Zynga arrives in San Mateo

“The change is phenomenal,” Bonilla said at the Sept. 22 ceremony. “This place is where new, modern and good jobs are created.”

Zynga’s vice president of Real Estate and Workplace Experience, Ken Stuart, said the company had been planning the move for two years since the pandemic. Stuart highlighted the new space would help its hybrid plans and offer great amenities and transit. Zynga has tried to take the good of both virtual and in-person work and bring them together in a welcoming environment as it transitions to a hybrid future. Stuart said the company realized it had too much real estate in San Francisco and wanted to find a better space for its new hybrid model.

“We feel this place offered the best all-around experience for our employees,” Stuart said. “It was easily accessible by multiple freeways, it had the trains and was walkable outside with local amenities. It checked all the boxes for us.”

Zynga has slightly under 500 employees in the Bay Area, and the office can support around 245 people at a workstation and up to about 400 if people come and go through the day. Zynga could also quickly change it to support 500 workstations if workers forgo the hybrid model. The office combines shared and individual workstations, with 77 meeting rooms of varying sizes and most of the working space designed for collaboration. The newly built office includes an in-house coffee bar, a fully equipped game room and a designated “barking lot” for Zynga’s dog-friendly environment. Other amenities include a wellness space, a lactation room for nursing parents and gender-neutral bathrooms.

“I’m thrilled to welcome Zynga to the 22nd Assembly District and San Mateo,” Assembly Speaker pro Tem Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, said at the ceremony. “This is an epicenter of the innovation economy, and it’s because of all of you.”

“You really thought about how you do a hybrid workplace in the modern era,” said state Sen. Josh Becker, D-San Mateo. “You make it welcoming for people but still have that flexibility to work at home. This is really on the cutting edge of how we think about work going forward.”

According to IBISWorld, the company has around 2,570 employees and accounts for a large share of the social network game development market. The company has about 183 million active mobile game users. Mark Pincus started Zynga in 2007 to create a social poker game to launch on Facebook and was named after Pincus’ dog, according to its website.

curtis@smdailyjournal.com

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