Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#21

Post by lic-defender » Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 4:36 PM UTC

SippinLean wrote: post #12

> Long Island City is a mixed-use community where arts and industry intersect It's mostly empty warehouses, housing projects, and luxury condos. There's very little in terms of culture or even basic needs, like grocery stores. > Long Island City has some of the best transit access in New York City, with 8 subway lines, 13 bus lines, commuter rail, a bike-sharing service, and ferries serving the area Realistically it'…

Vernon Blvd and some of the areas closer to Greenpoint are pretty lively, but you're mostly right about the emptiness. Biking through LIC can be kind of spooky (although not actually dangerous), and LIC is where a lot of "fight under abandoned bridge" scenes are filmed in NYC these days.

The M and E trains all go to LIC at Court Square or the station you take the moving sidewalk to. Depending on where the offices are, the N, Q, and R could all be closer than the 7. I feel worse for the renters in Greenpoint or Astoria, where many workers are going to go depending on the office location, than I do for the ones in LIC. Either way, this will hopefully also cause MTA to re-extend the G train to Jackson Heights.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#22

Post by jfasi » Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #13

refurb wrote: post #2

Let the real estate speculation begin!! https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-move-to-long-island-cit...

Grab a subway map of Queens. The good thing about NYC is that no one needs to drive to work.

The E/M/F/R tunnels are already some of the most congested, most delayed, least pleasant segments in the entire city. As much as I welcome Amazon's move, I don't envy the poor suckers who have to ride in and out of Queens.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#23

Post by rb808 » Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

> Hiring at both the new headquarters will begin in 2019.

Do they have buildings leased? I presumed they were going to build. How can they start hiring already?

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#24

Post by rb808 » Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 4:41 PM UTC

kodablah wrote: post #9

Tax kickbacks of $48k/job in NY and $22k/job in VA wth average salary of $150k/yr. Also $325mil in NY and $23mil in VA for just occupying the space. All well below the projected billions in direct investment and tax amounts. Not sure whether worth it or not, but it's all around economic growth which I see as a good thing in general. We can argue about public funds and growing pains, but this problem is better than th…

> $48k/job in NY

That is over 10 years, so is like $5k a year.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#25

Post by differentView » Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #17

This entire competition was an obvious sham to try to equivocate really desperate cities willing to give basically anything to have a major tech company headquarters, to the inevitable choice amazon was going to make of california or the coastal northeast, so they could extract maximum concessions. Its disgusting this worked as well as it did, $48k/job in tax concessions from NYC and $22k/job from VA, expect to see a…

What do you mean by "hurting local businesses"? Wouldn't more highly paid workers in the area be good for local businesses?

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#26

Post by fooker » Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

tomschlick wrote: post #15

isaacdl wrote: post #8

Wouldn't you call two new offices that are smaller than the headquarters "satellite offices"? It really does feel like Amazon successfully played a lot of municipalities against each other to try and extract the biggest concessions, knowing all along that it didn't make sense to try and hire 50000 people in a decade in any one location. I know that's how the game is played, but it's still feels a little disingenuous.

> Wouldn't you call two new offices that are smaller than the headquarters "satellite offices"? They could be divisional HQs, as in Alexa HQ'd in NYC and AWS in DC.

If they do that, that is eventually going to be used as ammunition for dismantling them.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#27

Post by phoenixstrike » Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

Cyclone_ wrote: post #19

Can't believe how many subsidies they got, to me it's a question of fairness, why should we subsidize them, but not others? I get that they are doing the community a service by creating high paying jobs, but there certainly have been negative sides to what they've done (gentrification, poor working conditions for many employees in their warehouses).

How is gentrification negative?

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#28

Post by dunpeal » Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

tomschlick wrote: post #15

isaacdl wrote: post #8

Wouldn't you call two new offices that are smaller than the headquarters "satellite offices"? It really does feel like Amazon successfully played a lot of municipalities against each other to try and extract the biggest concessions, knowing all along that it didn't make sense to try and hire 50000 people in a decade in any one location. I know that's how the game is played, but it's still feels a little disingenuous.

> Wouldn't you call two new offices that are smaller than the headquarters "satellite offices"? They could be divisional HQs, as in Alexa HQ'd in NYC and AWS in DC.

But they won't be. Can you imagine Amazon hiring 25k employees for just one project like Alexa?

Also, the whole point of the new offices is to aid recruitment. Limiting particular offices to just one skillset goes totally against that.

No, these offices will be smaller than the Seattle HQ, but at half the size, you can expect them to be quite diverse.

They will not be a "single project" office.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#29

Post by prolikewh0a » Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

Cyclone_ wrote: post #19

Can't believe how many subsidies they got, to me it's a question of fairness, why should we subsidize them, but not others? I get that they are doing the community a service by creating high paying jobs, but there certainly have been negative sides to what they've done (gentrification, poor working conditions for many employees in their warehouses).

They're doing the community a service by creating high paying jobs? The people will be shipped in from all around the world and displace the current communities. This destroys communities. This segregates poor & lower income people out. Only already rich people get to experience the benefits of this.

The subsidies and tax cuts they got are an embarrassment to our system and a wonderful look into how this country isn't working for lower classes and small local business that actually build communities. Amazon doesn't need subsidies, this is just a race to the bottom.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#30

Post by ghaff » Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

jfasi wrote: post #22

melling wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grab a subway map of Queens. The good thing about NYC is that no one needs to drive to work.

The E/M/F/R tunnels are already some of the most congested, most delayed, least pleasant segments in the entire city. As much as I welcome Amazon's move, I don't envy the poor suckers who have to ride in and out of Queens.

The "interesting" thing about that location is that it actually isn't especially especially convenient for commutes to/from places where young well-paid techies would normally choose to live.