8 ms·

I wonder how much goodwill Google could have generated by locating this hub in say Orlando or Des Moines. Even if they spent 150k per engineer in relocation co

I wonder how much goodwill Google could have generated by locating this hub in say Orlando or Des Moines. Even if they spent 150k per engineer in relocation costs (1 time fee), it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t make that up in terms of cheaper real estate and lower salaries. There were obviously some benefits in choosing New York City (and I realize it’s an expansion technically), but still, it’s so......unimaginative. Would have been a great contrast to Amazon’s bait and switch yesterday.

vikinghckr 8y ago
Well, problem with Orlando etc., as opposed to NYC is it would be harder to attract elite talent there. In fact, it will be hard enough to attract talent at NYC when most tech companies are still in SV.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Even if they spent 150k per engineer in relocation costs (1 time fee), it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t make that up in terms of cheaper real estate and lower salaries. Are you suggest that elite talent wants lower salaries in the Midwest or Florida as long as they can get a one time relocation payout? Google might save support staff salaries, but I don't think they'll save engineer salaries with your plan, they might even have to boost them.
- lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
  You'd definitely have to boost them. I feel like it's always grossly understated in these sorts of threads just how much better quality of life is in a dense city like NYC. Access to culture, to food, to public transportation, to other job opportunities is hard to put a dollar amount on. There's a reason so many people moves to places like NYC and not isolated towns in the midwest.
  - latencyloser 8y ago
    Personally, I have the opposite opinion. I took a pay cut to leave Seattle ( I lived in Chicago before that, I've lived in dense metro areas for many, many years now) so I could go live in a smaller town. I can actually afford a house. My dog has a yard to play in. I haven't been mugged since I left! No one uses my doorstep as a bathroom. My neighbors actually come say hi to me and are invested in forming relationships knowing I won't just up in move in the next year due to housing costs. We have decent enough restaurants, bars, bowling alleys, pool halls, movie theater, mall, etc, and if I really want to, I am within driving distance of the city (edit: for a day trip, no way in hell would it work for me as a commute). Yet, I haven't been back since I left. I think it's more nuanced than your comment indicates. You might be surprised how many people might take up an offer from Google to move to the boonies (I'm at least one).
    - jen20 8y ago
      If you're within driving distance of Seattle, you're still in the catchment area for working there though. The equivalent would be living in New Jersey or Connecticut or Long Island and working in New York City - which hundreds of thousands of people do.
    - lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
      I didn't mean to come off quite as harsh as that. There are plenty of goal sets that align well to being outside of the city; but I do think that y'all are the minority. When playing the numbers in trying to staff huge multi thousand head campuses catering to a specific minority doesn't add up.
    - gct 8y ago
      There's dozens of us!
    - zjaffee 8y ago
      One thing to point out about the NYC metro area is that there is a ton of land surrounding it with reasonably priced homes in safe areas with less than a 45 minute commute by public transit, where in the Bay Area and Seattle, the waterways are far larger, and transportation options more restricted. Within huge portions of nearby suburbs, you can buy a sizable 3+ bedroom house for <400k in a town with a train stop and a good school district that takes you directly to the office.
- fossuser 8y ago
  That’s how it works in medicine - salaries are higher in less desirable areas.
  - eloff 8y ago
    I think you're missing the point. It's a tough sell to relocate someone and give them a lower salary. Who'd take that deal?
    - fossuser 8y ago
      Yeah, I'm agreeing with you? My comment is that in less desirable locations people need to be paid more to be there if they don't have to be. The cost of living is not really relevant.
      - eloff 8y ago
        Sorry, I read your comment wrong. Looks like I'm missing the point.
    - ndnxhs 8y ago
      People who understand the lower salary is easily made up for by lower living costs.
      - jkaplowitz 8y ago
        That's partly true and partly not. In particular, if one anticipates returning to a pricey location later in life (e.g. needing to take care of elderly relatives there), one has to save for retirement at a higher level than if one can stay in the cheaper place forever. Cost of living comparisons used to justify salary reductions rarely account for such scenarios. With that said, the numbers can still work out to make it a good financial deal, it's just less automatically true.
      - tokyodude 8y ago
        I'm not sure I'm convinced. To give an example a recruiter once tried to get me to move to some place in India (2002). He told me I'd be making $30k a year which was 10x what locals made so I'd be living like a king. Even if that was true that I could live like a king for that salary in India all I could think about is how I'd be stuck there because I'd have no money to leave to a more expensive place in the future.
