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I 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 (
by Aloha 8y ago
I 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.
- dunpeal 8y ago10:1 seems a bit too much, but yeah, I'm not sure where GP got the idea that NYC has more engineers than SFBay. NYC was not historically focused on engineering or tech. Media, advertising, and of course - finance, banking, and investment banking. Pure engineering or software work? Not very much.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoOh - I'm sorry - I was looking at job openings in a specific software field and there were way more openings in NYC - I confused that with devs. A summary glance indicates that the Valley and SF may be roughly on par with NYC but that the Bay Area has more than NYC, I stand corrected - though there seems to be scant hard data as it's difficult to define exactly what a developer is ...
- calebh 8y agoAmazon is the new IBM
- Latteland 8y agoSheesh, get with the agreed upon narrative. Microsoft was the new IBM, but then they got rescued by their new ceo Nadella. Then it was Oracle, but well hell, Oracle is still the new ibm. Google is trying hard to be the new ibm but they aren't quite there yet.
- Latteland 8y agoI agree that dc makes sense for amazon because of us govt use of the cloud. But I am surprised to hear that nyc has that many developers, more than SF? There are more people in nyc by far, but more advanced software engineers? Of course there are many advanced software programmers for the financial industries and other major intl companies in nyc. I'm not in the bay area, I'm in a secondary 'leading software city'. Is there a citation for this?
- dunpeal 8y agoThis Quora response uses US Bureau of Labor Statistics to show there are 92,350 programmers in the whole SF Bay area, compared to 62,530 programmers in the entire NYC municipal area. So about 50% more in the Bay. https://www.quora.com/How-many-software-engineers-work-in-Silicon-Valley-and-NYC/answer/Drew-Eckhardt https://www.quora.com/How-many-software-engineers-work-in-Si...
- hueving 8y agoYou forgot to adjust for the standard NYC ego inflation. Each NYC developer is worth 2x what any other developer is worth so NYC would win with 125k developers.
- CPLX 8y agoThis guy gets it.
- m_ke 8y agoWNYC had a segment about this last week and claimed that there are 110k tech workers in the NYC area.
- dunpeal 8y ago"Tech workers" != programmers. In fact, if there are only 110k tech workers, I doubt there are 92,350 actual programmers in NYC. They are counting all Product Managers, designers, beta testers, etc, as well as probably sales and administrative assistants in outfits like Google.
- SeanLuke 8y agoThese silly New Yorkers, with no sense of anything outside Manhattan. Put aside government -- which is enormous -- and DC has: - A long Internet history. MAE-East. UUNet. AOL. Equinix. Network Solutions. Microstrategy. - Let's not discuss the one of the single largest tech regions in the country: the Dulles Technology Corridor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulles_Technology_Corridor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulles_Technology_Corridor - A huge Big Data industry fed by (besides government) stuff like DC's ginormous genomics and bioinformatics industries, financial regulation groups, you name it. FINRA is in DC. So is Capital One. - Amazon Web Services is already in DC. - The three highest income counties in the country.
- 0max 8y agoThe first Apple Store was also in Tyson's Corner in Northern Virgina
- akhilcacharya 8y agoFor some weird reason (in my experience) Amazon employees all seem to want to move to NYC. Like, constantly. Go on Blind and they'll talk about it all day with dubious reasoning. I don't get it myself (I had a few NYC offers but chose Amazon in Boston instead), but NYC has become "the place" elite for software-focused undergrads these days. Everyone wants to get into FB/Instagram NY or Google NYC.
- ghaff 8y agoNYC is more attractive than it used to be, to be fair. But, especially the parts of NYC young tech workers are actually interested in is still urbanization on steroids. I can tolerate and even revel in it for a week or so but it takes a lot of adjusting from most places, even other large cities.
- max76 8y agoNYC is very urban, but it isn't even the largest or most dense city in North America. I think you just have a bias against heavy urban areas. Lots of people are comfortable living in large dense cities. Hundreds of millions, if not more, live in cities with similar levels of urbanization as NYC.
- cddotdotslash 8y agoIt's the second largest and the second densest behind Mexico City. Somehow I don't think Mexico City was in the running for HQ2.
- jganetsk 8y agoMexico City density: 6,000/km2 New York City density: 11,000/km2 Wikipedia
- ghaff 8y agoI think you're misinterpreting me. I'm literally sitting in NYC at the moment. I enjoy visiting it. I've lived here (briefly). I also travel throughout the US and elsewhere. I don't know how anyone else could seriously suggest that the sheer volume of blaring horns and crush of humanity is not at least somewhat unique in North America. In my experience, Chicago comes closest. LA is quite different. I totally appreciate people are comfortable living in cities like this. I probably wouldn't be. But, if you are, more power to you. (Personally I live in the country.)
- jumelles 8y agoI feel like these are the safest choices. DC is the capital; NYC is the unofficial capital - not at all with "no real draw." If you want to live in a city, there's no comparison with New York anywhere else in the country.
- jey 8y ago[retracted]
- ghaff 8y agoNYC is a very mixed bag on quality of life. It depends on what your priorities are.
- justapassenger 8y agoFor some quality of life means being able to get a drink at 3AM. For others - house with a backyard.
- jey 8y agoGood point. Right now it's nearly impractical to have a family in the Bay area. I'd personally like to see a lot of improvement on the supply side in the form of high-density housing in urban centers.
