When a Silicon Valley company plans one of these "Taj Mahal" campuses, it's usually a sign that the wheels are about to fall off of its business, if they haven't already. Years ago, Atari built a huge central campus in Sunnyvale, and the company was effectively out of business before the complex was completed. First Apple, and later Cisco, planned to consolidate all their offices on a huge parcel in the Coyote Valley in far south San Jose, and both companies abandoned their plans when market conditions changed and their sales dried up. Borland built a huge office complex in Scotts Valley, complete with indoor swimming pool and athletic club, and ended up abandoning the facility after building only half of the planned buildings. Excite@Home built a huge two-building headquarters on the former Ampex campus in Redwood City. When the company went under, the buildings sat empty for years, a "white elephant" in one of the most visible locations in Northern California.
There's a huge number of unoccupied and under-occupied buildings in Silicon Valley that Yahoo could lease at very favorable rates. Why build new buildings when there are plenty of buildings already available at fire sale prices? This decision, along with Carol Bartz's $47.2 million compensation package for her first year at the company, makes me wonder who's in charge at Yahoo and what they're thinking.
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2 comments:
Three words..Santa Clara Power!. Its sooo much cheaper than PG@E that it will save hundreds of thousands of dollars in electricity fees. The second reason will be consolidation of the Great America campus's with the Sunnyvale campus's. This will save hundreds of thousands of dollars. The third reason is to build the buildings from the beginning to LEED certifications with solar power providing 8 percent of the company's power usage. This will save thousands of dollars. The company doesnt want to live in outdated spread out disfunctional buildings. They are a profitable company and have the cash to do it so why are you complaining..Im glad Carol is our boss and not you.
Frankly, if you see saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as a good trade-off for an unnecessary capital investment of hundreds of millions of dollars, I'm glad I'm not your boss, either, because I'd have to fire you.
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