
Stripe to move to South San Francisco - Croaky
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/2nd-most-valuable-U-S-startup-to-leave-SF-as-14558067.php
======
dawg-
I am not in the bay area, in fact I've never even been to the West Coast. So I
am going to ask what may seem like a stupid question to some of you.

I mean this in as polite a way as possible, but why wouldn't established
companies like Stripe just fuck off to another city entirely? It's a
successful company with a great product - that I'm sure many people would like
to work for. They could surely lure talent from the bay area by moving to a
lower cost of living area where mid-level employees can afford to buy an
actual house relatively close to work? And they could pull a mini-Amazon and
get some sweet tax breaks to boot. Is there some hidden reason that companies
like this insist on staying in the same area despite the many potential
advantages of looking elsewhere?

~~~
charlesju
1\. San Francisco is really nice. It's 87 degrees today at the end of October.
There is good food, decent public transportation, culture, ocean, forests,
etc. It doesn't snow here or get blistering hot, so productivity is very
steady year round.

2\. Because San Francisco is very nice (perhaps) and we have good schools
around here. A lot of hires come from UCB, Stanford, UCLA, USC, and other UCs.
Those account for several of the top engineering schools in the country/world.

3\. Silicon Valley has hit an inflection point where we're now the best place
in the world to find TOP talent in tech. It's not a great place for mid and
junior level talent, but if you need top talent for an opportunity that is
high growth and high per employee leverage, there is no place better in the
world.

Ultimately, the main issue is that everything is too nice and worked too well
so the cost of living has sky rocketed. And that is driving out everyone that
isn't a top tier talent (engineering and opts). It's really sad, to be honest,
I love San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and I wish we could find a way to
solve the living cost issue and continue to grow as a hub for innovation.

~~~
rpmcmurdo
SF has always been expensive. When I moved here, my grandfather who was an
actuary for an insurance company (i.e. walking financial database) told me
that back in the 1930s, they had to pay 2-3x salary for people based there due
to the high cost of living. If you read old issues of the SF Chronicle, you'll
find the same story repeated across generations.

The only time SF was every really cheap was during the 70s into the late 80s,
which was due to a combination of white flight, the Loma Prieta earthquake,
and the AIDS plague depopulating the city. Apart from that anomaly, it has
been super pricey ever since the Gold Rush.

~~~
ghaff
And the Bay Area as a whole wasn't cheap in the late 80s. (SF may have been
cheaper because, as you suggest, upper middle class people weren't rushing to
move to SF or most other cities in that period.) But I turned down recruiting
from the Bay Area during that period in part because the cost of living was
too high relative to where I lived on the East Coast.

------
Decade
What a completely unexpected consequence of the restrictions on office space,
spearheaded by John Elberling of TODCO. /s

He is now trying to make office space even more restricted, and his allies are
working to reduce office space alternatively by raising the fees on office
construction. [https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-Mayor-
SoMa-n...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-Mayor-SoMa-
nonprofit-clash-over-office-growth-14541749.php)
[https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2019/10/22/sf-...](https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2019/10/22/sf-
moves-forward-with-controversial-jobs-housing.html) (More about John
Elberling: [http://sfbamo.com/news/tenants-in-todco-property-allege-
abus...](http://sfbamo.com/news/tenants-in-todco-property-allege-abuse-
neglect-and-intimidation/))

San Francisco prevents office space from being abundant and cheap, and
therefore the office jobs are being moved to counties with even worse jobs-
housing balance, turning San Francisco into a bedroom community for (the
richer individuals working in) the peninsula.

~~~
abalone
_> working to reduce office space_

That's a rather uncharitable characterization. SF is just trying to tie jobs
to adequate housing construction. We already have way too few houses,
especially low-income housing.[1] Which is what makes Stripe's move here
particularly low integrity: they'll have all the housing impact on SF without
paying any of the corporate taxes.

From your own source: "A separate economic feasibility study from the City's
Office of Economic and Workforce Development found that a range of office
projects are 'currently infeasible,' even without a city fee increase. The
study did contend that an improvement in market conditions could make a modest
fee increase viable."

