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Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay

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Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay

#121
post #36

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You might be right when it comes to employees, but definitely not when it comes to users. There's a lot of people using X, and the vast, vast majority of them don't care much for Musk or actively dislike him. THe problem with X is that it is (and always was) sort of an echo chamber, there's no average X user, everybody sees very different content based on what they follow. The average HNer probably won't notice the h…

Im there for finance news and compiler tech. It’s the only platform where I don’t feel like I am force fed Hollywood drama. You just have to follow people you respect instead of people you find amusing.

Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay

#122
post #51

I 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?

The Bay area is fairly constrained in terms of transportation. Commuting in a car is not possible (unless you enjoy deadlock traffic + paying for parking). Public transportation exists but only works on specific segments. I would guess a large portion of the individuals in the SF office would live within SF/East bay and have a fairly reasonable commute going to the SF office. I am not sure how far Bart goes south now…

oh god i forgot Caltrain exists

Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay

#123
post #100
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until 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 wh…

Hey dang, what exactly in my comment above warrants -5 (or more) downvotes?

Because theres a snowball's chance in hell that will ever happen. Just build normal trains and expand the public transportation like every developed country on Earth.

Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay

#124
post #51

I 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?

The Bay area is fairly constrained in terms of transportation. Commuting in a car is not possible (unless you enjoy deadlock traffic + paying for parking). Public transportation exists but only works on specific segments. I would guess a large portion of the individuals in the SF office would live within SF/East bay and have a fairly reasonable commute going to the SF office. I am not sure how far Bart goes south now…

Commuting in a car is not possible because most people do it, I suppose.

Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay

#125
post #51

I 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?

If they relocate engineers to Palo Alto, that's halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. And a lot of engineers (not necessarily at X but in general in Silicon Valley) live in the suburbs between SF and SJ already. It might be mildly less convenient for some, but also mildly more convenient for many.

Twitter sold a lot of people on living in SF proper as opposed to Palo Alto, if memory serves they were one of the first big shops to set up on Market

Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay

#126
post #66
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More 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

Until 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 wh…

Is this comment satire? It's really hard to tell.

If it's not I encourage you to go look at the stellar success of the boring company in places like Las Vegas and reconsider your assessment of the future.

Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats generally the point with sudden disruptive moves - high attrition. Reduce the headcount without having to be in the news for layoffs.

They've already cut about 80% of their workforce since Elon took over, I'm not sure how much more attrition they can take. Sure the site still mostly works in the technical sense, but the way it works now has led to a significant decline in revenue and active users.

[flagged]

Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats generally the point with sudden disruptive moves - high attrition. Reduce the headcount without having to be in the news for layoffs.

They've already cut about 80% of their workforce since Elon took over, I'm not sure how much more attrition they can take. Sure the site still mostly works in the technical sense, but the way it works now has led to a significant decline in revenue and active users.

They've cut out things like viewing who liked a tweet etc (for cost savings I suspect) so the site is probably dirt cheap. Can't imagine ads don't pay for the cost of running servers at this point, and a headcount reduction might bring it to profitability.

Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay

#130
It’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.

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