FighterMafia 8y ago
10k software engineers in Des Moines? What planet do you live on? Is it the same quadrant of the Milky Way as mine?
CydeWeys 8y ago
Not many people want to work in those places though. And I say this as an engineer at Google living and working in Manhattan. NYC has a huge draw to it that most other places don't. Good luck attracting top talent to Des Moines or Orlando. Way more would rather work in NYC. You don't want to be in a one-company town either; if you left Google in Orlando, where else could you work without moving? There's no credible competition at the same tier. Network effects are real.
- thealfreds 8y ago
  Feel like most of the top talent was already swept up by Deere , Hy-vee and a couple of the insurance places in Des Moines anyways.
forrestthewoods 8y ago
The goal isn’t to reduce costs or move existing employees. It’s to tap a talent pool to hire new people.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  I think its more likely the other way around the "talent" doesn't exist there
timeseries2018 8y ago
If there are good, seasoned engineers in Silicon Valley that can't pass the Google interview, they sure as hell can't find very many in Orlando or Des Moines.
wenc 8y ago
I was in Des Moines a couple of weeks ago to do interviews for our office there. The talent pool of people who would want to work in Des Moines is very local, and the quality is far lower than in bigger metro areas. (the distribution curve skews right) Anyone with talent there tended to want to move out of the area. We ended up postponing our hiring. Des Moines favors people that want to settle down and have a quiet, comfortable suburban life. It is a nice, clean, orderly place with lots of new infrastructure. The landscape is pristine and beautiful. It has all the creature comforts you need. Nothing wrong with that--if anything, Des Moines is a hot real-estate market right now, including surrounding areas like Ankeny--but by definition that doesn't attract ambitious people. You can have a good career in Des Moines working for big insurance companies etc. (and many do). But it is not a hot house for the upper end of tech talent. You're looking at a different range of talent there.
- i-am-that-i-am 8y ago
  >Des Moines favors people that want to settle down and have a quiet, comfortable suburban life. I'm 24, but that is definitely what appeals to me. The mere thought of working in NYC or other tech hubs is nauseating. I'd feel totally out of place culturally.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    NYC is such a big city that you can find everything and everyone here. You're more likely to feel out of place culturally in a small city if you can't find your subculture there, whereas in NYC your subculture is guaranteed to exist. How many hacker groups, meetups, and conventions does random small city have, for example? Or gaming? Or anime? Or comics? We've got all that in spades.
    - gwright 8y ago
      It is still a city. Is it that hard to accept that not everyone wants to live in a city, never mind a metropolis like NYC?
      - 8y ago
zjaffee 8y ago
There is more demand for working in NYC than is currently met by existing tech offices, that simply isn't the case in other metro areas. The real problem is that Google is choosing to expand in the neighborhood they are currently in, where the same applies to Amazon should the Long Island City rumors be true. Regional transportation infrastructure already prioritizes midtown and the financial district, and there are tons of distressed areas regionally, that still certainly do benefit from a growing economy all around.
- hnmcQIOoQUDv 8y ago
  St John's Terminal really isn't the same neighborhood as Chelsea Market. It's little over a mile to the south.
  - zjaffee 8y ago
    I must've overlooked that part, that doesn't seem too bad actually given that it's about a half mile from the christopher street path stop.
    - hnmcQIOoQUDv 8y ago
      I'd hope they negotiate a ferry (maybe NY Waterway) from Hoboken, PATH is fairly crowded already and that Christopher St stop is a one–exit nightmare.
C1sc0cat 8y ago
Goodwill with whom? some local political hack sure for 6 months or so going to piss off a lot of staff and the good ones will not go.
Johnny555 8y ago
How many Google engineers do you think would be willing to move to the midwest or Florida? Especially in return for lower pay (and a one-time bonus). There are several cities I'd be willing to reloc to -- Florida and the Midwest are not in that list (not even Chicago, due to the winter weather). SF, Seattle, Portland, NYC, Boston are at the top of the list. Maybe San Diego or Austin or the DC area.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  I have the same opinion, and actually, one could say that many people are accepting lower net income in exchange for living in and near big cities, because for many the higher rents and decrease in living conditions are not made up for by the higher income.
spongepoc 8y ago
High quality talent are attracted to elite cities because other high quality talent is already there. It's easier to hire and retain the top 1% of engineers in an elite city because they're already working for other top companies. Also New York is closer to research centres of the universities compares to Orlando. This means access to students and academics.

