
Facebook Paying Employees to Move Closer to Work - cpeterso
http://fortune.com/2015/12/17/facebook-employees-money-to-move/
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Apocryphon
It is high time for all of the tech companies of Silicon Valley and San
Francisco to come together and lobby the hell out of municipal and county
governments to push for more housing and better transit.

It is absolutely insane that there is so much wealth being generated by these
companies, yet they seemingly have no political will to influence the very
_localities_ they are based in, never mind their federal adventures into H1-B
skullduggery and patent power-plays.

And the local communities themselves need to accept that tech is a huge tax
base and the reason for their affluence, and stop their rampant NIMBYism and
obstruction to urban progress.

Note: I'm referring more to past actions by wealthy communities in Santa Clara
and San Mateo counties who did things such as impede the growth of BART. Or
when rich liberals in San Francisco decry housing construction by citing a
fear of "losing the character of the city." Gentrification of indigent areas
such as East Palo Alto, the Mission, and so on is another story.

~~~
prostoalex
> It is absolutely insane that there is so much wealth being generated by
> these companies, yet they seemingly have no political will to influence the
> very localities they are based in

Wealth != municipal revenue. Menlo Park was particularly upset that Sun
Microsystems (selling hardware and generating sales tax) was replaced by
Facebook (no sales tax revenues). A pizza parlor would generate more revenue
for the city, seems like, than an Internet company.

The only other venue is for company employees to buy up residential real
estate, start paying property taxes and show up for city council meetings, as
the city is likely deriving significant revenue from that. But if that is not
happening, we can assume that company employees chose to deploy their
residential spending elsewhere, and if so, why should the city care?

~~~
mikeash
Does Menlo Park not have property tax for corporate headquarters?

~~~
prostoalex
Yeah, I think every city does, but like anything in property tax land, it's
the value of land and additions. So a bunch of office buildings plus cheap
land by the Bay.

I tried to find an exact answer, but San Mateo county doesn't publish a list
of largest property taxpayers (some do
[http://ttc.ocgov.com/proptax/toptaxpayers](http://ttc.ocgov.com/proptax/toptaxpayers)
so I believe it's public records), and a search for variants of Hacker Way on
their site doesn't yield much.

~~~
mikeash
Those places look like they ought to be valued really highly, but I suppose
it's probably not a huge amount compared to tens of thousands of houses.

~~~
prostoalex
This article seems to imply it was assessed at $355 mil
[http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_16037583](http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_16037583)
With new building Facebook erected it will likely get re-assessed at higher
value, but still, there are probably residential blocks in Menlo Park valued
higher.

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avitzurel
And so... Prices in the streets in that radius will go up another notch. As if
Fremont and parts of Menlo Parks hasn't gone up because of them already.

Acknowledge it or not, instead of paying 15,000$, Facebook could have been
more remote friendly and people can live wherever they want.

For a company the size of Facebook/Apple/Google they can also have micro-
offices in cities further away from the valley.

Employees won't have to relocate, housing prices will settle and the damn
traffic on the bridge and the 280 will be less horrible perhaps.

Every time I commute I think to myself, what if suddenly most companies
realize that they can have 15-25% of the workforce work remotely without
damaging the productivity, how many cars in front of me would just vanish?

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Every time I commute I think to myself, what if suddenly most companies
> realize that they can have 15-25% of the workforce work remotely without
> damaging the productivity, how many cars in front of me would just vanish?

Increase road tolls, use it to incentivize companies to allow remote work.

~~~
avitzurel
Everyone is working on solution for cleaner energy, electric cars and others,
no one really makes an effort trying to solve how many of us just waste 2
hours of our lives on the road every day.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Because its a political/human problem unfortunately, not a tech problem.

