More San Francisco Tech Companies Cancel Leases Due to Remote Work (sfgate.com) 79
Salesforce canceled its 325,000-square-foot lease at the unbuilt Parcel F tower in San Francisco's Transbay neighborhood, reports SFGate:
The company announced in February that more than half of its workforce will continue working remotely or on a flexible schedule after the pandemic is over...
The lease termination is just the latest blow to San Francisco's downtown office footprint as more companies shrink or offload leases because of the persistence of remote work. The lease on Yelp's 161,876-square-foot office space at 140 New Montgomery St. is up in October 2021 and the entire space has been listed for rent. WeWork confirmed it would be scaling back its Bay Area locations and is closing five downtown locations. Just this week, the Mission Bay headquarters once leased by Dropbox is being sold for $1.08 billion. The company adopted a remote work policy in October 2020... In August 2020, Pinterest paid $89.5 million to terminate its lease for 88 Bluxome.
The lease termination is just the latest blow to San Francisco's downtown office footprint as more companies shrink or offload leases because of the persistence of remote work. The lease on Yelp's 161,876-square-foot office space at 140 New Montgomery St. is up in October 2021 and the entire space has been listed for rent. WeWork confirmed it would be scaling back its Bay Area locations and is closing five downtown locations. Just this week, the Mission Bay headquarters once leased by Dropbox is being sold for $1.08 billion. The company adopted a remote work policy in October 2020... In August 2020, Pinterest paid $89.5 million to terminate its lease for 88 Bluxome.
Open offices (Score:4, Informative)
Even if the big return to work does happens, I hope the whole experience puts a nail in the coffin of the stupid "open office" trend. I'm not very optimistic however - it was a bad idea to begin with, but this didn't stop idiot managers from pushing it, so another extra good reason to avoid open offices won't probably stop them.
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Even if the big return to work does happens, I hope the whole experience puts a nail in the coffin of the stupid "open office" trend. I'm not very optimistic however - it was a bad idea to begin with, but this didn't stop idiot managers from pushing it, so another extra good reason to avoid open offices won't probably stop them.
I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that. The place I work for (government) has decided that instead of moving the entire IT department (all parts of it) into a building being built to house everyone, people will now work from home and if you need to come into the office you get to choose the cube you want to work at for the day. Tomorrow, someone else might choose the same desk to work at for the day.
While not an open office, hoteling is close enough. But hey, at least we're going through our ITIL classes. Bec
Re:Open offices (Score:5, Interesting)
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Simply the latest fad. Those corporations that persist in remote working for extrovert workers, will face worker losses in increasing numbers and large drops off in productivity. It goes against their genetic nature to be isolated and alone in that fashion. The harder you try to force it the worse it will become and the faster it will happen.
One of the biggest remote worker corporations Yahoo went the other way for a reason, after years of remote working. It only ever suits a minority of introvert workers,
Re:Open offices (Score:5, Insightful)
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Depends on which portion of which industry.
Sales folks are very likely to be extroverts. They thrive in that high-sensation, high-interaction open-office environment.
System Admin ... more likely to thrive in a quiet, no-interruption environment. Home, private office, cubicle, etc.
The examples are endless and it's not one size fits all. Incompetent workers will (do) find a way to schlep along when working from home just like they do in the office.
Re:Open offices (Score:5, Insightful)
it's inefficient because your team generally gets scattered randomly around the office unless you all come in exactly at the same time.
What's worse than having to meet your team in zoom when everyone were working remotely, is to have to meet your team in zoom when everyone were scattered around in the same office and all meeting rooms were already full.
Almost a whole year with most of the team working remotely ought to be enough proof that people can work productively that way. It is beyond stupid for a company to waste money on office lease and force people to come in physically to work, and doubly stupid to stint on office space so people of the same team cannot sit together after taking the trouble to be there!
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Hoteling is a trend that needs to die and die fast.
Hoteling will likely increase. It works well when mixed with WFH.
Per-Covid, I was working 3-2: In the office MWF and WFH on TTh.
Post-Covid, I will be working 1-4. It doesn't make sense for my employer to give me my own desk for one day per week.
