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Amazon expected to announce NYC and Northern Virginia as new headquarters

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Re: Amazon expected to announce NYC and Northern Virginia as new headquarters

#61
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[retracted]

For some quality of life means being able to get a drink at 3AM. For others - house with a backyard.

Good point. Right now it's nearly impractical to have a family in the Bay area. I'd personally like to see a lot of improvement on the supply side in the form of high-density housing in urban centers.

Re: Amazon expected to announce NYC and Northern Virginia as new headquarters

#62
If they are picking NYC, I see why Long Island City makes sense with proximity to Manhattan (and maybe Cornell on Roosevelt Island) plus its explosive growth, but still so much unused space.

I have to say I haven't heard from one person in Astoria or Long Island City (where I live and work, respectively) that's excited about this. And there has been a lot of buzz about it over the past couple weeks. The strain on the transit system and increasing rents that are already skyrocketing is definitely freaking out a lot of people.

Maybe it's a little selfish of me, but I'm pretty terrified of what it will do to our office's rent in particular...even though it's been expanding rapidly and getting more expensive, Long Island city has been a great place for cheapish space in old industrial buildings for new/small businesses. I figure we and a lot of the surrounding small businesses will be pushed out at the ends of our leases.

I am very curious to know where in Long Island City they are targeting. There are so many big industrial lots that they could build on or new construction that they could move into. I had heard they were looking at one of the Plaxall-owned buildings, but can't remember the source.

Re: Amazon expected to announce NYC and Northern Virginia as new headquarters

#63
post #6

I feel this choice is a mistake for the company long term, they're putting resources into two very hot housing and real estate markets, that have no real draw (in my opinion) for technical employees. Hew York is high tax (compared to Washington), unpleasant weather, overall high costs, and has a housing shortage, Washington DC, once described has having "Southern Efficiency, and Northern Charm" has similar issues of…

NYC has a lot of developers, more than the valley. It's already a 'draw' of sorts, this is an advantage. "DC, access to policymakers - but I see no real strategic advantages here." Amazon is going to become the #1 IT vendor of choice for the biggest government of the world AND reach their tentacles deep into the political arena for all sorts of other benefits. Military, FBI, CIA, Gov, Fannie/Freddie. All huge . Also…

Amazon is the new IBM

Re: Amazon expected to announce NYC and Northern Virginia as new headquarters

#64
post #17

I agree with Scott Galloway who has both predicted the outcome and has called this a sham 'contest.' Galloway said that Bezos was always going to pick one of the coastal cities where he has a second/third home. By doing this 'contest' Amazon was able to get cities to compete with each other to provide tax incentives to Amazon and was also able to get valuable private information on the cities that Amazon can use in t…

Obviously Amazon was going to get a great bargain and bunch of info to boot - they have massive bargaining power.

Not participating in the bid would have been suicide for the politicians of any major city save perhaps Kreuzberg, Berlin [1].

The amount of wealth creation and subsequent tax payments/land value boost that any FAANG company would bring with a new HQ is way too big to be ignored.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/09/fuck-off-goog...

Re: Amazon expected to announce NYC and Northern Virginia as new headquarters

#65
post #6

I feel this choice is a mistake for the company long term, they're putting resources into two very hot housing and real estate markets, that have no real draw (in my opinion) for technical employees. Hew York is high tax (compared to Washington), unpleasant weather, overall high costs, and has a housing shortage, Washington DC, once described has having "Southern Efficiency, and Northern Charm" has similar issues of…

> Washington DC, once described has having "Southern Efficiency, and Northern Charm"

This is so great.

