It's very hard to find the kind of space they need anywhere else. And while working at Google I get the sense that they would prefer more mixed use, higher-density development near their headquarters, but local city planning officials make that almost impossible.
Google's KPI is hiring talent away from competitors who physically live in the San Francisco bay area. And the ads/ML teams that they drench in their 1%ers.
Google's public-policy attention is largely elsewhere, eg. lobbying for net neutrality at the federal level or self-driving cars at the state.
Also, Mountain View's bargaining position is a lot stronger than Hershey's. If Hershey left the town of Hershey, there would literally be nothing there. If Google left Mountain View, there would still be Intuit, Mozilla, Symantec, LinkedIn, Microsoft, YCombinator, and a whole host of other companies. Google's negotiating position vs. local governments is actually a lot stronger in many of the places where they build data centers, eg. The Dalles, OR; Lenoir, NC; or Jackson County, AL, because those towns have no other major industrial employers.
I hear you. The problem is that the response is super local. ie I think Google hoped that just entering the space would spur activity on regional and national levels. So far though it seems to be only those specific cities that Google launches in then respond. I hope that changes but the bigger guys are calling Google's bluff and just matching it in the small cities (like mine wooo hooo!) that Google launches in.
I’ve never understood google’s insistence on making everyone sit in the same office.
There have been several consolidation pushes over the years.
I’d think smaller distributed teams would be more desirable. Don’t most people work in small-ish groups anyway?
Just the logistics of cramming so many people into such a small space are challenging.
The traffic from highway 101 to the googleplex in mountain view is infamous. The highway is wildly oversubscribed, the exits are congested for about 4 hours around the start and end of the work day. (Yes that’s basically constant. There’s a bit of a lull between 11 and 2)
Part of the problem is that Mountain View has refused to build more housing for decades so everyone commutes. That’s been changing slowly (housing projects are finally getting approved), but it can’t possibly be enough.
Why not take the opportunity of covid to decentralize?
Whatever, not my clowns, not my circus. Thank god.
Not sure why Google insists on staying in such an expensive place, rather than moving. Some possibilities:
1. There are synergies to having much of the staff working together at the same place. And the only place an employer the size of Google can find enough staff who are up to Google standards is the Valley.
2. Once you get to the Valley, anywhere else is cottage country. Google is by necessity somewhat geographically distributed, but its senior management is completely centralized. Last I checked, all the SVPs were in Mountain View. It's easy to mistake the best place for the only place.
3. Google started in the Valley and grew up there. Moving their main operation anywhere else would be very disruptive. Getting employees to move is hard at the best of times; getting highly sought-after engineers to move away from the center of their profession, where they have many many options should they decide to stay, would be brutal.
I'm kind of surprised that we haven't seen someone like google try to build a company town in another state where they just buy up tons of land, build nice homes/apartments for employees, and move their headquarters there.
There is a reason Google’s first office was right next door to DEC WRL and Alta Vista. There is so much cross contamination between the two that it’s impossible to say.
LOL. I worked for SGI in the late 1990s and was hired as a contractor in the marketing department. I recall having to share desk space on Rengstorff Ave in Mountain View —-which is, of course , where Google HQ is currently located.
There's also a full-fledged Google office in Madison, in addition to their offices in Chicago and (soon) Rochester, Minnesota. Working as a developer and living in the Midwest doesn't necessarily mean leaving Big Tech.
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