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Hoteling is a trend that needs to die and die fast
Hoteling is likely the only reasonable way for offices to put in place a hybrid model for workers to not come into the office every day. It makes no sense for around half of all desks to be empty each day because people are only coming into the office 2-3 days per week.
having your own desk used to be a perk
Now the perk is working from home 2-3 days per week. Better than my own office in my opinion.
it's inefficient because your team generally gets scattered randomly around the office unless you all come in exactly at the same time.
I have never had trouble sitting with my team when in a hoteling situation. We might not always be in the same desks, but getting close together is s
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I guess you are not, and have never been, an assembly language programmer. Or written real-time code of any kind.
Hell, even writing PHP in a common area is unlikely to result in code that works - most PHP doesn't work regardless of where it was written!
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No, there are better ways to do it. Like one chair, two desks, or two desks spaced closed together where it's really hard for both to work together at the same time, but one person can work quite well in the space. Take your desk, then take s
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The actual problem with hoteling isn't the availability of desks, it's the availability of chairs.
The way it starts is you find an open desk, then someone comes over to talk to you and grabs a free chair from another open desk. Another person shows up to use that desk, and grabs a chair from the next open desk because the person talking to you is still using that chair. That person goes to leave, but since there is no loner an open desk to take the chain back to, they just leave the chair.
The chairs migrate
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There you go, using facts and stuff. I just don't like the idea of other people farting in my chair.
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If your company is doing random hoteling to save space then they're getting bad guidance. You also come off as a negative nancy...but there's always one in each group. I've done an enormous amount of research/surveying/work facilitating WFH transition and new workspace functionality over the last year so I'll share some insight.
You build around 'neighborhoods' where x team that works with y team have adjoining pods of desks. You size pods based on realistic (not bossy-boss thinks his sheep will be in 6 d
Re:Open offices (Score:4, Informative)
Open offices are a deal breaker for me. I once interviewed at a place where they had all open offices (well, the managers had the conference rooms on perma-reserve with just them in it), all industrial décor with brushed aluminum and glass. To boot, managers thought earphones and earbuds made the worker bees look "too unresponsive and antisocial" so they banned them. Definitely noped out of that, especially I've had my ears ringing longer than some concerts after that interview with all the noise.
I just don't get how those places get work done. Especially the places that combine those distracting environments with constant meetings, especially the multi-hour standup meeting in the morning. But I'm guessing it is more about appearance and ego than productivity.
In any case, having more people work from home is a benefit to everyone. Fewer cars on the roads, less energy consumed, and so on. Not like it is going to hurt SF real estate prices, because there are many countries with their (speculators^winvestors) that are happy to gobble up anything that goes for sale at whatever prices are there.
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I benefited a lot from "open offices", especially earlier in my career. Just being able to walk to the senior people and ask relevant questions is very valuable.
However the trick is making sure you (the company) are not running a jungle. Give people space, no unneeded interruptions. Even with physical proximity prefer email if possible (additional bonus: long term record of interactions). And make sure there a lots of private spaces, 1 person "conference" rooms, study areas, outdoor study areas, etc.
Just op
Tech industry finally realized VPN works just fine (Score:3)
The only reason for employee proximity for knowledge workers is collaboration, and if you can demonstrate that vpn/slack/etc sufficiently fill that need, then the shareholders of any publicly traded company will ultimately demand they become normal operating procedure in the name of profits.
Or at least that's my current guess. Time will tell.
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Well, more facilities at work than at home, if you need facilities. Ie, lots of storage for equipment, devices, cables, debuggers, power supplies, sniffers, analyzers, etc. Lab desks and space, soldering stations, oscilloscopes, and other specialized equipment that is shared. And definitely more room. Ie, I don't have two monitors at home, and I definitely miss that. Now, if we all get back to work, and I can get some friends help out, I could replace a lot of furniture with bigger desks given that I d
Re: Tech industry finally realized VPN works just (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Tech industry finally realized VPN works just (Score:5, Informative)
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my home pc has 8x the ram, 4x the display screen real estate and is much better than the office pc in every way. the home and office net connections are fast. and even though i paid for my own home pc, i can now claim 50% as a busines expense for tax. there was no question working from home works to the tech staff, but now the non-tech business folk who were little backwards and scared of change know it too. we've settled on team goes in to the office 1 day a week. many of us would have 0 days a week, but here we are. its definately changing.
And as someone working in infosec, there's no way in hell I'd allow employees to attach random home PCs to my network.
