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
A logistical non-starter! They've got 200+ staff members, any gains to recruitment competitiveness will be quickly lost to the drain that losing whatever significant percent of the staff that doesn't make the move incurs on the organization.
Relocating within the US or worldwide?
Relocating the whole office or just some departments?
Vince
2015-04-08 7:07 GMT+02:00 Aleksey Bilogur aleksey.bilogur@gmail.com:
A logistical non-starter! They've got 200+ staff members, any gains to recruitment competitiveness will be quickly lost to the drain that losing whatever significant percent of the staff that doesn't make the move incurs on the organization. _______________________________________________ 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?subject=unsubscribe
On 8 April 2015 at 06:07, Aleksey Bilogur aleksey.bilogur@gmail.com wrote:
A logistical non-starter! They've got 200+ staff members, any gains to...
Plenty of companies and charities happily move their HQ building location with more staff gaining benefits rather than losing them. I was involved with a corporate move where most staff went from London to Glasgow, with the benefit that their family and social lives improved and they could afford to buy large houses with the same money it takes to buy half a small flat in London. Presented the right way, a move can improve staff commitment and even reduce turnover.
You also can't have it both ways, the WMF is supposed to be a multi-location global organization. Strategically it would be better to grow globally in several locations, rather than always having everyone in the same offices in the same city on the West Coast of America. Our staff and volunteers are highly experienced in virtual cooperation and meetings, the WMF could even become an exemplar for how that works for smaller organizations with global teams.
Fae
(volunteer hat on)
Glasgow to London in no way represents the scale of what any move, even an in-US move, would be, unless the goal is for the WMF to end up in LA or (maybe) Portland.
I would agree that a multi-location setup would work better as a good expansion route here, although I'm not sure what that how that would work out internationally, in terms of legal liability. Even just having an east coast location in somewhere obvious (we have clusters of staff in, e.g., Boston, Raleigh and NY, albeit small clusters) would make a big difference.
On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 9:53 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 8 April 2015 at 06:07, Aleksey Bilogur aleksey.bilogur@gmail.com wrote:
A logistical non-starter! They've got 200+ staff members, any gains to...
Plenty of companies and charities happily move their HQ building location with more staff gaining benefits rather than losing them. I was involved with a corporate move where most staff went from London to Glasgow, with the benefit that their family and social lives improved and they could afford to buy large houses with the same money it takes to buy half a small flat in London. Presented the right way, a move can improve staff commitment and even reduce turnover.
You also can't have it both ways, the WMF is supposed to be a multi-location global organization. Strategically it would be better to grow globally in several locations, rather than always having everyone in the same offices in the same city on the West Coast of America. Our staff and volunteers are highly experienced in virtual cooperation and meetings, the WMF could even become an exemplar for how that works for smaller organizations with global teams.
Fae
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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I know from experience that East St Louis is pretty cheap, and it's centrally located. And the weather is almost as good as California, but without the Hurricanes.
How do the WMF staff feel about moving to East St Louis? I imagine they would be *thrilled*.
Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
*Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.*
On 8 April 2015 at 14:57, Oliver Keyes ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
(volunteer hat on)
Glasgow to London in no way represents the scale of what any move, even an in-US move, would be, unless the goal is for the WMF to end up in LA or (maybe) Portland.
I would agree that a multi-location setup would work better as a good expansion route here, although I'm not sure what that how that would work out internationally, in terms of legal liability. Even just having an east coast location in somewhere obvious (we have clusters of staff in, e.g., Boston, Raleigh and NY, albeit small clusters) would make a big difference.
On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 9:53 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 8 April 2015 at 06:07, Aleksey Bilogur aleksey.bilogur@gmail.com
wrote:
A logistical non-starter! They've got 200+ staff members, any gains
to...
Plenty of companies and charities happily move their HQ building location with more staff gaining benefits rather than losing them. I was involved with a corporate move where most staff went from London to Glasgow, with the benefit that their family and social lives improved and they could afford to buy large houses with the same money it takes to buy half a small flat in London. Presented the right way, a move can improve staff commitment and even reduce turnover.
You also can't have it both ways, the WMF is supposed to be a multi-location global organization. Strategically it would be better to grow globally in several locations, rather than always having everyone in the same offices in the same city on the West Coast of America. Our staff and volunteers are highly experienced in virtual cooperation and meetings, the WMF could even become an exemplar for how that works for smaller organizations with global teams.
Fae
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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I see that East St Louis also has a murder rate approaching that of say, Bogota. This to me says "vibrant".
On a more serious note, while SF is egregiously expensive, if you want to attract good people, you have to base yourself where the action is.
S
On 8 April 2015 at 16:46, Richard Symonds richard.symonds@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
I know from experience that East St Louis is pretty cheap, and it's centrally located. And the weather is almost as good as California, but without the Hurricanes.
How do the WMF staff feel about moving to East St Louis? I imagine they would be *thrilled*.
Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
*Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.*
On 8 April 2015 at 14:57, Oliver Keyes ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
(volunteer hat on)
Glasgow to London in no way represents the scale of what any move, even an in-US move, would be, unless the goal is for the WMF to end up in LA or (maybe) Portland.
I would agree that a multi-location setup would work better as a good expansion route here, although I'm not sure what that how that would work out internationally, in terms of legal liability. Even just having an east coast location in somewhere obvious (we have clusters of staff in, e.g., Boston, Raleigh and NY, albeit small clusters) would make a big difference.
