SF News Some Waymos Get Assistance From Remote Workers in the Philippines When They’re Stuck During a hearing on self-driving vehicles in Washington DC Wednesday, a Waymo executive said that remote workers as far away as the Philippines are guiding the robotaxis when they encounter difficult situations, leading lawmakers to accuse the company of putting the American people at risk.
Business & Tech Instagram Ordering Everyone Back to the Office Five Days a Week There's been a long tail on pandemic-era hybrid work across the Bay Area and the tech sector especially, but some big companies like Meta are now cracking the whip and calling for five mandatory in-office days, just like olden times.
Business & Tech Silicon Valley Startups Duped by Developer Who Faked Resume, Worked 4 Jobs Simultaneously A Mumbai-based engineer who excelled in interviews reportedly held multiple Silicon Valley startup jobs at once, often disappearing after landing offers of up to $200K. Soham Parekh impressed on paper, but founders say most of his resume was fake.
SF News Saturday Links: California SEIU President Hospitalized, Arrested at ICE Protest in LA Over 6,500 local residents have been impacted by the closure of SF-Marin Food Bank's 13 pop-up pantries; Mr. S Leather is being sued over its mouth gags; and CA union president David Huerta was hospitalized and remains in federal custody following an ICE protest in LA on Friday.
Business & Tech Salesforce Work-From-Home Party Is Over, Employees Required to Be in Office Three to Five Days a Week SF’s largest private employer Salesforce is bringing the hammer down on its pajama-clad workers who’ve gotten used to remote work, as the company will start requiring employees to work three to five days a week in the office, and they’ll be monitoring security badge scans.
SF News Gump’s Store Owner Slams SF In Open Letter Complaining About Street Conditions, Remote Work The current owner of longtime Union Square retail emporium Gump's took out a full-page ad in Sunday’s Chronicle, an open letter to Governor Newsom, Mayor Breed, and the SF Board of Supervisors about the evils of remote work and the conditions of SF streets.
SF News Business Group Proposes Nebulous 'Reimagining’ of Downtown SF By ‘Reclaiming Street Space’ Would more street closings and beautified public spaces get you back to a moribund downtown San Francisco? One business group is betting so, but the plan is still mostly aspirational and does not yet have a price tag attached.
Business & Tech Persistent Remote-Work Rules Could Well Kill SF's Downtown Hospitality Scene Economists don't expect that metropolitan areas will see more than half their workers return in-person in the coming years, and that could mean disaster for many small businesses around SF's Financial District and SoMa.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Tells Tesla Employees to Stop Working From Home, Or They Can ‘Pretend to Work Somewhere Else’ A leaked email shows that Musk declared to Tesla employees Tuesday that “Remote work is no longer acceptble” [sic] and the work-from-home ride is over for Tesla engineers and execs.
Business & Tech Some Apple Employees Once Again Whining About Being Called Back to the Office Three Days Per Week A group of Apple employees are yet again making noise about their displeasure with being called back to an in-person office three days per week — the horror!
Business & Tech SF Leads the Nation in Workers Who Don’t Want to Return to the Office A Stanford analysis shows a 53% reduction in how much time San Francisco workers are spending in the office compared to pre-pandemic, the largest cutback on office time of any major city’s workforce in the country.
SF News Mayor Breed Would Like You Back Downtown Working in the Office Again, Thank You Very Much The mayor wants businesses to take a “pledge” to return their workers to offices, in a new Welcome Back to SF campaign that’s long on business interests, and short on public health concerns.
Business & Tech In Effort to Placate Employees, Uber Backtracks On Back-to-the-Office Plan Uber is the latest company to offer increasing flexibility for its workforce that has gotten very comfortable with their telecommuting situation.
SF News East Bay Parents Lose Their Minds Over Teacher Who Wouldn't Teach In Person, But Is Going to Mexico For 12 Days There's been another dustup in the many-months' war between Bay Area parents and their children's teachers and school districts, and this time it's about a kindergarten teacher taking a trip out of the country while she's still supposed to be teaching.
SF News Pinterest Abandons Massive SoMa Office Lease Amid Surge in Remote Work With the shift toward more evergreen remote work models still going strong, Pinterest has decided to move away from leasing a massive 490,000-square-foot SoMa office space — and, instead, pay a one-time fee of $89.5M to cut ties with the 88 Bluxome Street address they planned on leasing.
