91–100 of 229 posts
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New York doesn’t put Michelin star restaurants in strip malls.
Show me a single Michelin Star restaurant in the entire United States located in a strip mall. And besides, if they put Michelin Star restaurants in strip malls, they probably wouldn't be the marker of not much going on that they currently are.
Of course there are starred restuarants in strip malls.
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…
I'd suspect the choice of NYC has more to do with the available talent pool there. At this moment, with the scarcity of available engineering talent and the scale at which Amazon needs it, there might not be a city outside of SF that better fits their needs.
New York in particular is a very expensive talent pool with a lot of competition. Given Amazon's extremely strong brand, it's reasonable to think that they could benefit by opening almost anywhere else and then drawing talent in. Not only would those people get a lot more for their money, but Amazon would have relatively little competition, reducing turnover and wage inflation.
Northern Virginia is a hot mess of congestion. If they're smart, they'll go west of Dulles, or at the very least, not go further east than Reston. Better to stay out in Ashburn or something.
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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.
NYC is more attractive than it used to be, to be fair. But, especially the parts of NYC young tech workers are actually interested in is still urbanization on steroids. I can tolerate and even revel in it for a week or so but it takes a lot of adjusting from most places, even other large cities.
I think you just have a bias against heavy urban areas. Lots of people are comfortable living in large dense cities. Hundreds of millions, if not more, live in cities with similar levels of urbanization as NYC.
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…
Of course there are many advanced software programmers for the financial industries and other major intl companies in nyc. I'm not in the bay area, I'm in a secondary 'leading software city'. Is there a citation for this?
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 is a terrible place to live for a lot of people. i personally can not stand it. dirty city, terrible weather, and rude people.
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Whoa. Bezos indeed has homes in NYC and Washington DC. (As well as Seattle, Beverly Hills, and a ranch in Texas. [1]) I can't find it now, but years ago The Economist ran an article about a study that said a key factor in corporate headquarter moves was where the CEO lives. Disappointing to see it play out like that on such a grand scale, and after such a pretense of a nationwide search. Yet another thing that convin…
Doubt it was a factor with Bezos. The guy is rich enough to live anywhere, and has houses everywhere, as you also observed. Somehow the office didn't land in Beverly Hills or the Texas ranch. I expect the fact that he already has homes in NYC and DC is related to the fact they are in fact important locations for his business.
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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.theguardi…
>Not participating in the bid would have been suicide for the politicians of any major city I find that pretty implausible. Foxconn didn't save Scott Walker (and I don't think that's because his would-be supporters later realized that it wasn't such a sweet deal, either).
And it was a Chinese company. Chinese.
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…
Which is exactly what professional sports teams do often even if they've been somewhere a while and have no intention of leaving.