The Android app is now a featured app in Google Play. This means Google has recognised our design of the app to be amongst the best. This has led to the app being downloaded and used more, therefore supporting our organisation's goal to share knowledge. A massive part of why that happened is because myself and the app's primary designer were able to attend a conference Google had on material design, and relay that to our team. The conference was in San Francisco, so cost us nothing to attend.
My point is that these kinds of opportunities crop up a lot in San Francisco, and lead to measurable and demonstrable increases in the user value of the products we create. It's not like San Francisco is simply an expensive place with no benefits; if we were not in San Francisco, these opportunities would either not exist or would start costing us money (because we'd have to fly staff to San Francisco to take part in them).
All of us, myself included, are just guessing about all of this since we don't have all the facts and data. I have complete faith in the organisation's executive leadership to weigh that data and make an appropriate decision.
Dan
On Tuesday, April 7, 2015, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Garfield,
I'm asking this on Wikimedia-l because a number of Wikimedians have noted the expensiveness of the San Francisco area including its high cost of living for staff, employer competition for engineering talent, and associated high salaries for WMF employees.
I see on
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/8/8a/RFP_for_Real_Estate_Se... that WMF is considering relocating its offices when its current main office lease expires.
Questions:
What happens to the remodel expenses that WMF is paying for at its current location? If WMF vacates the premesis, will it be compensated for the remodel by the building owner?
I hope that WMF is contemplating fully exiting the San Francisco market area in order to economize, get better value for our donors' funds, have less competition for talent, and lower costs of living for staff. Is this being considered?
Thanks very much,
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe>