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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

#411

Post by golergka »

drewda wrote: post #149
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…

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…

> $10 million a year in lost revenue

This assumes that the company would be based on the city regardless. It's very common to see these assumptions in news articles about tax breaks, and it never makes sense.

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

#412

Post by hintymad »

There is a famous paper about the location of company headquarters: they get as close as possible to the residence of company CEOs. If we don't consider the CEO's influence, I'm actually curious if the location of company headquarters has to do with the average age of the employees in the Bay Area. As the employees start to have families, they most likely move to the south bay for better or for worse, and I have a hard time imagine that they'd enjoy commuting via BART or Caltrain for more than an hour every day. And this is probably just me or my circles, a city's hustle and bustle becomes a distraction or at least increasing irrelevant as I age. I increasingly enjoy ample parking space, tranquil suburbs, being able to step out and start jogging in woods or huge parks, and certainly not having to deal with the craziness on SF streets. If more people are like me who prefers living outside of the city proper, then I'd imagine a company will have access to more talent by moving its headquarters to the south of SF.

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

#413

Post by ESTheComposer »

aqme28 wrote: post #346
anotherhue wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[dead]

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

#414

Post by golergka »

caycep wrote: post #331
sangnoir wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never understood why the company would put its employees in danger... Like forcing them to drive to the office 2-5 days each week when they could continue working from home?

vs "I never understood why the company would not pay taxes to improve the environment around its chosen home"?

Like paying $2m for a public bathroom?

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

#415

Post by jandrese »

jsheard wrote: post #116
TheAdamist wrote: post #93

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.

4Chan was run by like one guy using the change he found in the cushions of his couch.

Getting the pixels on people's screens is the easy part. Keeping the Nazis and bots at bay is the expensive part. You have to do the latter if you want to keep the advertisers on your site, which is why X switched to a more for-pay model and still loses money hand over fist. Being able to pay to have your voice amplified has been a real boon for the fascist users on X, they're having a great time.

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

#416

Post by hintymad »

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…

> back when we did sf had a pretty aggressive additional payroll tax and gross receipts taxes

I always wonder what SF has done to deserve the added taxes? Did they keep the crime rate low? Did they keep improving the city's infra? Did they create a culture that people tolerate each other? Did they improve the quality of education? Did they improve the situation of the homeless community? Did they resolve the housing crisis?

Our forefathers fought for no representation no taxes. I don't know what representation I got in the city.

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

#417

Post by aqme28 »

lokar wrote: post #394
aqme28 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You really need to normalize crime rates by population (including commuters) and avoid focusing on anecdotes

No, my point was that you would also want to factor in injury rates from commuting, which tend to dwarf crime rates.

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

#418

Post by smsm42 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #383
pcwalton wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty undeniable that the bot problem is significantly worse than it was before Musk. (I'm not going to take a position on the value of any of the other changes to the product.)

It is interesting that they appear to have solved or at least dramatically reduced the porn spam. Still cant open a post though without seeing 10+ posts about something completely unrelated in the comments

I'm mostly reading political tweets, and for the last year or so I have never noticed that - the comments can be of very varying quality, as always on an unmoderated forum, but I don't remember too much offtopic. Maybe it depends on who do you follow and who the bots are targeting - except Musk, my follows are usually not celebrities, so maybe bots don't bother targeting them.

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

#419

Post by typon »

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.

* No ability to browse the site without logging in

* Hundreds of spam account followers

* Sponsored content inserted in replies masquerading as real content

* Random bugs with video content constantly

* Twitter blue boosting replies to the top, making conversations effectively pay to win.

* Bot account spam comprising ~50% of the replies to any popular tweet

Despite the above, Twitter is still the best place on the internet to get the latest news and a feel for the zeitgeist. This to me is a testament of the incredible product created by Jack.

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

#420

Post by aqme28 »

smsm42 wrote: post #401
aqme28 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If by "everywhere" you mean "major megapolises with crime problems", then yes, everywhere. Otherwise, no, not everywhere, and yes, in a suburban location a chance of a shooting happening under your very office window is extremely low. Living/working in a megapolis has its advantages, but let's not paint over its downsides also. Criminals want the same advantages too.

You're right of course, but it's sort of meaningless. I live in Germany where there isn't nearly as much gun crime, but Musk isn't about to move Twitter to Germany.
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