Re: Amazon expected to announce NYC and Northern Virginia as new headquarters

#66
post #33
post #6

I feel this choice is a mistake for the company long term, they're putting resources into two very hot housing and real estate markets, that have no real draw (in my opinion) for technical employees. Hew York is high tax (compared to Washington), unpleasant weather, overall high costs, and has a housing shortage, Washington DC, once described has having "Southern Efficiency, and Northern Charm" has similar issues of…

New York is literally the greatest city in the history of world civilization and the planetary capital of finance, media, business, fashion and culture. It’s easily the largest city in the country, and iconic globally. But you’re finding it hard to understand why people might want to live here? I’d post more but my New York life is veritable cornucopia of novel and enriching experiences and I’d better get back to it.…

Someone (I forget who) once said that New York’s real specialty is convincing twentysomethings that it is the center of the universe.

It certainly seemed that way to me for a long time.

Re: Amazon expected to announce NYC and Northern Virginia as new headquarters

#67
post #33
post #6

I feel this choice is a mistake for the company long term, they're putting resources into two very hot housing and real estate markets, that have no real draw (in my opinion) for technical employees. Hew York is high tax (compared to Washington), unpleasant weather, overall high costs, and has a housing shortage, Washington DC, once described has having "Southern Efficiency, and Northern Charm" has similar issues of…

New York is literally the greatest city in the history of world civilization and the planetary capital of finance, media, business, fashion and culture. It’s easily the largest city in the country, and iconic globally. But you’re finding it hard to understand why people might want to live here? I’d post more but my New York life is veritable cornucopia of novel and enriching experiences and I’d better get back to it.…

This is both arrogant and ignorant at the same time. New York, I'm sure, is a great city, but it is not the end all be all of everything. The next time you sit down at one of your fancy Manhattan restaurants I would encourage you to humbly thank the people from where there are "stripmalls" who made it and most other things in NYC possible. Food, the literal materials for the buildings, the energy renewable or otherwise, basically all the support resources and services that make cities like NYC even possible come from the parts of the world you seem to hold in contempt. No wonder middle America hates the "coastal elites" with an attitude like this.

Re: Amazon expected to announce NYC and Northern Virginia as new headquarters

#68
post #33
post #6

I feel this choice is a mistake for the company long term, they're putting resources into two very hot housing and real estate markets, that have no real draw (in my opinion) for technical employees. Hew York is high tax (compared to Washington), unpleasant weather, overall high costs, and has a housing shortage, Washington DC, once described has having "Southern Efficiency, and Northern Charm" has similar issues of…

New York is literally the greatest city in the history of world civilization and the planetary capital of finance, media, business, fashion and culture. It’s easily the largest city in the country, and iconic globally. But you’re finding it hard to understand why people might want to live here? I’d post more but my New York life is veritable cornucopia of novel and enriching experiences and I’d better get back to it.…

> "greatest city in the history of world civilization"

Woah, hold on your horses. There are plenty of contestants there. Rome. Tenochtitlan. Cairo. Babylon. Etc.

Re: Amazon expected to announce NYC and Northern Virginia as new headquarters

#70
post #6

I feel this choice is a mistake for the company long term, they're putting resources into two very hot housing and real estate markets, that have no real draw (in my opinion) for technical employees. Hew York is high tax (compared to Washington), unpleasant weather, overall high costs, and has a housing shortage, Washington DC, once described has having "Southern Efficiency, and Northern Charm" has similar issues of…

For some weird reason (in my experience) Amazon employees all seem to want to move to NYC. Like, constantly. Go on Blind and they'll talk about it all day with dubious reasoning. I don't get it myself (I had a few NYC offers but chose Amazon in Boston instead), but NYC has become "the place" elite for software-focused undergrads these days. Everyone wants to get into FB/Instagram NY or Google NYC.

I was one of those people. I moved to NYC in May. In a lot of adult sports leagues I'm meeting a surprisingly high number of developers who moved from the Bay Area to NYC. All for similar reasons. Its way more fun to spend your 20s in NY than it is in SF. Within my social circle, many more are planning on moving from SF to NY. This might be anecdata, but Google and Amazon might have recruiting data about candidates' location preferences.
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