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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

#241

Post by Johnny555 »

drawkbox wrote: post #240
Johnny555 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same reason Google, Facebook, Apple, et all still bus employees 40 miles south from SF to their offices -- having people together in one office (or campus) makes them more productive, no matter how much technology you throw at it.

Most communication in an office still takes place virtually just as you do remotely. Within a company located in the same physical area you might communicate across floors, across buildings, across campuses. Yes it is nice to have small groups together on regular basis in meetings, integration sessions, brainstorming but for the most part jobs are virtual even in an office today with chat, email, text, phones, video…

Yet the evidence from major tech companies suggests that physical presence is worth the time and expense to bus most employees to a central campus. Apple is spending $5B on their new building to house 13,000 employees together. Amazon is committing $5B to their new campus to house 50,000 employees.

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

#242

Post by mcbits »

Johnny555 wrote: post #241
drawkbox wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most communication in an office still takes place virtually just as you do remotely. Within a company located in the same physical area you might communicate across floors, across buildings, across campuses. Yes it is nice to have small groups together on regular basis in meetings, integration sessions, brainstorming but for the most part jobs are virtual even in an office today with chat, email, text, phones, video…

Yet the evidence from major tech companies suggests that physical presence is worth the time and expense to bus most employees to a central campus. Apple is spending $5B on their new building to house 13,000 employees together. Amazon is committing $5B to their new campus to house 50,000 employees.

There is evidence that they haven't reached their limits with vertical scaling as Amazon apparently has.

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

#243

Post by Johnny555 »

mcbits wrote: post #242
Johnny555 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the evidence from major tech companies suggests that physical presence is worth the time and expense to bus most employees to a central campus. Apple is spending $5B on their new building to house 13,000 employees together. Amazon is committing $5B to their new campus to house 50,000 employees.

There is evidence that they haven't reached their limits with vertical scaling as Amazon apparently has.

I think Amazon has reached the limits of Seattle -- Seattle can't build housing or transportation fast enough to match Amazon's growth, so starting somewhere fresh makes sense.

Plus there's the redundancy benefit -- if the Pacific Northwest suffers the catastrophic earthquake they are predicting, Amazon's HQ2 will live on (and make a fortune shipping supplies to the area).

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

#244

Post by rootw0rm »

Osiris wrote: post #102

I live in the Denver metro area and I think this assessment is pretty spot-on. The only downside is rush hour traffic around downtown can add 15-20 minutes to the commute. However, these is a significant light rail presence. I would say quality of life is great for anyone that likes to do anything outdoors: fishing, skiing, mountain bikes, dirt bikes, etc. And there's a pretty strong community of software engineers h…

rush hour only adds 15-20 minutes? as a southern californian, i'm amused that you call that a downside.

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

#245

Post by mcbits »

Johnny555 wrote: post #243
mcbits wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is evidence that they haven't reached their limits with vertical scaling as Amazon apparently has.

I think Amazon has reached the limits of Seattle -- Seattle can't build housing or transportation fast enough to match Amazon's growth, so starting somewhere fresh makes sense. Plus there's the redundancy benefit -- if the Pacific Northwest suffers the catastrophic earthquake they are predicting, Amazon's HQ2 will live on (and make a fortune shipping supplies to the area).

Building a second HQ is horizontal scaling unless they plan to consolidate at the new location and continue vertical scaling from there. It sounds like they're actually distributing the HQ across two locations, not just building a specialized satellite office. (All of the mentioned companies have those.)

If computing works as an analogy, decoupling a system enough to spread across two servers without one being the true master/head is already half the battle. But you'd rarely design a distributed system only to run it on two servers. The synchronization overhead wipes out most of the gains. Once you have the architecture, you might as well move to commodity servers that are collectively cheaper and more powerful than two top-of-the-line servers.

I wonder if there is an organizational equivalent of the CAP theorem.

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

#246

Post by hanley »

JBlue42 wrote: post #228
saryant wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Denver-Boulder train isn't going to happen for a very long time. IIRC the current target date is 2044.

Wow, I thought the timelines in LA were crazy. Isn't Boulder only 20-25 miles from downtown Denver?

People in the Boulder area approved a sales tax increase to start paying for this back in 2004. At that time it was sold as something that would be built in 10 years, that estimation later changed. Part of the problem is that the plan is to follow an existing railroad right-of-way, so they are financially at the mercy of the company who owns the existing rail system.

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

#247

Post by eip »

technofiend wrote: post #77

Actually I would challenge the idea Houston doesn't have enough of the professionals required. Houston was eliminated as not having enough white collar workers. Yet they left in Austin which is far smaller because at least 12.5 % base of their base has the right skills. It makes sense to compare desired jobs versus the general population but not without context. Seriously with six million+ people here, do you really…

>Houston was eliminated as not having enough white collar workers.

That fact that it is now under 10ft of water probably had nothing to do with it.

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

#248

Post by JBlue42 »

skookumchuck wrote: post #231
JBlue42 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's an elected official, which means some Seattle people seem to think her ideas are worthwhile.

That's right, she's reflective of the community. And if that community is hostile to Amazon/Boeing, why should they continue to invest in that community? The Seattle mayoral election candidates are all well over on the left. There isn't even anyone to vote for if you aren't on the left.

Out of curiosity, what has Amazon actually "invested" in the community?

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

#249

Post by JBlue42 »

hanley wrote: post #246
JBlue42 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I thought the timelines in LA were crazy. Isn't Boulder only 20-25 miles from downtown Denver?

People in the Boulder area approved a sales tax increase to start paying for this back in 2004. At that time it was sold as something that would be built in 10 years, that estimation later changed. Part of the problem is that the plan is to follow an existing railroad right-of-way, so they are financially at the mercy of the company who owns the existing rail system.

That really sucks but I've heard points to one of the issues of why we can't have high-speed rail in the US (outside of politics): freight always gets the right-of-way.

I guess in LA we're somewhat lucky that Metro can pretty much do whatever they want.

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

#250

Post by JBlue42 »

all_blue_chucks wrote: post #235
JBlue42 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boo hoo for rich people?

Are you lost? This is a site full of software industry types. Everyone here is either "rich" already or trying to be...

Very true.

I'm just here to spy on what the well-to-do and techno-utopianists are up to and want to inflict on the rest of us in the future. ;-)

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