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> And as someone working in infosec, there's no way in hell I'd allow employees to attach random home PCs to my network.
As someone working in infosec, you should know more than you apparently do about least-privileged-access solutions.
Re:Tech industry finally realized VPN works just f (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tech industry finally realized VPN works just f (Score:4, Informative)
My team is in four countries. We have never been in the same room.
For me the only difference between being in-office and remote is the commute and it's a lot quieter skype-meeting from home.
Then comes the other shoe... massive offshoring (Score:1)
Of course, the other shoe drops... when management realizes that the WfH people can be from an offshore contract place just as easily as employees who used to be at the building, then we are going to see a massive outsourcing/offshoring cycle.
Re: Then comes the other shoe... massive offshori (Score:2)
Why would that not be happening already if it were going to?
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I can't see this lasting (Score:3)
I can't imagine the powers that be are going to let us all keep working from home. They stand to lose a *lot* of money as their property is devalued.
This is sort of the problem with our current system. We do a lot of boneheaded things to maintain the status quo, especially for people at the top (which if you own real estate in San Fransisco you most certainly are).
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If it is possible to cut real estate costs, competent management will and we will see a transformation.
I can't see this renting. (Score:2)
Sears is dead for other reasons. It's real estate holdings is one of the good things because they can rent that out, and yes there's more than one use for buildings than just, office parks.
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Sears owned a lot of its retail space. Now that is in the hands of Sears Holdings. And the continuing cycle of borrowing against assets (unused real estate being one), declare bankruptcy (yet again), restructure, rinse and repeat probably has a few more cycles to run before the last of the suckers are wrung out.
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I can't see this launching. (Score:3)
They'll make them into Amazon warehouses*, or mini-datacenters.
*Have drones launch from the roof.
Re: I can't see this lasting (Score:2)
Re: I can't see this lasting (Score:2)
"Let us"? Whoever owns the building where I used to work doesn't have a say in my company's work from home policies. Never has and never will. The same is true elsewhere.
Re:There's a solution (Score:5, Funny)
But that might drive the rent on a broom closet with a common bathroom only 2 floors down to under $1000/month!
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Oh, kinda like the sweet $680M that Nancy Pelosi put in the COVID relief bill for San Fransisco. Just admit that both parties are completely corrupt and only serve themselves.
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https://www.politifact.com/fac... [politifact.com]
Re: California is in luck (Score:1)
The Fact Check you offered said the money was there, the false part was the word "snuck", which the original commenter never said.
You proved him correct in what he said, and disproved what he didn't say - excellent.
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Actually, you are totally wrong. it was for a BART project 50 miles outside her district. Maybe look at a map.
Seriously (Score:1)
Consider turning it into housing for the über elites in San Francisco, which should provide a 'trickle-down' benefit opening up some lower-cost housing in the city.
Sitting on acres and acres of vacant office space while housing costs go thru the roof is non-sensual.
I have to say (Score:3)
I have to say, "I told ya".
Why should Salesforce pay a ton of money for a big ol' building when most people can and will work at home if given the choice? And they won't be the only ones to bail from office buildings in major cities across the US.
Moving on, imagine what this will do to the tax base there over the next few years. Ouch.
Shit's fucked up, yo.
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The best thing about salesforce is the office in London. They've got an aquarium tank in the entrance hall worthy of a national zoo. Never been in, but you can see it very clearly from the street.
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I'm sure it's cool, but it's not enough of a reason for me to go into an office.
There's almost nothing that would motivate me to go into an office again.
Re:I have to say (Score:5, Interesting)
...when most people can and will work at home if given the choice
We've been technologically able to work from home for a long time now. The only thing keeping us at the office was upper-management's fear of doing something perceived as risky that wasn't being done by other companies. But with COVID19, everyone was in the same boat, and all but forced to act in unison. The perceived risk of failure was evenly spread among all companies, so everyone either sank or swam with no personal risk to upper management. Now that everyone is swimming just fine, the benefits to everyone in management have had a chance to sink in.
I'm hoping that we're going to see an acceleration of working from home as the new standard, and we can finally give a long overdue posthumous middle finger to The East India Trading Company that started this long central office nightmare.
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By "remote" they meant, "remote but still close enough to come into the office whenever we demand it."