On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 9:53 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 8 April 2015 at 06:07, Aleksey Bilogur aleksey.bilogur@gmail.com
wrote:
A logistical non-starter! They've got 200+ staff members, any gains
to...
Plenty of companies and charities happily move their HQ building location with more staff gaining benefits rather than losing them. I was involved with a corporate move where most staff went from London to Glasgow, with the benefit that their family and social lives improved and they could afford to buy large houses with the same money it takes to buy half a small flat in London. Presented the right way, a move can improve staff commitment and even reduce turnover.
You also can't have it both ways, the WMF is supposed to be a multi-location global organization. Strategically it would be better to grow globally in several locations, rather than always having everyone in the same offices in the same city on the West Coast of America. Our staff and volunteers are highly experienced in virtual cooperation and meetings, the WMF could even become an exemplar for how that works for smaller organizations with global teams.
Fae
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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,
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Hello,
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 10:07 PM, Aleksey Bilogur aleksey.bilogur@gmail.com wrote:
A logistical non-starter! They've got 200+ staff members, any gains to recruitment competitiveness will be quickly lost to the drain that losing whatever significant percent of the staff that doesn't make the move incurs on the organization.
I don't think it's that clear-cut.
A large part of the Product & Engineering staff is already working remotely, so they wouldn't be affected by the change. Many SF-based staffers also work remotely some of the time, and there are constant efforts being made to make the organization more remote-friendly; it wouldn't be a stretch to become a remote-first organization, to split to smaller offices, to relocate entirely, or all of the above.
Some WMF employees followed the WMF from St Petersburg, FL to San Francisco during the 2007 relocation. I expect that this would also happen to some extent if the WMF were to relocate and/or split to smaller distributed offices. San Francisco isn't just expensive for the WMF; it's expensive for employees as well, and some of them may find it beneficial to move to a less expensive area, especially as they start families.
In addition to the insanely high cost of living in the San Francisco area, there are other reasons that make relocation a viable long-term solution. The main that come to mind are geological instability (the bay area /will/ be struck by major earthquakes in the medium term) and ecological conditions (i.e. the multi-year drought and its anticipated socio-ecological consequences). Planning for continuity means taking these concerns into account in any medium- and long-term strategy thinking.
As Oliver mentioned, an East-coast office could make sense in this context. Technical staff is somewhat distributed around the globe, but in contrast the head (leadership) and backbone (finance, admin and HR) of the WMF is concentrated in the San Francisco office. In the current situation, it would take months or years to recover from a major disaster. Transitioning to several (2+) smaller, distributed offices would make the organization a lot more resilient, geographically and functionally.
All this to say: it is possible, even probably desirable, for the WMF to consider relocating out of the Bay Area in the long term (in whole or in part), so entertaining the idea is a valid train of thought.
Postscript (sorry): this isn't a time-sensitive question, so please respond at your convenience. Thanks (:
Pine On Apr 7, 2015 9:58 PM, "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
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 9:58 PM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
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?
Keep in mind that the WMF already mitigates the cost and competition of the San Francisco Bay Area market by recruiting remote employees.
According to the recent report ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation.pd...) a large number are based either in other U.S. states or internationally. Out of 202 employees, 77% are US-based in 19 states and 23% are based abroad in 19 countries.
Combine the remote employees in the U.S. and abroad, I wouldn't be surprised if close to half of staff are based remotely. On engineering teams especially, it's not uncommon for a majority of employees to be remote.
My two cents would be that of what evil giant corporations do: move their departments to the best place possible regarding costs/competition. Software development in SF, customer service to India :)
For example keeping the sofware somewhere in the Bay Area would keep the potential to attract highly qualified software guys. While others, for example grantmaking would do better in my opinion in the old continent (that is 'Yurp'). In London or Paris or Berlin, you can select from a wide and deep pool of experts yet still cheaper than SF. Note, about 50-70 percent of the chapters/thorgs/etc. would be within 2-4 hrs of flight and virtually all would be on a direct flight. Lots of saving on travelling costs for those that has to travel the most.
You can play with the rest as you wish. Finance for example don't travel anywhere except the top management (1-2 ppl), so they can be in East St Louis :)
My British company where I work has its finance in the Czech Republic, and its IT support in India for instance.
Balazs
2015-04-08 20:29 GMT+02:00 Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com:
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 9:58 PM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
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?
Keep in mind that the WMF already mitigates the cost and competition of the San Francisco Bay Area market by recruiting remote employees.
According to the recent report (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation.pd... ) a large number are based either in other U.S. states or internationally. Out of 202 employees, 77% are US-based in 19 states and 23% are based abroad in 19 countries.
Combine the remote employees in the U.S. and abroad, I wouldn't be surprised if close to half of staff are based remotely. On engineering teams especially, it's not uncommon for a majority of employees to be remote. _______________________________________________ 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?subject=unsubscribe
I like the ideas about setting up a variety of remote clusters as well as remote individual employees. Google, Microsoft and Facebook have remote clusters, and I'm sure that many other companies do this as well. Besides decreasing expenses, improving travel logistics, and improving recruiting, having a distributed workforce increases disaster resiliency such as in case San Francisco had a major earthquake.
Careful planning of the clusters would be important, of course, in order to maximize the benefits. And legal exposure could become more complicated.
Many major tech companies seem to feel that the tradeoffs of distributed workforces are worth it. WMF already makes this work to a degree with individual remote employees, so establishing remote clusters and moving department HQs to better locations than SF would be a reasonable progression.
