12 ms·

Stripe to move to South San Francisco

• olingern 7y ago
  > The company will move more than 1,000 employees just 10 miles south of its current South of Market headquarters, which it plans to vacate. Click bait. They're moving ten miles south of their current office ...
  • thaumasiotes 7y ago
    Ehhh.... it's true that this is unlikely to have much impact on Stripe or most of the employees who used the South of Market offics. But it seems fair to speculate that it could be part of a slippery slope. And it might have pretty substantial impact on the city of San Francisco (the governmental entity).
  • masonic 7y ago
    Click bait. They're moving ten miles south of their current office . Their new location is not only outside SF but is in a different county. SSF is a distinct city in San Mateo county.
    • schoen 7y ago
      All locations south of the City of San Francisco are in a different county!
      • asveikau 7y ago
        Hmm, the airport is technically part of the City and County, while distinctly being south of it.
        • chondl 7y ago
          Actually it is in San Mateo county. Wikipedia: "the airport is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco, despite it being located in San Mateo County."
          • gibolt 7y ago
            Pretty sure that was covered by the 'technically' part
            • vinay427 7y ago
              That's not what "technically" means. From the Wikipedia quote, it's literally not in the City and County of SF and is just owned by the government. It's very much south of the city because it's technically not in the city.
            • tingletech 7y ago
              Is Hetch Hetchy technically part of the city and county of SF, even though it is in Yosemite?
          • asveikau 7y ago
            Thanks then for the correction. It is a little confusing for me that the city owns or administrates a number of sites outside of what we think of as "San Francisco". It's not been clear to me if you "re-enter San Francisco" when you go to those places. I figured yes. A number of them have signs posted at entry that the city owns it, so it feels like a natural conclusion to make, as if a "now entering..." sign.
  • kevincrane 7y ago
    I mean, it eliminates the entire East Bay from its pool of possible employees, so that sucks for anyone who lives out there. That’s a pretty big deal for their quality of life.
    • djur 7y ago
      Doesn't Stripe have remote workers?
    • i_am_nomad 7y ago
      There is a ferry from Alameda to SSF, so that would at least allow some people to make the trip. Otherwise you’re right, that’s a 1.5 hour commute each way from major East Bay locales.
    • et-al 7y ago
      Agreed, but at the same time BART needs to run more trains to Millbrae for this reason.
      • khuey 7y ago
        BART is more than 4 miles from where Stripe is moving to.
    • chipotle_coyote 7y ago
      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 the edge of SOMA and Mission Bay, within pretty short distance of the Embarcadero and Financial District. Their new office will be...a business park. No offense to business parks -- Bishop Ranch in San Ramon is unexpectedly lovely -- but they're rarely known for their vibrant cafés, restaurants and nightlife.
      • x0x0 7y ago
  • huac 7y ago
    SSF is much less accessible by public transit - going from a major Caltrain station to a minor/local station is a big step down.
  • dwoozle 7y ago
    The travel times between these two locations can be 60+ minutes depending on mode and time. It is a Big Deal.
  • dguaraglia 7y ago
    "Ten miles South" in the Bay Area might as well be "30 minutes added commute each way, if you are lucky". And that's if you already have a car, which is not really a thing with most people in San Francisco. Just to give you an idea, according to Google Maps from where I live (Hayes Valley, a pretty central area) it'd take me right now 11 minutes on a car to get to Stripe's headquarter or 33 on public transit. At the new location it'd take me "between 30 minutes and 1 hour" or 1 hour 9 minutes respectively. The driving estimation is super variable because commuter traffic in that corridor is a nightmare. So no, this is most definitely not click bait.
  • wbronitsky 7y ago
    Why comment if you are obviously ignorant of the situation? To you, 10 miles might mean 10 minutes or less. In this situation, it could lengthen an already lengthy commute for many employees by 30 minutes or more in each direction. I know this because I worked at Stripe and commuted from Oakland to their office South of Market by car.
