
Uber shakes up real estate market with massive lease in Oakland - brendannee
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2015/09/exclusive-uber-oakland-sears-building.html
======
rdl
I'd heard this was going to be a Google office. Oh well.

I wonder how much "not driving over the fucking bridge" is worth to people.
Uber salaries tend to be pretty good (partially to make up for the stock being
so high), and they have a great team, plus are clearly on a rocket ship
trajectory, and are easy to explain as a product to anyone.

Offering $150-250k cash, great overall packages, AND being able to buy or rent
at almost-reasonable (i.e. 2011-2012 SF) levels is going to make them a really
annoying competitor in hiring. Oakland for city people, the less-used Fremont
to Oakland BART for the other people, or driving from places like Moraga for
more rural people.

~~~
rorski
As someone who used to do the "reverse commute" from SF to Oakland for a
couple years, I'd add that it's pretty attractive for SF residents who like a
slightly less crazy pace as well. I mean, you can actually go places for lunch
and get in, and not pay $14 for a sandwich. And going the opposite direction
of traffic (or taking the opposite BART) sure beats sitting on the 101.

But most people I worked with were definitely in the boat you describe - East
Bay dwellers who really, really didn't want to deal with trying to fight their
way into SF. And who can blame them? I think this is a great move for Oakland
and Uber.

~~~
rdl
I live in Oakland (10m walk from the new Uber office, but 3m from a 580
onramp), and my office is basically at AT&T Park. The commute has gotten
markedly worse over the past 15 months. :( And it's not even a particularly
bad east bay to sf commute; I know people who drive from Moraga.

Last year, my 95th percentile commute at 10am was 35 minutes door to door, and
the median was about 25-30. This year, the 95th is more like 45, and the
median is more like 35 at that time. To arrive at 9am, it's dramatically worse
-- basically an hour 95th, and sometimes up to 90m (once or twice a year), and
the median is about 45m (BART is 50m door to door, but is absurdly crowded at
that time, and I'm uncomfortable walking around with a laptop bag at 5-7pm in
Oakland after 2 people got their laptops stolen in front of me in one week).

I usually try to go in really late and wfh in the mornings so it's 20-25m, but
it's still usually 30-40m on the way back at 7-8pm. If I have to be in at 9am,
I have to leave at 7:45 to be comfortably on time with high confidence. And
the traffic basically starts between 0530 and 0600, so being early is almost
impossible; it's full-bad around 0630-0700.

~~~
awjr
10 miles on a electric bike _could_ be 40 minutes. (In Europe they are limited
to 15.5mph). Depending on your physical fitness you could get it down to 30
minutes but you'd need a shower at the other end ;)

~~~
rdl
The new part of the Oakland Bay Bridge has a bike lane, but only out to
Treasure Island; there's no bike lane from Treasure Island to SF.

~~~
sneak
That _has_ to be by design.

~~~
plorkyeran
They're two separate bridges built decades apart. They put a bike lane on the
new eastern span despite it not being very useful at the moment so that
whenever a new western span is built it won't run into the exact same issue
(and there's some ideas being thrown around for adding a bike lane to the
current bridge, but they're all hideously expensive).

~~~
sneak
Thank you for providing a least-hypothesis that is even more probable than
"ordinary racism/classism". :)

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tfigueroa
Listen. Pandora is two blocks away, so I can say it: this is a bad move for
Uber.

* Oakland isn't cool anymore. We were here before it was cool. And we are barely cool.

* Attrition is terrible. Coworkers either get shot or are poached by Clorox. I heard we lost a Glass developer to the dock worker's union.

* Mass transit at that particular location is astounding: the free green bus, the ferry, BART, an AC transit hub. What I'm saying is that it's too ironic for Uber to be there.

* The best milkshakes are at True Burger, the best banh mi is in Chinatown, and the best parking is at YMCA. Does any of that make sense? No, of course not.

Avoid Oakland at all costs. The real hot spot? Hayward.