[1] [https://hoodline.com/2019/10/report-sf-adding-equal-
numbers-...](https://hoodline.com/2019/10/report-sf-adding-equal-numbers-of-
high-and-low-wage-jobs-but-not-nearly-enough-low-wage-housing)

~~~
nindalf
> SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction

And also making the assumption that only people who work in San Fransisco will
live in San Fransisco? Because those Stripe employees who live in SF right now
are likely not going to change their apartments. They'll continue living where
they are, except now SF now longer benefits from the taxes that Stripe would
otherwise have paid.

~~~
kevingadd
What alternative solution actually fixes this, though? All you can really do
is build more housing (to fix housing undersupply caused by the excess office
space) and limit growth of office space (to prevent the imbalance from getting
worse).

The fact that companies can open up offices somewhere else shouldn't be very
surprising, and it shouldn't be shocking that people will choose to live where
they already live unless their commute gets too long and they can afford to
move.

I just don't see what you expect SF leadership to do about this that doesn't
fit into the two categories I mentioned, other than give up.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _What alternative solution actually fixes this, though?_

Lower the cost of building housing. Streamline permits, zoning, and
environmental review. Publicly commit, in other words, to driving down housing
prices over a decade. (Note: not land prices! That’s the compromise.) This
makes it cheaper to...

Build enough shelters for the transient homeless population. Now that they’re
a stable problem, we can focus on the gritty bits.

Fund mental-health intervention for the permanently homeless so afflicted. And
there has to be an element of coercion. Leaving the mentally ill to waste on
the street isn’t compassion, it’s dereliction.

Fund drug-addiction intervention for the permanently homeless so afflicted.
Carrot is clean places to use, seek counselling and get preventative medical
care. Stick _has_ to be arresting (and preferably transferring to clinics, not
prisons) public users of hard, illicit drugs.

With the above in place, encampments can be humanely cleared and/or relocated.
It also lets law enforcement tackle the minority of the homeless who are
threatening, violent or thieving, a minority that creates most of the problems
for other San Franciscans.

(Oh, and regional transit co-operation. If you make it easier for people to
get around the Bay Area, they don’t have to stack up on each other. Why is the
Caltrain a single trunk? Where is the network of every-fifteen-minutes
ferries? Why is the BART so loud and expensive?)

~~~
all_factz
I’ve lived in the SF Bay Area pretty much my whole life and I just want to say
you hit the nail on the head. Do you know of any politicians who are working
to make this happen? I’m pretty liberal, but I sometimes feel we live in such
a bubble here that even ideas like these are a third rail...

~~~
Decade
Permit streamlining (in order to make affordable and supportive housing more
tractable), increasing regional transit cooperation, these are projects of
sub-groups of YIMBY Action.
[https://yimbyaction.org/join/](https://yimbyaction.org/join/)

------
pc
Stripe cofounder here. Quick comment to say that we're excited about the move.
South San Francisco is a cooperative and open-minded city. In being an
infrastructure company, we have to take a long-term view, and we think this
can be a good for many years. And while the Bay is tricky from a commuting
standpoint no matter what the location, the the presence of a marina right
beside this site opens up a lot of interesting new transportation options for
us throughout the Bay.

~~~
Decade
South City is also one of the worst cities in the Bay Area in building offices
and rejecting homes. The long-term view is that we need more homes near jobs.
What are you doing to get South City to build more homes?

~~~
davidw
IIRC, he/they have funded political efforts in that direction.

------
cjlars
Articles misses that this is in response to SF's gross receipts tax. Payment
processing is an ultra low margin business, no way they can compete while
paying ~1% of revenues to the city.

~~~
ergocoder
Also, the tax oddly targets Stripe and Square.

People don't talk about this very much. But it seems extremely unfair that
Stripe/Square pay way more tax than Saleforce in terms of ratio to their
revenues. (I don't recall the numbers. Anyone?)

Jack Dorsey tried to raise this point multiple times. But people just kept
screaming that he didn't care about homeless :S

~~~
henrikschroder
> But people just kept screaming that he didn't care about homeless

JFC, it's not because of a lack of money that SF has a problem with homeless
people, and it's not that more money would make the problem magically go away.

~~~
baby
It’s a national issue and SF is a symptom. Instead of pushing for healthcare,
housing, more aids, and so on, people are just blaming it on mental health.

