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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

#421

Post by happyopossum »

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.

> but the way it works now has led to a significant decline in revenue and active users

I don' think that's completely true - MAUs are up this year, and hit 500M for the first time last Oct...

[1] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-sha...

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

#422

Post by beacon294 »

hintymad wrote: post #412

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 ha…

What did you mean by "move to south bay for good for worse"? I just couldn't parse your meaning.

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

#423

Post by 015a »

autoexecbat wrote: post #396
robxorb wrote: post #363

Why is the title of the HN post changed to read "Twitter", when the linked article title states correctly "X", and is otherwise identical?

It ultimately doesn't matter what a company wants to call themselves if the vast public just uses the old name

I mean, it does matter, and also HackerNews is the only bubble I interact with regularly that still holds on to the Twitter name like gollum and the one ring.

My understanding is that HN has rules against editorialization of headlines. This absolutely qualifies. The company is called X, the article calls it X. You don't have to like it, you don't have to use that name when you speak about the company, but editorializing the headline to name the company whatever the submitter wants is inappropriate.

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

#424

Post by hnburnsy »

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…

Wonder if these SF targeted taxes contributed to the move. I think Musk was debating Benioff about the HGR recently, something about payment processing and gross receipts...

Overpaid Executive Tax (OE)

https://sftreasurer.org/business/taxes-fees/overpaid-executi...

Homelessness Gross Receipts Tax (HGR)

https://sftreasurer.org/business/taxes-fees/homelessness-gro...

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

#425

Post by hintymad »

beacon294 wrote: post #422
hintymad wrote: post #412

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 ha…

What did you mean by "move to south bay for good for worse"? I just couldn't parse your meaning.

My bad. I meant "for good or for worse". That is, I was trying to be neutral to the merit of moving from SF to the south.

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

#426

Post by nimbius »

hintymad wrote: post #412

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 ha…

i concur. I think a lot of this is just sound business acumen.

Twit-er...X, isnt raking in cash like it used to. Musks changes like reinstating hate speech accounts and the blue check fiasco had a direct negative effect on advertising revenue and accelerated already downward subscriber trends. Leaning out the physical side of the already agile digital side was a good idea im not sure twitters old guard would have considered.

San Francisco has seen a talent exodus after the global pandemic. no senior SRE with 20 years of experience --whos also made to show up to the office five days a week-- is going to entertain San Francisco's traffic, crime, homelessness, or general congestion for even a minute.

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

#427

Post by mkaic »

hintymad wrote: post #425
beacon294 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you mean by "move to south bay for good for worse"? I just couldn't parse your meaning.

My bad. I meant "for good or for worse". That is, I was trying to be neutral to the merit of moving from SF to the south.

Anecdotally, I've generally heard this phrased as "for better or for worse" :)

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

#429

Post by lubujackson »

_kava wrote: post #7

I understand this is HN and many here love SF so can you explain to me how or why a company would want to have a physical location in downtown SF? It is expensive, higher tax, more regulations, all of which are often hated by a pure capitalist corporation. With the remote work push, the argument about talent pool is moot as well. IMO, moving out of SF is the correct choice. In fact, moving out of CA is also a correct…

It is an attractive location for young people that want to live in SF instead of the boring burbs. Downtown has a ton of food options for lunch. You can walk over to a Giants game or to the waterfront. Union Square in particular has turned into something of a trash heap, but FiDi to the north and SOMA to the south are (mostly) attractive.

It is easily accessible for anyone on BART or Muni lines so you may not need to own a car.

Outside of that, it's still a flex to have a downtown SF office. This isn't just for warm feelings, it can affect fundraising and talent attraction.

And currently, office prices are super low in SF. My company is paying about 1/5th of the price (literally) for the top floor of a building compared to a company that rents the floor below them (which signed a 5 year lease in 2019).

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

#430

Post by smsm42 »

fabian2k wrote: post #31

Doing this on a few weeks notice seems rather insane to me. Unless you have very good remote work options this is very disruptive for employees.

That depends on how many X employees actually live in SF and how many commute each day back and forth from the same South Bay. When I worked in SF, I regularly shared a train with the latter crowd, and there are a lot of them. I'm not saying they all work for X, but I suspect for a lot of people there the move would actually be an improvement.
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