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Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

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Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#121

Post by graeme »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #113
ramraj07 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a tech worker in NYC and none of my firends (except one idiot) pays more than 2500 for their studio apartment within Manhattan. I share a super fancy apartment in a hirise in Brooklyn and pay less than 2K. If you're okay living in Queens you can get a 2BR with less than 1h commute. And this is not even talking about distant Brooklyn, Bronx or jersey (also less tax)

You can also get a 2BR less than one hour's commute away from San Francisco for under $2000 / month.

A transit commute?

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#122

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gwright wrote: post #72
CydeWeys wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC is such a big city that you can find everything and everyone here. You're more likely to feel out of place culturally in a small city if you can't find your subculture there, whereas in NYC your subculture is guaranteed to exist. How many hacker groups, meetups, and conventions does random small city have, for example? Or gaming? Or anime? Or comics? We've got all that in spades.

It is still a city. Is it that hard to accept that not everyone wants to live in a city, never mind a metropolis like NYC?

By definition those who don’t want density aren’t located densely enough in a place that a high end tech company can relocate to.

But the old IBM campuses outside of NYC are actually like this. They are usually one or two hours from NYC, in really leafy forested areas...basically country side. People commuting from the city to those places (eg Yorktown in West Chester) are the first ones google attracted with their In-City office, they were extremely successful just because they were in the city and IBM wasn’t.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#123

Post by woolvalley »

chrisseaton wrote: post #97
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friend just bought a $400,000 one-bedroom co-op in Midtown East. He makes a low six-figure salary, and will have to be judicious about his spending for a few years. New York isn’t the Bay Area—we build supply to meet demand.

I don’t understand - are you giving this near half-million single bedroom as an example of affordability?

Well if your income is $133k/yr, then it would fit in the 3x annual income rule for housing affordability, which the typical sr eng at google now exceeds.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#124

Post by lallysingh »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #94
bilbo0s wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know man? You'd be surprised how attached people are to their spouses or partners. Doesn't matter how badly you want to work at Google, if your spouse is an IP attorney or VP at an academic hospital, as a family you just can't go moving to the middle of nowhere. It's not ALL about being able to work at Google. There's a lot more going on in making these decisions. (At least there is for the type of people tha…

That's now a small minority of a minority. It's more usual for just one partner to have the especially high powered career. Even more so after starting a family. For those that have both then sure, it's more nuanced and may come down to which of the two has the better future chances, or to make different decisions. Most potential workers will not be in that situation at all.

I don't know about that. The two most common spouse occupations, of people I knew at Google in NYC, were lawyer and some sort of financier. Often (more than a few of those I knew) the spouse made more money and Google was effectively daycare for the other.

And in hotbeds like NYC, with the opportunities all over town, there's little career reason to go somewhere else. If Google left NYC, they'd lose most of their engineering team to other tech firms in the city.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#125

Post by v30000 »

woolvalley wrote: post #123
chrisseaton wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand - are you giving this near half-million single bedroom as an example of affordability?

Well if your income is $133k/yr, then it would fit in the 3x annual income rule for housing affordability, which the typical sr eng at google now exceeds.

Affordability should still mean that you get value for your money, not that any surplus wages disappear in the pockets of the land owning class.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#126

Post by feri339 »

ndnxhs wrote: post #76
eloff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point. It's a tough sell to relocate someone and give them a lower salary. Who'd take that deal?

People who understand the lower salary is easily made up for by lower living costs.

Can't speak for anyone else but I gladly take a hit in my disposable income (it's not that much of a hit) if it means I can live in place where a lot of interesting stuff is happening aside from work (Berlin, NYC, Amsterdam, etc.). I don't need a big flat and I have few expensive hobbies.

Maybe it will be different in my thirties and forties but right now I want to either live in a (cool) city to work on exiting projects or be travelling. It may sound pretentious to some, but it's what I want.

