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Google announces major expansion in New York City
- JeremyBanks 8y agoA company choosing to expand in New York without billions in incentives? Could it be? The municipal government didn't think it was possible...
- CobrastanJorji 8y agoOn the contrary, the municipal government very loudly believed that it would have been possible. Unfortunately it appears that, for some reason I don't understand, New York City's Council doesn't have any input into those sort of incentive programs.
- bilbo0s 8y agoYep. The State officials can run roughshod over you whenever they like. We just need a nation wide system where politicians can make these Foxconn type deals, but the deals would be null and void until voters actually signaled approval in some kind of referendum.
- Kalium 8y agoAs someone living in California, my advice is to be very cautious about how much direct democracy you ask for. It can very easily go very badly.
- ericd 8y agoThis doesn't deserve downvotes. Some of the products of the referendums (prop 13, for example) have had disastrous long term consequences.
- FreakyT 8y agoAnd let's not forget everyone's favorite: > This [literally any object imaginable] contains materials known to the State of California to cause cancer.
- ericd 8y agoOh yeah, that one's great. My two favorite uses of this sign - first, on the jetway, when you're stuck in line, and second, in the baby food aisle at our local grocery store. I guess you could think of it like a memento mori, though: "Everything is killing you, slowly".
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y agoColorado is another state where the ballot initiatives are getting out of hand. Very conflicted because there are some decisions I believe should go directly to the people. My ballot this year was pages long. Took me over half an hour to fill it all out. The wording on some of the initiatives are so confusing you have to read them numerous times to decipher.
- peteretep 8y ago> until voters actually signaled approval in some kind of referendum Worked so well with Brexit
- bobthepanda 8y agoFor historical reasons, the State and City have never gotten along well. If you read the State constitution, you will see a lot of (now unconstitutional) clauses that target the City in all but name only. The state has arcane mechanisms to override city home rule because home rule is generously interpreted by state courts to mean nothing at all. I think the most surprising thing is that Bill De Blasio agreed to this at all, but he can't politick his way out of a paper bag.
- puzzle 8y agoNot only that, but soon after Google bought the main NYC building, the tax bill went up for a small number of the largest properties in the city, which of course included Google's. The valuation has since fluctuated a number of times because of byzantine rules in how properties are assessed, especially when the owner is also a tenant.
- bdhess 8y agoWell in fairness, tax bills are based on market values, and ought to respond to events in the market. In competitive markets with lots of supply and demand, you'd expect many transactions, and the effect of any one comparable transaction on the price of a given property would be quite small. In niche markets where transactions are rare (like, say, “commercial properties in mid to lower Manhattan with >2.5mm sq ft of floor space”), individual transactions involving comparable properties can be expected to have an outsized effect.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoThe net impact is going to be different. Amazon wanted to move to a part of town most tech companies aren't already and announced a significantly larger headcount.
- projectramo 8y agoTired of the expense of the Bay Area, companies are now uncovering small, cheap gems that no one knew about like NYC.
- whoisjuan 8y agoI know you're being sarcastic, but as someone who lived in NYC and California there is not even a comparison on how better is NYC when it comes to the amount of options you get to flexibly spend your money and smartly extend your paycheck. All this while still living in one of the boroughs. I lived for a year in Manhattan with a $50K salary. I wasn't living like a king at all and definitely not saving money, but still managed to have a lifestyle that I would consider comfortable and healthy. This was 2015. Now, compare that to San Francisco. $50K it's basically one level above homelessness.
- projectramo 8y agoWell, if it’s not too personal: what was your rent, where, and for how much space in the two cities?
- whoisjuan 8y agoMy rent in NYC was $1500 with utilities included. I was renting one bedroom in a 2 bedrooms apartment in 75th street. Only downside is that it was a semi-basement (Those apartments with tiny windows that are the same height of the street level---Probably a huge fire hazard). The plus was that I lived three blocks away from Central Park. Some people said that I was lucky to find that place, but in my search I saw similar places that ranged between 1400 without utilities to 2000 in Upper East, some areas of Midtown and East Village. I even saw one guy renting a room for 700 in Upper West. So yes, I was probably lucky to find that place, but not extremely lucky.
- thatfrenchguy 8y agoWith roommates you can definitely have 1500 of rent in SF in « desirable » neighborhoods.
- burtonator2011 8y agoThank god for NYC... Poor tiny NYC I'm sure could use the tax revenue. Why can't they pick some place that could actually use the growth? Boulder?
- jartelt 8y agoBoulder has a lot of policies in place that actually prevent growth (height limits, limits on suburban growth, etc.). They seem to literally not want Boulder to grow.
- kkhire 8y agothey don't want to become the next Austin!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- codyb 8y agoI'd assume it's a lot easier to hire 7,000 tech employees in NYC than Boulder and they already have a big presence there.
