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Amazon expected to announce NYC and Northern Virginia as new headquarters
- danso 8y agoWSJ was the outlet to break this story, before anyone asks why a link from a paywalled site was submitted.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Aloha 8y agoI feel this choice is a mistake for the company long term, they're putting resources into two very hot housing and real estate markets, that have no real draw (in my opinion) for technical employees. Hew York is high tax (compared to Washington), unpleasant weather, overall high costs, and has a housing shortage, Washington DC, once described has having "Southern Efficiency, and Northern Charm" has similar issues of an overheated housing market, and overall high costs, given the choice of a coequal salary in Seattle, DC, or NYC, I'd pick Seattle - as much as I hate Seattle. NYC has some advantages for access to capital markets - but Amazon seemingly has no shortage of capital, DC, access to policymakers - but I see no real strategic advantages here. If I were picking, I would have picked Atlanta and Detroit, or two other lower cost large cities with convenient air travel to Seattle.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sonnyblarney 8y agoNYC has a lot of developers, more than the valley. It's already a 'draw' of sorts, this is an advantage. "DC, access to policymakers - but I see no real strategic advantages here." Amazon is going to become the #1 IT vendor of choice for the biggest government of the world AND reach their tentacles deep into the political arena for all sorts of other benefits. Military, FBI, CIA, Gov, Fannie/Freddie. All huge. Also - every bank is becoming a 'tech company' and Amazon will provide them with their infrastructure.
- prlambert 8y ago"NYC has a lot of developers, more than the valley" - do you have a source for that? Seems highly unlikely. My quick googling suggests silicon valley has 2x-5x more engineers than NYC.
- whatever_dude 8y agoLiving in NY for over a decade and visiting the Bay area often, I have to agree. I'd say the difference is even bigger if you look at Silicon Valley as a whole. I wouldn't be surprised if the ratio was more like 10:1.
- amanzi 8y agoI'm sure everyone knows this already, but just search Google or DDG for the URL and click the first search result to read the article.
- Gabriel_Martin 8y agoAs a Bostonian, woot!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ghaff 8y agoThe already planned Amazon Seaport expansion actually makes more sense than the HQ2 proposal did. We'll see what happens with the GE HQ in the area anyway. Suffolk Downs was always a bit of a weird location for the HQ. Technically on the subway (Blue Line) but north of the city in working class areas that would presumably not have been preferred young tech worker housing in the near term.
- not_kurt_godel 8y agoWould someone mind pasting the article content for those of us who aren't WSJ subscribers (assuming such is at least tacitly allowed by mods)? Seems WSJ has gotten more aggressive in enforcing their paywall.
- stevewodil 8y agoUse outline.com
- not_kurt_godel 8y agoThanks. FYI the content shown by Outline is, as of 18:45 PT: > New York City and Northern Virginia will be the homes for Amazon.com Inc.’s second and third headquarters, according to people familiar with the matter, ending a more than yearlong public contest that started with 238 candidates and ended with a surprise split of its so-called HQ2. > The imminent announcement is expected as soon as Tuesday, according to the people. Other cities may also receive major sites, some of the people said. > More to Come
- sonnyblarney 8y agoI'm saddened by this because it just adds to hyper concentration. DC is already woefully over staffed with overpaid folks living off of guaranteed tax revenues, I don't believe in the inherent productivity there, and just cynical enough to believe it's a means for AMZN to leverage political power and government contracts. NYC is understandable ... ... but it would have been really nice for business diversity for that to go to so many other places. Chicago, Texas, Toronto, Raleigh, New Jersey etc etc.
- api 8y agoI dont understand it. We seem to have decided as a culture that absolutely everything had to be in like five cities. Its a major contributor to division and polarization and a trend that is destroying the middle class.
- CPLX 8y agoAt least we have five of them. Pity those poor English, for example.
- abcdcba 8y agoI mean there are a lot of economic reasons for that, right?
- bilbo0s 8y agoYep. A company like Amazon will have some natural needs. No other city can really beat NYC for meeting those needs. Not Chicago. Not Toronto. Not Raleigh. Not Jersey. And certainly not Texas. By air, land, and sea the best and most bountiful transport links to the rest of the US, or to the Europe-Africa side of the world, are out of NYC. Now maybe we can change that? But we don't seem to be working towards changing it. So as of today, and for the foreseeable future, NYC is the best hub.