Cheers,
Pine On Apr 8, 2015 12:08 PM, "Balázs Viczián" balazs.viczian@wikimedia.hu wrote:
My two cents would be that of what evil giant corporations do: move their departments to the best place possible regarding costs/competition. Software development in SF, customer service to India :)
For example keeping the sofware somewhere in the Bay Area would keep the potential to attract highly qualified software guys. While others, for example grantmaking would do better in my opinion in the old continent (that is 'Yurp'). In London or Paris or Berlin, you can select from a wide and deep pool of experts yet still cheaper than SF. Note, about 50-70 percent of the chapters/thorgs/etc. would be within 2-4 hrs of flight and virtually all would be on a direct flight. Lots of saving on travelling costs for those that has to travel the most.
You can play with the rest as you wish. Finance for example don't travel anywhere except the top management (1-2 ppl), so they can be in East St Louis :)
My British company where I work has its finance in the Czech Republic, and its IT support in India for instance.
Balazs
2015-04-08 20:29 GMT+02:00 Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com:
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 9:58 PM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
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?
Keep in mind that the WMF already mitigates the cost and competition of
the
San Francisco Bay Area market by recruiting remote employees.
According to the recent report (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation.pd...
) a large number are based either in other U.S. states or internationally. Out of 202 employees, 77% are US-based in 19 states and 23% are based abroad in 19 countries.
Combine the remote employees in the U.S. and abroad, I wouldn't be surprised if close to half of staff are based remotely. On engineering teams especially, it's not uncommon for a majority of employees to be remote. _______________________________________________ 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?subject=unsubscribe
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On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 3:45 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I like the ideas about setting up a variety of remote clusters as well as remote individual employees. Google, Microsoft and Facebook have remote clusters, and I'm sure that many other companies do this as well. Besides decreasing expenses, improving travel logistics, and improving recruiting, having a distributed workforce increases disaster resiliency such as in case San Francisco had a major earthquake.
Google, Microsoft and Facebook also have the vast majority of their employees working in the Pacific Northwest. I don't think recruiting and location strategy is a topic particularly amenable to amateur input. The management of the WMF is not an element of the movement that is crowdsourced, probably for good reason. Not that anyone with great confidence in their opinion should refrain from offering it, but hopefully no one will be upset when the WMF makes its own decision.
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>
Hi Pine,
If the Foundation decides to move, the cost of making the space usable for our staff is not a recoverable cost from the building owner.
At this point, WMF is not planning on moving out of the San Francisco market area. We will be doing our best to manage cost when we renew our lease or move. The advantages of having good access to talented people and organizations WMF interacts with far outweigh any advantages to moving to a lower cost location outside of the San Francisco market area.
Regards,
Garfield
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 9:58 PM, 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
Hi Garfield,
Ok, follow up questions:
* Does WMF have a plan to keep the Foundation and its essential functions operational if, say, the San Francisco main building all SF staff are completely offline and unreachable by phone for a week after an earthquake?
* Would there be worthwhile advantages to establishing a second main office in someplace like the US east coast or Europe?
Thanks, and please reply when it's convenient for you.
I'll follow up offline with HR about talent pool questions.
Thanks,
Pine On Apr 8, 2015 5:16 PM, "Garfield Byrd" gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Pine,
If the Foundation decides to move, the cost of making the space usable for our staff is not a recoverable cost from the building owner.
At this point, WMF is not planning on moving out of the San Francisco market area. We will be doing our best to manage cost when we renew our lease or move. The advantages of having good access to talented people and organizations WMF interacts with far outweigh any advantages to moving to a lower cost location outside of the San Francisco market area.
Regards,
Garfield
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 9:58 PM, 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
-- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
*https://donate.wikimedia.org https://donate.wikimedia.org/*
Hi Pine,
I have answered your questions in your email.
Regards,
Garfield
On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 12:38 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Garfield,
Ok, follow up questions:
- Does WMF have a plan to keep the Foundation and its essential functions
operational if, say, the San Francisco main building all SF staff are completely offline and unreachable by phone for a week after an earthquake?
Yes, we have a plan in place in case the building in San Francisco is unavailable. All San Francisco staff will not be offline for a week after an earthquake. Not all staff live in San Francisco, and Loma Prieta showed that even a major earthquake does not take the entire San Francisco Bay Area offline. So essential functions will continue even after an earthquake.
In addition, even though many of our staff are in San Francisco, we do have staff in many other states and 18 countries.
* Would there be worthwhile advantages to establishing a second main office in someplace like the US east coast or Europe?
We have tried to setup a center of activity in other states and it did not prove to be worthwhile, as staff preferred to work from home or other locations. So it was an an additional cost with any additional benefit. It is my understanding that having an office outside the United States creates complications for Wikipedia and the other Wiki projects in the area of content protection.
Thanks, and please reply when it's convenient for you.
I'll follow up offline with HR about talent pool questions.
Thanks,
Pine On Apr 8, 2015 5:16 PM, "Garfield Byrd" gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Pine,
If the Foundation decides to move, the cost of making the space usable for our staff is not a recoverable cost from the building owner.
At this point, WMF is not planning on moving out of the San Francisco market area. We will be doing our best to manage cost when we renew our lease or move. The advantages of having good access to talented people and organizations WMF interacts with far outweigh any advantages to moving to a lower cost location outside of the San Francisco market area.
Regards,
Garfield
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 9:58 PM, 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
-- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
*https://donate.wikimedia.org https://donate.wikimedia.org/*
Hi Garfield, many thanks for your answer! On Apr 9, 2015 5:35 PM, "Garfield Byrd" gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Pine,
I have answered your questions in your email.
