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Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#101

Post by CydeWeys »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #89
CydeWeys wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not with any serious engineering presence of note. I'm a SWE, so other positions don't affect me.

They do! Audible is headquartered in Newark, and there are lots of larger Ads, AWS, and Video orgs in the city too. This isn't internal information, you can look it up on the career page. https://www.amazon.jobs/en/search?offset=0&result_limit=10&s...

Fair enough, thanks for the info. I wonder if this change means they'll simply be expanding those existing offices more rather than (presumably) moving many of them into the new space?

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#102

Post by taude »

NathanKP wrote: post #63
taude wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interesting to know how many employees Amazon currently has in NY. I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's already in the thousands.

It is in the Amazon statement: "There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams." Disclaimer, I'm one of those 5k. Currently I work from home 99% of the time because the office spaces Amazon has in NY aren't fantastic. It would have been nice to have a new headquarters building, but I'll still be enjoying working from home now I gu…

Thanks, I missed that (I stopped after a couple paragraphs). I did do a quick Google Search after I searched for how many Googlers are in NYC. (Was verifying there's actually 7K.)

It's pretty amazing how large some of the non-home offices are at these mega tech companies.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#103

Post by moate »

larrydag wrote: post #53
tribune wrote: post #36

1. $3B in "incentives" sounds like a lot, but would this have been a good investment? i.e. would the city and State have gotten a reasonable return in the long run? 2. New York already has a lot to offer in terms of labor market, real estate for employees, and access to capital markets. Did Amazon really need incentives to want to be in NYC? 3. No huge loss for either party. NYC doesn't need Amazon, and Amazon can ma…

Concerning 1. I believe that is often overlooked. It would not be hard (I suspect) to figure out the future effective tax revenue a municipality would receive.

Also, being a positive gain doesn't represent a good deal. We don't know what the lowest deal was that Amazon might have accepted (2 Billion? 1 Billion?) so even if NYC winds up in the black, they might have been leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on the negotiating table.

It's just like anything, you might benefit from the price you pay but you might have been able to get it cheaper.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#105

Post by CydeWeys »

walrus01 wrote: post #95
akhilcacharya wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubling their office there still pales in comparison to the headcount projected for LIC. 7K max vs. 25k targeted for Amazon. Amazon already has a presence in NYC.

Worth noting that Google owns all of 111 8th in NYC. They're slowly not renewing leases for existing tenants and taking over the whole building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111_Eighth_Avenue 111 8th is a major internet traffic exchange point. It's also gargantuan, it's 2.9 million square feet and occupies a whole city block. One of the interesting things about 111 8th is that it was designed for much higher than no…

And Chelsea Market too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Market

These real estate acquisitions were so large that they explicitly needed to be called out on the quarterly earnings calls to explain why CapEx exploded for that quarter.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#106

Post by josefresco »

deelowe wrote: post #82
Bucephalus355 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol dude that never happens.

Yes it does. It's extremely common for businesses to be offered incentives like this. They are usually bounded in a way to ensure it's beneficial to the city. The ones I've seen are requiring a certain number of headcount be maintained over a specific duration, a certain amount in salary be paid out over a specific period of time, and certain infrastructure be installed within a certain period. If these obligations a…

Except this: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-wisconsin-foxconn...

Maybe an extreme example of a "bad deal" but these aren't always a slam dunk, and some of the math to justify (especially sports stadiums) can be a bit iffy.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#107

Post by djsumdog »

endofcapital wrote: post #46

The big tech giants seem to be A/B testing different ways of opposing and working with the government. Sooner or later these tests are going to start showing they have more power than the government, and they will start ignoring laws because they are irrelevant to increasing whatever metric is important this quarter. This may have already happened, it's really hard to say.

This is more true than people realize. I'm not sure if it's entirely the case in this situation; as in that wasn't the initial intent but that's the way it turned out.

Things like Uber, AirBNB, even Google Waymo are all examples of this.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#108

Post by tmh79 »

raiyu wrote: post #70

After being a resident of NYC for 30 years and seeing the city change and become a technology hub and just a financial center I think this is a real loss for NYC. It would also be in Long island City which would provide a huge influx of new workers and move that neighborhood forward in development rapidly. The down side would be that it would push some residents and business owners out but this is simply a fact of li…

the issue for me is that the main benefit of the tax breaks is capitalized by owners of AMZN stock, mainly Bezos, the wealthiest man in the world. AMZN is going to grow somewhere, they should pay taxes where they grow.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#109

Post by jdhn »

OldFatCactus wrote: post #88
jdhn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting downvoted, but it's true. If I recall, the city/state would've broken even not that far into the future, and then everything after that would've been pure profit for them.

do you have a link to that data?

Here you go[0]. Some highlights:

1. $2.988 billion in state/city subsidies (so ~$48,000 per job)

2. The state estimated that Amazon will generate $27.5 billion in state and city revenue over 25 years, a 9:1 ratio of revenue to subsidies.

Using the numbers above, we can calculate that the state would break even in roughly 3 years if they're correct.

[0]https://ny.curbed.com/2018/11/16/18098589/amazon-hq2-nyc-que...

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#110

Post by djsumdog »

occamrazor wrote: post #100
skh wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current pet idea is that the Electoral College ought to be replaced with the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies. That way we could do away with the facade that presidential elections currently create.

Curious fact: in the City of London, companies vote in the election of the local council, with a number of votes which depends on the number of employees within the City.

GCP Grey does a great video on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc

Jay Foreman does another great video on the very weird situation with the House of Lords:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrQBTvRj0s8

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