- taysic 8y agoI think they could meet those needs elsewhere but they can be choosey so why not.
- sswaterproofing 8y agoI have seen your website. Very good is your website https://www.sswaterproofing.in/ https://www.sswaterproofing.in/
- Rebelgecko 8y agoWhat will it mean for a company to have three "headquarters"? Will each location focus on a different part of the business?
- justapassenger 8y agoIt means nothing. Most of big companies have multiple big offices, with big autonomy and owned parts of the business in each of them. It's all just marketing buzz from amazon.
- ghaff 8y agoIt's actually not uncommon at even medium-large companies. Once you're spread among large or even not-so-large campuses, you might almost just as well be in different cities anyway. They don't tend to be called HQs but they are effectively divisional HQs.
- gkanai 8y agoI agree with Scott Galloway who has both predicted the outcome and has called this a sham 'contest.' Galloway said that Bezos was always going to pick one of the coastal cities where he has a second/third home. By doing this 'contest' Amazon was able to get cities to compete with each other to provide tax incentives to Amazon and was also able to get valuable private information on the cities that Amazon can use in their business strategy. Galloway told cities not to participate.
- ekun 8y agoWhich is exactly what professional sports teams do often even if they've been somewhere a while and have no intention of leaving.
- roymurdock 8y agoObviously Amazon was going to get a great bargain and bunch of info to boot - they have massive bargaining power. Not participating in the bid would have been suicide for the politicians of any major city save perhaps Kreuzberg, Berlin [1]. The amount of wealth creation and subsequent tax payments/land value boost that any FAANG company would bring with a new HQ is way too big to be ignored. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/09/fuck-off-google-the-berlin-neighbourhood-fighting-off-a-tech-giant-kreuzberg https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/09/fuck-off-goog...
- dunpeal 8y ago> they have massive bargaining power Wouldn't call it "massive" in NYC. The office size is projected to employ 25,000 people in total. Nice number, but not "massive" for a city of 8,623,000 people.
- dlgeek 8y agoWhat's new here that the NYT didn't report a week ago?
- Beefin 8y agoThis is no longer an HQ2 it’s a satellite campus. Amazon took advantage of cities vying for this HQ and in the end of the day its 20k employees maybe.
- mcculley 8y agoI have been wondering if any of the cities that proposed will make their proposals public now that the final decision has been made. My own city, Orlando, released only a redacted version of the proposal. How should cities and states manage the tension between their duty to transparency and the competitive advantage of keeping proposals secret?
- justapassenger 8y agoThis whole "contest" has to be greatest PR and marketing campaign of last few years
- SQL2219 8y agoDid the world’s smartest company really need 13 months, and applications from 238 cities, to reach the striking conclusion that it should invest in New York and D.C.? The former is America’s heart of capital, and the latter is America’s literal capital, where Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, already owns a house and a newspaper. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/amazons-hq2-spectacle-should-be-illegal/575539/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/amazons-hq...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jwallaceparker 8y agoThen I guess you won a lot of money betting that these would be the two locations. If not you missed out. Let me know who is going to win the Super Bowl!
- gcatalfamo 8y agoBecause that made them receive offers and tax cuts from city governments.
- herpes 8y agoNone of them they took advantage of. To what end?
- tptacek 8y agoDid either NY or NoVA offer significant incentives for Amazon?
- snowwrestler 8y agoThe details of the NoVA bid have not been released or leaked yet, to my knowledge.
- detcader 8y agoDavid Sirota writes that Amazon Cuomo is offering something like a billion dollars in tax incentives but a Democratic Assemblyman is now introducing legislation to block it. Source: https://capitalandmain.com/will-new-york-fund-amazon-subsidies-or-student-debt-relief-1113 https://capitalandmain.com/will-new-york-fund-amazon-subsidi...
- jorblumesea 8y agoHow much of this is really going to be a "second HQ" and how much of it is going to be a handful of engineers and a small force business/lobbyist folks? The locations seem to suggest business and lobbying interests. I'd be surprised if any of these offices number more than 20k. It feels like one giant sham for some glorified satellite offices.
