
Why Apple’s Suburban Spaceship Could Lose the War for Tech Talent - d99kris
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/12/apple-suburban-mothership/
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TwistedWeasel
The article assumes that the best people to hire are twenty-somethings that
want to live in the city. What about catering to the 30 and 40 something
senior engineers? In my experience it's much easier to hire a newly graduated,
smart young engineer than it is to hire somebody with 10+ years experience.

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.

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delackner
In general yes, but as a someone who that fits that story arc, I find the
dichotomy of insanely overpriced tiny city vs desolate parking lot, well,
lousy. I love the idea of what apple is building but there is still no
walkable / bicycle friendly place to live in the bay area. In central Tokyo i
can cycle to work in less than 15 minutes or walk in 40. Or take one of the
many many buses or trains departing every 2-4 minutes. Does that quality of
city planning exist anywhere in the US? I have not seen it.

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_pius
_there is still no walkable / bicycle friendly place to live in the bay area_

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.

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delackner
Fair enough, but when i lived there, every single person i knew had a car and
real estate in SF is so astronomically expensive that none of my friends, all
of them highly paid, live IN the city. So living in SF but never getting in a
car doesnt seem realistic unless you dont mind never visiting your friends. I
suppose that makes SF liveable without a car

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_pius
Just out of curiosity, when did you live there?

I live in SF without a car and I'd be hard pressed to name three friends who
_do_ have a car.

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mc32
Or they could build a huge campus in SF and then suffer the wrath of locals
decrying how tech cos directly take up valuable real-estate, as well as
indirectly by people who move to be closer to campus all driving up prices and
driving out the poor from the city.

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.

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jseliger
This is an astute comment and I hope it gets the upvotes it deserves; for more
on the subject, see
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/25/bay_area_zoni...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/25/bay_area_zoning_if_you_want_to_talk_housing_you_have_to_talk_zoning.html)
and
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/10/housing_costs...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/10/housing_costs_it_s_the_zoning_stupid.html)
.

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stevesearer
I think about offices a lot, but I don't really agree with this article all
that much. Apple isn't the same company as the so called "hot, tech" companies
located in San Francisco.

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.

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melling
According to Google Maps, Menlo Park is about 3 miles from Palo Alto. For
those of us not in SV, are we missing some reason why this really rates as
closer?

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stevesearer
I thought about that as well, but just didn't add it in my comment. The office
is probably actually further away for many employees that already located
themselves in Palo Alto to be close to HQ.

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stephencanon
Also much worse for those who located themselves close to 280 / Caltrain /
Foothill Ave for the easy commute to the old office.

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logfromblammo
Yes, about that... I'll live in downtown San Francisco when Federal Reserve
Notes start to grow out of my hair follicles.

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.

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suprgeek
If like me you sometimes skim the comments before going to the article - SKIP
reading this article completely. There are a couple of major assumptions and
lot of specious reasoning.

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.

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lambdasquirrel
Well if they just want 20-somethings, they could always market the spaceship
as a retreat center. I mean, cmon, it'd be the ironic thing to do. ;-)

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vikas5678
Are they limiting the definition of "tech talent" to single 25-somethings? I
know plenty of engineers with families who dont want to or cannot afford to
live in San Francisco and like to live in the south bay/east bay or in the
peninsula.

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ChuckMcM
What a silly article. Combined with the Forbes article today on where people
are moving after they get a bit older it is even more obviously wrong.

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 :-).

~~~
sliverstorm
_Combined with the Forbes article today..._

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.

~~~
ChuckMcM
True, from PayScale [1] - *"The median age of Employees 31"

[1] [http://www.payscale.com/top-tech-employers-
compared-2012/emp...](http://www.payscale.com/top-tech-employers-
compared-2012/employee-demographics)

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bluthru
I'm sure most of Apple's most valued employees are already near the new campus
location. Relocating the office to the city to increase commute time and
stress just wasn't going to happen.

Another office in SF like Google might be a good idea, though.

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stevesearer
I imagine that dividing up where Apple's main product engineering, design, etc
is not something that Apple even wants to do in the first place. Keeping
secret things secret is probably much easier when it is all located in one
place as opposed to spread out in many places.

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fiatmoney
Apple is already spread out into many buildings all over Cupertino.

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27182818284
Apple could have found itself (accidentally) in a great position where they
capture the people who are highly technical, but also looking to get their kid
into a good, easy-to-access school.

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.

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tthomas48
Honestly my bigger issue (and I'm not a twenty-something engineer) is that
it's such an isolated campus. I might not mind working in the suburbs, but
even the suburbs are moving towards walk-able interesting places, rather than
these weird isolated complexes you drive between. There are areas in the
suburbs that have apartments, restaurants, stores, and offices. I'd much
prefer to work in one of those mixed-use environments. I would definitely
consider not working for a company that took 15 minutes just to get from the
building back to a road.

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babesh
I think the problem is that other than San Jose, there isn't really a large
scale downtown or space that can easily turn into one that can accommodate
such a large campus. So you get stuck with isolated campuses like Google,
Facebook, etc... Apple's offices are actually closer to a downtown than those
two.

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josephscott
Increasingly, young tech talent wants to live and work <strike>in
cities.</strike> remotely.

~~~
Aloha
Yes, this.

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paddy_m
I think this article is spot on. I would already be fearful of working at a
place with an insular attitude, to be physically isolated too would be
difficult. I think the physical isolation is something that Steve wanted. It
also will probably affect Apple less than other companies because they have
such a top down management style (where the intermingling of ideas wouldn't
help so much).

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yalogin
This might completely change b 2016. Who knows how things change by then. When
the start ups mature they will/might rethink where they operate. We could
enter a recession or every start up could be priced out of SF.

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Aloha
Not all of us want to live and work in the city.

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gdubs
The green space of the future Apple campus is incredible -- it would be very
hard to achieve that in the city.

