Austin has been one of the fastest growing U.S. cities for the past few years. Yet, despite the rapid pace, it seems like this trend will only accelerate, as more major companies are relocating to Austin and bringing hundreds of jobs with them.
The latest company to join the trend is enterprise software company Oracle, which announced on Friday that it was formally moving its corporate headquarters from the Bay Area to Austin. The news was first reported by CNBC and confirmed to Built In by an Oracle spokesperson.
“We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work,” a statement from a company spokesperson read.
It’s worth noting that Oracle has had a presence in Austin for years. In 2018, the company expanded that presence even further with the opening of its southeast campus that has room to fit up to 10,000 employees.
Still, officially switching its corporate headquarters from its Redwood City location in California to Austin is significant because the company has been based out of the Bay Area since it was founded in 1977 in Santa Clara.
Oracle is far from the only company to leave the Bay Area this year. Although Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area have been a hot spot for tech companies since before the first dot-com boom, many of its residents are quick to criticize its high housing costs and general over-crowdedness. These inconveniences were seen as opportunity costs for being in one of the tech epicenters of the world.
But this year has caused many to reconsider their attachments to where they’re located. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced countless employees to work remotely for the majority of 2020, and, as a result, companies and employees alike are debating whether it’s worth staying in the Bay Area. This has led to an ongoing exodus, which has benefited other American cities, like Austin and Denver, by bringing high-paying jobs and stimulating local economies. The Wall Street Journal notes that the companies that announced relocations to Austin this year are expected to create almost 10,000 new jobs collectively — a record number largely driven by tech companies’ local growth.
Oracle cites changes in its flexible employee work location policy as the reason for its corporate headquarters relocation. Like many other tech companies, a significant portion of Oracle’s employees have been working remotely this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that’s likely to continue in the near future.
But even as Oracle prioritizes remote work, the company has hundreds of job openings listed on its website that are open to workers in the Austin area. These jobs are for roles across all aspects of the business, from engineering, to business development, sales, finance and more.
Although many of these jobs are currently remote, the fact that Oracle’s corporate headquarters is now in Austin probably means that the 135,000-person company will continue to be a major employer in the area over the next few years.
