As many of you know, we recently moved from Kirkland to the Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle. I wanted to share some of the motivations behind the move. The simple answer is recruiting. This is where the top talent wants to work. We want to hire top talent, so it boosts our chances of hiring these kinds of folks. If you’re an investment banker in the New York area, you want to work in Manhattan, not in New Jersey. Many software engineers in the Seattle area want to work in Pioneer Square, not in the suburbs.
If you weren’t already aware, studies show that companies most often locate themselves where it’s a convenient commute for the founders. We wanted to be a little more thoughtful and deliberate and locate the company where it best positions us to succeed. We subleased in Kirkland for 8-months, paying attention to the recruiting challenges of our eastside location. I’ve already received a few emails from candidates we interviewed previously who wanted to work in Pioneer Square and weren’t attracted to our old location in Kirkland.
So how’s it been working in Pioneer Square? We like it. Two-thirds of our employees now have a commute from the suburbs into the city. That includes me (I think I now have the second longest commute). We’ve all decided to ride the bus to work. The bus is peaceful and relaxing, a nice 20-minute ride to visit with other bus riders, read the newspaper or think about the day. It feels good taking public transportation, doing a little to help the environment. Near the office there are lots of great restaurants and places to quench your thirst after work. I even walked to the Seahawks-49ers game on Monday night.
The biggest downside is that people who visit from the eastside may not be aware that parking is tight in Pioneer Square and they drive in for a meeting and call you circling the block asking where your parking garage is. No such luck. We need to learn to manage people’s expectations better. Take the bus if you can. If not, there’s a moderate amount of 2-hour on street parking for $1.50/hour. If you plan to stay longer than 2 hours, Qwest field has parking for $10/day and Qwest event center has parking for $5/day.
So wherever you are, when your lease runs out, be thoughtful and deliberate about where you move. My vote is to locate where you can recruit, not for the CEO’s commute.
If you have 5+ employees, you might want to check out the Metro FlexPass program[1]. It’s under $25/month per employee for an all-inclusive bus pass. It’s a great perk that even small startups like ours can afford.
1. http://transit.metrokc.gov/cs/employer/ctr-fpprograms.html
Interesting comment on moving the office to where the “recruiting” is, but I would say you can take it one step further: recruit from everywhere.
We have a development staff of 4 people who work from Chicago, Washington DC and Florida and it works extremely well. When I was recruting for the last group, we discovered that the Washington, DC, area was overpriced and with a very low tech unemployment rate, we had to broaden our horizons.
And we are glad we did. We found better people and now they all work from home. There have been some changes, but we all adapted, including using some great online collaboration tools.
While I know that most people prefer the “face-in-the-office” approach, I will say (and have proven) that the better way to build the best team is to build it virtually. We bring everyone together a few times a year, which makes it more fun.