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   Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told investors this week that the   
   company will be more distributed because “our concentration in   
   San Francisco is not serving us any longer.”   
      
   While he hasn’t said how and where it will hire, the software   
   industry has been trending in the direction of remote work.   
      
   Dorsey’s other company, Square, hasn’t made any announcements   
   though it will soon be opening an office across the Bay in   
   Oakland that can hold about 2,000 people.   
      
   When Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told investors this week that he’s   
   planning for a future with a more distributed workforce, his Bay   
   Area peers could easily relate.   
      
   “Our concentration in San Francisco is not serving us any   
   longer, and we will strive to be a far more distributed   
   workforce, which we will use to improve our execution,” Dorsey   
   said on Twitter’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday,   
   adding that he expects to spend time traveling this year.   
      
   San Francisco, while always posing a unique set of challenges,   
   has become an unmanageable place for many companies as they look   
   to expand. It commands the highest salaries of any U.S. city and   
   has some of the most expensive real estate, both commercial and   
   residential. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of nearby companies,   
   including the most valuable in the world, ready to poach your   
   top developers and sales reps.   
      
   The tech talent in the Bay Area is undeniable. But with cloud   
   infrastructure, faster internet speeds in more remote areas and   
   a new generation of communications and collaboration tools, more   
   companies are finding it advantageous to hire elsewhere. Online   
   lender LendingClub slashed its San Francisco workforce last year   
   and moved jobs to Utah, and Stripe announced in May that it was   
   hiring over 100 remote engineers in 2019.   
      
   Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is having second thoughts,   
   recently telling an audience in Utah that if he were starting a   
   company today, he wouldn’t do it in the Bay Area.   
      
   ‘The Bay Area is a bloodbath’   
   “The Bay Area is a bloodbath when it comes to talent,” said   
   Armon Dadgar, co-founder of HashiCorp, a cloud data center   
   company that’s based in San Francisco but has 85% of its   
   employees in other locations. “It’s very competitive, very hard   
   to retain people and the compensation packages are all out of   
   whack.”   
      
   Dadgar moved to Connecticut last year from the Bay Area because   
   his husband got a job at Yale. His co-founder, Mitchell   
   Hashimoto, lives in Los Angeles. CEO David McJannet is based in   
   San Franciso.   
      
   HashiCorp describes itself as “remote first and fully   
   distributed.” Its 900 employees are scattered across the U.S.   
   and about a dozen other countries, working from home, local   
   coffee shops or at desks in co-working locations.   
      
   Similarly, open-source software developer GitLab calls itself a   
   “remote-only company.” Co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij lives   
   in San Francisco, but GitLab has no offices for its 1,100   
   employees in more than 65 countries.   
      
   Sijbrandij says the company shaves off 10% of operating expenses   
   by not renting physical space and another 40% because it focuses   
   on hiring outside of the most expensive areas in the world.   
   Dadgar estimates HashiCorp saves $10,000 to $15,000 a year per   
   employee by steering mostly clear of real estate.   
      
   “You have access to a way broader talent pool if not everyone   
   has to show up to a specific building in San Francisco,” said   
   Sijbrandij. “A lot of people who work for GitLab get paid well —   
   at or above the market rate in their area. And they get to   
   intersperse work with activities,” whether it’s going to the gym   
   or supermarket or picking up their kids, he said.   
      
   HashiCorp and GitLab were both founded in 2012, a few years   
   after San Francisco’s tech scene ballooned from the rapid growth   
   of Twitter, Square (Dorsey’s other company), Uber, Dropbox,   
   Airbnb and Stripe. Prior to that era of sizzling tech start-ups,   
   almost all of the notable tech companies except Salesforce were   
   located to the south in Silicon Valley, where they could occupy   
   large campuses in quieter cities and suburbs.   
      
   Big tax break to stay in SF   
   Twitter, founded in 2006, was planning to move south of San   
   Francisco and only stayed in the city because of a 2011 tax   
   break that was carved out for the company, and then expanded to   
   others, as part of a plan to redevelop a rundown area of town   
   called mid-Market. That’s where Twitter opened its current   
   headquarters in 2012.   
      
      
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