Regards,
Garfield
On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 12:38 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Garfield,
Ok, follow up questions:
- Does WMF have a plan to keep the Foundation and its essential
functions
operational if, say, the San Francisco main building all SF staff are completely offline and unreachable by phone for a week after an
earthquake?
Yes, we have a plan in place in case the building in San Francisco is unavailable. All San Francisco staff will not be offline for a week after an earthquake. Not all staff live in San Francisco, and Loma Prieta
showed
that even a major earthquake does not take the entire San Francisco Bay Area offline. So essential functions will continue even after an earthquake.
In addition, even though many of our staff are in San Francisco, we do
have
staff in many other states and 18 countries.
- Would there be worthwhile advantages to establishing a second main
office
in someplace like the US east coast or Europe?
We have tried to setup a center of activity in other states and it did not prove to be worthwhile, as staff preferred to work from home or other locations. So it was an an additional cost with any additional benefit.
It
is my understanding that having an office outside the United States
creates
complications for Wikipedia and the other Wiki projects in the area of content protection.
To create less headaches about this would it not be better to split up wmf in two, one doing the software at any convenient location, while the other one would own the domains, hosting and money?
Thanks, and please reply when it's convenient for you.
I'll follow up offline with HR about talent pool questions.
Thanks,
Pine On Apr 8, 2015 5:16 PM, "Garfield Byrd" gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Pine,
If the Foundation decides to move, the cost of making the space usable for our staff is not a recoverable cost from the building owner.
At this point, WMF is not planning on moving out of the San Francisco market area. We will be doing our best to manage cost when we renew
our
lease or move. The advantages of having good access to talented people
and
organizations WMF interacts with far outweigh any advantages to moving
to a
lower cost location outside of the San Francisco market area.
Regards,
Garfield
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 9:58 PM, 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
-- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
*https://donate.wikimedia.org https://donate.wikimedia.org/*
-- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
*https://donate.wikimedia.org https://donate.wikimedia.org/* _______________________________________________ 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,
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I think with this and many other discussions, form should follow function. So as we begin to introduce and implement our new Strategic Plan it will inform this issue over time.
Regards,
Garfield
On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 5:46 AM, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Garfield, many thanks for your answer! On Apr 9, 2015 5:35 PM, "Garfield Byrd" gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Pine,
I have answered your questions in your email.
Regards,
Garfield
On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 12:38 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Garfield,
Ok, follow up questions:
- Does WMF have a plan to keep the Foundation and its essential
functions
operational if, say, the San Francisco main building all SF staff are completely offline and unreachable by phone for a week after an
earthquake?
Yes, we have a plan in place in case the building in San Francisco is unavailable. All San Francisco staff will not be offline for a week
after
an earthquake. Not all staff live in San Francisco, and Loma Prieta
showed
that even a major earthquake does not take the entire San Francisco Bay Area offline. So essential functions will continue even after an earthquake.
In addition, even though many of our staff are in San Francisco, we do
have
staff in many other states and 18 countries.
- Would there be worthwhile advantages to establishing a second main
office
in someplace like the US east coast or Europe?
We have tried to setup a center of activity in other states and it did
not
prove to be worthwhile, as staff preferred to work from home or other locations. So it was an an additional cost with any additional benefit.
It
is my understanding that having an office outside the United States
creates
complications for Wikipedia and the other Wiki projects in the area of content protection.
To create less headaches about this would it not be better to split up wmf in two, one doing the software at any convenient location, while the other one would own the domains, hosting and money?
Thanks, and please reply when it's convenient for you.
I'll follow up offline with HR about talent pool questions.
Thanks,
Pine On Apr 8, 2015 5:16 PM, "Garfield Byrd" gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Pine,
If the Foundation decides to move, the cost of making the space usable for our staff is not a recoverable cost from the building owner.
At this point, WMF is not planning on moving out of the San Francisco market area. We will be doing our best to manage cost when we renew
our
lease or move. The advantages of having good access to talented people
and
organizations WMF interacts with far outweigh any advantages to moving
to a
lower cost location outside of the San Francisco market area.
Regards,
Garfield
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 9:58 PM, 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
-- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
*https://donate.wikimedia.org https://donate.wikimedia.org/*
-- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
*https://donate.wikimedia.org https://donate.wikimedia.org/* _______________________________________________ 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,
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On 9 April 2015 at 01:16, Garfield Byrd gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
... The advantages of having good access to talented people and organizations WMF interacts with far outweigh any advantages to moving to a lower cost location outside of the San Francisco market area.
I find the world-view expressed here slightly odd to read, perhaps because I am more European than American in background.
My background includes working for long periods with many companies in the U.S. (such as Microsoft) and we managed to do that perfectly with a handful of employees in a Seattle office, and most developers and internal operations such as HR, finance etc. in Europe (very few of these people ever had a need or desire to talk directly with customers or partner organizations). It was easy enough for me to visit the U.S. a couple of times a year when there was a lot going on there, and work on a daily basis within a lively virtual team spread out in offices across London, Paris and New York.
"Talented people" can be found in many places including San Francisco, and though Google is incredibly important, there many other critically important potential open knowledge partners without headquarters in SF (Europeana springs to mind). Even Mozilla has a very nice office to work with here in London. The idea that having all functions in SF has advantages that "far outweigh" all other considerations seems to over-egg the case, perhaps it would be a good thing to leave the door open a crack for alternative ways of working to be possible in a far future.
Fae
Hi Fae,
We have 215 staff in total, with a hub of activity in San Francisco and other staff in several other states and 18 countries. So I agree talented people can be found globally and WMF does hire the best talent it can find wherever they are located. At this point adding offices in other locations add cost without any benefits to the community or the Wikimedia Foundation. We also do not have the luxury of Mozilla's $300 million budget that can support a London office or Microsoft's billions to have a globally distributed workforce with offices. So we are not closing the door to anything. Based on our test project of trying to develop centers of activity in other parts of the United States there is no need for additional offices. We do need and will continue to hire a globally distributed staff of talented people to support our global community of talented volunteers.
Regards,
Garfield
On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 2:19 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 April 2015 at 01:16, Garfield Byrd gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
... The advantages of having good access to talented people and organizations WMF interacts with far outweigh any advantages to moving
to a
lower cost location outside of the San Francisco market area.
I find the world-view expressed here slightly odd to read, perhaps because I am more European than American in background.
My background includes working for long periods with many companies in the U.S. (such as Microsoft) and we managed to do that perfectly with a handful of employees in a Seattle office, and most developers and internal operations such as HR, finance etc. in Europe (very few of these people ever had a need or desire to talk directly with customers or partner organizations). It was easy enough for me to visit the U.S. a couple of times a year when there was a lot going on there, and work on a daily basis within a lively virtual team spread out in offices across London, Paris and New York.
"Talented people" can be found in many places including San Francisco, and though Google is incredibly important, there many other critically important potential open knowledge partners without headquarters in SF (Europeana springs to mind). Even Mozilla has a very nice office to work with here in London. The idea that having all functions in SF has advantages that "far outweigh" all other considerations seems to over-egg the case, perhaps it would be a good thing to leave the door open a crack for alternative ways of working to be possible in a far future.
Fae
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On 9 April 2015 at 16:47, Garfield Byrd gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Fae,
We have 215 staff in total, with a hub of activity in San Francisco and other staff in several other states and 18 countries. So I agree talented people can be found globally and WMF does hire the best talent it can find wherever they are located. At this point adding offices in other locations add cost without any benefits to the community or the Wikimedia Foundation. We also do not have the luxury of Mozilla's $300 million budget that can support a London office or Microsoft's billions to have a globally distributed workforce with offices. So we are not closing the door to anything. Based on our test project of trying to develop centers of activity in other parts of the United States there is no need for additional offices. We do need and will continue to hire a globally distributed staff of talented people to support our global community of talented volunteers.
Thanks for the response, it makes sense to me.
I agree with avoiding additional offices unless there is a very good business case. Back in the late 1990s I was part of a small consultancy where we chose to eliminate having a central office altogether. It was a strange thing to try back last century, but moving more of the administrative functions into the virtual working space, and arming employees with excellent teamworking tools they can use from home (or bookable office spaces locally) has become part of the ordinary world of work these days.
WMF development happens this way already, and you writing here shows that management/executive level folks are comfortable and skilled with virtual spaces. It would be jolly interesting if the WMF were seen to try out more virtual methods in other parts of its operation, and find meaningful ways of reporting on benefits or avoidable costs. I see this as part of the learning organization... Maybe a topic for another thread at some point. :-)
Fae
All --
As a matter of strategy we should be leveraging our open-source roots more as we grow. This means distributed, loosely-coupled teams. We know from software industry history that distributed teams work best when they are *entirely* distributed. We are working on some structures that will allow teams to either be entirely distributed or mostly co-located, consistent with what we know about best outcomes. In SF, remote working is not very common as the software companies demand people to be on-site and we have an advantage with remote talent, but it is also not for everyone as it can be isolating. Net-net.. before we worry about growth and costs we need to worry about effectiveness, but we are thinking about this.
Thanks, Lila
On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 9:02 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 April 2015 at 16:47, Garfield Byrd gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Fae,
We have 215 staff in total, with a hub of activity in San Francisco and other staff in several other states and 18 countries. So I agree
talented
people can be found globally and WMF does hire the best talent it can
find
wherever they are located. At this point adding offices in other
locations
add cost without any benefits to the community or the Wikimedia Foundation. We also do not have the luxury of Mozilla's $300 million budget that can support a London office or Microsoft's billions to have a globally distributed workforce with offices. So we are not closing the door to anything. Based on our test project of trying to develop centers
of
activity in other parts of the United States there is no need for additional offices. We do need and will continue to hire a globally distributed staff of talented people to support our global community of talented volunteers.
Thanks for the response, it makes sense to me.
I agree with avoiding additional offices unless there is a very good business case. Back in the late 1990s I was part of a small consultancy where we chose to eliminate having a central office altogether. It was a strange thing to try back last century, but moving more of the administrative functions into the virtual working space, and arming employees with excellent teamworking tools they can use from home (or bookable office spaces locally) has become part of the ordinary world of work these days.
WMF development happens this way already, and you writing here shows that management/executive level folks are comfortable and skilled with virtual spaces. It would be jolly interesting if the WMF were seen to try out more virtual methods in other parts of its operation, and find meaningful ways of reporting on benefits or avoidable costs. I see this as part of the learning organization... Maybe a topic for another thread at some point. :-)
Fae
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On 15-04-09 04:52 PM, Lila Tretikov wrote:
but it is also not for everyone as it can be isolating
I think that, at the Foundation, we are blessed to have several opportunities a year to meet with our colleagues during events, and that things would be much more difficult as a distributed team if it weren't the case.
-- Marc
Interesting. I look forward to seeing these new structures. Thanks Lila.
Pine On Apr 9, 2015 1:53 PM, "Lila Tretikov" lila@wikimedia.org wrote:
All --
As a matter of strategy we should be leveraging our open-source roots more as we grow. This means distributed, loosely-coupled teams. We know from software industry history that distributed teams work best when they are *entirely* distributed. We are working on some structures that will allow teams to either be entirely distributed or mostly co-located, consistent with what we know about best outcomes. In SF, remote working is not very common as the software companies demand people to be on-site and we have an advantage with remote talent, but it is also not for everyone as it can be isolating. Net-net.. before we worry about growth and costs we need to worry about effectiveness, but we are thinking about this.
Thanks, Lila
On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 9:02 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 April 2015 at 16:47, Garfield Byrd gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Fae,
We have 215 staff in total, with a hub of activity in San Francisco and other staff in several other states and 18 countries. So I agree
talented
people can be found globally and WMF does hire the best talent it can
find
wherever they are located. At this point adding offices in other
locations
add cost without any benefits to the community or the Wikimedia Foundation. We also do not have the luxury of Mozilla's $300 million budget that can support a London office or Microsoft's billions to
have a
globally distributed workforce with offices. So we are not closing the door to anything. Based on our test project of trying to develop
centers
of
activity in other parts of the United States there is no need for additional offices. We do need and will continue to hire a globally distributed staff of talented people to support our global community of talented volunteers.
Thanks for the response, it makes sense to me.
I agree with avoiding additional offices unless there is a very good business case. Back in the late 1990s I was part of a small consultancy where we chose to eliminate having a central office altogether. It was a strange thing to try back last century, but moving more of the administrative functions into the virtual working space, and arming employees with excellent teamworking tools they can use from home (or bookable office spaces locally) has become part of the ordinary world of work these days.
WMF development happens this way already, and you writing here shows that management/executive level folks are comfortable and skilled with virtual spaces. It would be jolly interesting if the WMF were seen to try out more virtual methods in other parts of its operation, and find meaningful ways of reporting on benefits or avoidable costs. I see this as part of the learning organization... Maybe a topic for another thread at some point. :-)
Fae
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I do think that it's doesn't particularly match up for the Foundation to base itself in one of the most expensive cities in the world, citing the local talent pool, when a lot of the tech staff are being recruited elsewhere and are working remotely. I did feel that a lot of the motivation to moving to SF in the first place was because for some high level staff, leading a tech-based organisation in SF looked better on the old CV than leading a tech-based organisation in Flint, Gary, or East St. Louis would.
With that said, I concede that it's probably much too late to unscramble this particular egg, as relocating now would probably end up costing more than would be saved by moving to a lower cost centre, which is unfortunate.
Regards, Craig Franklin
On 10 April 2015 at 01:47, Garfield Byrd gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Fae,
We have 215 staff in total, with a hub of activity in San Francisco and other staff in several other states and 18 countries. So I agree talented people can be found globally and WMF does hire the best talent it can find wherever they are located. At this point adding offices in other locations add cost without any benefits to the community or the Wikimedia Foundation. We also do not have the luxury of Mozilla's $300 million budget that can support a London office or Microsoft's billions to have a globally distributed workforce with offices. So we are not closing the door to anything. Based on our test project of trying to develop centers of activity in other parts of the United States there is no need for additional offices. We do need and will continue to hire a globally distributed staff of talented people to support our global community of talented volunteers.
Regards,
Garfield
On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 2:19 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 April 2015 at 01:16, Garfield Byrd gbyrd@wikimedia.org wrote:
... The advantages of having good access to talented people and organizations WMF interacts with far outweigh any advantages to moving
to a
lower cost location outside of the San Francisco market area.
I find the world-view expressed here slightly odd to read, perhaps because I am more European than American in background.
My background includes working for long periods with many companies in the U.S. (such as Microsoft) and we managed to do that perfectly with a handful of employees in a Seattle office, and most developers and internal operations such as HR, finance etc. in Europe (very few of these people ever had a need or desire to talk directly with customers or partner organizations). It was easy enough for me to visit the U.S. a couple of times a year when there was a lot going on there, and work on a daily basis within a lively virtual team spread out in offices across London, Paris and New York.
"Talented people" can be found in many places including San Francisco, and though Google is incredibly important, there many other critically important potential open knowledge partners without headquarters in SF (Europeana springs to mind). Even Mozilla has a very nice office to work with here in London. The idea that having all functions in SF has advantages that "far outweigh" all other considerations seems to over-egg the case, perhaps it would be a good thing to leave the door open a crack for alternative ways of working to be possible in a far future.
Fae
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-- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
*https://donate.wikimedia.org https://donate.wikimedia.org/* _______________________________________________ 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?subject=unsubscribe
On 15/04/15 22:45, Craig Franklin wrote:
I do think that it's doesn't particularly match up for the Foundation to base itself in one of the most expensive cities in the world, citing the local talent pool, when a lot of the tech staff are being recruited elsewhere and are working remotely. I did feel that a lot of the motivation to moving to SF in the first place was because for some high level staff, leading a tech-based organisation in SF looked better on the old CV than leading a tech-based organisation in Flint, Gary, or East St. Louis would.
Heh. Flint was never considered, for some reason.
I have a spreadsheet which Sue sent to all staff prior to the decision, which has a points system weighing up the various options, "not in order to determine the final location, but just as a jumping-off point for discussion". It suggests that local talent pool was a minor consideration.
