On office locations

I’ve been working out in the suburbs ever since I moved to Austin in 1996. There just aren’t many high-tech companies who have had the guts to disregard their CEO’s wishes and move downtown, where many of the younger workers would prefer to work (at least that was the case at my last job).

First office was in far north Austin at IBM, from 1996 through 1998, and during that time I bought and moved into a condo in Clarksville.

Second company was S3 where I had four different offices in three and a half years (five if you count the twelve months or so I worked at home in the condo between offices #3 and #4).

Then, I worked at two far western offices at the last company.

I currently work at 183/Braker, which, for the suburbs, is about as good as it gets – I can and did take the express bus to work to assist on my bike commute from time to time. But it still couldn’t beat walking a block to the #5 and busing 10 minutes downtown. I could only bike to work once a week at best because of the time it took, but if my office were downtown, I could easily do it 5 days a week.

So when the economy picked up, I started asking recruiters who contacted me where the companies were located (thinking I wouldn’t bother talking to somebody in the ‘burbs but might at least listen for a downtown position). I usually got the answer quickly; but one guy really didn’t want to say, and then claimed that this spot was “central”. Give me a break. When I explained that “central” meant “could hop a bus or ride my bike every day rather than once a week”, he said they’d pay for a bus pass (closest stop is miles away) and provide free parking(!) FREE PARKING IN THE SUBURBS! YEE-HAW! WHAT AN UNUSUAL PERK!

As it turns out, I’m now leaving the current job because a combination of a benefits change that hit us really hard and a property-tax mortgage-company screwup made it impossible to afford to stay, which stinks, since I really like the work and the people. The new job will mean a commute out to my desk in my garage (which I had to air-condition in order to work all that overtime which ate up at least 6 hours a day every weekend day from Memorial Day to mid-August). It was mildly humorous when I asked my normal question, and they responded “you’d have to work at home”, and I got to reassure them that it was a plus for me, not a minus. And as it turns out, the new people seem cool, and the work seems like it will be interesting too. But this is the first time I’ve ever quit a job I liked, which is a weird feeling.

Anyways, this all came up again today because a couple of threads today regarding Microsoft have mentioned the difficulty in getting people to move to Redmond. One of the threads thinks that people just don’t want to move to the northwest, which I don’t believe, but the second one gets it right – you can’t expect your twentysomething ideal hires to want to work in the suburbs as much as the fiftysomething CEOs.

This is applicable to me since I’ve been through the early stages of the interview process with Microsoft at least three times now, but haven’t yet found a group which wouldn’t require physical office presence in Redmond. And even if we could manage the blended family issues and move to the Seattle area (where my stepson was born and my wife and his father lived for ten years), you’d have to double my salary to get me to live in Redmond or any other such car-requiring soul-destroying suburban wasteland (and living in Seattle and commuting to Redmond would be like what I just got out of in Austin, except five times worse).

Unfortunately, as Joel on Software pointed out and I mentioned with regard to AMD, the wishes of the employees mean absolutely nothing; almost all corporate moves are to make the office closer to the CEO’s home.

(The rank-and-file workers at the last job, who were disproportionately the bright twentysomethings over whom all tech companies seem to want to fight, disproportionately live in the central city, like I do, but as far as I know only two have found jobs downtown – although another one has started a company on South Congress – on the other hand, the workers at the job I’m leaving are mostly family guys who moved here from RTP, where there is no ‘center city’ to be had, so there’s no demand there).

So my new commute is twenty steps out to the garage. Now I have two things to try to figure out:

1. How to work exercise into the daily routine without a bike commute (although I wasn’t doing it much lately anyways, I had planned to ramp back up since school’s now out for the summer). Maybe walking on my hands to the garage will do it…
2. How to write about Shoal Creek Boulevard when I won’t need to use it for my commute. Actually, that seems like a benefit rather than a drawback…