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Stripe to move to South San Francisco

sfchronicle.com

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Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#371

Post by ImprovedSilence »

nostrademons wrote: post #317
kerkeslager wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all true, but assumes a quick move. A move strategy could be as simple as, opening up an office in a cheaper location: 1. New teams are created at the new location. 2. New hires on existing teams are placed at the new location, with exceptions if teams have a strong need to be in the same place. 3. Make it clear that you'll help people relocate to the new office if they choose to--some people will take you up…

There're network effects between teams in a big company just like there're network effects between startups in a big city. As others have mentioned, the big tech companies are all actively doing this. Nevertheless, it's not really taking. I know 3 people who moved from Google's NYC office (the 2nd largest) to Mountain View because all the top-priority projects were in Mountain View. As a general rule of thumb, you wa…

A side not to your side note, I think you’re only half right. zoning and nimby-ism are largely creating artificial scarcity in terms of housing supply. SF cost of living gets squeezed on the supply side and demand side. If some other metro area got hit with high demand, presumably it would not have the issue creating supply that SF faces, and thus overall COL wouldn’t be as high.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#372

Post by kndjckt »

pc wrote: post #296

Stripe cofounder here. Quick comment to say that we're excited about the move. South San Francisco is a cooperative and open-minded city. In being an infrastructure company, we have to take a long-term view, and we think this can be a good for many years. And while the Bay is tricky from a commuting standpoint no matter what the location, the the presence of a marina right beside this site opens up a lot of interesti…

Hey Patrick. I drive past the current office quite frequently at night and notice most of the TV screens in the meeting rooms are left on (on a dark blue idle screen). For the sake of the planet, can you switch these off at the end of the day? It's frustrating to see such an innovative company wasting energy on something so easily fixed.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#373

Post by Decade »

abalone wrote: post #117
Decade wrote: 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…

> That's a rather uncharitable characterization. SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction.

I’m a San Francisco native. I’ve learned to be uncharitable when it comes to the Board of Supervisors. They are masters of saying one thing and doing another.

Increasing the fees on office space is going to make even more projects infeasible, which would lead to fewer offices being constructed. Which, in their minds, will justify the fees. For the longest time, the self-styled “anti-corporate” faction in San Francisco politics have said that the cap on office space construction that Elberling helped to pass back in 1986 is not a real burden because so few offices have been built that the cap has rarely been the limiting factor.

Limiting offices in San Francisco isn’t even going to help with the jobs-housing imbalance. As we see here, the limited office supply in San Francisco is driving companies to move to other Bay Area cities that don’t pretend to care about the jobs-housing imbalance.

The workers still need somewhere to live, and many of them will live in San Francisco. But instead of using our extensive investment in transit to downtown San Francisco, they will use the more limited transit and freeways going to the outskirts of South City.

Enough with this every-county-for-itself race to the bottom. If the San Francisco supervisors were serious about the jobs-housing balance, they would not be making offices harder to build in San Francisco. They would be ceding local control of land use to a regional authority, in exchange for the rest of the Bay Area counties ceding their control, too, so that we could build an integrated and equitable region. Solve the jobs-housing imbalance for the whole region by building a lot more homes. https://cayimby.org

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#374

Post by laurencerowe »

Expect this to add at least an hour a day to the commutes of those employees living in East Bay. Oyster Point is a long way from the Bart station. The fastest option will be to change to the shuttle at Glen Park. The ferry is nice for those who live near the terminal, but slower than Bart and shuttle for everyone else.

On a more positive note the Caltrain station is closer, so the East Bay commute could improve significantly in 20-30 years if the Caltrain to Oakland tunnel is ever built.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#375

Post by jeffFrom18F »

dawg- wrote: 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…

They can't move their HQ at this point for reasons others have mentioned.

It does seem like they are taking a balanced strategy, however. I remember a story a few months ago about how their latest team is all-remote. They might have better incentives to open more offices in lower-cost locales after going public (see Uber's new Dallas plans for example).

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#376

Post by mslev »

electricslpnsld wrote: post #368
citilife wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in Alameda (ferry to work daily), gotta say nice location. I only apply for jobs which I can ferry to and it'll definitely enable employees at Stripe live in more affordable locations.

Perk of the Ferry: donuts and beer...

No donuts on the 7:35 from Oakland this morning, tragedy.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#377

Post by paulcole »

pc wrote: post #296

Stripe cofounder here. Quick comment to say that we're excited about the move. South San Francisco is a cooperative and open-minded city. In being an infrastructure company, we have to take a long-term view, and we think this can be a good for many years. And while the Bay is tricky from a commuting standpoint no matter what the location, the the presence of a marina right beside this site opens up a lot of interesti…

> the presence of a marina right beside this site opens up a lot of interesting new transportation options for us throughout the Bay.

What specifically are these options?

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#378

Post by zjaffee »

unlinked_dll wrote: post #299
dawg- wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the insight, again I fully admit that I don't know the details of the housing/jobs market over there so it was really interesting to hear your perspective. I think the movie industry example is an interesting connection to make. For the last few years Atlanta has overtaken LA as the top producer of feature films in the country, largely due to crazy huge tax incentives for movie studios, and has earned the…

>the last few years Atlanta has overtaken LA as the top producer of feature films in the country I've worked in the film business a bit. I'd say it's more like colonization than relocation. Atlanta is a place for filming at low costs, most of pre/post production and the organizational aspects still happens in Los Angeles. Most of the talent is still in LA and flies out to Atlanta for a few weeks. They're saving a buc…

Adding onto this point, I think one thing to recognize about the future of LA as a big media hub is the fact that tons of popular Youtubers and other independent content creators will relocate to Los Angeles due to the agglomeration of talent that exists there.

This is much more similar to how things work with SF/SV in the context of startups.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#379

Post by rodgerd »

mc32 wrote: post #162
kasey_junk wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Boeing moved, many companies based in NYC moved out of the city in the 80s, 90s. It’s not extremely hard, but it is disruptive. When the exodus happens it’ll start as a trickle and by the time people take notice half the cos will have reduced occupancy. After certain stage it’s more about managing growth than about R&D, so you can find most of the talent you need in alternate markets.

Boeing's move seems to be working well for them.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#380

Post by PopeDotNinja »

giarc wrote: post #293
wbronitsky wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I commuted into the Stripe office by car from Oakland, it would take me about 45 minutes to get there, and well over 60 minutes to get home. With this move, you can add about 30 minutes, at least, on to each end. And that's on a good day and assuming you are already commuting by car. From Oakland/the East Bay, there is no good way to get to South San Francisco by public transportation. You are looking at a 2+ ho…

>From Oakland/the East Bay, there is no good way to get to South San Francisco by public transportation. Is the ferry considered public transportation? I don't live in the area at all, so I'm just poking around on Google Maps to see what the situation is like, so I'm geniuingly asking.

Yup, lots of people ride the ferry.
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