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Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

nytimes.com

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Re: Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

#121

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

blinkingled wrote: post #11

> We asked the economist David Albouy to rank these metro areas for us with an index he uses to measure how much people would be willing to sacrifice, in terms of housing costs and commutes, to live in desirable places. On that basis, we cut Charlotte, N.C. My experience being that neither housing costs nor commute times being horribly bad around CLT - this bums me out. It's actually a great city with lots of nature…

CLT beats Denver in housing costs and traffic/commutes handily, so I'm similarly confused -those are poor reasons to eliminate CLT currently.

The nature around Denver definitely beats CLT though, especially if you like mountain sports, but NC also has beaches.

Re: Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

#122

Post by wehere1 »

danjayh wrote: post #101
rurounijones wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the first person I have seen that has given supreme court justice list as reason fo voting trump and it seems like a pretty kosher reason. Not sure about the 4 year damage offset but hey, it is better than voting for him because wall

I really couldn't care less about the wall. I do think that choosing not to enforce immigration laws through an exective order was wrong - that is the domain of congress. In the case of an institution as important as the government of the United States, the ends do not justify the means if the means weakening the foundations of the entire system. I think that this applies equally to executive orders from both Trump a…

lol you're mad about downvotes when you admit you 'couldn't care less' about a wall that was borne out of pretty awful racism

Re: Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

#123

Post by _ptgt »

PorgSmorg wrote: post #107
jacques_chester wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they explained in the article: > (With apologies to Canada, we’ve set aside Toronto and several other large cities because they’re not included in most of the data sets we’ve used to determine which places meet Amazon’s needs.)

>we’ve set aside Toronto and several other large cities because they’re not included in most of the data sets we’ve used Not because the data isn't available, which it is (in abundance), but because it's not available in the data sets the chose to use. Not to put on a tinfoil hat or anything, but I have a very strong suspicion that they chose the data they did, and specifically mention leaving Toronto out, because th…

I think the biggest issue with Toronto is the fact that every American tech worker (60% of the probable HQ2 labor pool, conservatively) would need to get a Canadian work visa before being onboarded. Sounds like a horrible, horrible headache for both Amazon and prospective employees.

Re: Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

#124

Post by bagacrap »

hbk1966 wrote: post #12
acconrad wrote: post #9

Oh cool Boston is making it pretty far (I live and grew up here) > … and workers can easily get around — and out of town … Haha yup and that's when it drops off- WAIT WHAT??

I'm surprised DFW was knocked out at that stage too. From what I hear traffic is horrible in Denver.

I moved to Denver from LA and I can tell you they're having a laugh to even use the word traffic here.

Re: Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

#125

Post by School-Cotton »

_ptgt wrote: post #123
PorgSmorg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we’ve set aside Toronto and several other large cities because they’re not included in most of the data sets we’ve used Not because the data isn't available, which it is (in abundance), but because it's not available in the data sets the chose to use. Not to put on a tinfoil hat or anything, but I have a very strong suspicion that they chose the data they did, and specifically mention leaving Toronto out, because th…

I think the biggest issue with Toronto is the fact that every American tech worker (60% of the probable HQ2 labor pool, conservatively) would need to get a Canadian work visa before being onboarded. Sounds like a horrible, horrible headache for both Amazon and prospective employees.

Getting H1Bs is an even bigger headache, and much of Amazon's potential workforce isn't American.

Re: Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

#126

Post by bagacrap »

nether wrote: post #36
hbk1966 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised DFW was knocked out at that stage too. From what I hear traffic is horrible in Denver.

People say traffic is bad in LA, but Seattle is next level congestion.

LA #1 woohoo http://www.businessinsider.com/us-cities-ranked-worst-traffi...

Re: Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

#127

Post by School-Cotton »

KGIII wrote: post #109
School-Cotton wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Amazon isn't a charity; why would you expect them to care about anything other than their own criteria?

For the same reason my company used to, I'm retired, sponsor the local little league sports teams - even though the audiences were absolutely never going to be clients? Sometimes, you do the right thing, just because it's the right thing to do. It wasn't an investment. It was just giving back to the community that housed us. I guess you could argue that it improved employee morale? I don't think any of our employees…

I'm not denying that companies do charitable things, but I think where to build your headquarters is much more fundamental than whether to give money to a kids' sports team. Would your former company have made decisions about the parameters of their core business based on the interests of Little League?

Re: Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

#128

Post by bsder »

PorgSmorg wrote: post #22

Absolutely love, despite the fact that it's mentioned numerous times that Amazon is searching all of NA for its second hq, that both Canada, and Mexico are completely ignored. This is despite the fact that Toronto is currently the continents fastest growing tech market due to a lot of factors that would be of incredible interest to a behemoth like Amazon. Feels a like a bit of a snub of the thumb by NYT on that one..…

Amazon set up shop somewhere that they might not be able to buy the government? Not likely. They're staying inside US borders--sorry, Toronto.

Re: Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

#129

Post by troisx »

virtuallynathan wrote: post #17

I'm surprised to see Philadelphia eliminated so quickly, it ticks almost all of the boxes, and has a very large number of engineering schools (UPenn, Penn State, Drexel, Temple, Princeton, Rutgers, etc). It's transit is better than many of the other cities, and it has 2 major development plots in the city with existing full tax abatements. Not to mention its proximity to NYC and Washington, DC via Amtrak (~1h20m to N…

I noticed that people pushing Philadelphia never mention its bad crime rate. Amazon might not be explicitly mentioning that in the criteria, but I'm sure it can't help.

Re: Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

#130

Post by notatoad »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #25

Why doesn't Amazon choose a city that almost meets their criteria and invest the wealth they generate there back into the city? Then we get more good cities instead of overinvesting into any single city.

Is there a good reason to believe that picking a city that doesn't meet their criteria would be good for the city? If amazon brought a new HQ and 50k jobs into any smaller city or a city with declining growth, it's a crapshoot as to whether it would improve the city or just turn it into a "company town". A city where all the best-paying most desireable jobs are all at with the same company is not a healthy city.
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