- keammo1 8y agoIf they are picking NYC, I see why Long Island City makes sense with proximity to Manhattan (and maybe Cornell on Roosevelt Island) plus its explosive growth, but still so much unused space. I have to say I haven't heard from one person in Astoria or Long Island City (where I live and work, respectively) that's excited about this. And there has been a lot of buzz about it over the past couple weeks. The strain on the transit system and increasing rents that are already skyrocketing is definitely freaking out a lot of people. Maybe it's a little selfish of me, but I'm pretty terrified of what it will do to our office's rent in particular...even though it's been expanding rapidly and getting more expensive, Long Island city has been a great place for cheapish space in old industrial buildings for new/small businesses. I figure we and a lot of the surrounding small businesses will be pushed out at the ends of our leases. I am very curious to know where in Long Island City they are targeting. There are so many big industrial lots that they could build on or new construction that they could move into. I had heard they were looking at one of the Plaxall-owned buildings, but can't remember the source.
- nrjames 8y agoNorthern Virginia is a hot mess of congestion. If they're smart, they'll go west of Dulles, or at the very least, not go further east than Reston. Better to stay out in Ashburn or something.
- sneak 8y agoAmazon already has a sizable footprint in Ashburn, I would be surprised if they went very far away from there.
- snowwrestler 8y agoThe story says Crystal City, which is close to DC but has a lot of nearby residential and transit options. And it has been losing tenants for a while so there is some slack for Amazon to take up.
- untog 8y agoIn New York, at least, this is going to be quite a mess. Many within the city - politicians included - are against it. But Cuomo, the governor of the state, is all in, and is planning to remove the city council from the decision: http://gothamist.com/2018/11/12/amazon_cuomo_city_council.php http://gothamist.com/2018/11/12/amazon_cuomo_city_council.ph... As if it needed to be said, there are other cities that would be a lot more receptive, and would benefit a lot more. Even just over the river in New Jersey would be an improvement. Just go there.
- cddotdotslash 8y agoI'm normally not in favor of side stepping the processes in place, but I can guarantee you that if the community board was allowed to inject themselves into this process, you would be unlikely to see Amazon in NYC in 2050, let alone this decade. Nimbyism would never let this kind of thing progress.
- untog 8y agoCity council != community boards. I agree with you about community boards, but to sidestep the city entirely feels wrong.
- arcaster 8y agoReally - they had to ruin New York City...
- CydeWeys 8y agoHuh? This will be pissing in the ocean compared to the overall size of NYC. 10k employees added gradually? No one will even notice. Google has almost that many employees working within two blocks.
- moron4hire 8y agoNoVA is a great place to raise a family. For that reason, I'm actually kind of disappointed in Amazon choosing to setup HQ here. We have our own tech industry here, one that is very focused on and around professional services, and it works for us. We aren't defined by dude-bro culture--I think it's difficult to say that any East Coast city is defined by any specific culture. If Amazon comes to DC in the same way they set up in Seattle, it's not going to be a nice ride for the 20 million rest of us who live and grew up in this area.
- pratik661 8y agoRegardless of Amazon's culture, it will still have an upward competitive pressure on your salary as a developer. That is always a good thing.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- syndacks 8y agoWhat do you think this means for software engineering in NYC? IMO it's a good thing; more tech talent and the most legit tech company in NYC (besides maybe Google). But that about the tech economy and SE profession? What will the impact be? More demand for SEs, sure, and more SEs will be attracted to NYC too. These are all obvious first wave affects, but what will second, third wave affects be?
- zjaffee 8y agoCould very easily trigger a switch that leads to NYC being the city with more second offices for Bay area companies than Seattle. And possibly over time, NYC gaining dominance in the tech industry beyond what the Bay Area has today. The largest cities have historically always held dominance in every industry over the long tail, and I imagine that will ultimately be the case here too.
- dmode 8y agoHot take: none of these are headquarters. These are just big sattelite campuses that every company has. I will also predict that hiring in these offices will be far lower than projected, especially engineering hires
- geodel 8y agoVery reasonable thought. I'd think Amazon is now expanding to level of IT consulting companies who send hordes of consultants to sell/implement pre packaged solutions of their own or third party. This is not some SV level talent that Amazon will be looking for these positions. So I do not see why salaries will be SDE 2/3/4 or whatever.
- drfuchs 8y agoSince each city is only receiving half the benefit they thought they were bidding on, presumably they’ll each get to cut their bids in half — the subsidies, tax abatements, infrastructure spending promises, etc.? But I haven’t seen any notice of this in the news coverage.