For all the snark from people who dislike Elon, this is a bit of a sad ending. I remember when Twitter announced their presence in mid-market and the promises of how it would help the area. What people don't realize is that his will lead to real revenue losses for the city -- the largest companies in SF are overwhelmingly tech. Twitter is in the top 5 when it comes to how much tax they pay. Loss of revenue for the city will translate to cuts.
Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay
671–680 of 1001 posts
Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay
#672I lived for about 12 months in telegraph hill (got lucky with a solid apartment). I had my wife and 1 year old son. Despite it being a really nice and affluent neighborhood, there was a weekly mugging outside my house. Any packages or items left outside were basically taken if left out for more than 1 hour. My neighbor’s car parked in front of the house was stolen, taken for a joyride and left in a random part of the…
Did you ever try the peninsula, like Palo Alto? Crazy expensive if you want a free standing house but condos and townhouses aren’t too bad (relatively) and always felt safe when I was there.
I wasn’t making very much actually and we were a single income household. We wanted to look into buying a house but it was north of 850k for a closet sized space. Rent+food basically ate up all my income.
Moving to Palo Alto was definitively not in the cards
Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay
#673Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cities tend to have a lower per-capita crime rate, it's just dense and visible. This is just suburban paranoia. Crime happens.
No, it's not just suburban paranoia. Travel to Tokyo or Singapore and then to S.F.
We recently spent a month in Tokyo. It is ridiculously safe and law-abiding. I'm surprised they have any crime at all. In our entire time there, I saw one (1) individual piece of small rubbish on the street.
Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay
#674Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just in response to your second point, I do think that's specific to you and your circles. I know multiple retired or semi-retired people who have moved towards the center of a city. Without work to keep them occupied, they want the hustle and bustle, which means something to do. And driving has become more of a hassle and a barrier to the kinds of lives they want to live. These are east coast or midwest cities, so m…
Cities' attractiveness feels u-shaped Young adults love it bc they have the time to go to bars/restaurants/clubs Middle aged folks hate it because they're so busy - they can't take advantage, and other people get in their way (some) Older folks like it again bc they have the time to go to restaurants/theater
Idk about your second point, it’s only because I live in the city that I have time to enjoy it, after work and kids commuting to and from the city is too much of a time sink and there’s fuck all to do everywhere else in the bay.
Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay
#675There 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…
Back in the early 90s my wife and I moved to SF because it had a thriving art and music scene and more interesting culture than the 'burbs of palo alto. But as you say, the long commute to SV was a killer and we moved back down. Back then SF was a bedroom community for SV with no tech sector. Businesses up there were banking (Wells Fargo, BofA, Crocker etc), retail, the local stock exchange, and a bunch of manufactur…
I lived in San Francisco in the very late 70s through to the 00s. My first apartment share was $50/mo. The late 70s had the dying embers of the Beat Generation and San Francisco was a sleepy town. San Francisco was great in the 80s with a ton of theater, music, dance, art, everything. It was good in the 90s although the late 90s dotcom boom pushed/priced artists out. The 00s became pretty boring and compressed. I moved to Oakland.
I would say that San Francisco is quite nice now, great bones, although too expensive for interesting people to live.
Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay
#676Had a recruiter call with Twitter a few months ago. Mandatory in office 5 days per week. Among other things, an hour commute both ways to work was not acceptable. Maybe they will have better luck in Santa Clara. I don’t buy any of the flamebait reasons for leaving SF. Reason 1 is money and reason 2 is talent pool.
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Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay
#677Earlier quoted context omitted.
Telegraph Hill is one of the most touristy parts of the city, hence lots of crime (especially at night). It might be pretty but you just chose poorly / naively if safety was a priority. Raising a kid in SF is definitely tough, but places in the Sunset have yards, and there are some top-notch schools e.g. Lowell High School, UHS, Lick, etc. A lot of tech people come from out of town and don’t take any time to adjust t…
Correct me if i'm wrong but that's haight ashbury right? The famous magnet for druggies and general sh*theads? Why is this being help up as an example of a safe place?
I think you either replied to the wrong comment or are maybe confused. Telegraph Hill is quite far from Haight Ashbury (as much as anything can be far apart in a 7x7 mile city).
Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay
#678I lived for about 12 months in telegraph hill (got lucky with a solid apartment). I had my wife and 1 year old son. Despite it being a really nice and affluent neighborhood, there was a weekly mugging outside my house. Any packages or items left outside were basically taken if left out for more than 1 hour. My neighbor’s car parked in front of the house was stolen, taken for a joyride and left in a random part of the…
Crime is a function of inequality.
No, it's a function of low IQ and low impulse control.
Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay
#679I lived for about 12 months in telegraph hill (got lucky with a solid apartment). I had my wife and 1 year old son. Despite it being a really nice and affluent neighborhood, there was a weekly mugging outside my house. Any packages or items left outside were basically taken if left out for more than 1 hour. My neighbor’s car parked in front of the house was stolen, taken for a joyride and left in a random part of the…
Question from someone who doesn't know the SF neighborhoods...
Can a single, childless tech startup-type person live comfortably walking car-free in contemporary SF, long-term? If so, how much does that cost, and in what neighborhoods?
Reason I'm asking: the East Coast city where I currently live isn't great for software startups, and, on top of some crazy downsides of this city, there's a possibly emerging new downside: panhandler demographics shifting more towards angry 20yo men who use borderline mugging approaches, very brazenly.
Ideal for me in tech work is what I'll call "mostly-WFH-in-town", where people get most of the WFH flexibility goodness, but can also easily meet up for in-person high-bandwidth focused collaboration, personalizing, working on hardware, etc. So I'd probably want a concentration of potential colleagues who also like mostly-WFH-in-town. So I'm wondering whether SF is that place.
Zillow searches for modern apartments in parts of SF proper look more attractive, for the same money, as places in my city.
But I don't know the SF neighborhoods, and I don't know how representative are the SF stories about stepping over needles on the sidewalk all the time, finding poo on your doorstep every morning, frequent casual break-ins, etc.
Socioeconomic diversity, social justice, and safety nets are great, and preferred. Excessive poo, and other hazards, aren't.
When you walk most places, the sidewalk environment matters even more than if you're usually insulated in either a building or a car.
Re: Twitter kills its San Francisco headquarters, will relocate to South Bay
#680Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crime is a function of inequality.
Agreed. Although based on the downvotes HN doesn't see it that way, who could have predicted?
> Crime is a function of inequality
I think the prevailing attitude is more like, "Yes, crime is a function of inequality, but it's also a function of X, Y, Z other things, and leaving them out does more harm than good to the discourse."