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Oracle said it has moved its headquarters to Texas from its home state of California to give employees more flexibility over where they work.
The move from Redwood City to Austin “means many of our employees can choose their office location and continue to work from home part time or all the time,” Oracle said Friday in a regulatory filing. The company will continue to “support” its other US offices in Santa Monica, California, Seattle, Denver, Orlando and Burlington, Mass., According to the filing.
The spread of the coronavirus has prompted many companies to offer employees flexible arrangements, including the ability to work from home. The software maker said it had 135,000 employees at the end of May. Some companies, executives and employees are abandoning California over concerns about state tax rates and the high cost of living, as well as arduous commutes in some places.
Oracle’s transfer of resources away from California dates back to at least 2018, led by President Larry Ellison and the late Co-CEO Mark Hurd. That year, Oracle opened a campus in Austin, including an on-site apartment building for employees, in an effort to recruit a younger, lower-cost workforce. The campus could potentially accommodate 10,000 staff, Oracle said at the time.
Founded in 1977, Oracle was a foundational Silicon Valley company, and its silver-blue cylindrical buildings in Redwood City, visible from US Highway 101, are the rare landmark in this otherwise sprawling region. He follows other tech innovators to de-emphasize their Californian roots. Server Creator Hewlett Packard Enterprise declared on December 1 that he move headquarters in a suburb of Houston, where he is building a new campus. Palantir Technologies Inc. moved to Denver this year from Palo Alto, California.
You’re here founder Elon Musk said this week this he moved to texas to focus on the major projects underway for Tesla as well as for Space Exploration Technologies Corp., which he also heads. He had previously moved his private foundation, based in California, to Austin. The move has huge tax implications for high net worth individuals. Texas has no personal income tax, while California imposes the highest personal income taxes in the country on its wealthiest residents.
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