~~~
rayiner
It’s not “national issue.” Aid and housing are local issues. San Francisco and
California in general have much worse homelessness problems than many other
places in the country. (For example, Mississippi has one of the lowest
homelessness rates in the country.)

~~~
closeparen
It’s a national issue because people are mobile and will go to wherever the
services are best. If San Francisco decides to house every homeless person who
appears on its streets, it’s going to have to house every homeless person in
America.

Coordination at the federal level could even out geographical imbalances in
services and also prevent all services from having to be delivered in the few
places where it’s most expensive to do so. Doing all the free housing in the
most expensive market is crazy.

------
PopeDotNinja
I can tell you recruiting for South San Francisco was way harder than
recruiting for SF. If I lived in SF without a car, that'd be a deal breaker
for me. They're going to start losing people, or see a huge spike in chronic
working from home. I guess they have to move somewhere at some point, and no
move is without trade-offs.

Regarding the gross receipts tax, couldn't they just move their HQ-on-paper to
any place that doesn't have a gross receipts tax?

~~~
paxys
I'd say that's an exaggeration. I know _tons_ of people who commute from the
city to south bay and vice versa. Plus South SF is pretty well connected by
transit.

~~~
khuey
I've never heard anyone in SF say that South San Francisco is well connected
by transit before. BART takes a rather circuitous route to get to the city's
western edge and most Caltrain service skips its (rather sad) station.

~~~
dehrmann
Is that the station where you might exit onto the tracks of an oncoming (but
waiting) train?

~~~
khuey
It is. They have a holdout rule though, trains only pull into the station and
open their doors when the track is clear for obvious reasons.

------
dmode
As someone who has worked in South SF for years, it is pretty bad for
employees. It is a cultural wasteland with few restaurants or interesting
things to do. Transit is also poor as both BART and Caltrain are in awkward
locations. And the fog is worse. This will be like Uber’s move to Oakland,
which got rolled back pretty quickly

~~~
thordenmark
North of the GG Bridge has great restaurants and plenty to do. More tech
companies should move up there, I don't understand why they usually go south
of SF. Also, real estate can be found that are still within a range middle
class can afford.

~~~
derekdahmer
Marin is over an hour away by bus from SF, with no train or BART. Basically to
work in Marin you have to live in Marin, so any company that moved there
wouldn't be taking advantage of the SF/South Bay labor market.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_Marin is over an hour away by bus from SF, with no train or BART. Basically
to work in Marin you have to live in Marin, so any company that moved there
wouldn 't be taking advantage of the SF/South Bay labor market. _

You're looking at closer to three hours depending on where you're coming from.
There is a ferry from Larkspur but transit connectivity and parking are
limited. The Tiburon and Sausalito ferries are worse.

------
heymijo
I find myself confused about the new tax and unwilling to invoke Cunningham’s
Law to get clarity.

So I went to the source (I think) and it appears Stripe would have been taxed
at 0.560% on its gross receipts. [0,1]

Assumptions: 1) Stripe would be classed as a “financial services” company per
the law and subject to section 953.6 of the law 2) Stripe has gross receipts
over $25 million

My confusion is the discussion of a 1% tax rate on gross receipts. I don’t see
any business taxed at that rate and on this case neither Stripe nor Square
would be.

[0] [https://sftreasurer.org/business/taxes-fees/gross-
receipts-t...](https://sftreasurer.org/business/taxes-fees/gross-receipts-tax-
gr) [1]
[http://library.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll?f=templates&fn=de...](http://library.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll?f=templates&fn=default.htm&vid=amlegal:sanfrancisco_ca_m&anc=JD_953.6)

------
fierarul
> Though Stripe also strongly opposed last November’s Proposition C, which
> raised business taxes to fund more homelessness services, the company said
> that wasn’t a major factor for the move.

It would be PR suicide for a company to admit that the increased tax to fund
homlessness was a major factor for the move. To accounting though a tax is a
tax.

