> There is no bigger ego-trip for the insecure managers than moving the company to some distant place. [...] Of course, they are marvelously somber when explaining the rationale behind the move. They talk about the escalating price of space or the tax structure of the old location and the benefits of the new one. Whatever the reasons given for the move, you can be sure the real reasons are very different. [...]
> The typical person being moved today is part of a two-career family. The other half of that equation is probably not being moved, so the corporate move comes down hard on the couple's relationship at a very delicate point. It brings intolerable stress to bear on the accommodation they're both striving to achieve to allow two full-fledged careers. That's hitting below the belt. Modern couples won't put up with it and they won't forgive it. [...]
> "Forget the successes," [said Ray Ketchledge]. "The failure was that move. You can't believe what it cost us in turnover." He went on to give some figures. The immediate calculable cost of the move was the number of people who quit before relocation day. Expressed as a percentage of those who moved, this initial turnover was greater than the French losses int he trenches of World War 1.
> You can do less damage to you organization by lining up the staff in front of a machine gun than you could do by moving. And that accounts only for the initial loss. In the case of bell Labs, there was another large exodus starting about a year after the move. These were people who had honestly tried to go along with the company. They moved and, when they didn't like the new location, they moved again.
"A Special Pathology: The Company Move", Peopleware, chapter 19
They’re not actually moving. They’re just tagging a new campus as “HQ,” just like they did in 2020 when they “moved” to Austin, and just like they’ll do again in 2028 when they move to whichever state fits their narrative at that time.
I was wondering how they were just going to get a sizable number of employees to move from California to Tennessee of all places, but the article reminded me they already moved in the past to Austin, Texas. So maybe it's not that much of a move from there, distance-wise or culturally! Still kind of a big, inconvenient move for people.
I’m sure Tennessee is a great place to live if you’re a straight white man, of course the core state principles of women having no right to bodily autonomy, only straight white people have the right to exist.
My assumption is it will become a mandatory move for people, and if they “choose” to not live in a state where murdering them is legal that’s their choice.
