Don't forget that often (but certainly not always) CEOs will look ahead and try to get a feel for which locations may be a good fit both for their personal and company affairs. Usually due to taxation, regulatory, hiring, cultural, cost of living and a range of other realities. They may make the move themselves ahead of their company's move making it seem like the company later moved merely because of the CEO's new location, but they'd already made the decision that the company move would follow as the sensible thing.

You've already hinted at this, but it's not just selfishness - CEOs are much more mobile than companies. Both the CEO and the company as a whole are subject to similar incentives, but companies are big ships and execs' families are comparatively nimble.

Same with the Amazon "HQ2" relocation, all of the options that were considered happened to be places where Jeff Bezos owns a home.

Damn I’d just like to own one lol

Back to the salt mines with you!

At a specific place or anywhere?

I would like to own one of Bezos’ homes. Doesn’t really matter where as I assume they are all nicer than mine.

Very weak correlation, and hard to prove that "all options" <-> "owned a home"

Is that true? Why would any of that be limiting for a person who could by any home in a given city?

Because even Bezos can't afford to build a city one would want to live in, around any home.

But he probably bought homes in cities he thought were good cities with a future.

I'd guess that Musk personally moved to TX because he's planning on moving SpaceX and (possibly) Tesla HQs to TX.

TX has lots of cheap land, low taxes, business-friendly politics, low cost of living (for employees)....CA is basically the opposite and getting worse.

SpaceX and Tesla cannot move with the ease of software companies due to the facilities and equipment needed to build, test (and in SpaceX's case, launch & land) their vehicles.

???? You can keep factories open in other places and relocate corporate staff comparatively easily. Not to mention you can also build new factories and facilities close to the new HQ once the move happens.

It's particularly interesting given Ellison and Musk have become close in recent years, with Ellison buying a large chunk of Tesla and joining the board (now a $9.5 billion personal holding). Zero chance these moves weren't widely discussed between them over time.

That sounds like a big personal holding. But if he bought it in Early and mid 2019, then he probably spent under a billion for his stake. Which for him isn’t much.

1.5% of the company is still a solid portion. Especially if Musk ever needs to sell shares for some reason and needs an ally with substantial ownership to align with him for continued control

Interesting, hadn't heard about Whyte's rule. I'm sure it is a valid observation, but I wonder whether at least part of it could be explained by a lot of corporations being headquartered on either coast. If your first HQ is as far west or east as you can go, then most places you could move are going to be closer to your CEO's home.

Seems like a good time to invest in some Austin real estate

This is exactly how California was a red state during the silicon boom and then turned into a blue state thereafter. Everything gets expensive and then people look to the government.

Big difference between CA and TX: no Prop 13 in TX. That alone will have a massive impact on how things play out.

are you sure you are not flipping cause and effects here?

Don't believe I am unless you have a convincing argument I'm not aware of.

What was the typical tenure of a Fortune 500 CEO in the 1950s?

Both of those people probably have several homes and easy for them to commute in private jets so don't matter much.

Interesting, somehow I don’t think how companies where run in the 1950-1960 translates to today

Look at the google ML firing/resigning storm, in the 50s someone fired end of story not the CEO saying they will investigate (honesty transparency aside)

>Interesting, somehow I don’t think how companies where run in the 1950-1960 translates to today

In some ways maybe.

In the 50s your wife stayed home to work while you worked a blue-collar job, probably having only a high school diploma (if that), and your blue-collar job supported a family of 2.1 kids, your wife, Rex the dog, a car, and a mortgage in the suburbs. Oh and it probably came with a pension. Everyone smoked indoors. Companies felt obliged to look after their (male) workers and sexual harassment of female employees was routine and casual racism was baked-in to the culture.

Over the years CEO pay has risen something like 1000% and worker pay less than 20%.

Now companies spy on their workers and engage in union-busting while paying their workers a pittance such that even a person working two minimum wage full-time jobs is barely able to sustain a family in the USA and Canada. We don't smoke indoors any more. Sexual harassment of female employees is still routine and casual racism is institutionalized but perhaps less overt today.

I guess society can pride itself of the smoking thing but we've either made no progress or regressed in a lot of ways.

>someone fired end of story

Take off your rose-coloured glasses.

> Sexual harassment of female employees is still routine and casual racism is institutionalized but perhaps less overt today.

Please define what you mean by routine here.

Can you expand on what you mean by “casual racism is institutionalized but perhaps less overt”?

Aside from this being a somewhat strange example to bring up, it's not true.

See, for example, http://online.ceb.com/CalCases/CA2/174CA2d184.htm, a Supreme Court case concerning wrongful termination from 1959.

Not clear on what you are trying to say, the point I am making is today companies bow to public opinion, and the actions of companies spread fast

In the 50s Google would have been unionized and firing would have been harder, not easier, than it is today, all else being equal.

In the 1950's without modern media, social networks, etc., it was a lot easier to sweep some scandal or other major bit of unpleasantness under the rug.

They're not really going to investigate. Then as now, people say what they have to, and then wait for it to go down the memory hole.

"Firing/resigning" which is it, two different events there.

> “Firing/resigning” which is it, two different events there.

Which of those is the case is hotly debated. The legal concept of “constructive termination” recognizes that detailed inquiry into the history leading up to the end of employment may be necessary to distinguish those two things, and in this case its even debated whether it was firing or resignation in the superficial sense, as well as being debated as to whether it was constructive termination even if superficially resignation.