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Come to Atlanta! Great schools, great weather, downtown is under utilized, decent mass transit. One of the fastest grow tech locations in the country. We offer
by BatFastard 9y ago
Come to Atlanta! Great schools, great weather, downtown is under utilized, decent mass transit. One of the fastest grow tech locations in the country.
We offer, no hurricanes, no earthquakes, no tidal waves, no forest fires, no flooding, and once every 10 year snow storms. We are on the opposite coast which protects you from N Korean actions. Plus you can fly anywhere from our airport!
- vadym909 9y agoAgree. Atlanta is a great choice.
- logfromblammo 9y agoExcept that I want to live in Atlanta even less than I want to live in Seattle. It has a kind of psychic oppression field over it that makes me want to immediately turn around and leave. Atlanta looks good on paper. It always does. But actually being in the city tells me a different story. That said, I think only Atlanta, NYC, Chicago, or Boston could absorb the extra demand for skilled employees without sucking the wind out of the other local businesses' sails. The Texan cities could, too, but I don't think Amazon will go there, for some reason. If Amazon plopped down in Chattanooga or Harrisburg, or even Indianapolis or Detroit, it would exhaust the local talent pool immediately, and cause a local inflation bubble.
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y agoWhat rubbed you wrong with ATL?
- dbot 9y agoAs an Atlanta resident, I find it a terrible place to visit but a great place to live. Great cities have (1) cool places to visit; and (2) lots of hidden gems - parks, restaurants, etc. - that take years to discover. Atlanta lacks the first, but has plenty of the second. That combined with good weather, great housing options and a Delta hub make it pretty nice to live in.
- madcaptenor 9y agoI feel the same way about Atlanta. And the money that I save by living here as opposed to a cool place to visit means I can actually afford to visit those places.
- midnitewarrior 9y agoNobody's going to Chicago. The state government is in shambles, and taxes are going way up. The state is flirting with insolvency. Boston and NYC are all developed expensive. Atlanta still has undeveloped area inside the city limits or old industrial areas that can be removed and replaced. Chattanooga wouldn't work because they want an international airport and major university. Atlanta has the world's busiest airport and Georgia Tech (engineering), Emory (business, medicine). Atlanta is also a huge transportation hub of the Southeast. Detroit is a cesspool, but does have the added advantage of everything being cheap, lots of places to develop, and lots of transportation infrastructure, but no international airport. It looks like Amazon wrote this RFP for Atlanta.
- gitgreen 9y agoDetroit has a rather large, comfortable, and underutilized international airport. U Michigan is close by, widely considered a top ten CS school.
- BatFastard 9y agoShit, they could probably buy the whole city!
- logfromblammo 9y agoAnd then change their name to Omni Consumer Products?
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y agoGeorgia State is a reasonable school as well, not as glamorous as GT or Emory though. I'm certainly bias as I grew up in ATL, but the RFP seemed to be written for Atlanta to me.
- midnitewarrior 9y agoI'm sure Georgia State is reasonable, but it's just as reasonable as any other good state school in any other state. Georgia Tech and Emory are at the top of the list for their specialties though, engineering, computer science and business -- all things Amazon would find enticing.
- mncolinlee 9y ago> That said, I think only ... could absorb the extra demand for skilled employees without sucking the wind out of the other local businesses' sails. This is a bad thing? Wouldn't that work in favor of Minneapolis-St. Paul where they would outbid their top retail competitors for tech talent?
- madcaptenor 9y ago> "no hurricanes" Don't jinx it.
- leggomylibro 9y agoWhat about Chattanooga? It's in the same area with a rapidly-growing startup/tech scene, but it has gigabit municipal internet and a slightly cooler climate.
- BatFastard 9y agoChattanooga is great! Just not sure if they have the infrastructure to handle that big of a corp. And Gigbit is kinda passe by now.
- leggomylibro 9y agoOh, I doubt they'll be worried about that. Seattle sure doesn't have the infrastructure necessary to support them!
- drumttocs8 9y agoThey recently put a giant fulfillment center in Chattanooga- which really would make Atlanta an even better choice for HQ2
- nkassis 9y agoAtlanta was one of the top places that came to my mind given their requirements. It's really compares favorably with Seattle for size, access, tech talent.
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y agoHaving grown up in ATL and moved to SEA I don't think there's a lot of tech talent in ATL, but there's tons of potential for that to change. GT's college of computing has ~4k undergrads and masters. There's also ga state and emory within a short drive. Right now it seems like mailchimp is getting as much of the graduates as they can.
- williamsmj 9y agoAtlanta is also subject to the whims of a state legislature that passed a "religious freedom bill" that required the governor's veto as recently as last year.
- smileysteve 9y agoand sadly, a number of the gubernatorial candidates have indicated they are in favor of this bill.
- BatFastard 9y agoIndeed. but metro Atlanta area itself is very progressive.
- williamsmj 9y agoTrue, but I'm not referring here to whether the local community is politically progressive. The issue isn't whether there is nice record shops and an NPR affiliate. I'm referring to the real possibility that Atlanta might become subject to laws that pretty much every corporation in America would consider a major downside when choosing where to site a HQ. I assume this is what they are referring to in the CFP when they talk about the "political stability" of a region.
- JBlue42 9y agoThat probably excludes anywhere outside of the NE or West Coast. Even then, the metro areas are blue, rest of the states are red, like everywhere else in the country.
- williamsmj 9y ago> That probably excludes anywhere outside of the NE or West Coast. ding ding ding! My bet would be on Pittsburgh. Maaaaybe Minneapolis, Madison, Detroit or Philadelphia.
- matrix 9y agoA reasonable choice to be sure, but I do disagree on the weather and mass transit part. Atlanta's urban sprawl means that fewer residents live near a transit stop than in most cities of comparable size. And the weather - obviously that's a personal choice, but for me the heat and humidity in summer is debilitating.
- BatFastard 9y agoSummer is hot for sure. But in a world of AC I find it doesn't bother me as much. I go for a bike ride at 7 am when its 73 outside, and work all day! As for the sprawl, there is a huge building boom going on inside the city, 10's if not a 100 thousand new apartments going up. Bike lanes being added, its actually becoming civilized!
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y agoATL does have marta it's just that white people neglected it for most of it's history. The last year I lived in ATL I took marta to work as my commute.
- midnitewarrior 9y agoAmazon needs to locate west / southwest in / just out of the city. It will be very convenient to the airport, existing MARTA lines, inject new life into that part of town, and it would be cheap for Amazon.
- drumttocs8 9y ago"Decent mass transit" huh...