
In Palo Alto, Google/Apple Would Have Been Evicted from Their Garage Offices - ALee
https://medium.com/@_andrewlee/in-palo-alto-google-apple-would-have-been-evicted-from-their-first-garage-offices-ba0cc26eff2c#.m5806kk3v
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nitwit005
I imagine it's illegal most places. Even without a zoning violation, garages
tend not to meet basic habitability rules.

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baltcode
Why not go work in cities that don't mind building vertically and having mixed
use zoning? A lot of people like urban living.

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contingencies
Yeah. Writing from front-window home-office here: I live in China. The windows
is open and the view is greenery, there are birds chirping, with only distant
hum from city noise, and the occasional walker-by. Every time my brother, an
urban designer, comes to visit he comments on how intelligent and high-density
the cities are here. Very human scale, though they're losing a lot to cars
these days. Hanoi is another great one.

Anyway our team is 3 right now, we use the lounge room and large TV for
meetings and stuff, the office is mostly heads-down space and storage. The
last company I started here in China about 8 years ago was in a similar
(ground floor, 3 bedroom) apartment, and we had something like 10 people at
times. Never any complaints. I lived there too initially, but moved out to
dedicate the space to the company after awhile.

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GFK_of_xmaspast
I don't see why they couldn't have gone to any of the dozens of other
municipalities in the region.

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aphextron
Sure they could also go start their business in the middle of Kansas, too.
However, There is a huge benefit to being centrally located in Silicon Valley

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GFK_of_xmaspast
If they wanted to be centrally located, they should have been in Sunnyvale or
something instead of Palo Alto.

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a_small_island
Don't make it obvious and sit in front your entire team in front of a window?
Why is a neighbor "crazy" for not wanting a business run out of an adjacent
apartment? Meh.

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mathattack
Neighbors don't like it because it impacts property values to be in commercial
areas. (Strange people around who don't have kids) Of course worrying about
protecting property value in Palo Alto is a little absurd.

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autotune
Why not just work "remotely?" Everyone meets up at coffee shop or something at
the start of the day and at the end of the day to discuss and review action
items, and then communicates via tools like Slack and Google Hangouts. As a
bonus, you also start a culture where you can hire employees from anywhere in
the U.S. (or "world", if you decide to go the global route) since working
remotely becomes the norm.