• cjlars 7y ago
  Articles misses that this is in response to SF's gross receipts tax. Payment processing is an ultra low margin business, no way they can compete while paying ~1% of revenues to the city.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • MuffinFlavored 7y ago
    Payment processing rates in China are ____ Payment processing rates in USA are ___ Can somebody help me double check something? I don’t know the answers to those questions I feel like I read WeChat processes payments at 0.1% while Stripe/PayPal are still around 2%
    • lukeschlather 7y ago
      I have a credit card that gives me 1.5% cash back on every transaction. I'm reading that Visa typically charges 2.3% to merchants, and Stripe charges 2.9%, ignoring per-transaction fees. So Stripe itself probably gets around 0.6% of each transaction, and at least on average 1% of each transaction goes to cardholder bonuses, and the card issuer gets around 1.3%. Of course both Stripe and the issuer have some fraud prevention built-in, I don't know how much that amounts to (and how much more effective China is at combating fraud, though it's possible WeChat simply doesn't accept as much liability as American payment processors do.)
      • aeternum 7y ago
        Card not present transactions (the type primarily used by Stripe) are charged at a significantly higher rate due to the higher likelihood of fraud. To use square as an example, card present is 2.6% whereas card not present is 3.5%.
      • AdieuToLogic 7y ago
        Your conflating fees charged to Merchants (by processors) and rewards offered to Card Holders (by issuers). While often the same bank performs, or is a partial owner involved in, both processing and issuing, the percentages you quote are largely disjoint. > I'm reading that Visa typically charges 2.3% to merchants ... The Discount Rate[0] a Merchant pays varies significantly based on the line-of-business, charge-backs, processing contract, and a bunch of other things. > ... at least on average 1% of each transaction goes to cardholder bonuses ... Again, issuer costs have no bearing on Merchant fees nor the profitability of processors. 0 - https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/glossary/term-discount-rate.php https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/glossary/term-d...
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• forthwall 7y ago
  Kilroy Oyster Point is a pretty inaccessible area from San Francisco, you would need to take a limited train via Caltrain that's around 40 minutes to get there. I'm pretty sure this is definitely a blowback from the gross receipts tax and nothing more, even for commuters from the Peninsula would still have to get to the really strange south SF station which is also only accessible via limited express...or commute into one the worst traffic corridors in the Bay Area.
  • benatkin 7y ago
    It's right on the freeway, and there's a ferry. I think it's probably about as good as where the AirBnb and GitHub offices are, which are half a mile from BART. I think a lot of their employees are going to be driving in at times that avoid rush hour.
    • dmode 7y ago
      Airbnb office is in SF proper and walkable to Caltrain and BART. South Sf is not remotely comparable.
    • baby 7y ago
      Wat. Airbnb is super well located in soma. Unless Stripe has shuttles it’s going to be rough.
      • daseiner1 7y ago
        Stripe will definitely have at least limited shuttles from public transit.
  • gyc 7y ago
    I assume they'll also run commuter shuttles like Genetech.
  • novok 7y ago
    Yeah I'm wondering why not san bruno, which has fairly accessible caltrain and bart stations in close vicinity of each other, and youtube is there which makes it a more attractive location commute wise.
• samcheng 7y ago
  They spent a couple of years building a shiny new building, only to move out of it after a year?! What a waste...
• PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  I can tell you recruiting for South San Francisco was way harder than recruiting for SF. If I lived in SF without a car, that'd be a deal breaker for me. They're going to start losing people, or see a huge spike in chronic working from home. I guess they have to move somewhere at some point, and no move is without trade-offs. Regarding the gross receipts tax, couldn't they just move their HQ-on-paper to any place that doesn't have a gross receipts tax?
  • ergocoder 7y ago
    I'm curious about it. But there must be something illegal about the mismatch between where most employees are located and the hq location.
    • creato 7y ago
      > But there must be something illegal about the mismatch between where most employees are located and the hq location. How would that be illegal? Employers can't tell employees where to live, and a law that told them to do that is insane, even compared to other crazy laws of the Bay Area.
  • rco8786 7y ago
    Stripe is already a pretty remote friendly company no?
    • brunoTbear 7y ago
      Yes, to a very large extent
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  • paxys 7y ago
    I'd say that's an exaggeration. I know tons of people who commute from the city to south bay and vice versa. Plus South SF is pretty well connected by transit.
• paggle 7y ago
  SF won't care as it is the only major American city that seems to want fewer high paying jobs.
• normalperson 7y ago
  Why not move out of the bay area entirely. There are plenty of cities in the United States that do not actively antagonize technology businesses.
• paxys 7y ago
  The gross receipts tax was ridiculously misguided and is going to cause irreparable harm to the city's economy if not fixed. Square and other FinTech companies are most definitely next.