- Apocryphon 8y agoOne day Pittsburgh will get its big hockey-stick shaped break.
- SomeHacker44 8y agoHopefully this time Pittsburgh won’t be the smog poster child.
- freehunter 8y agoPittsburgh and Madison are both low COL cities with great engineering schools where only a small handful of companies are soaking up all the talent. Definitely underrated.
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- jamestimmins 8y agoDoes anyone know why Google, Amazon, and Apple have all announced large incentive programs recently? Is there something about it being the end of the fiscal year? Or are there other possible reasons?
- kyrra 8y agoI think the tax bill from last year helped some with this[0]. Apple announced that they would be bringing back billions of $ from overseas holdings due to changes in the laws, and investing it in the US. Google has been expanding in NYC for a while. Back in February, they bought their existing building for $2 billion[1]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/technology/apple-tax-bill-repatriate-cash.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/technology/apple-tax-bill... [1] https://nypost.com/2018/02/06/google-to-buy-chelsea-market-building-for-2b/ https://nypost.com/2018/02/06/google-to-buy-chelsea-market-b...
- paul9290 8y agoSo this is Trump's doing? Did he really help add about 100k high paying tech jobs and within the biggest tech companies on earth?
- dmode 8y agoGoogle, Apple, Amazon had been hiring like crazy well before Trump came into office. Google and Amazon revenues have gone through the roof in the last decade and they have doubled quadrupled their workforce. This is largely a PR move to respond to Amazon's show. And Amazon itself got started to extract maximum tax incentives from cities. Their HQ2 RFP was announced before the tax bill was passed
- freehunter 8y agoThe executive branch doesn't make changes to laws, including tax laws.
- paul9290 8y agoWhy is this getting downvoted? I was asking a question?
- remarkEon 8y agoI can't be the only one concluding that we're near the end of a nice run for tech, with all these expensive real estate moves. I don't know, maybe we've been there for a while now. What better way to spend piles of cash you have no idea what to do with than extort local governments for billions in tax breaks and park that money in a some commercial real estate you can depreciate? I'm not judging these companies for doing this per se (Amazon, Apple, and Google have all recently done this as far as I can tell - haven't noticed anything from Microsoft), but I do consider it a bit ominous that they've all picked expensive places that certainly seem like good picks. It really does seem like these companies have no idea what to do with their money. Buying up land and taking the next 3-5 years to build billion dollar campuses seems so boring to me.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y agoWhat do you want them to do without people? Spend money on what? Raw materials? They need people to develop IP. And they need somewhere to put those people.
- solatic 8y agoIf a FAANG's fundamental bottleneck is people, then the money should first be spent on improving the hiring pipeline. If traditional pipeline sources are insufficient or non-compliant, that means building their own pipeline sources - in-house degree or certification programs. The most well-known case study is the military, which runs all of its own training, the question is only whether a) a given FAANG company has reached an organizational scale where this makes sense and b) how to tinker with the military's model given that the military relies on people not leaving after finishing training but only after enough value has been extracted from their education.
- iso1337 8y agoGoogle hasn't extorted local governments for tax breaks in their recent San Jose deal. https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/12/san-jose-deal-google-campus-diridon-station-vs-hq2-incentive/576310/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/12/san-jose-deal-google-ca... >Liccardo says, the city didn’t offer the company any tax incentives in exchange for its business. “More importantly,” he added in a Medium post, “Google never asked for a dime.”
- synaesthesisx 8y agoCities like NYC and Los Angeles are seeing an explosion in tech jobs lately as the Bay Area is bleeding out.
- dmode 8y agoThere is no bleeding out. Google is actually expanding massively in the Bay Area with a huge purchase in San Jose, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and SF. They are adding space for 50k more employees in the Bay, far more than in NY. Facebook is building out its Menlo Park campus and also signed the largest lease in SF history. Tesla has basically taken over every bit of office space in Fremont. Apple recently opened their $5bn campus.Bay Area can only accommodate 8mn people and with housing push perhaps 10mn at max. So obviously the biggest companies in the world needs to expand somewhere else as well
- almost_usual 8y agoAmazing. Driving through the Penninsula is already a total nightmare. Took me 90 minutes to get from San Bruno to San Jose last week. The drive back to the city took 35 minutes in the late evening. How people ride these shuttles, drive, and deal with these commutes blows my mind. It’s only going to get way worse. Most expensive traffic jam in the country. No thanks.
- Reedx 8y agoYeah, it's terrible unless you can avoid driving between 7am - 10am and 4pm - 7:30pm. Also 280 instead of 101 helps.
- solatic 8y ago> Most expensive traffic jam in the country. Not sure if this was your point, but when we can make such a big deal about how a meeting with ten people costs the company ten man-hours and therefore meetings are sooo expensive yet everyone at the entire company goes and sits in traffic twice a day. The macroeconomic cost must be astronomical.