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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

#341

Post by lotsofpulp »

runako wrote: post #245
brookst wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layoffs are expensive compared to making people miserable so they quit.

Only if you pay severance/etc., which X doesn't.

Terminating employees without cause (i.e. due to employee’s poor performance) entitles the employer to unemployment benefits, causing the state to increase the business’s unemployment insurance premiums.

If an employee quits or is terminated due to not coming into work, then they are not eligible for unemployment benefits, and hence the business’s unemployment insurance premiums are unaffected.

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

#342

Post by whyenot »

htrp wrote: post #56
zknill wrote: 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?

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

You can take Caltrain to San Jose. I did this commute for several years when I lived in SF and worked in SJ. With electrification coming top Caltrain this fall, it should be faster than the current diesel trains. Depending on where Twitter's offices are in Palo Alto and San Jose, it probably won't be that bad.

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

#343

Post by AlexandrB »

brabel wrote: post #328
timeon wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor really. It used to work for all people with browser now it is only for logged-in.

That was already the case before Musk bought it.

What? No it wasn't! You used to be able to view entire Twitter threads without being logged in. It was also possible to go to someone's account page and see their posts in reverse chronological order. The latter went away shortly after Musk took over. The former took a little longer, but is now gone as well. In many cases you can't even view a single tweet without the site trying to get you to log in.

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

#344

Post by AlexandrB »

recursive wrote: post #332
timeon wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor really. It used to work for all people with browser now it is only for logged-in.

That must have been a very long time ago.

~October 27, 2022. So yeah, about 2 years ago.

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

#345

Post by dijit »

iancmceachern wrote: post #271
ahuth wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF certainly has its challenges. But in my 9 years of working in the financial district I never saw something like this. Obviously others will have different experiences than me. Point is, you can find crime and bad things in any city. San Francisco has work to do, but isn't the hell-hole people or the news make it out to be.

I live and have an engineering office in SOMA and I've had the exact opposite experience. In 8 years living here my dog has been viciously attacked twice, we've had people attack us on the Embarcadero and around the sidewalks and parks in our neighborhood, and just yesterday I was lamenting that there was a time in my past where I wasn't comfortable around drug use. Now when I walk out of my office and see someone sm…

Even when I was there for GDC one week this year there was a young black woman who was being detained for assaulting an asian lady.

Would be somewhat normal except she started attacking the officer, stripping off and screaming racist slurs. She was clearly on drugs- which gave pause to the seriously large amount of homelessness and drug use that seemed incredibly normalised on my short commute from Mission to the Moscone Centrr

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

#346

Post by aqme28 »

anotherhue wrote: post #143
bcx wrote: post #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 b…

during one visit to those Zendesk offices an urgent slack message (verily) was sent out advising everyone to get away from the windows, as there was shooting outside. About 10 minutes later also via Slack the CEO announced not to worry it was simply one drug dealer shooting another drug dealer in the back. Everyone could return to their desks. I never understood why the company would put its employees in danger until…

My first week working in a finance firm in midtown Manhattan there was a significant shooting. These things happen everywhere (edit: in the US) unfortunately. I'm not convinced that a more suburban location that forces people to drive would actually be any safer.

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

#347

Post by seanmcdirmid »

aqme28 wrote: post #340
drewda wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That SF's payroll tax exemption was specifically created for Twitter: https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/twitter-will-get-pa... Here's one summary of it as of last year: > The infamous "Twitter tax break" provided by former Mayor Ed Lee to lure companies, including Twitter, to mid-Market by exempting them from a portion of their payroll taxes, had its sunset in 2019. Many argued that it did little to revitalize…

I'm really curious if there has been a comprehensive study on incentive corporate tax breaks like these. It has become my understanding that these are rarely worth it. Reminds me on this very interesting video on the subject focusing on Louisiana ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTic9btP38 )

A tax on gross receipts is going to discourage any big business from locating in the city. You shouldn't ask "what incentive of these tax breaks" are, but rather "was it worth have Twitter/Google/Stripe/... downtown" or not.

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

#348

Post by recursive »

AlexandrB wrote: post #344
recursive wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That must have been a very long time ago.

~October 27, 2022. So yeah, about 2 years ago.

I have to admit, I have a loose understanding of what's going on with twitter or even how to use it. But my personal Mandela effect is that it didn't work right if you weren't logged in for a lot longer than that.

I'm probably mis-remembering.

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

#349

Post by archagon »

VancouverMan wrote: post #263
ianhawes wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats odd because SF _has_ been the hell-hole people and the media have described it as in my own experiences. It would seem to me that Chicago, NYC, LA do have "bad parts" but they're distinctly separate from the "good parts". San Francisco's bad parts and good parts have evidently merged. I do not understand why people who live in SF have to effectively gaslight themselves into believing that the breakdown of certa…

> I do not understand why people who live in SF have to effectively gaslight themselves into believing that the breakdown of certain basic tenants of society is part of the culture of their city. That phenomenon isn't isolated to San Francisco, nor even to the US. The same mindset is also widespread in "progressive" Canadian cities like Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa, for example. From what I can tell, one of the mai…

Consider it an overcorrection to the sick and routine dehumanization of these individuals. I’ve actually seen people on this site say that they laugh at drug addicts on the street. If they could lock them in a dungeon and throw away the key, I’m sure they’d do it in a heartbeat.

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

#350

Post by jerojero »

anon291 wrote: post #273

Realistically, X is better than its ever been; community notes have been a game-changer in terms of fact-checking. Higher quality and much more balanced.

Every day I get 5-10 new followers bot followers. I haven't gotten a real follower in months, I don't use the account that much.

Other than that, the fyp shows me a lot of right wing content (and particularly Elon Musk posts) that I ignore, but they do show them.

Regularly as I'm scrolling down the page, it'll randomly refresh or insert/disappear posts that I'm viewing. Yeah, the site is functional, but it is not better than its ever been. Not by a mile.

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