[HN Gopher] OpenAI closes big lease deal at Uber's San Francisco...
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OpenAI closes big lease deal at Uber's San Francisco headquarters
Author : babelfish
Score : 72 points
Date : 2023-10-27 01:59 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfchronicle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfchronicle.com)
| bratao wrote:
| OpenAI (https://fortune.com/2023/05/05/openai-ceo-sam-altman-
| remote-...) is a example of a high performing company where
| remote work is an exception. That's why I say that there is no
| cake recipe that guarantees that remote or in-person work is
| better than the other. Each company has its own culture and
| employees have to look for the culture that makes the most sense
| for them.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| "That's why I say that there is no cake recipe that guarantees
| that remote or in-person work is better than the other."
|
| You should really choose a different saying
| hervature wrote:
| The more common expression is "cookie cutter" implying that
| anyone can follow a simple process to achieve a good result.
| Cake is hard in general so even having the cake recipe is
| fairly useless for execution.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It's true though isn't it? But, I guess, there is also no
| souffle recipe that guarantees that remote or in-person work
| is better than the other.
| resolutebat wrote:
| Wait 'till you taste my AI-generated ramen recipe that
| _does_ guarantee it! (Spoiler: it contains bleach, and is
| fed only to those in the office.)
| Jensson wrote:
| Is there any large high performing company where remote work is
| the norm? OpenAI is the normal case here, not the exception.
| rmorey wrote:
| GitLab is a famous example
| rapsin4 wrote:
| can they even be considered "high performing"?
| Gigachad wrote:
| Feels like they were ahead around 2018 but just lost all
| that advantage to GitHub.
| mathverse wrote:
| They are not high performing. They are a mediocre company,
| not a leader or an innovator and they pay shit wages
| (60k/pa).
| chrisdbanks wrote:
| If you think top 1% of companies is mediocre then yes.
| Any company that makes is to their size is way beyond
| mediocre.
| elliotec wrote:
| GitLab? Top 1%? Of what?
| opportune wrote:
| The company that uses remote work to pay salaries less than
| what a store manager at Arby's makes?
| aantix wrote:
| Agree. Their salary offers were awful the last time I
| looked.
|
| They did IPO in 2021 - I wonder if the equity comp makes
| up for it?
| moandcompany wrote:
| Crowdstrike's engineering department was/is mostly Remote
| JelteF wrote:
| Microsoft is turned remote during covid without mandatory RTO
| so far.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm working remotely at Microsoft
| theplatman wrote:
| Based on the output of certain parts of Microsoft, I don't
| know if I would classify them as "high performing"
| Gigachad wrote:
| The problem is they have to use Microsoft Teams.
| cyrux004 wrote:
| The rumor is once the new office buildings complete; they
| will also do a RTO
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I am not sure my employer is high performing, but I work from
| home most of the time, and I don't think anyone has really
| noticed.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Meta is liberal with remote work for people with tenure in
| the company.
| arsenico wrote:
| Dropbox and Booking are good examples. Depends on what you
| call large though.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| I would assume no one can work remote because of who they're
| actually doing work for vs. it actually being necessary to
| collaborate.
| mcast wrote:
| Remote work seems like a bigger liability for a company which
| is expecting future legal battles and anti-trust cases,
| especially since all communications will be entered into
| discovery. It's easier for VPs to discuss AI ethics in hallways
| and unrecorded meetings rooms.
| MrOwen wrote:
| Eh, unless there's current ligation forcing record retention,
| just having a really short retention period is an easy enough
| solution.
| cyrux004 wrote:
| Didnt Sundar ask disappearing messages to be turned on on
| an internal communcation tool ?
