Where Do Silicon Valley's Tech Workers Really Live?

Silicon Vale may look very different after the pandemic

Updated 1130 Greenwich Time (1930 HKT) June 2, 2021

San Francisco (CNN Business)Later foursome months of working from home plate during the epidemic, Reeba Akram decided to change where home was.

Akram, who works for Google, touched with her husband and two young children from Los Altos — a 15-minute labour from the company's Atomic number 14 Valley headquarters — to Dallas, Texas. The biggest reason for the move out, she said, was monetary value of living.

"We were paying threefold the mortgage of our house that we have here in Texas, but we had same-one-third of the blank," she said. Her choice of where to live out is now "the question of the twelvemonth," she says, with Google's September deadline approaching for employees to decide between moving offices, advent back or staying remote.

Akram is part of a sizeable technical school Exodus from the San Francisco Bay Area, with the tech hub's biggest companies, including Twitter, Facebook, Google and Apple, among the start to shift to remote work last twelvemonth during the pandemic. Some employees have sick to totally contrary corners of the country, while others — the vast majority — have simply moved elsewhere in the state or to suburbs a few hours away.

Some of those relocations are more permanent than others, as companies and workers starting to cipher with the kind of offices they want after much than a twelvemonth of working from home. The technical school industry and its biggest companies are emerging as pacesetters thereon front, having pioneered several aspects of modern spot culture for years before mount the timber for a shift to remote crop when the pandemic began.

Merely the tech talent that Si Valley companies compete for has unfold across the state over the past year, and the pandemic has laid bare how much of their jobs rear in fact be done remotely. With more than than one-half of US adults amply vaccinated and a broader reopening on the horizon, more of those companies are figuring out how much remote puzzle out they'll continue to let, and employees are thinking harder about how much they want.

The result could have a great impact on Silicon Valley companies that spent billions on campuses and perks to keep workers at work as long as possible, and also on other big cities who are vying to attract talent away from the heartland of the tech diligence.

Pros and cons

Just American Samoa the technical school industry led the direction in transitioning to far form, its superlative companies are providing former templates for bringing workers back to the office (or not).

"Our [employees] really bear same different perceptions about working from home — some find information technology easier to separate work biography if they're in the business office, some people actually find IT easier to juggle if IT's at home," Nikki Krishnamurthy, Uber's chief people officer, told CNN Concern in an interview. "I don't think we would have had those insights if information technology hadn't been for the pandemic."

Uber started delivery workers back to its brand-new HQ, in San Francisco's Mission Bay, for the first time in late March — a highly published office locomote years in the making that was further delayed past the general. It's given them until September to return to their pre-pandemic locations, after which they'll be required to be in the office at least three days a week.

Krishnamurthy says the company chose that path subsequently considering options to residual productiveness, engagement, teamwork and tractableness, while also retaining its fast-moving cultivation. A surveil of Uber employees in September stopping point class showed 75% would prefer a cross model where they came into the office a few days a calendar week.

"You mightiness optimise more for flexibleness, a little piece broader reach for talent anywhere, but will you founde up your magic?" she said. "And we just didn't require to waive our magic."

Facebook says employees will generally be asked to recurrence to their present-day office, though they can transfer to roles based in another location. "In that location is also an option for employees in eligible roles to apply for long-run far work," the party added in a statement. "We don't see vibrant offices and level-headed outside work as a tradeoff -- we believe these can co-exist and exist unified by one cohesive employee experience."

Chitter has told employees they can act remotely "forever" if they so take and their role allows IT. Apple, which reportedly began delivery workers back as early as May last year, did not respond to requests for comment.

Google workers around the world will continue working remotely until September, after which they can opt between coming back to their pre-pandemic office, working out of a Google office in a different city or permanently practical from anyplace if their role allows it, CEO Sundar Pichai said in a note to employees in the beginning this month.

Pichai said he expects 60% of the company's world-wide me testament return to their pre-pandemic offices a few days a week, while 20% will move to a different office and the unexpended 20% will work from home. Information technology's a slim departure from Google's previous plan in which all employees would take in come into the office three days a week — similar to Uber's.

The tech industry might seem well-positioned for unlikely work indefinitely merely it has also exhausted years building a culture of collaboration and innovation that it will be antipathetical to throw up, outlay much billions on vast offices and perks like free intellectual nourishment, gyms and nap pods that convert employees to spend more time on that point than they practise at home.

Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University whose explore has extensively focused on remote work, says a hybrid model like the one and only Uber is adopting will likely to go more of a average.

"IT is hard to come up with new ideas and products impermanent fully remote," he same. "Post pandemic that will non exchange A [tech] employees incline to go well when at least portion of the week they are together."

Battle of the tech hubs

It ISN't just employees making big moves. In the beginning in the epidemic, there was a minor exodus of tech firms and executives from the True laurel Area to other cities — with Sunshine State and TX emerging as peculiarly popular destinations.

Hewlett Packard Endeavor (HPE), a descendent of the company credited with starting Silicon Vale, announced in December that it would move its headquarters to Samuel Housto. Seer, another longtime Bay Domain powerhouse, declared a move to Austin afterwards that calendar month. High profile individuals from the neighborhood, including Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, Dropbox (DBX) CEO Drew Houston and renowned Si Valley investor Jim Breyer rich person all moved to the American state majuscule in recent months.

In an op-ed for CNN Business hailing Capital of Texa Eastern Samoa an emerging tech destination, Breyer cited the metropolis's "culture of knowledge base quislingism" as well as its "relation affordability, exterior culture and professional person development opportunities."

Miami mayor Francis Suarez has spent months courting tech entrepreneurs and investors, with some achiever. Founders Fund, the venture Washington crunchy co-founded by Peter Thiel, reportedly wide a big new office in City of London, while Shutterstock founder Jon Oringer also moved there and started a firm aimed at incubating and investing in startups in the Miami technical school view.

Only on that point are indications the Book of Exodus from Silicon Valley may constitute somewhat exaggerated. Google committed more than $1 billion earlier this yr to expanding its California offices, while Apple has reportedly hired six new buildings in the Bay Area metropolis of Sunnyvale that seat admit up to 3,000 employees.

A report in March aside investment funds firm Telstra Ventures said 96.9% of startups stayed in the Coloured Area, and VC investments increased 4% from 2019. "The Alcove Area will carry on to glucinium the epicentre of tech for age to come," Bull's eye Sherman, general partner at Telstra Ventures, wrote in the report.

Decisions to make

It's also unclear how decisions ready-made during the pip of the pandemic power stick as the economy and people's lives reopen.

Jasmine Shah moved to Los Angeles, where she grew up, last October. Earlier the pandemic, Shah, who works for the software company VMWare, would drive from her home in San Francisco to the fresh's offices in Palo Alto, a commute she described as "very hard."

"The pandemic has blame this unscathed estimation that you have to be in the place you are," she said.

Silence, Shah says her exit from Silicon Vale has always felt temporary — a band of her stuff is tranquillize in storage in San Francisco. Ultimately, she says, if you lack to turn in tech then the Bay Area is where the superfine vocation opportunities are. It largely remains tech's biggest power center and the big guns such as Google, Facebook and Orchard apple tree still have their solid home office there. But she's unsure roughly living there long full term because of how prohibitively expensive it is.

"Honestly, I don't know," she says. "I'm looking to change much of things."

There are also signs the region is already starting to bounce back. A report last calendar month away real land firm CBRE said rents in major US technical school hubs, including San Francisco, San Jose, Cupertino (home to Apple) and Mountain View (home to Google) appear to receive bottomed out and have started rising again this class.

And given how much the pandemic has accelerated our dependence on technology, major tech firms are likely to be egg laying the groundwork for a spurt of further growth, Colin Yasukochi, director of CBRE's Tech Insights Center, told CNN Business.

Krishnamurthy said Uber considered all possible options before settling on its three-years-a-week approach, but fears a downside to Silicon Vale companies — particularly smaller startups — that decide to go in full remote.

"I worry that at some point that they will lose productivity because they haven't built those relationships," she said. "If you start that way, it's really hard to modify culture ... and I just wonder if the epidemic and these behaviors that have tough will lawsuit people to think they can do IT all remote and past still end up hitting that brick wall."

With her deadline to decide approaching, Akram has a long-running pros and cons inclination. Google's new policy adds more reasons for her to move back to Calif., she says. If she stool stay in a more affordable area, she's willing to get a little farther to devi the office a few years a week.

"I was definitely truly happy to see that they were listening to what the demand was out at that place and that they were unprotected to dynamical things," she said.

Where Do Silicon Valley's Tech Workers Really Live?

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/02/tech/silicon-valley-office-return-pandemic/index.html

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