Oracle is relocating its California-based headquarters to Austin, Texas, making it the latest tech company to decamp from Silicon Valley.
“Oracle is implementing a more flexible employee work location policy and has changed its Corporate Headquarters from Redwood Shores, California to Austin, Texas,” a company spokesperson confirmed to Gizmodo after Bloomberg first reported the news Friday. “We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work.”
Most employees will have the option to either pick their office location or continue working from home, whether that be part time or full time, the company added. It will also “continue to support” its major hubs worldwide, including U.S. office locations in Santa Monica, Seattle, Denver, Orlando and Burlington, among others.
“By implementing a more modern approach to work, we expect to further improve our employees’ quality of life and quality of output,” Oracle said.
The enterprise software giant has been based out of Redwood City, California, since the ‘80s, and is the largest employer there by far, representing more than 13% of the job market. However, the spread of the coronavirus pandemic has prompted many of Silicon Valley’s biggest names to adopt more flexibile guidelines on where employees do their jobs and, by extension, to ditch California for greener (read: less expensive) pastures.
Computer hardware maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced on Dec. 1 that it’s leaving San Jose and moving its headquarters to a “state of the art” campus being built in Houston, Texas. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said this week that he’s also relocating to Texas, reportedly to take advantage of the state’s lack of personal income tax. His exodus follows a public feud with California officials earlier this year over the state’s covid-19 lockdown restrictions, which temporarily shuttered Tesla’s Fremont plant.
In a tweet on Friday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott celebrated the news that yet another tech company had been lured to the Lone Star State: “Texas is truly the land of business, jobs, and opportunity. We will continue to attract the very best.”