X (formerly Twitter) is planning to close its office in San Francisco. The social media platform, owned by Elon Musk, would not terminate employees. Instead, they would have to share office space with other departments of the company
X regrets shuttering the location but asks employees to adjust
X is closing its office in San Francisco. The company has reportedly sent out an internal communication, informing employees they have a few weeks to shift location.
In the email from X’s Chief Executive Officer, Linda Yaccarino said workers would move to existing offices in San Jose. In the email, Yaccarino wrote:
“This is an important decision that impacts many of you, but it is the right one for our company in the long term.”
BREAKING: 𝕏 plans to close it’s San Francisco Office over the next few weeks. pic.twitter.com/eplc6D20ja
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) August 5, 2024
The e-mail, reportedly sent out early Monday morning, indicates X will also open an engineering-focused office in Palo Alto, California. The new office space will include employees working on xAI, the Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) branch that Musk had started to challenge Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT
Why is X closing its San Francisco office?
It is not clear why X is closing its San Francisco office. It certainly comes as a shock primarily because this office is generally considered as the home base for X.
Twitter was founded in San Francisco in 2006. Although the office being shuttered isn’t the first location, Twitter moved into the new office in 2012. Twitter may have inspired Uber because the latter also opened its office in the neighborhood.
Police chased away workers who were supposed to remove the Twitter logo from the company’s San Francisco office and replace it with an X
It turned out that the installers did not have a permit to work on the facade of the building. Now an unnamed blue bird remains on the building https://t.co/8bPicBuH3J pic.twitter.com/yAWYDhIaJa— Mikhail Kulakov (@mikkulakov) July 25, 2023
X’s owner Elon Musk has had a rather rocky relationship with the city’s authorities. After his acquisition, Musk reportedly skipped a few rent payments to the company’s landlord. He even clashed with San Francisco’s local administration for setting up temporary overnight accommodations. He even clashed with the city’s Department of Building Inspection for installing a giant flashing X on top of the building.
Neither Yaccarino nor Musk has made any official comment explaining their reasons for closing the X’s San Francisco office. However, the company has been striving to run a leaner operation. After all, asking employees to share office space certainly helps cut costs.
2024-08-06 15:07:13