vikinghckr 8y ago

Well, problem with Orlando etc., as opposed to NYC is it would be harder to attract elite talent there. In fact, it will be hard enough to attract talent at NYC when most tech companies are still in SV.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Even if they spent 150k per engineer in relocation costs (1 time fee), it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t make that up in terms of cheaper real estate and lower salaries. Are you suggest that elite talent wants lower salaries in the Midwest or Florida as long as they can get a one time relocation payout? Google might save support staff salaries, but I don't think they'll save engineer salaries with your plan, they might even have to boost them.

lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
You'd definitely have to boost them. I feel like it's always grossly understated in these sorts of threads just how much better quality of life is in a dense city like NYC. Access to culture, to food, to public transportation, to other job opportunities is hard to put a dollar amount on. There's a reason so many people moves to places like NYC and not isolated towns in the midwest.
- latencyloser 8y ago
  Personally, I have the opposite opinion. I took a pay cut to leave Seattle ( I lived in Chicago before that, I've lived in dense metro areas for many, many years now) so I could go live in a smaller town. I can actually afford a house. My dog has a yard to play in. I haven't been mugged since I left! No one uses my doorstep as a bathroom. My neighbors actually come say hi to me and are invested in forming relationships knowing I won't just up in move in the next year due to housing costs. We have decent enough restaurants, bars, bowling alleys, pool halls, movie theater, mall, etc, and if I really want to, I am within driving distance of the city (edit: for a day trip, no way in hell would it work for me as a commute). Yet, I haven't been back since I left. I think it's more nuanced than your comment indicates. You might be surprised how many people might take up an offer from Google to move to the boonies (I'm at least one).
  - jen20 8y ago
    If you're within driving distance of Seattle, you're still in the catchment area for working there though. The equivalent would be living in New Jersey or Connecticut or Long Island and working in New York City - which hundreds of thousands of people do.
  - lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
    I didn't mean to come off quite as harsh as that. There are plenty of goal sets that align well to being outside of the city; but I do think that y'all are the minority. When playing the numbers in trying to staff huge multi thousand head campuses catering to a specific minority doesn't add up.
  - gct 8y ago
    There's dozens of us!
  - zjaffee 8y ago
    One thing to point out about the NYC metro area is that there is a ton of land surrounding it with reasonably priced homes in safe areas with less than a 45 minute commute by public transit, where in the Bay Area and Seattle, the waterways are far larger, and transportation options more restricted. Within huge portions of nearby suburbs, you can buy a sizable 3+ bedroom house for <400k in a town with a train stop and a good school district that takes you directly to the office.
fossuser 8y ago
That’s how it works in medicine - salaries are higher in less desirable areas.
- eloff 8y ago
  I think you're missing the point. It's a tough sell to relocate someone and give them a lower salary. Who'd take that deal?
  - fossuser 8y ago
    Yeah, I'm agreeing with you? My comment is that in less desirable locations people need to be paid more to be there if they don't have to be. The cost of living is not really relevant.
    - eloff 8y ago
      Sorry, I read your comment wrong. Looks like I'm missing the point.
  - ndnxhs 8y ago
    People who understand the lower salary is easily made up for by lower living costs.
    - jkaplowitz 8y ago
      That's partly true and partly not. In particular, if one anticipates returning to a pricey location later in life (e.g. needing to take care of elderly relatives there), one has to save for retirement at a higher level than if one can stay in the cheaper place forever. Cost of living comparisons used to justify salary reductions rarely account for such scenarios. With that said, the numbers can still work out to make it a good financial deal, it's just less automatically true.
    - tokyodude 8y ago
      I'm not sure I'm convinced. To give an example a recruiter once tried to get me to move to some place in India (2002). He told me I'd be making $30k a year which was 10x what locals made so I'd be living like a king. Even if that was true that I could live like a king for that salary in India all I could think about is how I'd be stuck there because I'd have no money to leave to a more expensive place in the future.

FighterMafia 8y ago

10k software engineers in Des Moines? What planet do you live on? Is it the same quadrant of the Milky Way as mine?

