Category: Workplace

GAWKER: Facebook Is Building Its Own "Resort-Inspired" Factory Town

Facebook is dipping its big blue thumb into the real estate market, investing in a cushy 394-unit apartment complex that’s a 45-minute walk to its new Frank Gehry-designed Menlo Park campus . The $120 million Anton Menlo will be designed by architects at KTGY Group in a partnership with St. Anton Developers (hence the name) and offer a mix of studios and one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments on a 10-acre site. KTGY’s Keith Labus tells the San Francisco Chronicle the "resort-inspired" complex will have "everything the young professional could want to complement their busy lifestyle." Amenities include a pool, rooftop deck, communal kitchen, bodega, bar, bike repair shop, yoga room, personal trainer, dog day care and a pet spa. A PET SPA, you guys! This all sounds eerily similar to HomeTown, the dorms of a Facebook-like company in Dave Eggers’ new novel The Circle , which was excerpted in the New York Times Magazine last weekend (and is also facing claims that Eggers lifted the story from an ex-Facebook memoirist ): She felt a profound sense of accomplishment and possibility that was accompanied, in short order, by a near-complete sense of exhaustion. It was almost midnight, and she needed sleep. It was too late to go all the way home, so she checked the dorm availability, reserved one, got her access code, walked across campus and into HomeTown. When she closed the door to her room, she felt like a fool for not taking advantage of the dorms sooner. The room was immaculate, awash in silver fixtures and blond woods, the floors warm from radiant heat, the sheets and pillowcases so white and crisp they crackled when touched. The mattress, explained a card next to the bed, was organic, made not with springs or foam but instead a new […]

It Hits the Fan for Mom Bloggers Everywhere – We're looking at you WSJ

Let’s start with the title. “The Mommy Business Trip” is the headline on Katherine Rosman’s piece in the Wall Street Journal and its tagline is the equally icky “Conferences Appeal to Women With A Guilt-Free, Child-Free Reason to Leave Home.” It gets worse from there. In 1,228 words, Rosman takes a real trend — the explosion of conferences for women with online businesses and a parallel surge in the numbers of advertisers who are courting those entrepreneurs — and turns it into a tale of desperate housewives who use the pretext of work as an excuse to escape from home and act like ninnies. A few questions: Is it possible that the reason a woman attends events like BlogHer and Mom 2.0 is NOT because she needs an excuse to “leave her husband and children,” but rather because those conferences provide her with the connection and know-how to do her job? Would Rosman ever describe Dad 2.0, which attracted hundreds of men who write about parenting, as a gaggle of Daddies “who need a legitimate reason to leave home”? Haven’t men been going to sales meetings and conferences for generations? Staying at lovely hotels and dining in fine restaurants — and sometimes acting really silly? Do you think there is a single article about men and work travel that oozes the same patronizing tone as this one? Find me one. I challenge you. Isn’t there a big ‘ol conference in Austin every spring , where the crowd is mostly male and the schmoozing and partying is considered far more of the draw than the actual sessions? Didn’t Rosman write about that conference two years back, calling South By Southwest a place where “Internet entrepreneurs, engineers, journalists, promoters, moneymen and web-savvy Hollywood types meet to discuss technology, brand and buzz”? […]