  • tayo42 7y ago
    This is what the voters of San Francisco want Make San Francisco Great Again lol
  • dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
    No, it's a very good move as many digital economy businesses are great at creative accounting making their net receipts look ridiculously small or negative.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • JoshTriplett 7y ago
      And what about companies whose net receipts are actually small?
      • dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
        I think the current binary law (either gross revenue or net receipts for everybody) is flawed. We have to acknowledge different kind of companies exist. One method of taxation cannot be applied to all. Specifically if you engage in activity like trade and your margins are low, gross revenue taxation is clearly unfair. But devising a balanced and bulletproof taxation system that would protect honest companies while preventing abuse seems extremely hard.
        • kortilla 7y ago
          Yet almost every other city in the US has managed to do it. Complete incompetence or just willful negligence?
• brunoTbear 7y ago
  I'm surprised to not see any current Stripe employees in here commenting on the move. Usually you'd see one of The Brothers Collison in a HN Stripe thread. As a former Stripe (ex-Stripe?), I do buy the story of running out of room. That office is lovely, but they keep growing on a pretty steep curve, and the floors weren't as dense in there as you might imagine. Decidedly cool interior design tho!
  • bdibs 7y ago
    It’s sort of late, I’m sure we’ll hear from them eventually.
• isuckatcoding 7y ago
  Or you know they could move to a much more accessible and cheaper city like Oakland
• dmode 7y ago
  As someone who has worked in South SF for years, it is pretty bad for employees. It is a cultural wasteland with few restaurants or interesting things to do. Transit is also poor as both BART and Caltrain are in awkward locations. And the fog is worse. This will be like Uber’s move to Oakland, which got rolled back pretty quickly
  • masahiko 7y ago
    Fog is worse than where? I work in SSF as well... A) its where businesses like Stripe should be in the coming years (it wont be creative, it'll be internet infrastructure) B) there is a ferry to Oakland (to help alleviate the absurd traffic jams over the bay bridge) and C) bring some variety (right now SSF is all pharma and med device) into SSF. There is no reason why SSF couldn't be a thriving, cool place to live and work. It takes companies like Stripe to take the lead and have a vision. Right now downtown SSF is totally boring but add a good grocery store (ahem, Berkeley Bowl) a couple cool coffee shops, wine bars and great restaurants and it would be a perfect fine place to live and work - half way between the south bay and SF. Buy, renovate or build a place or open a restaurant in SSF now while you have than chance. It will be corporate, funky but potentially cool in 5 years with your creative and financial energy in it.
    • harimau777 7y ago
      Is SSF still a large city in terms of cost of living and owning a home? Personally, by living in a large city I'm giving up the ability to own a home in exchange for access to niche resources such as ethnic enclaves, bohemian artist communities, cultural events, groups dedicated to uncommon hobbies, etc. Just having trendy restaurants and coffee shops wouldn't do it for me.
      • bravura 7y ago
        I think you’ve nailed for me the difference between superficial trendiness and rich culture, in an urban setting
      • maxlamb 7y ago
• Decade 7y ago
  What a completely unexpected consequence of the restrictions on office space, spearheaded by John Elberling of TODCO. /s He is now trying to make office space even more restricted, and his allies are working to reduce office space alternatively by raising the fees on office construction. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-Mayor-SoMa-nonprofit-clash-over-office-growth-14541749.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-Mayor-SoMa-n... https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2019/10/22/sf-moves-forward-with-controversial-jobs-housing.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2019/10/22/sf-... (More about John Elberling: http://sfbamo.com/news/tenants-in-todco-property-allege-abuse-neglect-and-intimidation/ http://sfbamo.com/news/tenants-in-todco-property-allege-abus...) San Francisco prevents office space from being abundant and cheap, and therefore the office jobs are being moved to counties with even worse jobs-housing balance, turning San Francisco into a bedroom community for (the richer individuals working in) the peninsula.