~~~
jaredhansen
Reminds me of my two favorite bumper stickers:

If you love Kauai, send your friends to Maui.

and

Surfing sucks, don't try it!

------
pikeymick
I saw teo people shot not far from here, the windows of Obama's campaign HQ
smashed in with hammers down the street, and a homeless man crap on the steps
of city hall in broad daylight. Welcome to Oakland Uber.

~~~
ChuckFrank
No difference from just around the corner of the Twitter building.

This isn't a homeless man crapping problem, it's an insufficient bathroom
infrastructure problem, and yes most mid to large size American cities have
it. Which is exacerbated by laxative type drugs. 'Hello Alcohol, Hello Heroin,
I'm talking to you two.'

~~~
cookiecaper
This might be a nice way to comfort yourself about living not only in CA but
in either SF or Oakland, but it's not real life. I've worked in the downtowns
of multiple major metropolitan areas, and have never seen anyone defecate in
public, nor have I witnessed a robbery.

I was once pressed to buy crack in the Crossroads District of KCMO, but that's
pretty much it. I used to walk from Crossroads to Crown Center for lunch and
back again every day. Second most eventful walk: a couple of birds swooped
down and tried to take some of my hair.

~~~
parasubvert
Apparently you've not lived or worked in the Tenderloin or deep SOMA.

In a 2 year period I saw/experienced:

\- defecation, urination, and masturbation in broad daylight on the sidewalk

\- heroin injection

\- a half full 26er of vodka fly out of a window and hit me at my feet

\- packs of men with assless chaps and various states of undress and arousal
in line at a Subway (it was the Folsom street fair week) , one holding his
slave by the collar while ordering a BLT

\- half naked people stumbling out of minivans with crackpipes

\- two incidents of modest riots / bonfires in the middle of Market street
(the Giants won)

\- various gunshot murders (one being a sawed off shotgun assassination
attempt at the Gas station off Harrison and ...5th?) that I thankfully missed
but glimpsed the aftermath of

It's like parallel universe Disneyland. None of this really affected me - more
bemusing than anything, but it can be shocking to those unaware.

~~~
dllthomas
You seem to have misread the parent comment as saying they haven't seen this
stuff _in SF_ \- they said they haven't seen this stuff where they have
worked, in _other_ major cities.

~~~
parasubvert
I read that. But they said "it's not real life". It is, and not just in
SF/Oakland. Plenty of weird experiences to be had in New York or Toronto, for
example.

~~~
dllthomas
Ah, you interpreted cookiecaper as saying "this problem doesn't happen,
period". In which case, your response makes sense - "of course it happens in
these parts of SF under discussion".

I read that comment as more narrowly disputing _" most mid to large size
American cities have it"_. Revisiting, I do think my initial reading was
correct. If cookiecaper was denying the problem existed, why would imagining
it be _" a nice way to comfort yourself about living [...] in either SF or
Oakland"_? The comment makes substantially more sense as asserting that 1) the
problems in SF are not problems elsewhere, and 2) a view that they are
problems everywhere (and thus maybe not solvable) is not reality based, so SF
and Oakland must be "Doing It Wrong". I don't _agree_ with that comment - as
you can see from my direct response to it - but the logic of it is coherent in
a way it would not be if it were supporting the other point.

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anigbrowl
If Uber really wants to earn goodwill in Oakland (which is worth thinking
about because the local anarchists are probably planning their protests
already), it would be worth renovating the exterior of the building too. A lot
of buildings in downtown Oakland have beautiful art deco facades that were
covered up with ugly concrete facings in the 1950s in a misguided attempt to
look more modern. Bringing out some of Oakland's original business history
would garner a ton of long-term community goodwill.

~~~
rdl
I suspect Art Deco is already popular with Uber's leadership for other reasons
:)

~~~
nailer
What are those reasons?

~~~
rdl
Ayn Rand liked it, her book covers, etc. Uber is known for liking Rand.

------
Animats
This is in addition to their new giant HQ in SF?

Uber has an awful lot of overhead for a taxi company.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/uber-new-
hq/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/uber-new-hq/)

~~~
jedberg
No no they aren't a taxi company. They are a marketplace that matches people
selling space in their car with people who need space in a car.

