US streaming giant cuts 45,000 sq ft of Manchester space
Roku is looking to slash its footprint by more than a third less than two years after it signed for 115,000 sq ft at Bruntwood SciTech’s Circle Square.
The US streaming company has appointed Colliers to find a company to sublease a 45,000 sq ft chunk of its floorspace at No1 Circle Square off Oxford Road in Manchester.
Roku, Bruntwood, and Colliers declined to comment when approached by Place North West.
Roku opened its Manchester office in early 2022 having signed for the space the previous autumn. The deal was the largest in the city in 2021.
The company’s Manchester site is its fourth in the UK. The others are in London, Cambridge, and Cardiff.
Speaking last year, Alastair McGeoch, director of software engineering at Roku said the company had chosen Manchester for its “incredible talent pool” and announced plans to recruit more than 50 software engineers by the end of 2022.
Roku’s arrival in Manchester was part of a flurry of deals at Circle Square, which also saw Octopus Energy, and Uber sign up.
That spike in letting activity at Circle Square contributed significantly to Manchester’s annual take-up exceeding 1m sq ft in 2021.
This was an increase of 200,000 sq ft compared to the pandemic-impacted 2020.
Can’t get the staff outside of London, Cambridge and Oxford, that’s why they are the golden triangle
By Gilly
This is nothing more than the backside dropping out of the Tech Market and was to be expected. JP Morgan have just committed to an office here so not sure they share your view on lack of talent.
By Bob
@Gilly you can get the staff easily theres just no point coming into the office when software development can be done from home.
By Capture-75
You’d have thought they’d leave Manchester altogether then Gilly, rather than reduce by a third. Clearly you know more than the director of software engineering at Roku..
By Anonymous
Manchester is definitely one of the places to be for high tech jobs. That’s why so many companies like Amazon , HP, BT and the Cybersecurity service amongst many others located here in the first place.
By Obvs
Gilly. Silly comment when they are moving to a city which has the fastest growing productivity in Britain and since 2014 the fastest growing house prices.
By Elephant
Working in the streaming industry myself, my understanding for this is that this has less to do with working from home, nothing to do with not finding qualified staff and more to do with the fact that Roku has failed to take any significant market share in the UK. Roku has nearly 40% of the US streaming device market, whilst here it is only 6% and dropping fast. Most of that 6% was white label offerings like the Now TV stick, but that has pretty much died with Now TV switching to apps on other devices or their own Sky Glass. The most popular streaming stick in the UK is the Fire TV stick, with smart TVs (especially Samsung) leading with the largest market share.
Working from home is a complicated story. Whilst engineers can technically work from home, it’s very quickly been found that efficiency in the design industries suffer from lack of face to face collaboration. While hybrid working still exists everywhere, many tech companies in the US have been reducing the time allowed at home and increasing office time. They still keep hybrid working, but just less. This does depend by company, but Roku was in the camp that has shifted back to more office work.
By EOD