Oracle moving from California to Texas, joins Tesla, Hewlett Packard

[TruckElectric]

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is Tesla's second largest individual shareholder behind Musk

The smart money may be sticking together and sticking it to California.

Oracle is joining Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in moving some operations to Texas, detailing the move in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday.

"Oracle is implementing a more flexible employee work location policy and has changed its Corporate Headquarters from Redwood City, California to Austin, Texas. We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work. Depending on their role, this means that many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part-time or all of the time. In addition, we will continue to support major hubs for Oracle around the world, including those in the United States such as redwood City, Austin, Santa Monica, Seattle, Denver, Orlando and Burlington, among others, and we expect to add other locations over time. By implementing a more modern approach to work, we expect to further improve our employees’ quality of life and quality of output" the SEC filing noted.

While the move signals working remotely is here to stay, it also signals more corporations could be becoming disillusioned with California.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is the second-largest individual shareholder in Tesla behind CEO Elon Musk and sits on the electric-vehicle maker's board. Last summer, Tesla chose Austin for its new factory, after considering other cities including Tusla, Oklahoma.

Earlier this week Musk blasted California for driving a corporate exodus, likening the state to a sports team that is used to winning and has grown complacent.

California, like a winning sports team that “has been winning for a long time,” has taken innovators for granted, Musk said, adding, “You have a forest of redwoods and the little trees can’t grow.”

Musk made the comments in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Tuesday. In the interview, Musk revealed that he personally had moved to Texas after growing frustrated with the Golden State.

Earlier this month, Hewlett Packard Enterprise also announced it was moving its headquarters to Houston.

“HPE has made the decision to relocate its headquarters from San Jose, California, to Houston, Texas. HPE’s largest U.S. employment hub, Houston is an attractive market to recruit and retain future diverse talent, and is where the company is currently constructing a state-of-the-art new campus. The Bay Area will continue to be a strategic hub for HPE innovation, and the company will consolidate a number of sites in the Bay Area to its San Jose campus. No layoffs are associated with this move.”

SOURCE: FOX BUSINESS


Software giant Oracle moving corporate HQ to Austin

In another win for Central Texas' surging technology sector, software giant Oracle confirmed Friday that it is moving its corporate headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin.

“Oracle is implementing a more flexible employee work location policy and has changed its Corporate Headquarters from Redwood City, California to Austin, Texas. We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work,” the company said in a written statement.

Oracle, the second-largest software company in the world, did not immediately provide a timeline for the formal move, or say how many jobs it might bring to Austin. Oracle’s current Austin workforce is estimated at about 2,500 people, according to the Austin Chamber of Commerce.

"While some states are driving away businesses with high taxes and heavy-handed regulations, we continue to see a tidal wave of companies like Oracle moving to Texas thanks to our friendly business climate, low taxes, and the best workforce in the nation," Gov. Greg Abbott said in a written statement.

Abbott's office said the state didn't provide any financial incentives to encourage Oracle's move to Texas.

"Welcome home, Oracle! Austin yet again contributing to economic development in Texas," Austin Mayor Steve Adler wrote on Twitter.

Laura Huffman, president of the Austin Chamber of Commerce, called the news a huge “holiday present for Austin,” saying the chamber has worked with Oracle in the past but didn’t learn about its relocation plans until the company announced the move Friday afternoon.

“I think obviously we can expect to see new jobs in Austin,” Huffman said. “Whether or not the chief executive moves to Austin, I think that remains to be seen. But generally, when people announce headquarters, there are a lot of core functions for these large businesses” that come with them.

The move by Oracle comes on the heels of the July news that Tesla would build a $1.1 billion Austin area manufacturing facility that could employ as many as 5,000 people. It also follows announcements in the past three years of expansion plans by Apple and other technology companies.

Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives said Austin is likely to continue to be among the top destinations for technology companies leaving the Silicon Valley, a trend that has increased in recent months amid the pandemic: “This is a clear trend of more tech stars moving out of the Valley to other locations.

“Austin’s front and center. Tesla’s led the charge. And it's really becoming a core technology hub, because of the engineering community and a lot of the startups that have succeeded in Austin over the last decade, with many of them coming in at Dell,” Ives said. “Austin's really become the Goldilocks location for companies moving out of the Valley."

Austin economist Angelos Angelou called the Oracle news "a huge development for Austin's future."

"It follows the recruitment of Apple and Tesla and other companies that are really going to guarantee Austin a decade of significant growth, the likes of which we've never seen before," he said.

While tech giants — including Facebook, Google and Amazon — have expanded in Central Texas, for a company to move its corporate headquarters here "is a huge boost to the region's global reputation as a high-tech center," Angelou said.

Oracle relocating to Austin "puts us ahead of the game, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be followed by others. The business climate in Texas compared to California as well as our highly skilled tech talent will keep them coming," he said.

Even if Oracle doesn't move hundreds of workers to Austin immediately, the company will concentrate its hiring future here, resulting in a wave of new talent. Some of those workers will eventually leave to start their own companies, fostering a new wave of startups, he said.

"No matter how many jobs they bring here, it's the corporate headquarters and that's a marquee event," Angelou said. "From an economic development standpoint, this is really fantastic news that's beyond anyone's imagination."

Amber Gunst, CEO of the Austin Technology Council, said Oracle's decision is a big win for Austin.

“This move is a great win for Austin and the incredible team Oracle has built in our community,” Gunst said in a written statement. “The level of executive talent that will join the local campus will have a significant influence not only on the growth of Oracle employees, but to other leaders and companies in the tech community through mentorship, sponsorship, and thought leadership,”

Business-friendly policies in Texas helped encourage Oracle to make the move, said Patrick Moorhead, a technology analyst and founder of Austin-based consulting firm Moor Insights and Strategy.

