per employee-month

Except that after those ten years, the value of the property will exceed $0. In fact it's rather likely to be worth more then than now, so it's actually an investment. As Tony Soprano said, "buy real estate cus God ain't making any more". Demand is pretty certain to outstrip supply from here on out.

Presumably, Google's core business has better return on capital than real estate, or else Google would have become a real estate shop.

Re: Google pays $250M for Sunnyvale offices where 3,000 could work

#77

Post by pflats »

Nav_Panel wrote: post #38
mtbcoder wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop there though? Why not open up shop near a university town with a low cost of living? Steady supply of interns, new hires, R&D partnerships, etc. Culture in a university town, while not on par with a major city, is generally quite well too.

This happened in Pittsburgh. Not quite a college town, but many Google Pittsburgh employees are straight out of Carnegie Mellon.

It's definitely a recruiting strategy. Heck, until fairly recently, Google Pittsburgh was on the CMU campus.

Apple, Intel, Disney, and a bunch of others still are.

http://www.cmu.edu/corporate/partnerships/cic/tenants.html

Re: Google pays $250M for Sunnyvale offices where 3,000 could work

#78

Post by rwmj »

bane wrote: post #39
tyingq wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for comparison, that would cover PITI for a 15 year mortgage of around $330k. In cheaper parts of the country, like Dallas, that would net you a 4br 2000+ sq foot home on a 1/2 acre in an affluent suburb.

Mortgages also don't go up once you're in, so they decrease as a percentage of living cost over time (assuming no change in income), while rents go up roughly with inflation.

Does the US not have standard variable rate mortgages? They are the norm in the UK, and they very much can go up (or down) over time, depending on the interest rate. Of course many people have assumed that interest rates will be low forever.

Re: Google pays $250M for Sunnyvale offices where 3,000 could work

#80

Post by Retric »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #62
ones_and_zeros wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the worlds best and brightest, in the worlds technology hot bed, blamed for gentrification, told we are over paid, told our skills are in such demand that special worker visa systems are in place to supplement the supply but not only can they not afford a home, they can't afford rent by themselves. Someone is making money in SV to live alone and buy homes but it isn't the engineers.

some engineers most certainly do. I'd say anyone who makes over 200K can afford to live here. Can a single person making 150K a year afford to live in Santa Clara County? I'd say for sure.

Your vastly overstating things. 2,700 per month was doable @85k. @150K you could afford 6K per month.
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