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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

#451

Post by mensetmanusman »

consteval wrote: post #224
dmix wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Because in reality, as in statistically, SF is actually not that dangerous. People say this about any vaguely blue city, which is almost all of them. But they forget Urban areas are very dense. You're actually more likely, per capita, to die to gun violence in rural America. It's just very hard to see that because the coverage isn't there and the actual amount of deaths is lower.

Danger stress is an AOE (area of effect). A single shooting in a city mentally harms/affects 100x more people than in the burbs.

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

#452

Post by liquidgecka »

golergka wrote: post #411
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…

> $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.

I dealt with the Twitter office move stuff and there was a real honest to goodness push to get is to love to an office in South San Francisco so we could avaint the payroll tax and have parking. Had it not been for the tax break I suspect they would have left SF completely.

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

#453

Post by janalsncm »

bastardoperator wrote: post #443
seizethecheese wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had several meetings, either in Twitter office or around it, and the street scene is very bad in that part of SF. If the claim is that this is a motivation for the move, it certainly passes the sniff test for me.

So you've been able to gauge life and the street scene in SF based on several meetings? That's super interesting. I would argue the Embarcadero is fairly nice and I live here, but what do I know.

I visited Fisherman’s Wharf last year after dark and it was pretty poorly lit and not that clean. Maybe for a company where employees are expected be “extremely hardcore” (i.e. long hours) that is a consideration.

(Although if you’re truly hardcore you don’t care what the street looks like, you sleep under your desk.)

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

#454

Post by runarberg »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #381
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…

> Even commuting within sf can be kind of a pain it took our folks 50 minutes from both areas in the mission and Menlo Park to get to an office in South Park. This is not to impunge on your credibility, but it takes me 16 minutes to get from my door in 21st and Valencia to the door at 313 Brandan next to South Park. This touches on some positive trends in San Francisco: of course, I e-bike, so I can get anywhere pret…

Yeah, I’m not buying it either, I did a quick google map survey and it seems that commute times goes between 20-40 minutes between the Mission and South Park, depending on where in the Mission you start. In all cases biking is around 20 minutes.

Meanwhile only the trainride station to station between Menlo Park and SF is 45 minutes minimum (6 stops), assuming some commute time to the Menlo Park station and a 10 min walk after the train arrives, 50 min is cutting it short.

The commute from Mission gives you a variety of options, you could even walk it if you have the time (personally, I used rollerblades when I lived in the Mission and worked maybe half the way to South Park).

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

#456

Post by some-guy »

aqme28 wrote: post #417
lokar wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just another anecdote but I concur with you--10 years of commuting experience in the Bay Area tells me that the most likely bodily harm I will experience is behind the wheel on the freeway, not from homeless / mentally-ill people wandering the streets. I have been involved in two car accidents on 580 (not at fault) but zero bodily harm on BART.

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

#457

Post by rabuse »

fooker wrote: post #17

Good riddance. That part of San Francisco has been worse than the risky areas of most third world cities for the last 3-4 years. I don't understand how this beautiful city was let to deteriorate so fast.

You don't understand? Seriously? The terrible policies that are broadcasted everywhere online, through both text and video, isn't enough to understand?

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

#458

Post by er4hn »

bastardoperator wrote: post #443
seizethecheese wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had several meetings, either in Twitter office or around it, and the street scene is very bad in that part of SF. If the claim is that this is a motivation for the move, it certainly passes the sniff test for me.

So you've been able to gauge life and the street scene in SF based on several meetings? That's super interesting. I would argue the Embarcadero is fairly nice and I live here, but what do I know.

This is disingenuous. Twitter is located in Civic Center, which is a different neighborhood. From the ferry building at the Embarcadero to Twitter HQ is about 1.8 miles away, or 3 BART stops.

Given the density of SF and how quickly spaces can change you cannot realistically compare the two.

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

#459

Post by s1mon »

whyenot wrote: post #342
htrp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I commuted for several years to Palo Alto from SF. If you manage to get on a "baby bullet" it was a 37 minute ride, but you also have to get to/from a Caltrain station on each end. In PA, I was lucky that the office was a few minute walk, but in SF it was a taxi or bus ride (this was pre-Uber etc).

As an X employee, if you had optimized your commute around the mid-market area, you could be living less than 45 minutes away on a single mode of public transit, but it could double or triple to commute to the new X offices. Any time you have a transfer with the commuter systems in the Bay Area, it's going to be a clusterfuck from time to time.

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

#460

Post by hintymad »

mkaic wrote: post #427
hintymad wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" :)

Oh yeah! Thanks!
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