~~~
keiferski
Yeah, I don't really get the point of mentioning something like this. Does
anyone expect them to say, "Yeah, we moved because we don't want to pay to
help the homeless." PR 101.

------
brunoTbear
I'm surprised to not see any current Stripe employees in here commenting on
the move. Usually you'd see one of The Brothers Collison in a HN Stripe
thread.

As a former Stripe (ex-Stripe?), I do buy the story of running out of room.
That office is lovely, but they keep growing on a pretty steep curve, and the
floors weren't as dense in there as you might imagine. Decidedly cool interior
design tho!

~~~
bdibs
It’s sort of late, I’m sure we’ll hear from them eventually.

------
baby
These days I was thinking about San Francisco and wondering how it had come to
that. There’s so much demand, so many people want to move to SF, yet its
population has barely moved in the last decade. Why is that?

If anything had gone right, SF should be a HK-like dystopian city filled with
electronics and high-tech.

But instead we have a horizontally limited place, that is filled with homeless
and restricts new advances like shared kick scooters.

It’s sad.

~~~
rland
I suspect that they're paying a dear price for it. The growth that would have
contributed to a HK-like metropolis has been displaced to everywhere else:
Seattle, Austin, Boulder, LA/NYC, etc.

------
forthwall
Kilroy Oyster Point is a pretty inaccessible area from San Francisco, you
would need to take a limited train via Caltrain that's around 40 minutes to
get there. I'm pretty sure this is definitely a blowback from the gross
receipts tax and nothing more, even for commuters from the Peninsula would
still have to get to the really strange south SF station which is also only
accessible via limited express...or commute into one the worst traffic
corridors in the Bay Area.

~~~
benatkin
It's right on the freeway, and there's a ferry. I think it's probably about as
good as where the AirBnb and GitHub offices are, which are half a mile from
BART. I think a lot of their employees are going to be driving in at times
that avoid rush hour.

~~~
baby
Wat. Airbnb is super well located in soma. Unless Stripe has shuttles it’s
going to be rough.

~~~
daseiner1
Stripe will definitely have at least limited shuttles from public transit.

------
paxys
The gross receipts tax was ridiculously misguided and is going to cause
irreparable harm to the city's economy if not fixed. Square and other FinTech
companies are most definitely next.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
No, it's a very good move as many digital economy businesses are great at
creative accounting making their net receipts look ridiculously small or
negative.

~~~
JoshTriplett
And what about companies whose net receipts _are_ actually small?

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
I think the current binary law (either gross revenue or net receipts for
everybody) is flawed. We have to acknowledge different kind of companies
exist. One method of taxation cannot be applied to all. Specifically if you
engage in activity like trade and your margins are low, gross revenue taxation
is clearly unfair. But devising a balanced and bulletproof taxation system
that would protect honest companies while preventing abuse seems extremely
hard.

~~~
kortilla
Yet almost every other city in the US has managed to do it. Complete
incompetence or just willful negligence?

------
the_watcher
> “Taxes don’t have a lot of impact on business decisions. It’s something that
> has been exaggerated for years”

What a laughable comment, as anyone can just look at the overseas behavior of
large companies to see how this is false.

~~~
Wh1skey
Thornberg skipped ECON101.

~~~
the_watcher
"Taxes do not drive business decisions" as a company leaves a city immediately
after said city passed a massive tax increase on said company for a city with
demonstrably lower taxes.

"Real estate prices drive business decisions, not taxes" as though business
are not capable of understanding that real estate costs should take into
account the tax implications of said real estate.

------
samcheng
They spent a couple of years building a shiny new building, only to move out
of it after a year?! What a waste...

------
paggle
SF won't care as it is the only major American city that seems to want fewer
high paying jobs.

------
skybrian
This is described as somehow bad news for San Francisco, but I don't see it.
Load balancing can be good news both for the old location (less crowded, less
competition for housing) and the new one.

Maybe it's counterintuitive for some, but San Francisco is nothing like a old
Midwest factory town where reduced jobs and economic activity would be a
serious issue. It would be even better if they had moved somewhere further
away that needed the jobs and economic growth more, but this isn't a bad
result.

