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Stripe to move to South San Francisco

sfchronicle.com

151–160 of 441 posts

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#151
post #149

I am not in the bay area, in fact I've never even been to the West Coast. So I am going to ask what may seem like a stupid question to some of you. I mean this in as polite a way as possible, but why wouldn't established companies like Stripe just fuck off to another city entirely? It's a successful company with a great product - that I'm sure many people would like to work for. They could surely lure talent from the…

Stripe has offices in lots of places. But they also have their existing employees in San Francisco.

Fucking off to another city is functionally equivalent to laying off half the company.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#152
post #149

I am not in the bay area, in fact I've never even been to the West Coast. So I am going to ask what may seem like a stupid question to some of you. I mean this in as polite a way as possible, but why wouldn't established companies like Stripe just fuck off to another city entirely? It's a successful company with a great product - that I'm sure many people would like to work for. They could surely lure talent from the…

More and more companies are choosing to do this when they are created. But Stripe has, I believe, over a thousand employees. Expecting them to relocate far away (p.e. another state) is simply ridiculous (I believe the one example of a company doing something like this would be Zappos, when they relocated to Las Vegas). You'd just lose too many people. Now, opening another office somewhere else to keep expanding, a lot of companies do.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#153
post #149

I am not in the bay area, in fact I've never even been to the West Coast. So I am going to ask what may seem like a stupid question to some of you. I mean this in as polite a way as possible, but why wouldn't established companies like Stripe just fuck off to another city entirely? It's a successful company with a great product - that I'm sure many people would like to work for. They could surely lure talent from the…

More and more companies are choosing to do this when they are created. But Stripe has, I believe, over a thousand employees. Expecting them to relocate far away (p.e. another state) is simply ridiculous (I believe the one example of a company doing something like this would be Zappos, when they relocated to Las Vegas). You'd just lose too many people. Now, opening another office somewhere else to keep expanding, a lo…

Thanks! I didn't consider this before posting

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#154
post #67

What a completely unexpected consequence of the restrictions on office space, spearheaded by John Elberling of TODCO. /s He is now trying to make office space even more restricted, and his allies are working to reduce office space alternatively by raising the fees on office construction. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-Mayor-SoMa-n... https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2019/10/22/sf-... (Mo…

> working to reduce office space That's a rather uncharitable characterization. SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction. We already have way too few houses, especially low-income housing.[1] Which is what makes Stripe's move here particularly low integrity: they'll have all the housing impact on SF without paying any of the corporate taxes. From your own source: "A separate economic feasibility…

A law or regulation relying on corporate integrity in order to work well is a law or regulation that is poorly constructed.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#155
post #82

These days I was thinking about San Francisco and wondering how it had come to that. There’s so much demand, so many people want to move to SF, yet its population has barely moved in the last decade. Why is that? If anything had gone right, SF should be a HK-like dystopian city filled with electronics and high-tech. But instead we have a horizontally limited place, that is filled with homeless and restricts new advan…

>If anything had gone right, SF should be a HK-like dystopian city filled with electronics and high-tech.

Do you know what dystopian means? Generally speaking it's not something people pine for.

ADDED: Opinions will of course differ as to whether SF should have more aggressively transformed to be more like Hong Kong. (Which is an extremely expensive city with serious housing problems BTW.)

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fog is worse than where? I work in SSF as well... A) its where businesses like Stripe should be in the coming years (it wont be creative, it'll be internet infrastructure) B) there is a ferry to Oakland (to help alleviate the absurd traffic jams over the bay bridge) and C) bring some variety (right now SSF is all pharma and med device) into SSF. There is no reason why SSF couldn't be a thriving, cool place to live an…

Is SSF still a large city in terms of cost of living and owning a home? Personally, by living in a large city I'm giving up the ability to own a home in exchange for access to niche resources such as ethnic enclaves, bohemian artist communities, cultural events, groups dedicated to uncommon hobbies, etc. Just having trendy restaurants and coffee shops wouldn't do it for me.

I think you’ve nailed for me the difference between superficial trendiness and rich culture, in an urban setting

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#157
post #149

I am not in the bay area, in fact I've never even been to the West Coast. So I am going to ask what may seem like a stupid question to some of you. I mean this in as polite a way as possible, but why wouldn't established companies like Stripe just fuck off to another city entirely? It's a successful company with a great product - that I'm sure many people would like to work for. They could surely lure talent from the…

> I mean this in as polite a way as possible, but why wouldn't established companies like Stripe just fuck off to another city entirely?

To be totally blunt, I also suspect a large part of it is that the founders would like to be in the bay area.

I don't mean that as a slight either - I think if you're spending a good portion of your life on something, you might as well do it in a place you enjoy spending time in!

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What alternative solution actually fixes this, though? All you can really do is build more housing (to fix housing undersupply caused by the excess office space) and limit growth of office space (to prevent the imbalance from getting worse). The fact that companies can open up offices somewhere else shouldn't be very surprising, and it shouldn't be shocking that people will choose to live where they already live unle…

> What alternative solution actually fixes this, though? Lower the cost of building housing. Streamline permits, zoning, and environmental review. Publicly commit, in other words, to driving down housing prices over a decade. (Note: not land prices! That’s the compromise.) This makes it cheaper to... Build enough shelters for the transient homeless population. Now that they’re a stable problem, we can focus on the gr…

[deleted]

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#159
post #149

I am not in the bay area, in fact I've never even been to the West Coast. So I am going to ask what may seem like a stupid question to some of you. I mean this in as polite a way as possible, but why wouldn't established companies like Stripe just fuck off to another city entirely? It's a successful company with a great product - that I'm sure many people would like to work for. They could surely lure talent from the…

A corollary to this well reasoned question would be: has Silicon Valley area peaked in terms of startup creation? On the one hand, you've got the talent there, attracted because the big tech is concentrated in the area; on the other hand, the living costs makes a ramen-profitable startup in SV way more expensive than a non-SV one.

How should I look at this issue from the perspective of an outsider? Should I join the crowd or run in the opposite direction?

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#160
post #149

I am not in the bay area, in fact I've never even been to the West Coast. So I am going to ask what may seem like a stupid question to some of you. I mean this in as polite a way as possible, but why wouldn't established companies like Stripe just fuck off to another city entirely? It's a successful company with a great product - that I'm sure many people would like to work for. They could surely lure talent from the…

One issue is when the people who relocated with you start to leave. If you need 500 engineers you might be able to get them to move to a mid-tier city with you but when you start needing to replace those engineers it’s going to be tougher.
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