Business expenses are higher maintaining the HQ in San Francisco than if the HQ was moved to Charlotte.
11 replies (most recent on top)
Will anyone admin California is bad for anyone not just WF?
Out of 260,000 employees, only a very small fraction work at the HQ building in San Francisco, so not a significant expense. Also, SF is part of our heritage, all of those stagecoaches had to take the gold somewhere and they sure as heck weren't going to take it to Charlotte, NC!
@1poj. Obviously you have a coastal bias, and I bet you have never set foot in any one of the cities you call a shithole.
I wouldn’t touch real estate in NYC, SF or LA with a ten foot pole. Ridiculous to pay so much for so little. You can have it.
OP clearly doesn’t understand the talented and educated live in the big cities like SF, LA or NYC. No one with a solid education wants to waste their life in a sh*t ho-e like CLT or Des Moines and certainly not Texas. That is why HQ is in SF.
Look, San Fran Sicko is the worst city to hire knowledge workers. You have the best and brightest of the heartland coming here to work in tech but at Wells we only have the pay scale to employ the D-minus tech employees.
Why the h*ll are we not staffing up in the heartland to get the smart people?
Charlotte is the worst of all worlds, d-mbest employees and highest cost.
If they want lower costs, they should have more roles moved to Texas. Presuming you don't pick downtown Austin or something, prices will be lower there than anywhere else WF has a significant presence.
My son lives in Charlotte and he tells me that the cost of living is skyrocketing there. Rents and housing prices are going through the roof and it’s happening fast.
Headquarters is a ceremonial designation. There is no cost advantage to moving it to Charlotte.
SF, NYC and Charlotte are all on the enterprise target destination list for locations. they are not exiting SF.
Real estate expenses continue to be managed down - shrinking the physical footprint in many markets, including SF and Charlotte. There just isn't that much in NYC to start with so you likely won't be seeing shrinkage there.
At a certain level in the org, jobs are "flat priced" - there is no difference by geography... so all of the exec hiring in NY is not increasing cost - they'd get paid the same no matter where. Charlie and his hires are all in real estate (hudson yards) that was previously decided to be in NY due to the wealth businesses.
Headcount expenses are managed at the level of jobs that have area differentials... this differential starts at levels 4-6 down from CEO (depending on job family).
San Francisco?! Try New York City, just as expensive if not more. Kind of ironic those at the top preach about expenses being so high but choose to work in NYC high dollar district? Emblematic of not practicing what they preach. If they're interested in saving money, Minneapolis, Des Moines or Irving are all far cheaper. But wait, they don't wanna have have HQ there do they!
It is not the HQ anymore really. Schart and all his cronies from JPM are all based in NYC.