San Francisco had the most points, followed by Boston. San Francisco beat Boston substantially in the "proximity to partners and likeminded organizations" category, since San Francisco had EFF, OSI, CC, Mozilla, Wikia and a few others. San Francisco also got a bonus for having a Board member living near it, specifically Jimmy Wales. Jimmy was presumably following Wikia, which was set up in San Mateo in order to be close to investors.
Boston scored a lot of points for "ease of international communication", which was based on the timezone difference from Europe. They were almost the same on "proximity to technology", which considered tech companies generally and availability of computer science graduates, the closest category to Craig's idea of a local talent pool: 8 points for SF and 7 for Boston. The total was 88 to 73.
I think we do benefit from proximity to technology. There is a lot of staff turnover in the tech industry, people tend to spend 2-3 years at one tech company and then move on to another one. It gives the Bay Area a kind of shared tech culture. Innovations introduced in one place are stirred around the Bay by staff movement.
-- Tim Starling
Thank you, Tim. That background information is extremely helpful to understand the thinking behind the previous decision.
Sydney On Apr 16, 2015 10:15 PM, "Tim Starling" tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 15/04/15 22:45, Craig Franklin wrote:
I do think that it's doesn't particularly match up for the Foundation to base itself in one of the most expensive cities in the world, citing the local talent pool, when a lot of the tech staff are being recruited elsewhere and are working remotely. I did feel that a lot of the motivation to moving to SF in the first place was because for some high level staff, leading a tech-based organisation in SF looked better on the old CV than leading a tech-based organisation in Flint, Gary, or East St. Louis would.
Heh. Flint was never considered, for some reason.
I have a spreadsheet which Sue sent to all staff prior to the decision, which has a points system weighing up the various options, "not in order to determine the final location, but just as a jumping-off point for discussion". It suggests that local talent pool was a minor consideration.
San Francisco had the most points, followed by Boston. San Francisco beat Boston substantially in the "proximity to partners and likeminded organizations" category, since San Francisco had EFF, OSI, CC, Mozilla, Wikia and a few others. San Francisco also got a bonus for having a Board member living near it, specifically Jimmy Wales. Jimmy was presumably following Wikia, which was set up in San Mateo in order to be close to investors.
Boston scored a lot of points for "ease of international communication", which was based on the timezone difference from Europe. They were almost the same on "proximity to technology", which considered tech companies generally and availability of computer science graduates, the closest category to Craig's idea of a local talent pool: 8 points for SF and 7 for Boston. The total was 88 to 73.
I think we do benefit from proximity to technology. There is a lot of staff turnover in the tech industry, people tend to spend 2-3 years at one tech company and then move on to another one. It gives the Bay Area a kind of shared tech culture. Innovations introduced in one place are stirred around the Bay by staff movement.
-- Tim Starling
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On Apr 17, 2015 4:15 AM, "Tim Starling" tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 15/04/15 22:45, Craig Franklin wrote:
I do think that it's doesn't particularly match up for the Foundation to base itself in one of the most expensive cities in the world, citing the local talent pool, when a lot of the tech staff are being recruited elsewhere and are working remotely. I did feel that a lot of the motivation to moving to SF in the first place was because for some high level staff, leading a tech-based organisation in SF looked better on
the
old CV than leading a tech-based organisation in Flint, Gary, or East
St.
Louis would.
Heh. Flint was never considered, for some reason.
I have a spreadsheet which Sue sent to all staff prior to the decision, which has a points system weighing up the various options, "not in order to determine the final location, but just as a jumping-off point for discussion". It suggests that local talent pool was a minor consideration.
San Francisco had the most points, followed by Boston. San Francisco beat Boston substantially in the "proximity to partners and likeminded organizations" category, since San Francisco had EFF, OSI, CC, Mozilla, Wikia and a few others. San Francisco also got a bonus for having a Board member living near it, specifically Jimmy Wales. Jimmy was presumably following Wikia, which was set up in San Mateo in order to be close to investors.
Boston scored a lot of points for "ease of international communication", which was based on the timezone difference from Europe. They were almost the same on "proximity to technology", which considered tech companies generally and availability of computer science graduates, the closest category to Craig's idea of a local talent pool: 8 points for SF and 7 for Boston. The total was 88 to 73.
I think we do benefit from proximity to technology. There is a lot of staff turnover in the tech industry, people tend to spend 2-3 years at one tech company and then move on to another one. It gives the Bay Area a kind of shared tech culture. Innovations introduced in one place are stirred around the Bay by staff movement.
-- Tim Starling
Tim, I am not too sure about this. No single piece of open source software comes to my mind when hearing bay area or silicon Valley. And no people living there and no company located there. Except the Gnu c compiler and may postgres no single piece of open source software came out of the United states, at least not without pressure from software from other countries, mostly German speaking, Scandinavia, Asia.
Do you not have the impression beeing located in the United states poisons the minds of people and has quite a bad influence on the technology output of Wmf? Did you ever meet some young hungry person with good ideas there willing to contribute? The only goal of a brilliant person in the this area is to get rich with his own company. I d curious to hear how you handle such conflict of interest.
Rupert
On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 5:13 AM, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
Tim, I am not too sure about this. No single piece of open source software comes to my mind when hearing bay area or silicon Valley. And no people living there and no company located there. Except the Gnu c compiler and may postgres no single piece of open source software came out of the United states, at least not without pressure from software from other countries, mostly German speaking, Scandinavia, Asia.
