
Pinterest pays $89.5M to terminate San Francisco office lease - pseudolus
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Pinterest-terminate-SF-office-lease-88-Bluxome-15525421.php
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merricksb
From a few days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24312478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24312478)

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pixelpoet
It would be such a relief if they went under, I am _so_ tired of pinterest
thumbnails (just copies of other images on the net, but low res, appearing
first and unusable) polluting my image search results! Just this weekend I
installed a plugin called Unpinterested to add -site:pinterest.* to all
searches automatically- instant relief.

~~~
jeffbee
I expressed this same view on Twitter and I got a DM from a Pinterest software
engineer who seemed to be an intelligent and thoughtful person but also seemed
to be puzzled by my position, and genuinely unaware that this perception of
Pinterest exists. There must be some other side of Pinterest that I've never
seen, where it performs a useful function for its users?

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gowld
70% of pinterest users, and 93% of pinterest _usage_ is female. That's
probably highly correlated to your (and HN userbase's) confusion about how
Pinterest is perceived.

~~~
lucideer
Yeah I signed up for Pinterest once and ticked "prefer not to specify" on the
gender question. I also opted not to select any favourite/followed categories.

I was immediately inundated with bridal content and very little else.

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lordnacho
I think some sort of highly flexible model is long overdue. So, not a complete
abandonment of the office, but people will no longer be forced to go in.

There's things that are hard to communicate even over vidconf, and thus it's
useful to have at least some human contact. On the other hand, it's very
useful for people with families to be able to shift their working hours
around, and a fair few jobs would allow that.

I foresee a lot of firms reducing the offices, maybe making what's left a bit
nicer, and then letting people take care of their own time. Perhaps something
like a day or two in the office for meetings, the rest of the time work from
home but be in contact.

Managers will have to let go of the desire to see that everyone is in their
seat.

~~~
chii
> I foresee a lot of firms reducing the offices...Perhaps something like a day
> or two in the office for meetings,

would you invest in wework if they become the biggest provider of these
prefurnished, time-share offices?

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ghaff
Even if you think WeWork will disproportionately benefit... (And I'm not sure
it does; do you want to be mixed in with employees from different companies
that may have different rules about travel, behavior, etc.) Commercial real
estate is likely to be an overall bloodbath.

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tinodotim
For those also wondering how much the lease would've been:

> Pinterest, ..., said its lease obligations for the Bluxome project would
> have been at least $440 million.

Source: [https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Pinterest-
cance...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Pinterest-cancels-huge-
SF-office-lease-in-unbuilt-15523170.php)

~~~
fluffything
How much revenue does pinterest generate?

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tinodotim
Revenue according to the article $272 million in Q2 (with a $100.7 million
loss in the quarter).

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lolsal
That boggles my mind.

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closeparen
The lease number is likely over the lifetime of the lease (10 years or more)
while the revenue number is quarterly.

~~~
lolsal
No I meant the revenue of Pinterest. I can't understand how they make that
kind of money.

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desmap
All Google engineers readings this: Why isn't Pinterest banned from all SERPs
yet?

Every other site that employed the same SEO and funnel tactics as Pinterest
would be banned within a month.

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fergie
Why does a company that is worth more that 20 billion dollars rent property in
the first place? If, as others have said, the total value of the lease was
$440 million, surely its better to hire people to buy and run an office
building?

~~~
shajznnckfke
Most likely a prop 13 issue. Property taxes don’t go up in California unless
you sell, since 1978, which means a lot of people are still paying what they
paid in '78\. Goes for commercial too, not just poor grandma eating cat food
with all that equity in her Beverly Hills cottage. All the big towers are
leased. I heard it’s downright byzantine, with many layers of 99-year
subleases. Good deal for the lawyers, and for the landlords! Some professional
would lose a license for malpractice if they sold.

By the way, it’s not just SF, it’s also the big chunks of the valley. The
Facebook sign still says Sun on the back, and the Googleplex land is on lease
from NASA. Question I’d like to know the answer to: who owns the land at Apple
Park?

This law is enshrined in that fine document the California constitution, and
can only be repealed by a simple majority of voters. Voters who own homes, or
live for free in a home someone owns, or pay rent to live in a home someone
owns.

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poof131
The commercial property aspect of Prop 13 is actually up for a vote in Prop
15, to repeal these tax breaks for commercial property over $3M. It’s
interesting to see people come out of the woodwork railing against it for all
sorts of reasons from how the money is distributed to claiming it will cost
the state hundreds of thousands of jobs. Would be nice to see this archaic tax
relic go away. It’s like the state has granted feudal land rights to certain
property owners.

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dubcanada
Completely off-topic but I went and looked up that buildings site

[https://iwamotoscott.com/projects/bluxome](https://iwamotoscott.com/projects/bluxome)

I don't think I've ever been that annoyed at a scroll jacking website in my
live. You legit scroll multiple wheel rotations for about 20-50pxs of scroll.

~~~
jeffbee
99.9% of web developers now use a trackpad, and this site works perfectly with
a trackpad. Those of us with actual mice are a vanishing breed.

~~~
dencodev
I know many web devs and they all use mice at their desks in the office.

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timvdalen
Is it just me or is there no way to continue from this site's cookie modal?

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martin_a
I deselected everything and could "Continue". Modal was gone then.

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keiferski
I’m not knowledgeable enough on the current state of VR, but I’m curious as to
how it will affect office setups. If VR can replicate the feeling of being in
the same room, I imagine some companies will skip the office expense entirely.

I can’t foresee wanting to wear a VR helmet all day, but for an hour-long
meeting? Maybe. Presumably projection tech will also progress and we might not
even need to wear a helmet. Is this something that can conceivably exist in
the next 10-15 years?

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noir_lord
It kinda exists now with existing VR tech but the question is, is it work it?

For me when I'm working remote the existing video chat stuff would be great
_if_ they could fix the latency.

Anything over a few hundred milliseconds means you end up talking over people
accidentally, it's hard to have a naturally flowing conversation.

Honestly a big 4K screen on the wall with a good webcam on both ends and low
latency would be great.

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ghaff
Latency and I also think it's just harder to read body language and back off
of talking over. I was on an online panel a few months ago with people who
I've appeared with before. We definitely did more talking over each other and
not doing smooth handoffs than would have been the case in person.

I definitely have zero interest in wearing a headset for calls etc. unless the
results are really amazing. Assuming the network is behaving (and people have
a decent setup), video calls are fine.

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darknessmonk
Is Pinterest going WFH?

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mkl
Partly. From two days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24312478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24312478)