Good cover to get rid of overstaffing. (Score:1)
Remote only is not effective for high end devs (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're a high end professional, you need to collaborate. If you're a low-end one, then remote-only is just fine.
If you're an entry level employee who needs over-detailed specs to do his piecework, then you can probably work faster. I'm a high end dev, which means I am expected to put out high end work with inadequate direction AND compensate for
I think it can be more effective (Score:3, Insightful)
1. I lost a means of communicating with people
2. In person, I could gauge his reaction and ensure he's not upset at me. Remotely, I have no clue if I sound like an asshole or if he's mad.
3. In person, my boss could join me in his cube and we could instantly have a short meeting, ensure everyone is on the same page, and maintain a healthy relationship and work out differences.
Aren't your options 1,2, and 3 basically all solved by Zoom (or videoconference of your choice)?
I've been working remote for many year
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The problem with slides is people spend far too much time trying to make them look good.
I'm more talking code examples than slides, or even running demos to show exactly where the problems are - that combined with a few good diagrams.
Plus even on the fly diagramming is better because everyone can see and comment as you draw, or even join in.
Meeting time has gone up exponentially so to get the actual work done people are spending 10-12 hr days working during the lockdown.
That sounds like a process problem, p
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The reason anyone pays EXPENSIVE rent in office buildings
That's a reason to pay rent in cheap office buildings. The EXPENSIVE part is so that the big shot in the corner office can brag about his view. If he/she can't justify having everyone on site, then there goes the executive office.
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That's a reason to pay rent in cheap office buildings. The EXPENSIVE part is so that the big shot in the corner office can brag about his view. If he/she can't justify having everyone on site, then there goes the executive office.
Maybe it depends on the nation or city you work in, but city-center office have a higher perceived value because of restaurants, cafes, transport links etc etc.
One company I worked at had a great location for that and my team loved it. After hours beers were great for team morale. Then we got a fat-fuck new Managing Director who preferred to drive his flashy German car to the office, so we all moved to some edge-of-city location so that he could drive into the basement car park and take his private eleva
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higher perceived value because of restaurants, cafes,
To a degree, yes.
transport links
Not so much. When you think in terms of which bars you can reach from the font door of your office tower, you have been caught in the trap of the local business community. You work downtown, you shop downtown, you live downtown. That's how company towns were built in the old days. That might be OK if you are younger with a life that revolves around working, hitting a bar and going home to sleep. But once you develop other interests, you'll see that the transportation options in the suburbs
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Not so much. When you think in terms of which bars you can reach from the font door of your office tower, you have been caught in the trap of the local business community. You work downtown, you shop downtown, you live downtown. That's how company towns were built in the old days. That might be OK if you are younger with a life that revolves around working, hitting a bar and going home to sleep. But once you develop other interests, you'll see that the transportation options in the suburbs are far greater.
Nope, not in my city (Nordic city). In the downtown location we go for a beer after work and then take the tram or train or bus back to the home area. Out of town office location means a car. There are no bars or cafes there only lunch places which close at 1pm. People aren't going to drive to the city centre and have a beer then drive home. The laws are very strict on the alcohol and parking a nightmare.
Of course, during COVID the bars are closed or so have so restricted access that we don't use the
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Just to add:
1. for my team, executing already planned work is better remotely (less distractions and meetings), but planning new work is much harder.
2. Working with existing colleagues is fine - we know how to make jokes and get on with each other. Getting to know someone remotely is much harder. Team cohesion suffers. Previously I used to fly in remote sub contractors in for a week to get to know the others. The SAFe process management foisted on me had exactly on
Re: Remote only is not effective for high end devs (Score:4, Interesting)
This sounds less like a WFH issue and more like a dysfunctional organization issue.
All organizations are dysfunctional. (Score:2)
This sounds less like a WFH issue and more like a dysfunctional organization issue.
I've never seen a profitable organization that wasn't dysfunctional and that includes the tech titans. So yeah, we work with the team we have, not the one we wish we had. You have to adapt to circumstances. My team was quite functional when I joined and then my favorite team members had kids & moved to the suburbs or founded startups. It's life. Things SHOULD be better, but we just have to make things work.
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Ever since we've been working from home, I can confidently state that productivity has incre
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Giving a new meaning... (Score:1)
SF is giving a new meaning to "cancel culture."