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I think it may have been a factor with NoVA. But the logical place for HQ2 was always NYC. There was a large confluence of factors, but the two most important b

I think it may have been a factor with NoVA. But the logical place for HQ2 was always NYC. There was a large confluence of factors, but the two most important being logistics and access to a super-sized community of technology experts. (No other city can really match NYC's transport links, by air, land, or sea. So if you were going for the whole "sun never sets on the British Empire" thing, then it would almost have to be NYC.) NoVA is a little more perplexing? I think it may have been, as you said, DC is Bezos' home. And it's DC, so there's a lot of government type stuff there. I don't know? Maybe Bezos is the reason HQ2 was split into HQ2A and HQ2B? Because if you have NYC, I'm not sure why you need anyplace else?

zjaffee 8y ago
us-east-1 is the largest AWS region by far, and is located in northern VA. There are tons of employees already located nearby for this reason alone, among other AWS work that's already happening. Additionally, public sector sales is a huge part of the business, and you need people in DC/VA in order to make that happen. I doubt building a full HQ2 in Nova is possible, but a 40,000/10,000 split between the two places makes a ton of sense.