I would imagine quite a few people feel similarly. In that way a campus in New York City makes sense I believe.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#127

Post by TulliusCicero »

taurath wrote: post #4

This coupled with the Amazon news is starting to get distressing. With the amount of companies that copycat them it’s like the rich are getting richer and the economic benefits are still going to be concentrated only in the most affluent cities. The rest of the country desperately needs real industry and good paying jobs - and will go to huge lengths to try to get them but it appears nobody can come up with a busines…

> The rest of the country desperately needs real industry and good paying jobs - and will go to huge lengths to try to get them

No they don't. Tax breaks aren't enough. One of the big reasons a lot of people really like NYC is that it's one of the few cities in the US that actually feels like a city. NYC is urbanist in a way that relatively few American cities are (and most of the other cities in this category are also big economic winners, like SF and Boston).

How many of those more conservative/cheaper US cities actually take walking/biking/transit over driving as a serious issue? Virtually none of them that I've seen, they put in token efforts at best; an unprotected bike lane here, a "technically counts as transit" bus stop there, but very little that really moves the needle or challenges the status quo.

Name one of these cities, and I'll show you how they're failing miserably on at least this front just by a quick look at Google Maps.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#128

Post by lotsofpulp »

ramraj07 wrote: post #91
tokyodude wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and has a dampening effect on rent increase Is that really true? I don't know if this data is accurate but googling "average rent new york city" vs "average rent san francisco" brings up these 2 results as the first hits. They look almost identical. The site claims average rent for NYC is $3634 vs SF at $3735. It also claims prices increased in NYC by 9.46% over last year vs SF at 0.62% https://www.rentjungle.com/a…

I'm a tech worker in NYC and none of my firends (except one idiot) pays more than 2500 for their studio apartment within Manhattan. I share a super fancy apartment in a hirise in Brooklyn and pay less than 2K. If you're okay living in Queens you can get a 2BR with less than 1h commute. And this is not even talking about distant Brooklyn, Bronx or jersey (also less tax)

If you count the opportunity cost of the time, stress, and money you spend using NJTransit to commute into Manhattan, and especially if you’re commuting further into other boroughs, the tax savings of NJ turn into losses.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#129

Post by mooreds »

oblio wrote: post #118
choot wrote: post #108

One of the reason is that, people who are incharge of these decisions are invested in these cities. They've real estate in these cities. So, using public money of the company to invest in these cities increase the value of their personal investments :) It won't be changing anytime sooner. Shareholders aren't bothered. I wouldn't be surprized if majority of shareholders by value live in these cities too.

I don't remember the actual source, so it might just be a funny anecdote. But I remember reading that after WW2 a lot of US companies were expanding and looking for new headquarters. They'd commission huge research teams to find the best location for the new headquarters, spend a lot of time and effort to find a good place. A book written about 10 or 15 years after many of these companies found that almost invariably…

I was curious so I hunted the anecdote down.

Via https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/03/28/20030328/

I found this HBR article: https://hbr.org/1989/03/corporate-architecture-from-the-outs...

Which has this quote:

> A dozen years ago, William Whyte, author of the classic book The Organization Man, tried to do just that. The sociologist took his map and phone book and set out to chart which corporate headquarters had gone where and why. Contrary to official rationales, which emphasized corporate enhancement or a disinterested pursuit of the great outdoors, Whyte found that most of the new campus compounds were sited within eight or nine miles of the CEO’s home—a chilling and widely broadcast statistic that jarred with corporate claims about humane treatment for those uprooted in the move.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#130

Post by lotsofpulp »

rayiner wrote: post #103
CydeWeys wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing about NYC in comparison to the Bay Area is that we're not afraid of building more housing here, so supply increases every year and has a dampening effect on rent increases. Also, mass transit is much better, so if you live even 30 minutes away on a subway line the rents will be much lower. If you're willing to commute an hour each way (which is still less than a lot of people who drive every day on I-1…

The burbs are wsy better too. You can still find a great family home in a good school district within a reasonable commute on NJ transit, lirr, or metro north, well under a million.

I feel like the suburbs in NJ within reasonable commuting distance (door to door in 45 min max reliably) offer all the drawbacks of the city with none of the benefits of the suburb. You get a little more space, but not enough. A little less traffic, but still a lot of traffic. No decent gyms or parks, unless you like paying out the nose. And super high and ever increasing taxes. And I think even a 45 min door to door commute is too much, but add on the system’s unreliable-ness, I would find it unacceptable to commute from Jersey.
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