Glassdoor tech firm moving its HQ to S.F.
Glassdoor, an internet company that lets workers rate employers, may get a thumbs-up from its own employees who found the commute to Marin challenging. The firm is moving its headquarters from Mill Valley to a San Francisco office tower and plans to add 300 jobs.
Glassdoor had long been an anomaly in Mill Valley, a high-profile tech company in a small city where the biggest employers include retailers, restaurants and the local retirement community. Its future home, a 24-story office tower in the southern Financial District, is the former headquarters of Bechtel Corp., the engineering giant that built BART and left San Francisco for Northern Virginia last year.
Glassdoor will maintain an office in Mill Valley to accommodate employees who live in Marin and the North Bay.
As non-tech companies have departed San Francisco for more affordable cities, tech companies and related firms have grown further. Pinterest and DoorDash moved from Palo Alto to San Francisco, as did scooter company Lime from San Mateo, seeking to be closer to potential employees and gain more room to expand. Sitecore, which makes customer experience
software, used to have its U.S. headquarters in Mill Valley but moved to San Francisco a year ago after an interim stop in Sausalito.
Glassdoor CEO Robert Hohman said the move is a culmination of the company’s growth in San Francisco in the past few years and in response to employees’ preference for the city. Glassdoor has an office at 353 Sacramento St., and employees there will move to the new headquarters at 50 Beale St.
“There’s a variety of reasons that people want to be in the city. There’s an energy — being able to walk out of the building and being surrounded by shops and places to eat,” he said.
The building is a block from the Embarcadero BART and Muni station and near Transbay bus service, which was also attractive, he said. The San Francisco Business Times first reported Glassdoor was in talks for a lease at 50 Beale St.
“We’re a little isolated here” in Mill Valley, said Hohman. “If you were in the East Bay or the South Bay, it was a very challenging commute.”
Paramount Group, the owner of 50 Beale St., is giving the building a new entrance and renaming it 300 Mission St. The change of name is likely a nod to the southward shift of the city’s economic center of gravity to Mission Street and the nearby Salesforce Tower.
Glassdoor has leased four floors and will move 500 of its current employees in by fall of 2020. Blue Shield, currently a major tenant, will move its headquarters this year to a new Oakland tower. Its departure, coming shortly after Bechtel’s, will free up room for Glassdoor amid a tight office market.
Hohman declined to disclose how much rent Glassdoor will pay, but said the San Francisco lease is more expensive than its current location.
Mill Valley’s average office asking rent is under $50 a square foot per year, compared to San Francisco’s average rent of more than $80 per square foot, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
Asked how big Glassdoor’s Mill Valley office will be in the future, a company spokeswoman said by email: “We expect a majority of our Bay Area employees to be based in the new San Francisco headquarters location. Meanwhile, we will continue to operate in Marin for the foreseeable future and we will maintain enough space to accommodate Marin and North Bay residents.”
While Mill Valley has “dozens” of small, 5-10 person tech companies, “I’m not aware of any other large employer tech firms here,” Jim Welte, director of Membership and Community Engagement at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce, said by email. The recent opening of a WeWork co-working space in Mill Valley has been a boon to many locals working in tech, according to Welte.
As for Glassdoor, “we support their growth and appreciate that they’re going to maintain a sizable footprint here for the foreseeable future,” he said.
Glassdoor started in Novato in 2007 and soon moved to Sausalito, before moving again, in 2014, to Mill Valley. It allows employees to review their companies and provide salary data. It also has job listings, and Hohman said much of the company’s growth will focus on recruiting services.
Glassdoor said it has 49 million reviews spanning around 900,000 companies in 160 countries. It has 67 million unique users and 900 employees worldwide.
Last year, Japanese company Recruit Holdings bought Glassdoor for $1.2 billion, which has enabled the company to focus on long-term growth, said Hohman.
Hohman said Glassdoor is expanding around the country, in places like Chicago, as well as in the Bay Area.
“San Francisco is a fascinating market. The talent here is so good,” said Hohman. “It’s so expensive and it’s so constrained, though.”
Chronicle staff writer Kate Galbraith contributed to this
report.