| MrOwen wrote:
| I believe so but from what I recall, he still wanted
| syncing between phone/computer which required the
| messages be stored at some point, alebeit with an
| extremely small ttl (minutes? seconds?). This miniscule
| retention meant the record was created despite a low ttl
| and so when the record was removed, it became a violation
| of the court-ordered record retention. Again, this is all
| just from fuzzy memory but I think that's how it
| approximately went down.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| You might be interested in https:// www. jwz.org
| /gruntle/ rbarip.html (I'm obfuscating the URL a bit
| because the website's owner does something rude if your
| browser sends an HN referer header)
| fragmede wrote:
| https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html
|
| HN turned off referrer globally, so that no longer
| happens.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| HN uses rel="noreferrer" on all links so perhaps this is
| no longer an issue?
|
| Let's see: https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Presumably doing illegal things is the bigger liability for
| legal issues?
| benatkin wrote:
| Similar to Apple. Apple seems to understand whatever this sort
| of structure is really well, and have followed it for a long
| time. Facebook thought they were different but now they seem to
| need the same. Less openness externally, but a lot of
| collaboration internally. Google recognized this more quickly
| than Facebook, but less quickly than Apple.
| ipaddr wrote:
| This is silly when you go into work to remote into meetings
| with others sitting at their desk in the build across the
| street.
|
| Facebook, Google, Apple have been laying off people. The
| return to office was about real estate, local power and
| getting employees to move or quit.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > That's why I say that there is no cake recipe that guarantees
| that remote or in-person work is better than the other.
|
| I'm not sure this is all that insightful. I don't think anyone
| is saying that if you force all your employees into the same
| physical space (or, you allow for remote work) you will
| instantly become infinitely successful.
| JambalayaJim wrote:
| There are lots of people online who claim remote work is an
| asbolutely superior model for any tech company.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| That is a different claim.
|
| Remote work can be the absolutely superior model for any
| tech company, but you still also fail for one of many other
| reasons companies can fail.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Good for OpenAI, but the fact that this is "news" on the SF real-
| estate market is quite troubling.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| high key fax, no printer
| addicted wrote:
| With all the doom and gloom SF news, much of which is also
| unwarranted, it's reasonable to have some possibly unwarranted,
| non gloom and doom news as well.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Isn't the real news the recent government commercial to
| residential conversion ~~bailout~~ incentive?
| fragmede wrote:
| just come out and say what you want to say
| candiddevmike wrote:
| The government shouldn't bail out CRE, they should let them
| fail, spend the money to purchase the properties at bargain
| auction prices, renovate them, and rent them out at cost.
| Ideally the government should provide housing to anyone,
| not means tested, one bedroom per person or partnered
| couple. Because shelter is a human right.
| crooked-v wrote:
| All the actual news on the SF real estate market is waiting for
| the effects of various local laws being flatly overridden by
| the state [1], which will take about six months from now to get
| to the 'or else' point of huge amounts of state funding being
| pulled from the city.
|
| In particular, it will completely eliminate discretionary
| review for most projects, which is an overwhelming source of
| construction delays and cost inflation in SF.
|
| [1]: https://www.sfyimby.org/sf-yimby-blog/housing-policy-and-
| pra..., see the report PDF at
| https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/docs/policy-and-r...
| flakiness wrote:
| I wonder where Uber folks went. They didn't do layoffs in _that_
| scale, AFAIK. Have they just shifted to remote? Or moved to some
| other areas?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Their HQ was designed / built when it looked like they would
| grow forever and before the pandemic encouraged a lot of
| 'hybrid' options. The complex is (afaik) still 3/4 Uber, 1/4
| OpenAI after this - it was nearly 1 million sq ft of office
| space.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Famously big towers are an indicator that a company or
| economy is about to slow down hard, since they only get
| financed during frothy market conditions.
|
| The big poster child for this is Sears opening the biggest
| office tower in the world at the time.
| lhorie wrote:
| Uber has four office buildings in SF mission bay. One was never
| used, the other 3 were underutilized, so employees are going to
| be moved/consolidated into 2. These buildings also have street-
| front retail lease spaces, so presumably by having more people
| coming into the area, that increases foot traffic for those
| spaces as well.
| indus wrote:
| Isn't this the same office where Travis could come out to market
| st using a secret passage?
| huac wrote:
| you're thinking of 1455 market st. this is 1455 third st. (the
| coincidence amused me)
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