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Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

Maybe Wong wanted to move HQ to the Valley proper, rather than SF itself?

Almost all corporate HQ relocations move closer to the CEO's home.

But also, there's a (plausibly-fair) knock on SF-city-based companies as being more superficial, frothier, and more prone to distraction and high-burn rates than those in the more-authentically-nerdy Valley.

Maybe someone can leak where Wong wanted the new HQ to be.

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> Almost all corporate HQ relocations move closer to the CEO's home.

Is there any evidence of that? Seems quite interesting..

It was already folklore back when I was first part of a company discussing new office locations, in the 90s. (My father may have even mentioned it when I was child.) Since then, I've observed it often – though in fairness that may be confirmation bias.

The ~cschmidt sibling reply highlights a Joel-on-Software post about the phenomenon from 2003, attributed to a 20th-century urbanist/organizational-analyst, William Whyte, perhaps as coined in a 1958 book.

Here's a critique of a Connecticut tax incentive from earlier this year that notes all 5 resulting corporate relocations reduced their CEO's commute:

http://www.raisinghale.com/2014/07/16/connecticut-taxpayers-...

Thanks for the replies guys!

Apparently that is William Whyte's rule:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/OfficeNewYork.html

> Maybe someone can leak where Wong wanted the new HQ to be.

Sam himself obliges: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8604199

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