It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town • Hacker News Board

Re: It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town

#191

Post by nerfhammer » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 2:20 AM UTC

cribbles wrote: post #72

kissickas wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an all a fan of how Amazon went about this farcical "search" and haven't deeply researched the deal NYC gave them. That said, addressing rising rents by limiting the number of high-paying jobs in a city seems like one of the worst possible ways to approach the problem.

This assumes the higher-paying jobs would have gone to the district's representatives, instead of to out-of-town yuppies. I am open to being contracted on this, but my assumption is that Amazon's HQ2 would not have primarily created jobs for underserved Queens residents. My own experience in NYC's tech scene is that a plurality of tech workers come from outside the city, and I am skeptical that their presence neverth…

NYers are opposed to commuters now? The city with 1 to 2 million current daily commuters?

Re: It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town

#192

Post by closeparen » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 3:08 AM UTC

nickelcitymario wrote: post #30

One of the biggest lessons I've taken from New York's approach is not to try and be the next Silicon Valley (as every community is trying to be). You can't beat the Valley at its own game. That's foolish. Instead, look to what industries your community has long been successful in, and develop the tech to disrupt those industries before the Valley does. NYC's example was to focus tech on advertising, finance, and medi…

Most towns don’t have anything like that. What local economic activity there is fulfills inherently local needs: healthcare, education, construction trades, retail, etc. Maybe a handful of “legacy” players on the national/international stage still holding on from back when those things were less geographically centralized, with layoffs looming.

Places desperate to become “the next Silicon Valley” aren’t anything to outsiders, as far as I can tell. That’s why they’re desperate.

Re: It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town

#193

Post by pmart123 » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 4:07 AM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #169

pmart123 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony of this is that attitude has created pretty much zero startups that have transformed into sustainable, profitable, medium or large companies. While there have been a couple successful exits that later crashed and burned like Tumblr and Blue Apron, and a couple TBD like MongoDB and Jet (Wal-mart acquisition), many of the NYC startup IPOs and exits seem to be playing a game of hot potato by selling to the nex…

> that attitude has created pretty much zero startups that have transformed into sustainable, profitable, medium or large companies. You are looking at modern day Amazon and comparing its profitability to startups, when Amazon itself consistently lost money every year until around 2004.

I just mentally built this list, but I have:

Here to Stay: Facebook, Twitter, Square, Netflix, Salesforce, Workday

Likely Strong Businesses: Airbnb, Stripe, Slack, Palantir, Twilio, Trade Desk (profitable), Zendesk, Automattic, Squarespace, One Medical, Juul

Profitable: Stitch Fix, Yelp, I'm sure there are others.

Maybe: Cloudera, New Relic, Dropbox, 23andMe, Robinhood, Plaid, Opendoor, Instacart

We will see, but big private valuations: Uber, Lyft, Pinterest, Coinbase, Instacart

Then for NYC I would have:

ZocDoc, Warby Parker, Classpass, and probably also Harry's, 1stdibbs, Lemonade, Compass, and Betterment. I'm sure I missed a few interesting ones, but I still think the current crop of SV companies established after 2004ish are on a different scale or tackling a bigger addressable market than the ones in NYC. Wallstreet is probably an even worse critic when a company is in its own back yard. I was at a Bloomberg event where the founder of Blue Apron was absolutely annihilated by the interviewer, and you could tell it was taking a toll on him mentally. Meanwhile, Evan Spiegel is in a similar situation and doesn't appear to have a care in the world out in LA.

Re: It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town

#194

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 11:18 AM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #117

vonmoltke wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon pays $0 in federal tax Citation to actual financial statements needed. Their most recent 10-K indicates they paid $1.2B in total taxes. > demanded $3 billion in local tax breaks No, they didn't. At least $2.5B of that is on the table for any company that wants to build and office for 25,000 people in LIC. > offered very little enforceable things in return Not sure what you mean here. The majority of the tax…

Amazon paying $0 in 2018 federal taxes was widely reported. Here's one citation: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/15/amazon-ta...

[deleted]

Re: It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town

#195

Post by danielson » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

zebnyc wrote: post #150

danielson wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At what point does someone who moves to NYC become a NYer? 10 years, or if you were here on 9/11.

Who gets to decide this 10 year magic number?

New York Today: Becoming a New Yorker

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/nyregion/new-york-today-b...

Re: It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town

#196

Post by aetherson » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC

beager wrote: post #189

aetherson wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do the same in the bay area. People who are complaining about how unaffordable the bay area is on six figure salaries are either wanting to be much closer than one hour from hot spots, owning a house, having a kid, or some combination thereof.

If not one of those three things are indepdently attainable on a six figure salary, then yes, the Bay Area is massively unaffordable.

The bay area is certainly very high cost of living. But not massively different from New York, which is also very high cost of living.

