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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

#431

Post by opportune »

ohduran wrote: post #188
titanomachy wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have data to back this up, except anecdotal, but I think spending a few years in SF, NY, or Seattle can boost your market value by a factor of 3-4. So it could still be worth it in the long run.

It's just my personal perspective, but... I'm still in awe of SV. I simply feel that the time to be there has passed, and I'm late to the party. So where's the party now? It's happening somewhere. Someone is building the next big thing and none of us know yet. The eternal struggle of trying to predict the future. Is Stripe's move a bad move? I guess that the execs are driven by the same fear of missing out what the f…

SV still feels like a party to me. Sure, it’s not 2000 any more, and property prices are high, but there is still a lot of capital and talent sloshing about. Just staying at a top paying big co for 5 years or so, starting as a senior dev, can set you up with a lot of money

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#432

Post by NCWV »

driverdan wrote: post #209
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Last year Stripe funded an anti-homeless campaign just $1 shy of the reporting threshold I don’t get the sense that San Francisco’s homeless problem can be solved by throwing dollars at it. San Francisco chooses high housing prices by restricting construction. Its NIMBYs block tackling its homelessness problem. Money won’t change those choices by San Francisco’s voters. It will just swell another city bureaucracy.

Considering the city already spends around $30k per year per homeless person it's pretty obvious money is not the solution.

Once it gets that high, why not just pay for their housing outright? How are they spending more than it would actually cost to house them?

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#433

Post by helen___keller »

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…

The tech sector as a whole is in a period of massive expansion. It is basically assumed that any well-run tech company needs to be perpetually hiring anybody sufficiently qualified for the endless business opportunities that lie just on the horizon, and there's a small number of expensive cities where it is prudent to do so.

Some day the business climate will cool and the realm of new tech growth won't seem as limitless. When this time comes, big profitable tech companies will continue their drive for bigger profits, and they will turn to cutting costs rather than driving new growth.

When cutting costs comes to tech, plenty of established companies will decide it's time to head off to a smaller city with lower rent and lower wages - or atleast some of them will, and eventually wages and rent in silicon valley will start heading downwards from its current place in the heavens.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#434

Post by chipotle_coyote »

x0x0 wrote: post #31
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree with it being bad for the quality of life, but eliminates is a bit of an exaggeration. It makes it more difficult, to be sure, but there's a BART station in South San Francisco and a free shuttle that runs between there and Oyster Point. For anyone coming up from the Peninsula or the South Bay, though, this might be a commuting improvement. Of course, the big difference is that Stripe's current office is at…

Do you ride Bart? You're going from a local commute to bart -> walking to the office, to a local commute to bart -> going to a station that is skipped by 3/4 of bart lines (ie requires an xfer for Antioch, Pleasanton, or Fremont) -> a shitty bus. NB: Bart is ass and generally is too incompetent to align train and bus schedules. This adds probably at least 45 minutes each way for anyone coming from SF or East Bay loca…

I have ridden BART and Caltrain in the past for work. I've had commutes that involve transfers, too -- usually Caltrain to MUNI.

I don't think what you're saying contradicts anything that I said -- I said that the move to SSF makes it more difficult to commute via BART, but that it was too strong to say that it "eliminates" the possibility of doing so.

In any case, I really suspect that if companies keep moving to the SF Bay Area and keep growing, they're going to have to start moving to places that are out of the city. The rent per square foot in SF is approaching $85/ft^2, the highest it's been since the original dotcom boom; downtown San Jose is around $60/ft^2, better but not that much better. But places like San Ramon, Fremont, non-downtown San Jose, and yes, South San Francisco are around $30/ft^2. Some would argue that staying in the Bay Area at all is silly for tech companies at this point; while I don't think I'd make that argument, if I had several hundred employees to find space for, I just don't think I'd do it in the City.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#435

Post by my_usernam3 »

randycupertino wrote: post #418
lsc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there some hidden reason that companies like this insist on staying in the same area despite the many potential advantages of looking elsewhere? the long term root is that there is a huge productivity advantage to clusters of workers. (or, at least many people believe so) Around here, if you strike up a random conversation in public, it's very likely you will do so with someone who does something relevant to wha…

> I literally found someone to buy my company at a (non-industry) party. (I mean, I did a bad job of it, I was drinking too much and complaining loudly about how much it sucks to run a company and how I had fucked up like three really good chances to sell the thing and generally being a downer, which is rude, I think, at a party, but also not how you maximize the value of the company you sell. Still, I got an impactf…

Me too! I always have the feeling while in the bay that "the grass is greener on the other side". As in I think I don't want to talk about tech all day everyday, and only be surrounded by other engineers.

Then I go visit the "other side", and man do I miss conversations around the newest framework, or latest VC investment bust. It's very much a love hate relationship; which I have no plans on leaving.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#436

Post by wbronitsky »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #398
wbronitsky wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a very helpful argument. I live in Oakland and commute to San Francisco and rarely take Bart because there are many other options that don't involve me breathing directly from someone else's exhalation like we all are forced to on Bart. Personally, I take casual carpool, https://sfcasualcarpool.com/ , to work and a transbay bus home. Total cost is $6.50/day, which is cheaper than commuting by Bart, and bec…

Yeah I couldn't give you stats on how many people do that commute via car, but bus vs BART is a no brainer. A 10-car BART train can hold about 1,000 people. Bus service can't scale like that (especially not on shared right of ways) which would definitely put you in the minority. South city may as well be the middle of nowhere transit-wise but the difference between taking BART to Market St vs SSF isn't all that big.

