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Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

sfchronicle.com

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Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#131

Post by awad »

fortyten wrote: post #27
selectodude wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which says more about why the real estate market in San Francisco is such a disaster.

Because people keep using valuable space for offices instead of affordable housing? This is exactly why SF sucks to live in. You have to live there to be close to work, but you're in competition with your damn office. Talk about screwing over your employees.

The municipalities could allow building vertically for more dense housing in both SF and the wider Bay Area but NIMBYism is pretty strong out here so not sure why the commercial developers are being chastised.

The reality is that the market has determined that, with the limited resources available given current building codes, it is more profitable to build and lease commercial space. I don't know that I would blame the employers so much as the actual existing residents fighting against more dense housing.

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#132

Post by dx034 »

awad wrote: post #113

Inevitably, someone will make a comment about how Dropbox is overstaffed and could do this with ~10 employees since 'they just sync files'. To save you the trouble, consider that they also need to hire support, sales, marketing, and operations staff beyond the engineers and designers it takes to keep the product(s) running, especially as they shift into an enterprise-focused business.

I just wonder why all of them have to be in the most expensive part of the US. Tech talent might be more accessible in SF but support staff and marketing shouldn't be. Having offices in a cheaper location would not only save the company money but also be potentially nicer for employees. It would probably cut most people's commute time and increase cost-adjusted salaries.

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#133

Post by dx034 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #103
IgorPartola wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to modify stuff structurally (which isn’t really structurally but rather just the non-load bearing walls) is pretty standard in commercial leasing. Your employer isn’t getting anything special.

Yes, because even a SMB has a lot of leverage compared to, say, a residential leasee. I believe that was the point.

It's more the duration of the lease. If you'd rent a house on a fixed contract for 10 years, landlords would also allow changes under the condition that they're reversed at the end.

Interestingly that's exactly the case in Germany. Home ownership there is one of the lowest in the world so that tenants stay in one place for longer. It's normal for tenants to change apartments as they like during the tenancy. Landlords don't care as long as it's in a good state at the end of the tenancy.

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#134

Post by mosselman »

On a somewhat unrelated note: If you scroll down to the second image in the article (not counting the slider) there is an image of some people standing in a room with a table that has a few lamps above it. Can someone tell me which lamps those are? I'd like to find out if I can afford them for my living room.

(http://ww1.hdnux.com/photos/66/50/52/14322364/3/920x1240.jpg)

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#135

Post by Arnt »

mosselman wrote: post #134

On a somewhat unrelated note: If you scroll down to the second image in the article (not counting the slider) there is an image of some people standing in a room with a table that has a few lamps above it. Can someone tell me which lamps those are? I'd like to find out if I can afford them for my living room. ( http://ww1.hdnux.com/photos/66/50/52/14322364/3/920x1240.jpg )

Haven't seen those exact ones, but many like them. Expect a three-digit price for each cluster of four, and you can get those or similar ones from expensive lamp shops that sell primarily to architects. Those shops have pleasantly clueful consultants. If you can't find one, ask for a recommendation from an architect or perhaps an office furniture shop that sells aeron chairs and/or sit/stand desks with motors.

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#136

Post by wellboy »

keypusher wrote: post #52

> File-sharing giant Dropbox has signed the biggest lease in San Francisco history, an agreement for 736,000 square feet, the entirety of a new office complex under construction in the southwest corner of Mission Bay. [...] The space will represent an expansion for Dropbox, which occupies 182,000 square feet at 333 Brannan St., a building Kilroy also owns, as well as 115,000 square feet at 345 Brannan. Dropbox curren…

Because their current office would only be big enough for maybe 1,300 employees and they are planning to hire another 102 in the next 3 months, 300 within this year, 1,000 in the next 3 years?

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#137

Post by icebraining »

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #60
kaishiro wrote: post #24

This is tangential, and I'm not a designer so this is just one dev's opinion, but I found Dropbox's latest rebrand (dropbox.design) to be a bizarre departure for them. It was so off the wall I just assumed it was some sort of parody site until I realized it was official. I'm in no place to determine if it's "good" or "bad", but it's certainly an...interesting direction, if nothing else.

For my taste dropbox.design is borderline ugly. It is definitely not pretty. The colors look like they were picked in MS Paint. https://www.dropbox.com is in the same style and I find it looks very unprofessional, even if it is targeted to regular users. It looks like an art gallery? https://www.dropbox.com/business on the other hand looks clean and trustworthy.

Seems like they're testing different landing pages, to me those look the same.

Taking screenshots with different tools reveals two other pages (I assume the first is what you're seeing):

https://imgur.com/a/lPqe3

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#138

Post by icelancer »

deelowe wrote: post #101
IgorPartola wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to modify stuff structurally (which isn’t really structurally but rather just the non-load bearing walls) is pretty standard in commercial leasing. Your employer isn’t getting anything special.

Not only that, but the tenant is responsible for all maintenance and repairs.

This is absolutely not the case in my buildings for our SMB that is in the single digit millions in revenue. We can make changes to non-load bearing structures and we are not on the hook for maintenance or repairs on the building.

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#139

Post by codecamper »

dx034 wrote: post #132
awad wrote: post #113

Inevitably, someone will make a comment about how Dropbox is overstaffed and could do this with ~10 employees since 'they just sync files'. To save you the trouble, consider that they also need to hire support, sales, marketing, and operations staff beyond the engineers and designers it takes to keep the product(s) running, especially as they shift into an enterprise-focused business.

I just wonder why all of them have to be in the most expensive part of the US. Tech talent might be more accessible in SF but support staff and marketing shouldn't be. Having offices in a cheaper location would not only save the company money but also be potentially nicer for employees. It would probably cut most people's commute time and increase cost-adjusted salaries.

Isn't that the part that is built on landfill & so the buildings will simply sink into the earth during the big one?

Re: Dropbox taking entire building in Mission Bay – biggest lease in city history

#140

Post by [deleted] »

mypalmike wrote: post #79
a2tech wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a ton of stuff around that though. Tens of thousands of paying customers need support. Credit card teams. Data center guys. Guys to right deployment tools. Security guys to monitor the credit card system. Hacking together a proof of concept is simple, running a big business is complicated.

Yeah, it surprises me how often even tech people don't understand the compounding complexity that comes with scale. Just consider the engineering involved in this story: https://www.wired.com/2016/03/epic-story-dropboxs-exodus-ama... That is just a portion of their infrastructure engineering activity. They also have product engineering - frontends, backends, mobile clients, integrations, etc. It's not just a server u…

[deleted]
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