Re: It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town

#197

Post by JetSpiegel » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 12:14 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #151

gammateam wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your whole post missed the important part about what can get funded and where. NYC is coming up, but the graveyard of quirky disruptors would still only be pursued in Silicon Valley. These non revenue generating companies acting as developer daycare need to be flipped from one portfolio to the next until you have a deal size big enough to matter, swap out the board and executive team and shop it to the public markets…

non revenue generating companies acting as developer daycare need to be flipped from one portfolio... I wonder what's going to happen when, at some point, the Saudi Arabia Sovereign Wealth Fund stops putting money into Softbank. They're currently the world's largest source of dumb money. That can't last forever.[1] [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/19/softbank-year-in-review/

As long as Trump is in power they should be OK.

Re: It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town

#198

Post by phonon » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

EnderMB wrote: post #182

phonon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of Visa sponsorship are you expecting? An L1 visa for transferring from an international company location to the US? That would rule out startups. An H-1B? That takes months, and has less than a 30% success rate. An O-1? Do you have documentation that would support "extra-ordinary" abilities? An E-2 visa is kinda neat though--have you thought of taking matters into your own hands? https://workpermit.com/imm…

Isn't the low success rate for H1B down to how it is used for consultancy roles, whereas large companies looking for full-time employees tend to have a very high success rate for "straightforward" applications? If not, then why do the likes of Google and other FAANG companies even bother interviewing people?

So!

Like I said, the visas in play are, L1,O1,H1B

L1--a common option for large companies, that can accomodate having an employee first work in a European office, before moving them to a US based one. So perhaps you get hired, and you work in Zurich, or perhaps even Canada, for a year, before moving to the NY office. Also abused by large offshore consulting firms, who move employees between countries. Obviously, not an option for most companies.

O1--are you well known in your field? Published? Won awards? Print articles about you? Then you have a good shot at an O1. Possibly, FAANG have the ability to hire those top ~5% people disproportionately...

H1B--for "specialty" occupations. You HAVE to apply through a lottery (and be sponsored, etc). The applications are ONLY accepted first few days of April, for work that begins October 1 (six months later). Last year, 190,098 people applied. There were 65,000 regular openings, and 20,000 openings for people with Masters degrees.

After you get selected in the lottery (if you're not chosen, your application is returned, UNOPENED) your application is reviewed. Google etc. has about a 100% acceptance rate during review, body shops do much worse (it's basically a disqualification process..applicant is not sufficiently skilled/experienced/educated, doesn't have a job waiting for them, etc.)

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/it-consulti...

So the upshot--

Google wants you bad? They will work with their immigration lawyers (who are skilled, and do this routinely,) and Google may not care if it takes months or years to complete the process to bring you over to the US.

Small, or even midsize company company? A lot of overhead, and expense, and waiting, and it may not work out. Hence the lack of enthusiasm... (Caveat--already here on a legal work visa? Then lots of smaller companies would be happy to take it over.)

Re: It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town

#199

Post by EnderMB » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 9:44 AM UTC

phonon wrote: post #198

EnderMB wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the low success rate for H1B down to how it is used for consultancy roles, whereas large companies looking for full-time employees tend to have a very high success rate for "straightforward" applications? If not, then why do the likes of Google and other FAANG companies even bother interviewing people?

So! Like I said, the visas in play are, L1,O1,H1B L1--a common option for large companies, that can accomodate having an employee first work in a European office, before moving them to a US based one. So perhaps you get hired, and you work in Zurich, or perhaps even Canada, for a year, before moving to the NY office. Also abused by large offshore consulting firms, who move employees between countries. Obviously, not…

Thanks for the detailed post!

To be honest, I've always viewed the H1B visa as the "default", since it's the visa type associated with FAANG type interviews. As far as O1 goes, I'd be interested in how many developers make it over on a O1 visa to see where the bar is for being "known" in your field.

The L1 visa sounds interesting, though! I've looked at a few jobs in the UK where companies have offices in different cities, but I often get the feeling that few of them want to hire someone in their office when they have an eye on their sister office. As suggested in the other reply, banking sounds like a good idea, but the downside is that...you're working for a large company on (I assume) boring corporate stuff.

Re: It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town

#200

Post by phonon » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

EnderMB wrote: post #199

phonon wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So! Like I said, the visas in play are, L1,O1,H1B L1--a common option for large companies, that can accomodate having an employee first work in a European office, before moving them to a US based one. So perhaps you get hired, and you work in Zurich, or perhaps even Canada, for a year, before moving to the NY office. Also abused by large offshore consulting firms, who move employees between countries. Obviously, not…

Thanks for the detailed post! To be honest, I've always viewed the H1B visa as the "default", since it's the visa type associated with FAANG type interviews. As far as O1 goes, I'd be interested in how many developers make it over on a O1 visa to see where the bar is for being "known" in your field. The L1 visa sounds interesting, though! I've looked at a few jobs in the UK where companies have offices in different c…

You can google for people's experiences with O1. You can move the needle a bit by writing articles and getting some awards...you can also apply for an O1 and H1B.