CydeWeys 8y ago

Not many people want to work in those places though. And I say this as an engineer at Google living and working in Manhattan. NYC has a huge draw to it that most other places don't. Good luck attracting top talent to Des Moines or Orlando. Way more would rather work in NYC. You don't want to be in a one-company town either; if you left Google in Orlando, where else could you work without moving? There's no credible competition at the same tier. Network effects are real.

thealfreds 8y ago
Feel like most of the top talent was already swept up by Deere , Hy-vee and a couple of the insurance places in Des Moines anyways.

forrestthewoods 8y ago

The goal isn’t to reduce costs or move existing employees. It’s to tap a talent pool to hire new people.

C1sc0cat 8y ago
I think its more likely the other way around the "talent" doesn't exist there

timeseries2018 8y ago

If there are good, seasoned engineers in Silicon Valley that can't pass the Google interview, they sure as hell can't find very many in Orlando or Des Moines.

wenc 8y ago

I was in Des Moines a couple of weeks ago to do interviews for our office there. The talent pool of people who would want to work in Des Moines is very local, and the quality is far lower than in bigger metro areas. (the distribution curve skews right) Anyone with talent there tended to want to move out of the area. We ended up postponing our hiring. Des Moines favors people that want to settle down and have a quiet, comfortable suburban life. It is a nice, clean, orderly place with lots of new infrastructure. The landscape is pristine and beautiful. It has all the creature comforts you need. Nothing wrong with that--if anything, Des Moines is a hot real-estate market right now, including surrounding areas like Ankeny--but by definition that doesn't attract ambitious people. You can have a good career in Des Moines working for big insurance companies etc. (and many do). But it is not a hot house for the upper end of tech talent. You're looking at a different range of talent there.

i-am-that-i-am 8y ago
>Des Moines favors people that want to settle down and have a quiet, comfortable suburban life. I'm 24, but that is definitely what appeals to me. The mere thought of working in NYC or other tech hubs is nauseating. I'd feel totally out of place culturally.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  NYC is such a big city that you can find everything and everyone here. You're more likely to feel out of place culturally in a small city if you can't find your subculture there, whereas in NYC your subculture is guaranteed to exist. How many hacker groups, meetups, and conventions does random small city have, for example? Or gaming? Or anime? Or comics? We've got all that in spades.
  - gwright 8y ago
    It is still a city. Is it that hard to accept that not everyone wants to live in a city, never mind a metropolis like NYC?
    - 8y ago

zjaffee 8y ago

There is more demand for working in NYC than is currently met by existing tech offices, that simply isn't the case in other metro areas. The real problem is that Google is choosing to expand in the neighborhood they are currently in, where the same applies to Amazon should the Long Island City rumors be true. Regional transportation infrastructure already prioritizes midtown and the financial district, and there are tons of distressed areas regionally, that still certainly do benefit from a growing economy all around.

hnmcQIOoQUDv 8y ago
St John's Terminal really isn't the same neighborhood as Chelsea Market. It's little over a mile to the south.
- zjaffee 8y ago
  I must've overlooked that part, that doesn't seem too bad actually given that it's about a half mile from the christopher street path stop.
  - hnmcQIOoQUDv 8y ago
    I'd hope they negotiate a ferry (maybe NY Waterway) from Hoboken, PATH is fairly crowded already and that Christopher St stop is a one–exit nightmare.

C1sc0cat 8y ago

Goodwill with whom? some local political hack sure for 6 months or so going to piss off a lot of staff and the good ones will not go.

Johnny555 8y ago

How many Google engineers do you think would be willing to move to the midwest or Florida? Especially in return for lower pay (and a one-time bonus). There are several cities I'd be willing to reloc to -- Florida and the Midwest are not in that list (not even Chicago, due to the winter weather). SF, Seattle, Portland, NYC, Boston are at the top of the list. Maybe San Diego or Austin or the DC area.

lotsofpulp 8y ago
I have the same opinion, and actually, one could say that many people are accepting lower net income in exchange for living in and near big cities, because for many the higher rents and decrease in living conditions are not made up for by the higher income.

spongepoc 8y ago

High quality talent are attracted to elite cities because other high quality talent is already there. It's easier to hire and retain the top 1% of engineers in an elite city because they're already working for other top companies. Also New York is closer to research centres of the universities compares to Orlando. This means access to students and academics.