I'm not sure it matters why I'm in the minority in my commute. And if I am in the minority in some populations, I might not be in others. It would seem that quite a few people that live in my neighborhood use the same transportation options that I am, although this is obviously anec-data.

I disagree with your last statement. BART is 4 miles from oyster point, so you would have to take a shuttle. I'm going to assume that is at least 20 minutes more, if I'm being generous. So, for me, that would equate to about a 90 minute commute each way, at a minimum, where as a commute to Market street via BART would be about a 50 minute minimum. 80 minutes per day is not a trivial amount of time for me.

Overall, I'm not sure what the argument here is. That a lot of people take BART? That we should be ok with more commute time?

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#437

Post by Grzegrzolka »

randycupertino wrote: post #417
Tade0 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mulled over this for a while and figured that I should be grateful. This whole situation appears to be lifting IT salaries all over the world. I'm currently in the middle of switching jobs and found that I sneer at positions that pay less than ~$50k (in Poland at that) or don't offer fully remote work. So, I guess, thank you?

Polska! I am Polish (3rd gen removed) and was recently in Krakow for a work/fun trip and fantasized about moving there for a year or so and working remote for a while to learn the language and explore the country. Could keep my Bay Area salary as long as kept US hours for conference calls etc. We hire remote IT as well- lmk if you're interested in connecting!

Hey! I'm in Krakow, personally I'm React/C# guy, buy have couple Java friends that would love to work fully remotely. Can give you my contact www if ur willing to network

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#438

Post by kortilla »

gamblor956 wrote: post #332
kortilla wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taxes don’t have a lot of impact on business decisions. Said nobody involved with any big business. Amazon in New York, Apple’s avoidance of repatriating cash, etc. Taxes have a massive impact on business decisions all of the time. This kind of ignorant thinking is what destroyed the yacht manufacturing industry in the US. “Oh, what difference can a small tax make? Whoops, doesn’t matter because I’m a politician an…

Businesses say that taxes make a huge impact because they don't like paying taxes. But they do business where they need/want to do business, regardless of the tax situation. Complaining about taxes is just an attempt at leverage to get tax rebates/concessions/exemptions/etc or to structure the final holding company in a way that artificially shields profits so the executives can pay themselves larger salaries and bon…

Nope. Taxes are treated equally as every other cost. Any opportunity to eliminate is treated just as seriously as anything else.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#439

Post by ergocoder »

abalone wrote: post #422
ergocoder wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see any problem with how Jack behaved. Jack wanted companies to pay more tax to the city. He helped lobby it. But this part where Saleforce pays less tax than Square is absurd. So, he's against it. I don't really see any problem with this line of thinking. To give the exact number, Square pays 20m, and Saleforce pays 10m. But Saleforce is 2-10x bigger than Square. No matter how you cut it. It's not fai…

> Jack wanted companies to pay more tax to the city. Uh, no. Jack has specifically and consistently lobbied against paying taxes (see: previous link). In 2011 he threatened to threatened to move Twitter to neighboring Brisbane unless he got the now infamous mid market tax break.[1] Exactly what Stripe just did. He greatly exaggerates the impact of a hypothetical $10M extra towards fighting homelessness on a $26B comp…

Yet you still doesn't give a straight answer how it is fair that Saleforce pays less tax than Square. I don't blame you. Nobody has answered that question.

Even Benioff merely said ~$10m was nothing to Square. He implied it didn't matter that it wasn't fair because the amount was so little. Like Wut?

Because Square doesn't help homeless much (I don't really know how much compared to Saleforce and other companies), so we make a law for a smaller company to pay tax more than a bigger company? We can simply disregard fairness? Really?

Also, Jack explicitly said that he has no problem paying taxes to the city; he wants to pay tax fairly when considering peer companies. We just gonna need to agree to disagree on whether jack is willing to pay tax.

Re: Stripe to move to South San Francisco

#440

Post by Decade »

skybrian wrote: post #348
Decade wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This absolutely is bad for San Francisco. South San Francisco is building lots and lots of offices, but not building nearly as many homes. While San Francisco is harmfully negligent at building homes, it is at least building more than its (painfully low-ball) estimated need for high-priced housing. The rest of the peninsula isn’t even building that much. All the counties are far behind at building less-fancy housing.…

Maybe in the short term, but I would expect Stripe workers would now find the peninsula more attractive and gradually move there. There is also the Marina, which might make some ferry commutes from the east bay reasonable and even pleasant. (I still remember commuting from Alameda to Market Street by ferry to be quite nice.) More density near transit seems like a good result.

More density near transit is not a foregone result. It has to be through political will. This is the YIMBY movement.

The peninsula would absolutely be more attractive for Stripe employees. But as I said, the peninsula is building a tiny fraction of the housing as opposed to jobs. The richest executives can move to the few vacancies that open up, but unless something changes, the rest of the employees have to live elsewhere. https://yimbyaction.org/join/

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