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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

#701

Post by hemloc_io »

neilv wrote: post #679
rapatel0 wrote: post #468

I 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 downs…

> 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?

yes-ish

In SF generally the areas are the most car dependent and the hilliest are also the quietest and have the least amount of bullshit.

SOMA, where you see a majority of those modern apartments, is going to have some of the worst problems. You get what you pay for in the city. Every part of the city is going to have some kind of street problem, but some, like Bernal for example, have them very rarely. It entirely is neighborhood dependent and there's tradeoffs.

Maybe you get a quiet apartment, but it's at the top of a hill. Do you want to walk up that every day?

The easiest way to tell is just to show up and walk around the whole city, it's only 7x7 so you can literally spend a weekend walking around and see all of it and make your own conclusions. Certain places change completely within a few blocks.

e.g. you can go from the Tenderloin which is easily one of the worst parts of the city to the yuppie paradise of Hayes Valley in like three or four blocks.

Edit: in terms of cost? prob 2-4k in monthlies for a good studio/one bed.

The rest is up to your budgeting, eating out and anything in the service economy is very expensive compared to the rest of the country. Including places like NYC.

Very few affordable places survive here, regardless of their quality.

I'd say you could tack on like another 1-2k a month as a single person and be pretty happy with the amount of things you're doing, plus some grocery cost depending on how much you cook for yourself.

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

#702

Post by Alupis »

next_xibalba wrote: post #655
acedTrex wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You think the engineers at Tesla and SpaceX, who have created jaw dropping technical marvels, don’t respect themselves? I’m not saying Musk isn’t an asshole, I don’t know him. And I’m willing to guess you don’t either. But it’s real hard to argue that his companies haven’t done amazing engineering results.

I don't believe you got the memo, did you? Musk is evil and we were all told to hate him. Nothing he is associated with is ok anymore.

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

#703

Post by slyall »

CalChris wrote: post #675
gumby wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mov…

I've seen similar complaints from cities in rich countries around the globe

Basically to have thriving arts scene you need people in the 20s-30s to be able to live on a minimum wage job and do art/music/whatever in their spare time. Even better if it is a part-time job or some sort of government scheme.

If your cost of living is too high then you are restricting yourself to trust-fund 20yo and older people with a bit of spare time. Also high property reduce the number of venues.

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

#704

Post by neilv »

rapatel0 wrote: post #692
neilv wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 downs…

> 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? I used this when doing analysis. It's pretty good. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/comparison.jsp From a pure cost, POV you burn most of your money on rent and food. When we had visitors, I had to plan out my budget to cover meals for ever…

Thank you for the info.

> In terms of security, If you keep your head on a swivel then you're fine. I had the same alertness that I have when traveling a foreign country. You need to be on high alert all the time.

Are we talking only about having basic city street savvy (e.g., you're perceived as a savvy native rather than easy pickings, can spot the usual threats and risks without trying, and can avoid or handle them)?

Or more like someone who has that basic street savvy, but who is also feeling like they found themselves in a rougher neighborhood at the moment (e.g., getting closer to military head on a swivel mode, and looking to not spend more time there than necessary)?

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

#705

Post by skissane »

jen20 wrote: post #594
SoftTalker wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they upgrading the tracks as well? Diesel trains can run at 80mph no problem, which is about the maximum any standard US railroad supports. If the track is built to high speed standards you could go faster.

The track has a lot of at-grade intersections with roads running through the mid-peninsula - it seems unlikely they'll be running trains at 80mph.

At-grade intersections can be removed.

Melbourne, Australia has been running a project since 2015 – scheduled to continue until at least 2030 – to remove at-grade intersections (or "level crossings" as we call them) on suburban rail lines. They've already removed 83, and by 2030 plan to have removed 110. I'm not sure of the total cost, but I'd say in the ballpark of US$5-10 billion. The removal is done by a combination of elevating the rail line, trenching the rail line, and leaving the rail line at the same level but building road bridges over it – adopting whichever solution is most feasible and cost-effective for any given at-grade intersection. The project is run and paid for by the state government, with the federal government contributing some of the funding.

Australia's State of Victoria: population close to 7 million, economy almost US$300 billion (Gross State Product), annual state government budget around US$70 billion. California: population close to 40 million, economy almost US$4 trillion (GSP), annual state government budget of almost US$300 billion. If Victoria can afford it, California can too.

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

#706

Post by dehrmann »

anotherhue wrote: post #143
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…

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…

When I was at Spotify in the Warfield building, something similar happened, and we dropped behind the windows. Later that day, a can of pre-made Starbucks coffee someone left on their desk exploded from baking in the sun. Caused quite a scare.

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

#707

Post by closeparen »

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…

The typical commuter suburbs for SF companies are in the East Bay, in my experience. South Bay is a lot more expensive.

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

#708

Post by lazide »

bobthepanda wrote: post #686
lazide wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF schools and traffic are terrible with kids. Suburbs are generally much mellower.

I mean this depends on what specifically you’re optimizing for. A child in the suburb will need a chauffeur to get anywhere outside their immediate subdivision, and sometimes within it. Children are perfectly capable of taking public transit and using their two feet, though.

Have you not heard of school buses or soccer moms?

Cities like SF tend to be okay for families in two different (and polar opposite) classes - those who are working poor, and the scare factor of public transit and hassle of traffic is something they just have to deal with, or quite wealthy - and they can afford drivers and/or private schools.

The public school system in SF is also notoriously terrible to deal with, even by US big city standards, as ‘equity’ changes results in bussing kids all over town so there are no ‘good’/‘bad’ schools due to demographics. So siblings will often end up in schools on different sides of town, or kids in a school very far from where they live.

The middle class tends to go to the suburbs where things are less crazy and easier to handle, and they get ‘bad’ things like a school where all the neighbors kids also go, and siblings can all be in the same school. And they can buy into a ‘good school district’. Among other things.

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

#709

Post by throwaway2037 »

nkozyra wrote: post #596
bluGill wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle ages folks hate it because they are most likely to have kids and cities (in the US) tend to be kid hostile. What I'm calling city below is probably better described as downtown - most cities extend out farther and have areas that are nothing like what follows - but are also nothing like what you described as what people move to the city for. Parks in the city tend to be focused on art. They often lack kid basi…

> Parks in the city tend to be focused on art. They often lack kid basics like swings and sand. Leaving NYC my son was disappointed in almost any park we'd go to. Most smaller cities and towns have a few decent playgrounds but in the city we had 3-4 in walking distance that were amazing and another 10 within a single subway stop.

Where in NYC?

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

#710

Post by quesera »

jjav wrote: post #510
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…

Not relevant to any current actions by Twitter, but an interesting historical perspective is that it was very rare for a tech company to be in San Francisco. Approximately all tech companies were in Silicon Valley proper (thus named) which is about (depending on who was drawing the boundaries) about 30-60 minutes south of San Francisco. When Twitter opened in San Francisco I distinctly remember how weird it was to se…

This is not correct at all.

When Twitter was launched, SF was overflowing with startups on every corner. In fact it was the second wave of SF startups, being a handful of years after the dot com crash.

The only thing even slightly surprising about Twitter's location was that they were way down in South Park instead of more solidly in South of Market. They moved to the Tenderloin building in 2012.

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