271–280 of 490 posts
I think an East Coast city definitely makes the most sense. Realistically though, they probably can't get enough land in the ideal spot of NYC/Jersey meaning the next best options are DC, Philly and Atlanta. Baltimore could be a dark horse candidate. There's already a lot of construction going on there courtesy of Under Armour building out a new HQ. Charlotte could be an option as well.
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I completely agree with that generalization The people who want to work for Amazon wouldn't like living in Utah, and the people living in Utah wouldn't like the people who work for Amazon I've been in tech in Southern Utah for almost 20 years, and it's extremely difficult to find qualified people. If I didn't have a house I love, and family around, I would have left a long time ago.
Southern Utah is way different/smaller than northern. Is there even a $1billion company HQ'd in southern Utah? I'm in Seattle but my company is HQ'd in Utah Valley. There is lots of tech talent in Northern Utah. Heck, Angular Conf and React Rally are in SLC every year for a reason.
The only billion dollar company HQ around here I can think of is SkyWest (https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/SKYW:US)
Texas has the inside track, too. Wonder what city though... Austin's already too crowded as it is but has a great talent pool. Could be better off somewhere like San Marcos or Georgetown.
Silicon Slopes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Slopes - Population > 1,000,000 - Serviced by 2 great universities (UoU, BYU) - Utah is a top 5 state for # of Unicorn Companies From the wiki I shared: "The Utah Governor's Office of Economic Development allows a variety of grants and tax incentives to companies willing to either relocate or expand their enterprise" Note: I live in Seattle, not Utah.
I know you want to pitch SS but saying UoU and BYU are great universities is just wrong. Indeed, attracting talent in Utah is going to be one of Amazon's biggest challenges if it opens an office there.
Frankly, I don't care either way. I work in downtown Seattle in Amazon's back yard. I just know SS has a healthy tech scene and not a lot of people know about it.
> saying UoU and BYU are great universities is just wrong
What? Am I missing something?
The RFP is rather more interesting than the marketing page: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/Anything... The 2nd criterion is basically the total amount of sweet, sweet taxpayer dollars available to subsidize them: Please provide a summary of total incentives offered for the Project by the state/province and local community. In this summary, please provide a brief description of the incentive item,…
The Phoenix area would be a great option.
I suspect both Phoenix and Tempe will be strong contenders.
Positives: - Affordable housing - Affordable corporate real estate - Construction boom in both cities - Local governments interested in wooing corporations
Downsides: - No deep CS university pipeline - No strong tech presence, complicating hiring - Will need to offer incentives to get people to move - Public transport is lacking
I'll suggest a dark horse candidate: Indianapolis. Indy is close to two top 5 engineering colleges (UIUC and Purdue) and one top 10 business school (IU). Purdue has a unique product history with Amazon [1] and Amazon has four warehouses within an hour drive (though to be fair, that's true of a lot of cities). The city has seen major investment from outside tech companies like Salesforce [2], IAC [3], and others in re…
That said, moving some place in the midwest would be very interesting. Amazon has a lot of employees that are from those areas, so if they want to start moving teams it would probably not be too hard.
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Dallas/North Dallas (Plano/McKinney/etc.) Haven't seen it listen much but it is probably one of the top contenders. There is a reason Toyota, along with many others, moved their (U.S.) headquarters here.
North Dallas is getting crazy crowded, though. Enough that housing supply for their potential workers really should be a concern for any additional company looking to relocate there. That said, engineer availability should be fairly good when compared to most places outside of more traditional tech hubs (the area is served by TCU/SMU/UTD directly, UT/Texas A&M/additional Texas schools indirectly, is already near EDS…
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And anyone wonders why the USA does not have money for healthcare, higher education, high speed rail, etc. etc. I am in West Africa and everyone continually asks about the corruption. At least here it's up front and honest. The guy with the AK-47 just wants $5. In the USA, it's the guys in suits getting billions.
The thing is, those tax cuts are largely offset by income taxes that those employees bring in, along with all of the $ that having a huge corporation like Amazon would bring into the area. It's not corruption, it's business.