Google Will Exit Prominent San Francisco Waterfront Office Tower

Google announced on Tuesday that it will be exiting One Market Plaza, a prominent office complex in San Francisco that it had been occupying since 2018. The company's lease for the 300,000-square-foot-office will expire next April. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: Many of Google's employees are already working outside of the giant waterfront office, in light of the company's flexible approach to office attendance. As one of the city's largest office properties and a prominent feature on its skyline, the 1.6-million-square-foot One Market Plaza complex features two high-rise towers and a 11-story office annex building known as the Landmark." Ryan Lamont, a spokesperson for Google, said the company will be moving out of One Market's Spear Tower, but will continue to occupy the smaller Landmark building. He declined to comment on how long Google plans to remain in the latter." As we've said before, we're focused on investing in real estate efficiently to meet the current and future needs of our hybrid workforce," Lamont said in an email to the Chronicle. "We remain committed to our long-term presence in San Francisco."

Real estate market participants who spoke with the Chronicle indicated that Google plans to consolidate much of its operations from One Market to nearby 345 Spear St., where the company leases about 400,000 square feet. These individuals said that Google will likely renew its lease at that property once it expires next year.

Re: SF can count on Google moving out

[wesolve4]

no they're not

Google not investing in real estate

[will4]

FTA - " As we've said before, we're focused on investing in real estate efficiently to meet the current and future needs of our hybrid workforce," Lamont said i

Google is exiting a leased office space.that's not an investment.

Given the bad press and pressure from VC types about being overly overstaffed, apparently Google's long term business plan is "cutting costs". Cutting costs each year repeatedly is not a viable business plan.

"Andreessen Horowitz investor says half of Google's white-collar staff probabl

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

Cutting costs each year repeatedly is not a viable business plan.

It needs to be part of the plan. Google is in a mature business and can't grow out of it's problems.

half of Google's white-collar staff probably do 'no real work'

You can say that about any company. The problem is figuring out which half.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

The problem is figuring out which half.

It's impossible. It's not even really real necessarily. Organisational scaling is sublinear: efficiency of big teams always decreases because the communication and organisational overhead get larger (there are linearly more people and quadratically more communication paths), but some things simply cannot be done with tiny teams.

If you have 200,000 employees working 10% as efficiently as a solo person, it's going to look like there's an awful lot of people doing not muc

Re:

[Ed Tice]

It's not impossible. I've worked many places where it would be trivial to identify who is contributing and who isn't and I would have been glad to provide a list if asked.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

It's not impossible. I've worked many places where it would be trivial to identify who is contributing and who isn't and I would have been glad to provide a list if asked.

lol of course, but you aren't the Oracle. Look I've worked there too, and could have provided a list. Their managers would have vociferously disagreed of course. In fact some of them would have been substantially better for contributing merely nothing.

But why do you think the company was keeping them employed? It wasn't for the lulz. How c

Re:

[Ed Tice]

Yes their managers were very good at defending bad employees since, otherwise, it would reflect poorly on the manager. Hence how you create an environment where the good people leave. Good people and mediocre people don't mix well so don't put them together.

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[serviscope_minor]

You're preaching to the choir, but what I'm saying is that no one has devised a reliable way to do it at large organisations.

Re:

[Ed Tice]

Well one way that would have worked in my situation was that there were about ten of us (out of hundreds) that customers had gone out of their way to write letters (not emails, but physical letters) that we were the best person they had ever encountered from a vendor and that they've never been so satisfied. If you had asked any of that group of ten or so who was useful and who should be unemployed, you would have gotten the same list. So one way that would work is caring about what your customers have to

Re:

[jonbryce]

Sure, but renting a load of office space for empty desks is a cost that can legitimiately be cut.

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[geekmux]

FTA - " As we've said before, we're focused on investing in real estate efficiently to meet the current and future needs of our hybrid workforce," Lamont said i

Google is exiting a leased office space.that's not an investment.

Perhaps. All depends on what a business does with the money they would have normally saved by not having to put that money into the property. Maintaining a property (including taxes) can be considerable.

And NOT investing in real estate when the market is still stupidly inflated, is somewhat of a strategy.

Given the bad press and pressure from VC types about being overly overstaffed, apparently Google's long term business plan is "cutting costs". Cutting costs each year repeatedly is not a viable business plan.

Guess that depends on what the business truly is. A mega-corp sitting on a few hundred billion in cash reserves can probably “cut costs” for years and years and stay afloat. Not to mention A

Re:

[Ed Tice]

Leasing office space that's needed to conduct their business is an investment in the business. It's not an investment in real estate because they aren't in the real estate business. But the terminology is completely correct. Obtaining the things needed to make the business better is an investment. Not in those things but in making the business better.

Google is a blight

[sinij]

No matter where Google ends up moving, they will bring blight of radical left politics with them and in a few short years real estate prices will double and there will be Skid Row all over your downtown. THAT is a direct consequence of the ideology that denies personal agency and personal responsibility.

Re:Google is a blight

[HamidPayaamAbbasi]

What planet do you live on that billionaire capitalists running a multi-billion dollar non-unionized advertising-tech firm "radical leftist"? It isn't earth. Radical leftists would have put the owners in gulag, Replace the Alphabet board members with a council of workers and then redistributed the profits to everyone.

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[sinij]

I was speaking about Google workers that are radical leftist, they are allowed to implement their agenda insofar as it doesn't interfere. So on social issues, which do not matter for the bottom line, they are given free reign. On other issues, like attempted boycott of Israel, they were brutally reigned in. As local community policies do not impact the bottom line, these leftist radicals allowed to promote crime, addiction and general lawlessness.

Re:

[sinij]

Your understanding of what far left is out by at least few decades. Far left today is about critical theory, hierarchies of oppression, DEI and they are deeply embedded into social tech as it allows them to shape narratives and present false consensus. So no, I am not worried about Che Guevara types advocating for the end of capitalism, these guys have no power (and they are in arts and not tech).

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[gillbates]

Have you ever considered that Google prefers Left-leaning employees, because those who emphasize personal responsibility and self-improvement are generally more expensive than those who don't?

Someone who values equality over competence is more likely to be more concerned with the equality of salaries rather than what their contribution is actually worth to the company, or what the company could actually afford to pay them. For example, two decades ago, Motorola made roughly a half-million dollars per emp