TaskRabbit Goes Fully Remote, Vacates All Offices And S.F. HQ
TaskRabbit has announced that it will be vacating its offices nationwide as the company shifts to a fully remote work model. That includes its headquarters at 425 Second St. in San Francisco.
The company has already closed its offices in New York and London and will also be closing its location in Austin, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. The company’s space in Austin at 2201 Donley Drive will open up 11K SF, with JLL currently listing the property. The New York offices were closed in 2020.
TaskRabbit began shifting away from in-office work earlier in the year, with CEO Ania Smith telling The Washington Post, “I tend to believe that the future of work looks very different than the way work looked a couple years ago, and so we are at the forefront of really becoming a remote-first company where we don't force people to go back into the office but instead are making connections and allowing for connections to happen more naturally, whether it's in person or on Zoom or Google Hangouts.”
The company will organize monthly meetups for employees in San Francisco, Austin and London, and bimonthly meetups in New York City and Los Angeles, based primarily on the number of employees in those metros.
TaskRabbit’s departure from the space in San Francisco comes at a tough time for the city’s overall office vacancy rate. The company previously occupied nearly 20K SF in San Francisco, before reducing that to 7.5K SF this year, prior to its decision to vacate.
San Francisco’s return to office usage is lagging behind that of other metros, and vacancy is rising, especially downtown. The commercial real estate segment hoping that Big Tech will eventually fill in the gaps, but there have been other high-profile departures this year in that field, including PayPal vacating its 79K SF space at 425 Market St.