"Texas has fostered a jobs-friendly environment with lower taxes, lower cost of living and less red tape to create and run businesses. California, on the other hand, is headed in a different direction. When you add in an educated Austin population base, the city is a natural destination," Moorhead said.

Moorhead said he also expected the move would result in additional jobs coming to Austin.

"I believe this will translate to increased Austin headcount for Oracle. At a minimum, we will see more HQ staff move to Austin from California," he said.

Waco-based economist Ray Perryman said that as an industry leader, "the fact that Oracle has chosen to headquarter in Austin is further indication of the area's continued emergence and establishment as a center for multiple technologies."

The advantages of an Austin location in terms of the quality of the workforce and business climate "are hard to beat," he said.

"The location will ultimately offer opportunities for Texans across a spectrum of job types, both onsite once the pandemic is dealt with and remotely," Perryman said. "It will also create synergies for additional activity."

Oracle already has a significant presence in Austin. In 2018 it opened a five-story, 560,000-square-feet campus overlooking Lady Bird Lake in Southeast Austin.

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the time that facility opened, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison said he expects the corporate campus in Austin to grow to as large as 10,000 employees.

"We have big plans," Ellison told the crowd in 2018. "We have a handful of hubs in the United States, and Austin is one of the key places we want to be because that's where we think our people want to be."

Oracle's sleek Austin campus was designed to attract recent college graduates. It includes outdoor terraces with views of downtown, a fitness center, "huddle rooms" and a "tech bar" to give employees the ability to get their computers and devices repaired quickly.

Along with its original land purchase, Oracle bought a new apartment complex, called Azul, just steps from its new office building as a housing option for its employees. The apartment acquisition marked the first time Oracle bought an apartment building on an Oracle campus.

The campus, an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars, is expected to be transformative for a part of town along East Riverside Drive that is rapidly gentrifying with hundreds of new luxury housing units.

Oracle in recent years has worked to attract young talent as it shifted its focus to the cloud and built hubs for those sales groups.

Employees in the Austin campus's first phases were working mainly in sales-oriented jobs for its cloud services, a business unit Oracle has expanded globally. The jobs include direct selling, lead qualification, prospecting and technical support.

SOURCE: Austin American-Statesman

 

[TruckElectric]

Apple will be next.

In the Ars Technica article about Oracle's move to Austin it says "Apple announced a major expansion of its Austin campus two years ago. Its headquarters continues to be in Silicon Valley."

But according to this Bloomberg graphic Austin shares HQ with Cupertino.

 

[Crissa]

So far, none of these companies that have tried to move their HQ to Texas have succeeded in taking their workforces with them.

These breathless articles usually fail to note that.

-Crissa

 

[Newton]

Is elon actually moving tesla? I thought he was just moving himself and family.

Either way I want CA back. Would be nice to be able to afford a house where I grew up.

 

[Crissa]

Gonna hafta pry the land out of speculators and inherited landlords, first.

Elon has threatened, mostly when the County of Alameda was rightfully alarmed but also not willing to actually put in place measures that could be followed for the time span needed.

Of course, there are reasons, mostly Federal, for that problem.

-Crissa

 

[azjohn]

Not just cooperation's are leaving but people have been fleeing California for the past couple of years. One of the reasons I left Arizona is it is turning into another California.

 

[Crissa]

Not just cooperation's are leaving but people have been fleeing California for the past couple of years. One of the reasons I left Arizona is it is turning into another California.

Good riddance, I suppose.

Weirdly, the competition for rents and home-buying hasn't dropped.

-Crissa

 

[Newton]

I was lyfting some people around the bay area last year, a couple times an Indian person commented about how it was so wierd that all their neighbors are chinese and indian. I guess if u got the needed skills the market will bring in whoever's has it

 

[Crissa]

Yep. And they get paid for it, too.

-Crissa

 

[empiredown]

ẞ

 

[Quicksilver]

Not just cooperation's are leaving but people have been fleeing California for the past couple of years. One of the reasons I left Arizona is it is turning into another California.

So far, none of these companies that have tried to move their HQ to Texas have succeeded in taking their workforces with them.

This is not a recent trend. I recall a "60 Minutes" segment (younger readers will not get this) that showcased a business owner that moved his factory and most of his workforce from California to Arizona. This was back in the late 70's or early 80's. I can't remember the Arizona city but they had an industrial park that needed tenants and a subdivision that had many houses that had gone unsold. The city and state provided incentives to the businessman to relocate there.

The owner of the company cut a deal with city leaders and developers. He moved the factory and any employee that wanted to move with it. The move was accomplished in a series of lifts that moved equipment and employees along with their household goods. The owner paid for all the move and helped employees buy or rent homes in the subdivision that needed tenants

Almost 95 percent of his workforce moved with him.

When asked by the interviewer why he left California the owner replied, " the Liberal agenda of California politics, high taxes, crime rates, cost of doing business due to regulations and taxes and quality of life for him and his employees".

The more things change the more they stay the same.

 

[Crissa]

And yet, California continues to have enough kids to replace those who left. Birth rate is generally above net domestic emigration.

Toyota wasn't able to move most of their workforce. Who would want to leave? White-collar workers don't, if they have homes here. Cleaner air, cleaner water, more parks, cheaper food, less power needed to be comfortable.

Blue-collar workers are more likely to be crushed by the housing market and willing to move. My county has literally shrank over the last two decades. More and more of the homes are vacation homes. People can't afford to live here because we don't replace the homes that are lost with in-kind.

Very frustrating, yes, but the same NIMBYs liver everywhere. Anyone complaining about liberals is just lying, because they never cite anything they're not taking with them.

-Crissa