  • abalone 7y ago
    > working to reduce office space That's a rather uncharitable characterization. SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction. We already have way too few houses, especially low-income housing.[1] Which is what makes Stripe's move here particularly low integrity: they'll have all the housing impact on SF without paying any of the corporate taxes. From your own source: "A separate economic feasibility study from the City's Office of Economic and Workforce Development found that a range of office projects are 'currently infeasible,' even without a city fee increase. The study did contend that an improvement in market conditions could make a modest fee increase viable." [1] https://hoodline.com/2019/10/report-sf-adding-equal-numbers-of-high-and-low-wage-jobs-but-not-nearly-enough-low-wage-housing https://hoodline.com/2019/10/report-sf-adding-equal-numbers-...
    • austhrow743 7y ago
      >SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction If that was the case wouldn't a tax by number of employees be what to push through?
      • 7y ago
• heymijo 7y ago
  I find myself confused about the new tax and unwilling to invoke Cunningham’s Law to get clarity. So I went to the source (I think) and it appears Stripe would have been taxed at 0.560% on its gross receipts. [0,1] Assumptions: 1) Stripe would be classed as a “financial services” company per the law and subject to section 953.6 of the law 2) Stripe has gross receipts over $25 million My confusion is the discussion of a 1% tax rate on gross receipts. I don’t see any business taxed at that rate and on this case neither Stripe nor Square would be. [0] https://sftreasurer.org/business/taxes-fees/gross-receipts-tax-gr https://sftreasurer.org/business/taxes-fees/gross-receipts-t... [1] http://library.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll?f=templates&fn=default.htm&vid=amlegal:sanfrancisco_ca_m&anc=JD_953.6 http://library.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll?f=templates&fn=de...
• baby 7y ago
  These days I was thinking about San Francisco and wondering how it had come to that. There’s so much demand, so many people want to move to SF, yet its population has barely moved in the last decade. Why is that? If anything had gone right, SF should be a HK-like dystopian city filled with electronics and high-tech. But instead we have a horizontally limited place, that is filled with homeless and restricts new advances like shared kick scooters. It’s sad.
  • rland 7y ago
    I suspect that they're paying a dear price for it. The growth that would have contributed to a HK-like metropolis has been displaced to everywhere else: Seattle, Austin, Boulder, LA/NYC, etc.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • ghaff 7y ago
    >If anything had gone right, SF should be a HK-like dystopian city filled with electronics and high-tech. Do you know what dystopian means? Generally speaking it's not something people pine for. ADDED: Opinions will of course differ as to whether SF should have more aggressively transformed to be more like Hong Kong. (Which is an extremely expensive city with serious housing problems BTW.)
  • opportune 7y ago
    Turns out if you don’t build new buildings, there’s not really anywhere to put new people. You just start losing quality of life as rents go up and people start doubling up in rooms, families move out (because you can’t afford roommates who don’t pay rent), etc. This is what the voters here wanted and have been voting for the entire time. Not that I like the outcome either, but considering SF is a pretty wealthy and culturally influential place, I don’t feel sorry for them in the least. It’s just the outcome of decades of policy with public support.
• fierarul 7y ago
  > Though Stripe also strongly opposed last November’s Proposition C, which raised business taxes to fund more homelessness services, the company said that wasn’t a major factor for the move. It would be PR suicide for a company to admit that the increased tax to fund homlessness was a major factor for the move. To accounting though a tax is a tax.
  • keiferski 7y ago
    Yeah, I don't really get the point of mentioning something like this. Does anyone expect them to say, "Yeah, we moved because we don't want to pay to help the homeless." PR 101.
• Tempest1981 7y ago
  Can't wait until we learn how to work remotely. Would save a ton of resources.
• abalone 7y ago
  This blows, not so much because Stripe is leaving SF, but because it's going just over the border for tax purposes so 100% of employees who live in SF will stay in SF. The company just won't pay their fair share to the city to offset their impact. The line about this being about space and not taxes is hard to believe.[1] And for good reason. Last year Stripe funded an anti-homeless campaign just $1 shy of the reporting threshold, initially, until they were exposed.[2] That's not something you do if you're proud of sharing your true motivations. [1] https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/affordable-housing-fee-hike-on-office-development-in-sf-advances-toward-approval/ https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/affordable-housing-fee-hike-... [2] https://missionlocal.org/2018/10/orgy-of-big-money-donations-flowing-into-prop-c-battle-both-for-and-against/ https://missionlocal.org/2018/10/orgy-of-big-money-donations...
  • ppf 7y ago
    > The company just won't pay their fair share to the city to offset their impact. The company's impact on what?
  • JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > 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.
