Many large companies (f50) have fleets of jets and salaried pilots. Its not uncommon at all for commuting by jet to be the standard. Not sure why this is such a big deal or any different than the thousands of c-suites that commute this way.
You might start with 5 or so candidates and then whittle it down to 1 or 2 that are the right person for a job. These people are already wealthy with all that goes along with it and the idea of relocating could be a hard ask. From a successful CEO's perspective, it's probably much easier for them to land another gig that caves to their demands than the other way around.
At this comp level you could say it's similar to a sports star that gets traded to another team, and it is in a way, but that's part of what comes along with being someone like that... in the span of 20 years they may have to uproot their life 3-4x. Their career even starts off like that, where they get selected to a team and boom, they have to move to somewhere they may have never even visited before their life even gets somewhat calcified by having generational wealth.
It’s pretty clear (by looking at actions, not words) that nobody cares about being insanely wasteful and polluting.
Everybody believes some other person is being insanely wasteful and polluting but their lifestyle isn’t as bad so they don’t have to change.
Starbucks pretends to care about the environment and sustainability much more than most. Or at least they used to, he may dial that back since his commute will be mentioned in news articles for at least the next few years.
If you need to travel, for instance to expect a new remote production site, a potential acquisition, getting to know well something up somewhere where you have interests, it's not wrong at all. Travel just to show up in the office, like a religious act, a ritual probably to justify RTO policies needed by the company to stay alive not because they need people in the office but because they live on cities and with WFH as the default, having already lost industries with '80s globalization, cities are simply dead with their Barnum circus including therein Starbucks that have no substantial reason to exist in business without the "ritual, polite, city-stile suit and tie/tailleur" way of living.
This act means a thing: Starbucks is a no future company, desperately attached to a past model that can't exists anymore, so having no substantial reason they switch to rituals, imposing them on their own, chiefs included, to trying keeping up.
My unproven response is that's simply a ritual because Starbucks will die without modern cities, or will die without mid/high income office workers with a certain mindset who like being in places like Starbuks. A cohort of people who will change mindset if WFH.
Did you see the impact of the "covid" switch on airlines, hotels NOT due to the lack of tourist but due to the change in working travelers, with conferences moved to remote meeting, business trips much reduced due to remote meetings and so on? That's the point: could Starbucks live without the office, not it's own office, but the office model, or the modern city model, since most factories are not in cities anymore and in modern city the economy, at least in the west is essentially driven by the tertiary sector and could such modern city model live?
My personal take it's a double no. I expect cities slowly evolve in ghetto's for poor and desperate people, a cohort not likely to buy Starbucks, and so despite the substantial ritual of "being in an office at least some days per week", their business model is doomed IMVHO, not tomorrow morning, things do change slowly, but in not much years in the future anyways, rituals do work only a bit, if the economy underneath is flawed they can keep things up for a bit more, but not save the game.
Plenty of people go to Starbucks that don’t live in big cities. Lots of rural people love SB and those who live in towns of 20-30k or less even.
“ Did you see the impact of the "covid" switch on airlines, hotels NOT due to the lack of tourist but due to the change in working travelers, with conferences moved to remote meeting, business trips much reduced due to remote meetings and so on?”
Yes and it was a shame because we never should have shutdown.
“ A cohort of people who will change mindset if WFH.”
People still went to Starbucks during the shutdown.
People in small or medium cities I do not know, but rural people I doubt for a simple reason: where is SB outside cities? To sustain their costs they need a certain size, not available in spread area, while the small Old Joe pub perfectly can.
> Yes and it was a shame because we never should have shutdown.
I agree about the shutdown, but I'm not talking about it but SINCE it or the fact many realize that there is no damn need to meet in person for countless of activities from the till today simply decide there is no sense doing in-person conferences and so on. That's the impact I'm talking about, of course airlines for cargoes have compensate much of the loss because we still need to move goods for a distance that a cargo is the cheapest not only the fastest option, tourism still exists (and that's perfectly fine) but no need to move for many business activities.
> People still went to Starbucks during the shutdown.
No doubt, but when you decide to leave the city, perhaps a very expensive and even very small apartment for a home in a nice place with plenty of nature, a nice garden, a nice veranda depending on the climate, why going to a luxury bar when you can have it at home, without the need to dress and with anything you like done as you like? Restaurants it's another thing, you go to eat something you do not typically cook at home, but a bar? I'm Italian, living in France, my cappuccino is definitively better than a SB one, I do not need to register myself, I only need the good roasted coffee and some sufficiently fat milk. Why bother to get dressed and go somewhere if I can just open a door and have a better alternative? In a dense city, full of noise, things are different but in nature with plenty of space I can have friends at home, outside, inside, in both in total comfort.
Having read the article, what’s your best guess?
Companies (F500s and below) are increasingly moving away from this for efficiency and cost reasons, but I agree with you that it's a bit of a nothingburger.
Meanwhile the same HNers complaining about Niccols contract are the same ones who oppose the unrealized capital gains tax proposal that literally only affects people with $100M and above in undeployed capital
And for what? So politicians can spend it on some photo-op project for themselves? Maybe sending "aid" to other countries (bullets and bombs)? Using it to spy on it's own citizens and quell dissidents? Surely individuals can on average invest the money more productively.
You don't even have a moral argument for that stupid idea. Just a political belief.