Its landlord, SRI Nine Market Square, in early 2023 filed a suit against X for more than $3 million in unpaid rent. SRI Nine Market sought to extend Twitter’s line of credit to $10 million as an assurance that future rent would be paid. Other vendors also have sued X for failing to pay its bills. But in January of this year, SRI Nine Market dropped the case, Reuters reported. It’s unclear why.
The latest update from Yaccarino suggests it’s the San Francisco office, specifically, that is the thorn in X’s side. And it’s an about-face for Musk, who tweeted a year ago that, despite incentives to move out of San Francisco, X would not move its HQ out of the city. “You only know who your real friends are when the chips are down,” he waxed poetically on X. “San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, though others forsake you, we will always be your friend.”
Why is it always Austin, the most liberal, left-wing city in Texas? If they're trying to get away from "woke", they should be moving to REAL Texas. Some town nobody's even heard of.
They're posers. They want to look like Texans, but they move to liberal-ville.
Moving a corporate headquarters, in this case presumably one where a huge proportion of the business operations actually happen, is expensive. What could go wrong?
My employer closed down its former HQ on the east coast & moved it to Austin in 2019. Much of the old HQ contained engineering teams. The CEO explained that all engineering was shifting to 100% remote so that they could start hiring the best tech talent they could find no matter where they lived. All non-technical jobs (finance, HR, marketing, etc) were moved to an existing office in Austin, where he said it would be relatively easy to hire from the talent available in that area.
I’ve been working remotely for 5 years now and really enjoy it. I’m also working not only with folks from all over the US, but globally now as well.
Employees in San Francisco reportedly will be moved to new locations in the Bay Area, “including the existing office in San Jose and a new engineering focused shared space with [xAI, Musk’s AI startup] in Palo Alto,” the note said. The company’s executive team is said to be working on “transportation options” for staff. X did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.
Anyone who hasn't already fled that sinking ship now gets to spend an extra 3-4h per day commuting to work there. I'm sure that'll be great for talent retention.
I just recently moved out after over twenty years there. I dearly love that town and it breaks my heart to shit shitbags like Elon and Joe Rogan bring their toxic crowds to town. Austin deserves better.