    • kevingadd 7y ago
      Both things can be true: NIMBYs are contributing to skyrocketing housing prices (and thus a growth in homelessness), AND essential city/county/state services require tax dollars. I can think of plenty of things that SF locals complain about when I talk to them that would be mitigated by more tax dollars spent by the appropriate agencies. If your argument is that SF local government is a black hole that spends 0% of its tax income on important programs, then that's another matter but requires a bit more support...
• sneeze-slayer 7y ago
  Are there good bike paths in San Franciso? It seems like the weather is good enough for year-round biking, which would be a big plus.
  • zten 7y ago
    Well... their new office is on the SF2G Bayway route, but the whole area is absolutely unfriendly to bikes. Use Google Maps and look at the intersection of Gateway Blvd and Oyster Point Blvd. It's special.
• joshe 7y ago
  It's a disappointingly boring corporate campus (the second photo in the article) for a well run company with lots of smart people. The rendering shows a sad 1990's office park, complete with a path winding artificially along the water, office windows overlooking parking lots, and useless lawn accents that no one will ever play on. Imagine the desolate dystopian feeling when you came in to do a few hours work on a Saturday. We should have the will, talent, and state capacity to build more San Francisco style urban landscape. High prices cause San Francisco's worst problems. More high quality urban areas would make these areas cheaper and more people could enjoy them.
  • namdnay 7y ago
    Come on, that's slightly unfair... "office windows overlooking parking lots" - but with a pretty nice sea view. And the path seems like a nice place to jog at lunch. Maybe even go for a swim?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• eternalny1 7y ago
  Why are all these companies in San Francisco? Because that's where it was the place to be for cool tech companies, start-ups, and venture capitalism. Now that companies realize they can just move to Witchita, Kansas or wherever else they want, they will.
• dawg- 7y ago
  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 bay area by moving to a lower cost of living area where mid-level employees can afford to buy an actual house relatively close to work? And they could pull a mini-Amazon and get some sweet tax breaks to boot. Is there some hidden reason that companies like this insist on staying in the same area despite the many potential advantages of looking elsewhere?
  • kasey_junk 7y ago
    Stripe has offices in lots of places. But they also have their existing employees in San Francisco. Fucking off to another city is functionally equivalent to laying off half the company.
    • mc32 7y ago
      Boeing moved, many companies based in NYC moved out of the city in the 80s, 90s. It’s not extremely hard, but it is disruptive. When the exodus happens it’ll start as a trickle and by the time people take notice half the cos will have reduced occupancy. After certain stage it’s more about managing growth than about R&D, so you can find most of the talent you need in alternate markets.
      • ghaff 7y ago
        In all fairness, significant HQ moves often have a major cut in headcount as a well-understood side effect if not an actual motivation. But, yes, companies can and have moved their HQs a lot more than ten miles. It's probably harder in an industry and at a time when more people figure a job with a given company is pretty ephemeral though.
        • mc32 7y ago
• the_watcher 7y ago
  > “Taxes don’t have a lot of impact on business decisions. It’s something that has been exaggerated for years” What a laughable comment, as anyone can just look at the overseas behavior of large companies to see how this is false.
  • Wh1skey 7y ago
    Thornberg skipped ECON101.
    • the_watcher 7y ago
      "Taxes do not drive business decisions" as a company leaves a city immediately after said city passed a massive tax increase on said company for a city with demonstrably lower taxes. "Real estate prices drive business decisions, not taxes" as though business are not capable of understanding that real estate costs should take into account the tax implications of said real estate.
• bernierocks 7y ago
  “Taxes don’t have a lot of impact on business decisions. It’s something that has been exaggerated for years” If I'm paying 50% in taxes as opposed to 10%, I will be making different business decisions. Most SF startups incorporate in Delaware because of the low corporate taxes.
  • hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    > Most SF startups incorporate in Delaware because of the low corporate taxes. That is not true. Most startups everywhere incorporate in Delaware because Delaware has the most robust legal system (e.g. the Court of Chancery) dedicated to handling corporate disputes. More info: https://whyy.org/articles/why-do-so-many-corporations-choose-to-incorporate-in-delaware/ https://whyy.org/articles/why-do-so-many-corporations-choose...
    • bernierocks 7y ago
      This sounds like something a VC would tell the press as an excuse. It's no coincidence that Delaware has very low corporate taxes: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/092515/4-reasons-why-delaware-considered-tax-shelter.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/09251...