Remote work clearly works, you just need to incentivize companies to put it in
place. Otherwise, they will continue to extract those hours a day of commuting
from workers, the money workers put into public transit or their cars, etc.
Externalities people!

~~~
avitzurel
I was actually about to make this comment when you did.

This is a matter of responsibility and perception. When you are help up in
traffic you don't think of Facebook's and Google's responsibility for it, you
think of the government.

The solution for this is not hard, it's just something that no one seems to
have the guts for making the decision.

Sometimes I wonder, this 15,000$ incentive to employees make me think that no
one is even thinking about it over there at Facebook.

------
martinald
There is literally a railroad _next_ to their campus. FB should be offering to
pay to modernise it and build stations along it with Caltrain.

Trains are absolutely the solution to Bay Areas traffic problems. Even better,
with WiFi/LTE and decent seating/tables (add first class if required for
people willing to pay so you get a seat) you can get a lot of work done on the
train to and from work.

~~~
pc86
> _FB should be offering to pay to modernise it and build stations_

I'm sure Facebook pays taxes, why should they be building train stations on
top of that?

~~~
Zikes
Google builds internet balloons and self-driving cars, a few train stations
wouldn't be too terribly absurd for a big tech company.

I don't think anyone is saying Facebook et al. should be expected or required
to undertake municipal improvement programs, but in certain cases it really
could be in their own best interest to do so.

~~~
beambot
California's high speed rail project is estimated to cost $70B. That's like
15% of Google's entire market cap... I'm not sure trains (esp. in the Bay
Area) are within the capability of even the largest internet companies. Plus:
You'd probably require some level of imminent domain to seize land -- which
would be wildly unpopular and generate a lot of bad PR.

~~~
Zikes
I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. The original commenter's suggestion was
to "modernize" a train route that runs near their campus. My assumption is
that the route is currently functional, only missing the required stations and
amenities necessary for relatively short-term passenger transport. I don't
think high speed is called for in that situation, just anything capable of
making a commute more bearable and less costly, therefore a conventional
passenger train would likely suffice.

Additionally, it would still be a primarily municipal project, for which
Facebook (and perhaps other interested private parties) would only partially
contribute to in monetary terms.

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bkjelden
There are 20 metro areas in the US with a population over 3 million people.

What would it take to get the big players in tech, say, the 10 biggest
companies by market cap or # of people employed, to open up satellite offices
in all (or even half!) of those metros, employing, say, 100-500 people.

These companies all have satellite offices - some of them are even growing
those satellite offices. Every one of these companies has offices in the bay
area, Seattle, and NYC. Some have offices in Colorado, LA, Austin, and beyond.
They've proven it can work - so why not double down on that strategy, instead
of incurring the exponentially growing costs of keeping talent in the bay
area?

This would be a huge win for all parties involved.

Employees get some choice over what climates and cultures they want to live
in, and don't have to worry about family or other ties that keep them in a
specific geographic reason.

Employers get access to talent that isn't willing to relocate to the bay area.

Employers _and_ employees benefit from employees living in cities with real
estate as cheap as 1/10th the cost of the bay area.

The nation as a whole benefits, because more cities get to reap some of the
economic rewards these companies are producing, instead of watching it all
concentrate in the wallets of landowners in California.

~~~
Apocryphon
This is a great idea, actually. Though at the moment it looks like most tech
companies are simply doing this to Oakland, which is simply pushing existing
Bay Area urban issues across a bridge.