~~~
Decade
This absolutely is bad for San Francisco. South San Francisco is building lots
and lots of offices, but not building nearly as many homes. While San
Francisco is harmfully negligent at building homes, it is at least building
more than its (painfully low-ball) estimated need for high-priced housing. The
rest of the peninsula isn’t even building that much. All the counties are far
behind at building less-fancy housing.

The effect of moving these high-income jobs to San Mateo County is that Stripe
employees will now live in San Francisco and commute to San Mateo, increasing
the pressure to gentrify communities near the transit infrastructure, while
freeing Stripe’s former office space for another high-tech company that can
make even more profit per employee.

~~~
skybrian
Maybe in the short term, but I would expect Stripe workers would now find the
peninsula more attractive and gradually move there. There is also the Marina,
which might make some ferry commutes from the east bay reasonable and even
pleasant. (I still remember commuting from Alameda to Market Street by ferry
to be quite nice.)

More density near transit seems like a good result.

~~~
Decade
More density near transit is not a foregone result. It has to be through
political will. This is the YIMBY movement.

The peninsula would absolutely be more attractive for Stripe employees. But as
I said, the peninsula is building a tiny fraction of the housing as opposed to
jobs. The richest executives can move to the few vacancies that open up, but
unless something changes, the rest of the employees have to live elsewhere.
[https://yimbyaction.org/join/](https://yimbyaction.org/join/)

------
bernierocks
“Taxes don’t have a lot of impact on business decisions. It’s something that
has been exaggerated for years”

If I'm paying 50% in taxes as opposed to 10%, I will be making different
business decisions.

Most SF startups incorporate in Delaware because of the low corporate taxes.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> Most SF startups incorporate in Delaware because of the low corporate taxes.

That is not true. Most startups everywhere incorporate in Delaware because
Delaware has the most robust legal system (e.g. the Court of Chancery)
dedicated to handling corporate disputes. More info:
[https://whyy.org/articles/why-do-so-many-corporations-
choose...](https://whyy.org/articles/why-do-so-many-corporations-choose-to-
incorporate-in-delaware/)

~~~
bernierocks
This sounds like something a VC would tell the press as an excuse.

It's no coincidence that Delaware has very low corporate taxes:

[https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/09251...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/092515/4-reasons-why-delaware-considered-tax-shelter.asp)

------
carpol
I find it disappointing that Stripe is moving to a development that is a
housing wasteland.

Oyster Point was slated for 1,200 housing units, but biotech opposed them.

> The residential development proposal was met by resistance from
> representatives of the life sciences industry though, with claims residents
> living in the area could make it less attractive to businesses.

[https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/new-builder-
buys-o...](https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/new-builder-buys-oyster-
point-project-in-south-city/article_8d28937a-6880-11e8-8950-e7656ecdc914.html)

------
tlavoie
You know, the more I read about this sort of thing, the more I appreciate
working for a company with a strong remote-friendly culture.

It's not universal within the organization, but _very_ common in the tech
groups I interact with. All this talk about whether one can have pleasing
weather vs cost of living highlights that for some, having both is quite
possible.

I'm on Canada's west coast, so Vancouver (with crowding, culture and cost) is
my nearest approximation to the Bay area. Being at or near HQ is irrelevant
when remote work is common-place, and very occasional travel ceases to be a
big deal.

------
laurencerowe
Expect this to add at least an hour a day to the commutes of those employees
living in East Bay. Oyster Point is a long way from the Bart station. The
fastest option will be to change to the shuttle at Glen Park. The ferry is
nice for those who live near the terminal, but slower than Bart and shuttle
for everyone else.

On a more positive note the Caltrain station is closer, so the East Bay
commute could improve significantly in 20-30 years if the Caltrain to Oakland
tunnel is ever built.

------
hellllllllooo
Stripe CEO was actively against paying taxes to support SF homeless through
Prop C. This isn't suprising.

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Tech-moguls-
wor...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Tech-moguls-workers-
views-on-homeless-tax-13356716.php)

------
abalone
This blows, not so much because Stripe is leaving SF, but because it's going
just over the border for tax purposes so 100% of employees who live in SF will
stay in SF. The company just won't pay their fair share to the city to offset
their impact.

The line about this being about space and not taxes is hard to believe.[1] And
for good reason. Last year Stripe funded an anti-homeless campaign just $1 shy
of the reporting threshold, initially, until they were exposed.[2] That's not
something you do if you're proud of sharing your true motivations.

[1] [https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/affordable-housing-fee-
hike-...](https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/affordable-housing-fee-hike-on-
office-development-in-sf-advances-toward-approval/)

[2] [https://missionlocal.org/2018/10/orgy-of-big-money-
donations...](https://missionlocal.org/2018/10/orgy-of-big-money-donations-
flowing-into-prop-c-battle-both-for-and-against/)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Last year Stripe funded an anti-homeless campaign just $1 shy of the
> reporting threshold_

I don’t get the sense that San Francisco’s homeless problem can be solved by
throwing dollars at it. San Francisco chooses high housing prices by
restricting construction. Its NIMBYs block tackling its homelessness problem.

Money won’t change those choices by San Francisco’s voters. It will just swell
another city bureaucracy.

