Why Apple’s Suburban Spaceship Could Lose the War for Tech Talent
wired.com
wired.com
Those people may have a family, and would much prefer a suburban home in a good school district.
Apple isn't part of the tech _startup_ scene, it's been around a long time and they know the value of retaining experienced engineers.
For the last 50 or so years, "urban" has always had the property "bad school district." I wonder how preferences would change if urban school districts were functional, or at least more functional than most of them are now.
In addition, safe and functional urban neighborhoods tend to be expensive because of zoning (see Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City for more on this). What would happen if we had cities in which housing weren't so expensive?
There is also the question: What is a good school district?
Are the schools themselves the actual cause of high test scores or the involved parents? How much does it matter if there are some low performers at your school if YOUR kids are learning fine?
For that, though, we lack virtually any sort of night life, and have very few non-chain restaurants/stores/etc. It's a great place to raise a family, but horrible to attract the "20-something Ruby Rockstar" developer, despite the 4-year university down the road.
This is just false; San Francisco is plenty walkable and public transit generally works quite well, despite the grousing you may hear from the people whom it has spoiled.
I live in SF without a car and I'd be hard pressed to name three friends who do have a car.
I went long stretches where I only used my car when I wanted to go to a different city or wanted to carry more cargo than would fit in my panniers.
Unless things have changed a lot (it has been quite a while) I'd expect Cupertino to be fine for the kind of people who are actually in shape for biking.
If they move out to the suburbs, it's so they can afford a nicer and larger place. Silicon Valley is still ridiculously expensive and mediocre in terms of amenity. They tend to go to places like Portland or Austin rather than pay city prices to live in a suburb.
Beyond that, I grew up in Los Angeles, the car culture is deeply baked into me, plus, my eventual intention is to live in a rural area - where I can have land to do things like solar power, growing my own produce and a nice workshop to futz around in when my heart desires.
It also comes down to rent, I need a vehicle because of my line of work, its a fixed cost I'll likely have to carry forever - rent in the city is upwards of twice as much (sometimes more) for the same space over suburbs, I cant justify the costs when I cannot otherwise expense shed elsewhere to make up the difference.
Attack local zoning laws which made sense in the 50s but don't make sense in a modern metropolis. The peninsula should make El Camino, from SSF to Santa Clara a high density canyon with underground transport. The transit project would lose money the first decade or two, but would set the stage for the following decades for business development, housing and community.
[Added] It's not lost on me that this would require State governance to overcome the hurdles presented by having to manage the needs and input from ten different local governments and agencies.
An office for a growing 20-150 employee company, or even 1000+ employee company is entirely different than an office that will hold 15,000 employees, r&d facilities, parking, etc. Apple would literally need to build a skyscraper to achieve that in San Francisco proper.
I also don't agree that Facebook moved from Palo Alto to Menlo Park to be closer to the city in order to attract talent. It was about gathering enough real estate to house their growing company (and probably about who offered higher tax breaks).
EDIT: I guess my comment doesn't really address the idea that they might lose tech talent, but rather more the idea that having an office in SF is actually feasible.
I'm not seriously suggesting it, but Apple could easily afford to do that. The Burj Khalifa skyscraper, tallest in the world, cost ~$1.5 billion, or about 1% of Apple's cash reserves.
I was trying to find what skyscrapers in SF cost to build and apparently the new Transbay Transit Tower is estimated at $1B+. But it is supposed to have 1.3M Sqft, whereas Apple's new building will be around 3M sqft.
Also, you have to take into account the cost of the brushed aluminum panels to seamlessly cover the entire building, the cost of rounding off every corner in the building, and the enormous Apple logos visible from any direction.
That is exactly what Amazon is doing with their current expansion in Seattle.
There are experienced and talented engineers that won't even live anywhere in the entire state of California. Apple is not shooting itself in the foot by building an enormous headquarters in the suburbs: it is shooting itself in the foot by building an enormous headquarters, period.
Tech companies that large should instead be establishing as many satellite offices as they can manage in the commercial collar areas between urban centers and their suburbs. You don't actually want all of your employees to be competing with each other for their homes and groceries, because that just raises your labor costs. Also, you don't want to dredge the bottom of a local talent pool while ignoring the cream at the top of another.
Instead of 2000 employees in one building, you can pay less on labor costs (which will dwarf your facilities costs) by putting 200 employees in 10 buildings. Let's just say Portland, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, St. Louis, Nashville, Raleigh, Albany, Ottawa, and Guadalajara. That way, you don't end up competing with yourself for resources.
Apple could lose the War for talent because...it is not in SF. Being in SF counts because...because every company who wants "20 Somethings" is presumably migrating to SF or setting up a presence. So the company with the "think different" slogan that is famous for doing things its own way should...stop being different & follow everyone.
This writer should be embarrassed to write such drivel.
Personally I think a lot of people will really enjoy working in that building. Certainly enough to fill it up. I look forward to seeing it and the little tourist shop replicas :-).
The premise of this article is that Apple's Most Desired hire is a hip-and-with-it 22-year-old, so I can see why they would ignore the Forbes article about where the 30-somethings are moving.
Not to say, of course, that I believe Apple is gunning for the fresh-faced crowd with this campus.
[1] http://www.payscale.com/top-tech-employers-compared-2012/emp...
Another office in SF like Google might be a good idea, though.
I can't really add much other than anecdotal evidence, but, the PhDs I know loved San Fran when they were young and hate it now that they're trying to raise a family. Instead of the "I love Berkeley!" and "I love San Francisco!" like I used to hear from them, I now hear things like, "We're thinking something outside of San Diego." or even more drastically, "Why don't we look at houses in Wisconsin the next time we visit your folks over Christmas?" ...And family seems to be the deciding factor that changed the tune.