Might I suggest, then, that you're not very familiar with open source software. The basis of modern UNIX is BSD, and its related free license, out of Berkeley, California. Add to that the output of major firms like Sun Microsystems (Java) and Google (Android) for their contributions to the FLOSS landscape, and it's hard to find anywhere else in the world with more impact.
Do you not have the impression beeing located in the United states poisons the minds of people and has quite a bad influence on the technology output of Wmf?
Poisons? Too odd to merit a response.
On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 10:41 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
Tim, I am not too sure about this. No single piece of open source
software
comes to my mind when hearing bay area or silicon Valley. And no people living there and no company located there. Except the Gnu c compiler and may postgres no single piece of open source software came out of the
United
states, at least not without pressure from software from other countries, mostly German speaking, Scandinavia, Asia.
Might I suggest, then, that you're not very familiar with open source software. The basis of modern UNIX is BSD, and its related free license, out of Berkeley, California. Add to that the output of major firms like Sun Microsystems (Java) and Google (Android) for their contributions to the FLOSS landscape, and it's hard to find anywhere else in the world with more impact.
And the term open source was coined at a meeting in Palo Alto, in response to Netscape's release of Mozilla's source code in Mountain View.[1]
Luis
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_free_and_open-source_software#The_la... which says the phrase was "adopted" in Palo Alto, but OSI's official history http://opensource.org/history says "created". I'd edit the page to add a citation, but I'm the author of the current OSI history so I'd rather not...
On 15-04-17 05:13 AM, rupert THURNER wrote:
The only goal of a brilliant person in the this area is to get rich with his own company. I d curious to hear how you handle such conflict of interest.
I'm sorry - what?
I have no abundance of love towards the US society or its government as a rule, but that's not a mere generalization - it's a poor caricature.
I can probably name a dozen American "brilliant persons" whose contributions have permanently shaped the FLOSS landscape - hell, created the movement - without even doing any research or thinking hard.
Berkley and MIT are the birthplaces of the Hacker culture and - last I checked - they were American institutions.
And even if your gloss were true, "get rich with his own company" is hardly mutually exclusive with FLOSS.
-- Marc
On 17/04/15 19:13, rupert THURNER wrote:
Tim, I am not too sure about this. No single piece of open source software comes to my mind when hearing bay area or silicon Valley.
BSD, sendmail, vi, GTK+ and GIMP, Mozilla, Ceph, Docker.
Do you not have the impression beeing located in the United states poisons the minds of people and has quite a bad influence on the technology output of Wmf?
No.
Did you ever meet some young hungry person with good ideas there willing to contribute?
Yes, we hired some of them.
The only goal of a brilliant person in the this area is to get rich with his own company.
Maybe you should visit some day. Urban California is left-leaning, at least by American standards, full of compassionate, progressive people. San Francisco was at the centre of the hippie movement in the 1960s, and continues to have a leading role in America's civil rights dialogue.
We get a constant stream of prospective employees who say their main reason for wanting to work for Wikimedia is because they want to do something positive with their lives, not just earn money. That would probably be true anywhere, but it underscores the fact that the Bay Area does not "poison their minds".
-- Tim Starling
It strange to see that the reality is giving more strength to different solutions probably not considered valid some years ago.
For instance the de-localization is giving more strength than weaknesses.
The idea of an headquarter with delocalized departments (also in different countries) can be in important option in my opinion.
The analysis of Sue makes sense because the team of WMF was not so big and the offices were small, but when an organization becomes bigger, there is the option to extend the offices but also the option to open new offices in other towns. For a worldwide organization like that of WMF the option of the "follow the sun" can be a good option.
On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 4:14 AM, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 15/04/15 22:45, Craig Franklin wrote:
I do think that it's doesn't particularly match up for the Foundation to base itself in one of the most expensive cities in the world, citing the local talent pool, when a lot of the tech staff are being recruited elsewhere and are working remotely. I did feel that a lot of the motivation to moving to SF in the first place was because for some high level staff, leading a tech-based organisation in SF looked better on the old CV than leading a tech-based organisation in Flint, Gary, or East St. Louis would.
Heh. Flint was never considered, for some reason.
I have a spreadsheet which Sue sent to all staff prior to the decision, which has a points system weighing up the various options, "not in order to determine the final location, but just as a jumping-off point for discussion". It suggests that local talent pool was a minor consideration.
San Francisco had the most points, followed by Boston. San Francisco beat Boston substantially in the "proximity to partners and likeminded organizations" category, since San Francisco had EFF, OSI, CC, Mozilla, Wikia and a few others. San Francisco also got a bonus for having a Board member living near it, specifically Jimmy Wales. Jimmy was presumably following Wikia, which was set up in San Mateo in order to be close to investors.
Boston scored a lot of points for "ease of international communication", which was based on the timezone difference from Europe. They were almost the same on "proximity to technology", which considered tech companies generally and availability of computer science graduates, the closest category to Craig's idea of a local talent pool: 8 points for SF and 7 for Boston. The total was 88 to 73.
I think we do benefit from proximity to technology. There is a lot of staff turnover in the tech industry, people tend to spend 2-3 years at one tech company and then move on to another one. It gives the Bay Area a kind of shared tech culture. Innovations introduced in one place are stirred around the Bay by staff movement.
-- Tim Starling
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The WMF will become a truly global organization when a Wikimedia US chapter is founded ;-)
Il 08/04/2015 06:58, Pine W ha scritto:
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,
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