• pc 7y ago
  Stripe cofounder here. Quick comment to say that we're excited about the move. South San Francisco is a cooperative and open-minded city. In being an infrastructure company, we have to take a long-term view, and we think this can be a good for many years. And while the Bay is tricky from a commuting standpoint no matter what the location, the the presence of a marina right beside this site opens up a lot of interesting new transportation options for us throughout the Bay.
  • citilife 7y ago
    Having lived in Alameda (ferry to work daily), gotta say nice location. I only apply for jobs which I can ferry to and it'll definitely enable employees at Stripe live in more affordable locations.
    • electricslpnsld 7y ago
      Perk of the Ferry: donuts and beer...
      • mslev 7y ago
        No donuts on the 7:35 from Oakland this morning, tragedy.
  • Decade 7y ago
    South City is also one of the worst cities in the Bay Area in building offices and rejecting homes. The long-term view is that we need more homes near jobs. What are you doing to get South City to build more homes?
    • davidw 7y ago
      IIRC, he/they have funded political efforts in that direction.
    • the_watcher 7y ago
      PC extremely vocal and active in advocating for better housing solutions in the Bay Area, particularly within SF proper. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a company to run, and to look out for its best interests given the existing state of regulations. That said, South SF definitely seems like trading a worse commute for anyone in SF or the South Bay who rely on Muni/BART/Caltrain (presumably the majority of current and future Stripe employees) for improved commute options from parts of the East Bay (ferry) & the Peninsula (driving). This seems like a bet on a future tech flight from SF proper (to the Peninsula and East Bay). As someone hitting the point where I'm thinking about where I'd like to raise kids, this doesn't seem like a terribly bad bet to make, particularly as I see places I wouldn't have considered living at 24 evolve towards what I originally preferred about city life.
• hellllllllooo 7y ago
  Stripe CEO was actively against paying taxes to support SF homeless through Prop C. This isn't suprising. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Tech-moguls-workers-views-on-homeless-tax-13356716.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Tech-moguls-wor...
• skybrian 7y ago
  This is described as somehow bad news for San Francisco, but I don't see it. Load balancing can be good news both for the old location (less crowded, less competition for housing) and the new one. Maybe it's counterintuitive for some, but San Francisco is nothing like a old Midwest factory town where reduced jobs and economic activity would be a serious issue. It would be even better if they had moved somewhere further away that needed the jobs and economic growth more, but this isn't a bad result.
  • Decade 7y ago
    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. The effect of moving these high-income jobs to San Mateo County is that Stripe employees will now live in San Francisco and commute to San Mateo, increasing the pressure to gentrify communities near the transit infrastructure, while freeing Stripe’s former office space for another high-tech company that can make even more profit per employee.
    • skybrian 7y ago
      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.
      • Decade 7y ago
        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/ https://yimbyaction.org/join/
• carpol 7y ago
  I find it disappointing that Stripe is moving to a development that is a housing wasteland. Oyster Point was slated for 1,200 housing units, but biotech opposed them. > The residential development proposal was met by resistance from representatives of the life sciences industry though, with claims residents living in the area could make it less attractive to businesses. https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/new-builder-buys-oyster-point-project-in-south-city/article_8d28937a-6880-11e8-8950-e7656ecdc914.html https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/new-builder-buys-o...
• laurencerowe 7y ago
  Expect this to add at least an hour a day to the commutes of those employees living in East Bay. Oyster Point is a long way from the Bart station. The fastest option will be to change to the shuttle at Glen Park. The ferry is nice for those who live near the terminal, but slower than Bart and shuttle for everyone else. On a more positive note the Caltrain station is closer, so the East Bay commute could improve significantly in 20-30 years if the Caltrain to Oakland tunnel is ever built.
• tlavoie 7y ago
  You know, the more I read about this sort of thing, the more I appreciate working for a company with a strong remote-friendly culture. It's not universal within the organization, but _very_ common in the tech groups I interact with. All this talk about whether one can have pleasing weather vs cost of living highlights that for some, having both is quite possible. I'm on Canada's west coast, so Vancouver (with crowding, culture and cost) is my nearest approximation to the Bay area. Being at or near HQ is irrelevant when remote work is common-place, and very occasional travel ceases to be a big deal.