If you're not at the core, you'll be forgotten. That's what's happened to Seattle. Palo Alto is the engineering core and Chicago is the business core. The company is pretty immature in many ways and communication is definitely one of them so if you're in a satellite office, you won't get all the information that you need to do your job and you'll be forgotten when it comes to a lot of opportunities. That ends up seriously limiting engineers's career growth. You'll be better off at many many other companies within Seattle.
The only outlier is the marketing team that's in Seattle, but they managed to not be forgotten by making *everything* a fire that is urgent. Palo Alto hates Seattle because of it and will sometimes follow up on requests because they know "the people in Seattle are experts at making noise". Which reinforced a bad cycle, because the marketing team then knows that works and continues that. The other engineering teams in Seattle get labeled with that reputation even though they're very separated from the marketing side. If for some strange reason you really want to work for Groupon, best move to Palo Alto.
Cost cutting measures are a bit ridiculous. Penny-wise, pound-foolish.
In the last couple years, let me list out all the HR problems that have been big enough that a mass e-mail had to be sent to the whole office:
1) all the men had to be asked to attend a meeting where the SVP had to ask them to stop urinating on the ground in the rest rooms
2) employees were asked not to expose themselves to the facility staff
3) people had to be told to stop spitting and blowing their nose into the kitchen sink because it's not hygienic
