Pinterest is paying $90 million to cancel its lease at its yet-to-be-built HQ replacing the tennis club at 5th/Brannan. https://twitter.com/laura_waxee/status/1299498712041955328

Can anyone explain why Pinterest needed 490,000 sq ft for 3000 employees? Has it changed at all since it had 20 employees?

It's another one of those 2010s bubble companies. It has lost billions of dollars, but acted like it's super profitable.

Pinterest is the perfect avatar of the 2010s tech bubble in SF, in real estate.

It started out small but very luxe, with the classic Soma loft at 7th/Brannan, with all the space devoted to interior design, toys, catered food. Almost no work space.

By 2018, moved in to this new construction office building at 4th/Brannan. What do all these people do?

Like all tech companies now, the office is all about the massive free food court and event space.

By 2019, Pinterest, never having made a penny, was ready to move in to 490,000 square feet of of SF tech utopia. https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2019/03/20/pinterest-inks-huge-lease-in-soma-at-proposed-1.html

This is so SF tech.

All roof decks and private interior courts, insulated from the city. A monolithic city block-sized building, designed to vary the facade, so it looks less monotonous. No defining character other than $ and being new.

https://iwamotoscott.com/projects/bluxome