I wonder which of any of these other metro areas are in the running to be the
next SV/Seattle: [http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/cities/best-places-tech-
jobs-...](http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/cities/best-places-tech-jobs-2015/)

~~~
sjg007
EPA and Oakland and the East Bay will all gentrify.

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rgbrgb
This is an awesome move. When I was at Amazon in SF I had a team mate who
literally commuted around 90 minutes each way from Sunnyvale. This summer at
Open Listings we built a product to help people shop for homes with short
commutes [0]!

Here's a list of homes with short commutes to Facebook HQ:
[https://www.openlistings.com/near/facebook-
hq](https://www.openlistings.com/near/facebook-hq)

Pricey but maybe doable by cashing out some of that cush FB stock, going with
an FHA loan, or one of those crazy new 0 down jumbo loans [1].

[0]: [https://www.openlistings.com/near](https://www.openlistings.com/near)
[1]: [http://www.housingwire.com/articles/35789-san-francisco-
fede...](http://www.housingwire.com/articles/35789-san-francisco-federal-
credit-union-unveils-zero-down-jumbo-mortgages)

------
Apocryphon
Quoting ChuckMcM's post from a previous thread
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5032555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5032555)):

> I've often wondered what might happen if Apple, Google, and Facebook joined
> forces, bought a couple of Tunnel boring machines, and bored a pair of
> tunnels from Cupertino to San Francisco, right underneath El Camino. If you
> looked at the number of people carried by private busses between San
> Francisco and the south bay it would get good ridership. If you threw in
> access to as much dark fiber as you wanted between those two points and
> added big fiber drops to PAIX, MAE-EAST and SF, you could offset costs by
> selling this capacity up and down the peninsula. I also know if Google built
> the tube they could figure out how to do it for a whole lot less than the
> $1B/mile that these things command in the public sector.

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tzs
How often do people who live in San Francisco but work 30-60 miles away
actually have time to do things that take advantage of living in SF,
especially on weekdays?

If I had a bad morning commute, a full day of work, and a bad commute home, I
think I'd most likely spend that evening at home doing things online or
watching TV or reading. I don't think I'd be going out. I'd probably only get
out on weekends.

But that would mean I wouldn't really benefit much from living in SF. I could
just as well live near work, and drive to SF on weekends (and time the trip to
avoid bad traffic hours) when I want to do something that is better done in
SF.

~~~
crzwdjk
I used to live in SF and work 40 miles away (in Santa Clara), and yes, that is
more or less exactly how it was. The one advantage was that going out on
weekends was somewhat easier, since I didn't have a car at the time, and
weekend Caltrain takes absurdly long to get to SF (an hour and a half), and if
you miss the last train back, it's an even slower bus ride.

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JDiculous
You don't have to pay extra to get people to work remotely. When is one of the
big tech giants going to embrace telecommuting?

~~~
a3n
When they believe that telecommuting works.

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rhino369
I wonder when companies will flat out start offering dorms.

My office already has futon.

~~~
nickalekhine
I mean...they (apple, amazon, etc.) already do offer corporate housing for
interns and co-ops. It's certainly possible for these benefits to extend to
full-time hires.

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gnicholas
> Old hands remember a time when Facebook offered a few hundred dollars for
> employees who lived within a few blocks of its old offices in Palo Alto.
> Landlords got wind of the situation and quickly raised rents to match, they
> say.

There's a big difference between "within a few blocks" and within 10 miles
(which includes 3 separate counties). Landlords would be foolish to raise
rents just because one employer is giving a housing incentive.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Landlords would be foolish to raise rents just because one employer is
> giving a housing incentive.

Landlords would be foolish not to capture the highest rent would-be renters
are willing to pay; the subsidy increases that, so landords would be foolish
not to react to it.

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webosdude
Probably that explains why the home prices in nearby areas like East
bay(Newark and Fremont) are rising so much. I live in Newark and housing
prices have risen by more than 15% since last year.

~~~
mrnismo92
Incredible! I just looked up trends for Menlo & East Palo -- unbelievable.

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trhway
nice way to buy local votes - displace existing residents and replace with
your employees, and the city council will in a few years become just a meeting
of your PM-s :)

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mrnismo92
I wonder how this is going to affect residential real-estate prices (and COL
in general) in Menlo Park/E. Palo Alto...

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raincom
How much will Apple pay to move closer once they build the spaceship in
Cupertino?

~~~
avitzurel
I hope they don't.

Even if they don't it will drive prices and make finding places to rent
harder, if they do, well, that would be a real mess.

~~~
STRiDEX
Had a family friend sell a house 5-6 min from the future spaceship for 1.2
million. It's a tiny box and they had 8 offers over their 800k asking price on
the first weekend. The highest bidder was quoted saying "It's close to
work(apple)". That area is already expensive for the schools.

~~~
avitzurel
In the bay area, "asking price" is just the start of the communication on the
low end.

I have a friend that was in the market for a house, most houses went for 150K
avg over the asking price.

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AlexWest
This is great news for all of us in San Francisco

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dbg31415
In other news, rental prices near Facebook just went up $10k / year. Odd.

