I could understand if the goal of zoning wanted to preserve Downtown as a destination/place for generating foot traffic/visitors...but I don't see a difference between an office of 1,000 HR people for Amazon and 1,000 software engineers.
In this case, the issue is what happens to non-tech businesses in downtown. When there are a large supply of small and medium professional services business, the bars, restaurants, barbers and small shops do well. The Palantir employees tend to eat in their own cafeteria, and are perceived to purchase less from the local businesses. This is why there's an element of the population that prefers smaller businesses whose employees go downtown during the lunch hour.
The city does have space though, they just choose not to build on it. Another research park could be built and zoned for. (As could more housing)
The article also doesn't quote the many Palo Alto residents who like being a short commute to work, rather than taking Caltrain to SF for tech jobs.
If that is a problem, then the zoning laws should restrict cafeterias, not job functions. The more specific and direct that regulations get, the better things tend to be.
Everyone except the businesses would justifiably riot.
But if an employee goes offsite to get lunch, they have to buy it with after-tax money.
So when the business buys them food, it's effectively at a 1/3 discount to what they'd have to pay after-tax out-of-pocket -- more when you consider sales taxes and bulk discounts!
So it's not exactly a level playing field there either.
Oh, where? I don't drive around much down there but I haven't seen empty lots just lying around like I have in e.g. Sunnyvale (the corn palace plot).
Also, like any city in the US, there is a ton of land dedicated to the storage of automobiles that is unused a great deal of the time.
One could argue that the cafes do replace those businesses, just in a different form. And one would be right, but the tax situation works out differently, especially the sales tax situation.
I spent several years living in Houston, which, at the time, had among the least pleasant downtowns I'd ever seen, or have seen since. It was completely bereft of good food, small shops, etc. There was no reason to go downtown unless you worked there, and no way to live there, and it showed. At night, it was a total dead zone; the fourth largest city in the nation, and its downtown population at night approached zero.
I get the feeling the sentiment is more about "get off my lawn you pesky techies" than about actual economics.