~~~
kevingadd
Both things can be true: NIMBYs are contributing to skyrocketing housing
prices (and thus a growth in homelessness), AND essential city/county/state
services require tax dollars.

I can think of plenty of things that SF locals complain about when I talk to
them that would be mitigated by more tax dollars spent by the appropriate
agencies. If your argument is that SF local government is a black hole that
spends 0% of its tax income on important programs, then that's another matter
but requires a bit more support...

~~~
dominotw
> NIMBYs are contributing to skyrocketing housing prices (and thus a growth in
> homelessness)

My impression was that the homeless there cannot afford a home at any price
due to life circumstances.

~~~
seehafer
Yes but let’s assume we built free or nearly free housing. We can’t even do
that in SF with any speed.

------
Tempest1981
Can't wait until we learn how to work remotely. Would save a ton of resources.

------
isuckatcoding
Or you know they could move to a much more accessible and cheaper city like
Oakland

------
sneeze-slayer
Are there good bike paths in San Franciso? It seems like the weather is good
enough for year-round biking, which would be a big plus.

~~~
zten
Well... their new office is on the SF2G Bayway route, but the whole area is
absolutely unfriendly to bikes. Use Google Maps and look at the intersection
of Gateway Blvd and Oyster Point Blvd. It's special.

------
olingern
> 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 ...

~~~
kevincrane
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.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
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.

~~~
x0x0
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.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_Do you ride Bart?_

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

~~~
wbronitsky
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/](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.

~~~
inferiorhuman
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.

~~~
wbronitsky
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?

------
eternalny1
Why are all these companies in San Francisco?

Because that's where it was the place to be for cool tech companies, start-
ups, and venture capitalism.

Now that companies realize they can just move to Witchita, Kansas or wherever
else they want, they will.

------
joshe
It's a disappointingly boring corporate campus (the second photo in the
article) for a well run company with lots of smart people.

The rendering shows a sad 1990's office park, complete with a path winding
artificially along the water, office windows overlooking parking lots, and
useless lawn accents that no one will ever play on. Imagine the desolate
dystopian feeling when you came in to do a few hours work on a Saturday.

We should have the will, talent, and state capacity to build more San
Francisco style urban landscape. High prices cause San Francisco's worst
problems. More high quality urban areas would make these areas cheaper and
more people could enjoy them.

~~~
namdnay
Come on, that's slightly unfair... "office windows overlooking parking lots"
\- but with a pretty nice sea view. And the path seems like a nice place to
jog at lunch. Maybe even go for a swim?

