Hacker News Reader

Comment by olingern | Hacker News Reader

> 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 ...

View on HN

SSF is much less accessible by public transit - going from a major Caltrain station to a minor/local station is a big step down.

  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.

All locations south of the City of San Francisco are in a different county!

Hmm, the airport is technically part of the City and County, while distinctly being south of it.

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."

Pretty sure that was covered by the 'technically' part

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.

Is Hetch Hetchy technically part of the city and county of SF, even though it is in Yosemite?

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.

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.

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.

Agreed, but at the same time BART needs to run more trains to Millbrae for this reason.

BART is more than 4 miles from where Stripe is moving to.

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.

Do you ride Bart?

You're going from a local commute to bart -> walking to the office, to a local commute to bart -> going to a station that is skipped by 3/4 of bart lines (ie requires an xfer for Antioch, Pleasanton, or Fremont) -> a shitty bus. NB: Bart is ass and generally is too incompetent to align train and bus schedules.

This adds probably at least 45 minutes each way for anyone coming from SF or East Bay locations and using public transit. It's an enormous downgrade.

Before claiming incompetence consider there are at least 23 different transit agencies in the Bay Area BART has to coordinate with. Yes, we need a system that integrates seamlessly (I personally feel it, I ride BART from Oakland to Caltrain in Mountain View 10-12 times a week). But blaming BART alone for this problem misses the root cause: fragmented transit operators. We need a lead or unified agency like the MTA in NYC or WMATA in DC.

Do you ride Bart?

How do you think most East Bay commuters are getting to San Francisco?

This isn't a very helpful argument. I live in Oakland and commute to San Francisco and rarely take Bart because there are many other options that don't involve me breathing directly from someone else's exhalation like we all are forced to on Bart.

Personally, I take casual carpool, https://sfcasualcarpool.com/, to work and a transbay bus home. Total cost is $6.50/day, which is cheaper than commuting by Bart, and because I live 30 mins walking from Bart, it is also much faster.

Yeah I couldn't give you stats on how many people do that commute via car, but bus vs BART is a no brainer. A 10-car BART train can hold about 1,000 people. Bus service can't scale like that (especially not on shared right of ways) which would definitely put you in the minority.

South city may as well be the middle of nowhere transit-wise but the difference between taking BART to Market St vs SSF isn't all that big.

it's 19 minutes each way if you ride the train, and roughly 30 minutes each way if you require a transfer. Plus more waiting time heading north due to worse service intervals.

I'm struggling to figure out how a one hour increase in commute time isn't a big deal. Without even discussing the local bus.

I'm not sure it matters why I'm in the minority in my commute. And if I am in the minority in some populations, I might not be in others. It would seem that quite a few people that live in my neighborhood use the same transportation options that I am, although this is obviously anec-data.

I disagree with your last statement. BART is 4 miles from oyster point, so you would have to take a shuttle. I'm going to assume that is at least 20 minutes more, if I'm being generous. So, for me, that would equate to about a 90 minute commute each way, at a minimum, where as a commute to Market street via BART would be about a 50 minute minimum. 80 minutes per day is not a trivial amount of time for me.

Overall, I'm not sure what the argument here is. That a lot of people take BART? That we should be ok with more commute time?

Most all of my coworkers from East Bay drive in, but my office is in Mission Bay and BART doesn't go there. People used to take BART to the shuttles but so many people were quitting as a company retention thing they started letting everyone wfh during rush hours, commute off hours and gave people free parking instead. I like the flexibility but it's still a pita.

Bay Area needs more robust interconnected public transit, and higher density housing near transit hubs.

I have ridden BART and Caltrain in the past for work. I've had commutes that involve transfers, too -- usually Caltrain to MUNI.

I don't think what you're saying contradicts anything that I said -- I said that the move to SSF makes it more difficult to commute via BART, but that it was too strong to say that it "eliminates" the possibility of doing so.

In any case, I really suspect that if companies keep moving to the SF Bay Area and keep growing, they're going to have to start moving to places that are out of the city. The rent per square foot in SF is approaching $85/ft^2, the highest it's been since the original dotcom boom; downtown San Jose is around $60/ft^2, better but not that much better. But places like San Ramon, Fremont, non-downtown San Jose, and yes, South San Francisco are around $30/ft^2. Some would argue that staying in the Bay Area at all is silly for tech companies at this point; while I don't think I'd make that argument, if I had several hundred employees to find space for, I just don't think I'd do it in the City.

I commute by public transit from Oakland to Mountain View every day, so claiming elimination is a bit extreme.

Sorry, but that's a brutal commute, and I spent 5+ years commuting from Mountain View to SF...by car.

Doesn't Stripe have remote workers?

Anyone in west Oakland or Alameda will actually have a fantastic commute, the new office is steps away from the ferry which is by far the best way to commute in the bay. They'll need to step up service though, earlier boats are already pretty full.

"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.

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.

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).

The travel times between these two locations can be 60+ minutes depending on mode and time. It is a Big Deal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com