Until they get their self driving cars, and then the are a transportation and
logistics company.

But they definitely aren't a taxi company

~~~
noer
They're a company you can contact to dispatch a car to take you where you want
to go that charges you by distance traveled. If that's not a taxi, I don't
know what is.

~~~
falsestprophet
A taxi is a vehicle for hire that you can lawfully hail on the street.

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DigitalSea
The gentrification of Oakland is now well and truly under-way after the great
job gentrification did in San Francisco displacing thousands of people from
their homes.

~~~
beedogs
The truth clearly hurts some people, as evidenced by the color of your
comment. Ask anyone who isn't in tech in San Fran how easy it is to make ends
meet in that city. Then ask them what their commute's like.

~~~
Kalium
I know a guy in Oakland who complained about all the techies moving in.

Then he said he's had three raises in two years.

------
hiou
Remember kids, Oakland is actually closer to Market St/Mission than most of
SF.

------
evtothedev
Now if only Uber Pool would go to Oakland.

------
rmason
Looks like the VC's are spearheading the move to Oakland. Chamath Palihapitaya
from Social + Capital is planning a developers village apartment complex in
Oakland with the goal of luring more Midwest coders to the West coast.

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/17/chamath-palihapitaya-on-
ins...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/17/chamath-palihapitaya-on-insane-burn-
rates-ipos-and-raising-a-new-real-estate-fund/)

~~~
pmorici
Seems overly optimistic to think that anyone from the midwest would be dumb
enough to think that $80k was a livable salary for that area even in Oakland.

~~~
aeling
As a Midwestern coder, I could definitely see peers making that mistake - 80k
seems like a lot when you're used to rent in the low hundreds. That said,
where are you getting 80k? I didn't see it in either the GP link or the
original story, and would expect Uber to be hiring at higher salaries than
that given other comments in this thread re: the cash/stock split.

~~~
muzmath
Low hundreds? Not even in the middle of no where in the midwest will the low
hundreds get you a half-decent place.

~~~
philsnow
In my last year of grad school, I splurged and got a three-bedroom apartment
in the guest house behind the mansion of an auto industry magnate, with
utilities paid for $745. This was an amazing apartment, too (though maybe it
was only amazing in comparison to the cookie-cutter apartments I had stayed in
before).

I think it's quite possible to find rent in the low hundreds for a place that
is "half decent".

------
beatpanda
This is going to go very, very poorly for Uber.

~~~
prawn
You should explain why.

------
primitivesuave
Oakland is already an attractive new location for tech companies. It is my
sincerest hope that the policy-makers in Oakland see what happened in SF with
housing, and are proactive in controlling rent to avoid displacing low-income
people and most importantly, the people who contribute to the city's culture.

~~~
w1ntermute
Because tech workers clearly fail to "contribute to the city's culture."

~~~
mjb394
I don't know anyone who works 60 hours a week and also participates in the
kind of community that Oakland has. People actually know each other there!
They talk to their neighbors and strangers on the street, and it brightens
everyone's day to have that little touch of human connection. They go to
parties and talk about things other than their jobs. They paint and draw and
play music and plan events and fundraisers that are good for the community. I
know techies who aspire to that kind of life, but thinking like you want to do
something and actually doing it are very different things.

~~~
danans
I work in tech, work reasonable hours, live in Oakland, and do all those
things. I also have many neighbors who work in tech and outside tech
(healthcare, law, skilled trades) and work reasonable hours, and do all those
things.

I think doing all those things is a function of whether someone is in a
particular industry. It is a function of whether one has a desire to be
involved in one's community.

Having kids is a stronger predictor of community involvement if you are
looking for one.

