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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

#171

Post by dunpeal »

m_ke wrote: post #169
dunpeal wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Quora response uses US Bureau of Labor Statistics to show there are 92,350 programmers in the whole SF Bay area, compared to 62,530 programmers in the entire NYC municipal area. So about 50% more in the Bay. https://www.quora.com/How-many-software-engineers-work-in-Si...

WNYC had a segment about this last week and claimed that there are 110k tech workers in the NYC area.

"Tech workers" != programmers.

In fact, if there are only 110k tech workers, I doubt there are 92,350 actual programmers in NYC. They are counting all Product Managers, designers, beta testers, etc, as well as probably sales and administrative assistants in outfits like Google.

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

#172

Post by bilbo0s »

Aloha wrote: 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…

>Atlanta and Detroit, or two other lower cost large cities with convenient air travel to Seattle...

???

I think planners at Amazon were thinking more long term. I'm thinking that convenient and multi-modal access to the Europe-Africa side of the world played a big part here. East coast and west coast HQ's just make sense for a global behemoth like Amazon.

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

#173

Post by briandear »

rayiner wrote: post #69
c3534l wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does the state of New York.

New York doesn’t put Michelin star restaurants in strip malls.

Assuming a restaurant can even survive in the first place to earn that star.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/dining/restaurant-economi...

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

#174

Post by briandear »

c3534l wrote: post #87
rayiner wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One of the best restaurants in Silicon Valley, Alexander’s in Cupertino is effectively in a strip mall next to a Target and it’s far better than most of the good restaurants in “character-filled” San Francisco locations.

It’s so snobby and inaccurate to suggest a strip mall restaurant is “bad.” With the economics of restaurants, a strip mall location is often a great idea.

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

#175

Post by withhighprod »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #131
pratik661 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

“Fun” must be a bizarre elite perspective I’ve never understood either. The same stuff is available in Seattle as it is in NYC or Boston, just with an order of magnitude more people. Whenever I ask people about this they just talk about nightlife or something that I can’t relate to at all. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I didn’t hobnob with the well connected in college or “have fun” in college either.

NYC has much much more girls and boys, I know tons of male developer from west coast moving to NYC just to find their partner. And the anecdote is they mostly find one within weeks

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

#176

Post by roymurdock »

dunpeal wrote: post #146
roymurdock wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average salary for these employees will be many x greater than the average NYC resident - you need to compare the relative size of the +25k employees to the ~200k subset of residents that make $200k+ in NY, not the entire 8M pop. Not to mention the knock-on effects of the many jobs the HQ will indirectly create - cleaning, food prep, waste mgmt, facilities, security, transportation, etc. But yes, I agree that NYC…

> The average salary for these employees will be many x greater than the average NYC resident - you need to compare the relative size of the +25k employees to the ~200k subset of residents that make $200k+ in NY, not the entire 8M pop. NYC isn't known for small salaries, partly because it's not easy to live in Manhattan on a small salary. A major industry in Manhattan is banking, and folks in investment banks pull sa…

Good points. I think we're mostly in agreement that NY needed to put a bid in, unrealistic to call for cities to boycott the bid process. And that the impact of Amazon building a 2nd HQ will be pretty big for the city, if not in $$ terms (which I still believe) then at least in perception and to get access to the young professional talent that would've gone into banking/consulting otherwise. Will be interesting to see how the city handles increasing tech gentrification vs. bankers moving to connecticut

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

#178

Post by briandear »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #68
CPLX wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong for some modern contenders. Paris is a close runner up.

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

#179

Post by jowiar »

hueving wrote: post #163
jowiar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking the slider to the other extreme, you end up with company towns everywhere, and there are a whole lot of burned out husks of civilization that are memories to that. Until we truly solve remote, there will be some concentration. And there's value to that as an employee. If your employer goes kaput, or you're stagnating in your career, or you have an abusive boss, there are plenty of opportunities available, and…

>Taking the slider to the other extreme, you end up with company towns everywhere Why would you go to the other extreme? There are hundreds of large cities around the US that could easily headquarter these big companies and not become company towns.

Hundreds is a stretch. When you get down to the hundredth-largest city you’re at Des Moines, population 217k. At that point, if the company were to say “zero our taxes or we leave”, the city would do as told.

How small can a city be and have a healthy relationship with an employer of 25,000?

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

#180

Post by pratik661 »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #131
pratik661 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

“Fun” must be a bizarre elite perspective I’ve never understood either. The same stuff is available in Seattle as it is in NYC or Boston, just with an order of magnitude more people. Whenever I ask people about this they just talk about nightlife or something that I can’t relate to at all. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I didn’t hobnob with the well connected in college or “have fun” in college either.

Seattle is a tech monoculture. Chances are, all your friends will be working in Tech. By comparison, NYC is much more diverse professionally. If you have esoteric hobbies, orders of magnitude matter.
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