- pratik661 8y agoYou can literally have a house with a backyard and a less than 1 hour commute from Manhattan.
- scarejunba 8y agoAn hour is too much. Ain't nobody got time for one hour commuting each way.
- pratik661 8y agoI agree. An hour is considered a slightly above average commute in the Bay Area. However in NYC its considered way above average. When I was interviewing there, I was low key shocked that the interviewers considered 30 minutes to be a 'long' commute. Thats when I knew I was in the right place. Density + transit is the way to go.
- 8y ago
- ChefboyOG 8y agoI'd suspect the choice of NYC has more to do with the available talent pool there. At this moment, with the scarcity of available engineering talent and the scale at which Amazon needs it, there might not be a city outside of SF that better fits their needs.
- wpietri 8y agoIf available talent pool were the #1 determinant, they'd be opening up in the Bay Area. New York in particular is a very expensive talent pool with a lot of competition. Given Amazon's extremely strong brand, it's reasonable to think that they could benefit by opening almost anywhere else and then drawing talent in. Not only would those people get a lot more for their money, but Amazon would have relatively little competition, reducing turnover and wage inflation.
- CPLX 8y agoNew York is literally the greatest city in the history of world civilization and the planetary capital of finance, media, business, fashion and culture. It’s easily the largest city in the country, and iconic globally. But you’re finding it hard to understand why people might want to live here? I’d post more but my New York life is veritable cornucopia of novel and enriching experiences and I’d better get back to it. Enjoy your stripmalls.
- adamrezich 8y ago>unpleasant weather I mean I've visited both Austin and San Francisco so I understand the appeal of temperate climates but plenty of people not only tolerate but enjoy less temperate climates, myself included
- czardoz 8y ago> I 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. The goal was never to optimize for employee housing or quality of life. The goal was to get concessions from already urban areas where 25000 engineers might want to live. >If I were picking, I would have picked Atlanta and Detroit Atlanta and Detroit have arguably lesser draw than NYC or DC.
- rayiner 8y ago> Washington DC, once described has having "Southern Efficiency, and Northern Charm" This is so great.
- statguy 8y agoAre you sure, this sounds reversed - Northern efficiency, and Southern Charm?
- dctoedt 8y agoGenerally credited to John F. Kennedy, but he prefaced it with "somebody said" (original source unknown). https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2006/06/04/ask-not-where-this-quote-came-from/ca3a139f-0060-477e-9693-48b08f6d0e20/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2006/06/04/a...
- jorblumesea 8y agoImplying that these "HQs" are going to be more than 10k employees. Both cities can easily absorb another few thousand highly paid engineers/business/lobbyists.
- jordache 8y agonyc is a terrible place to live for a lot of people. i personally can not stand it. dirty city, terrible weather, and rude people.
- untog 8y agoObviously nowhere is going to be ideal for everyone. But judging by the number of people living in NYC, plenty are very happy with it.
- tomcam 8y agoCan you give me an example of the rudeness? I have visited New York city regulator from the last 35 years. I completely agree with the dirty part, and I suppose I agree with the weather part, but I have found that the people surprisingly open and hopeful for my entire life.
- dionidium 8y agoThe "rude" thing seems like more of a meme than a reality. I find New Yorkers to be remarkably pleasant, much more so than the grumps in my Midwestern hometown where everybody has a chip on their shoulder and basically nobody is excited to be there.
- itronitron 8y ago>> "Southern Efficiency, and Northern Charm" and don't forget "Amazon Humidity" and "Mexico City Traffic"
- bane 8y agoThe D.C. Metro area has pretty much the most highly educated workforce in the country and something like half of the top-25 highest income counties in the U.S. IIR, the D.C. Metro is something like 3rd or 4th in the country for total software engineers after SV, NYC and maybe Seattle and is fed by "nearby" Virginia Tech, CMU, UMD, Johns Hopkins, UVA, NCState, and GMU (among others) which are all highly ranked CS and CE schools. Silicon Valley East is basically the 30 mile stretch from D.C. to Dulles and it's basically an unbroken chain of tech and engineering companies, mostly fed contractors, but chock full of people clawing at the walls to work for non-fed tech businesses. D.C.'s main issues are traffic and absolutely abysmal weather. But other than that it's an absolute no-brainer of a location even if you subtract all the political co-location and lobbying factors. NYC makes sense for different, but some similar reasons...it's also chock full of people wanting to work for tech companies that aren't fintech and LIC has long been an underdeveloped part of the city that's just a bridge hop away from basically everything you'd ever want in Manhattan. If you can stomach living 20-30 minutes east, housing prices become much more affordable even if the inventory is uninspiring.
- alienreborn 8y ago> that have no real draw (in my opinion) for technical employees 3rd in tech patents after San Francisco and San Jose. 2nd or 3rd in total tech jobs after San Francisco and Seattle. This comment seems like its coming from some one who doesn't know a thing about NYC Tech scene. > unpleasant weather, 8.6 Million people like here and lot of people prefer 4 season cycle.
- bilbo0s 8y ago>Atlanta and Detroit, or two other lower cost large cities with convenient air travel to Seattle... ??? I think planners at Amazon were thinking more long term. I'm thinking that convenient and multi-modal access to the Europe-Africa side of the world played a big part here. East coast and west coast HQ's just make sense for a global behemoth like Amazon.