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Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

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Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#111

Post by shard972 »

choot wrote: post #108

One of the reason is that, people who are incharge of these decisions are invested in these cities. They've real estate in these cities. So, using public money of the company to invest in these cities increase the value of their personal investments :) It won't be changing anytime sooner. Shareholders aren't bothered. I wouldn't be surprized if majority of shareholders by value live in these cities too.

That and before they even move in they will be lobbying for foreign work visas because they "just can't find any local talent".

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#112

Post by iainmerrick »

Xcelerate wrote: post #106
taurath wrote: post #4

This coupled with the Amazon news is starting to get distressing. With the amount of companies that copycat them it’s like the rich are getting richer and the economic benefits are still going to be concentrated only in the most affluent cities. The rest of the country desperately needs real industry and good paying jobs - and will go to huge lengths to try to get them but it appears nobody can come up with a busines…

I worry about this as well. I wouldn't be surprised if SF, NYC, and DC encompass the majority of the country's wealth in a few decades. It genuinely amazes me that remote tech jobs haven't taken off. I just can't fathom why—unless companies have honestly found that it doesn't work for some reason unknown to me. What other incentive could there be? You get good workers at a fraction of the cost. And with companies lik…

Speaking as someone who does a fair amount of remote working, yes, videoconferencing is awful. I’ve worked at several different companies of different sizes and it’s always awful. The video quality is bad, audio is terrible, getting a meeting started takes forever.

These aren’t insurmountable problems, you just have to get used to a different way of working. It’s not remotely the same as working in the same office. Better in some ways, worse in others.

Google is one of the few companies with the resources to try to drastically improve the technology and fix this problem, but they instead decided just to double down on consolidating their staff in big offices. Obviously works for them but it’s a shame.

Edit to add: the above doesn’t necessarily preclude remote offices, but one of the problems is that it’s hard to get a good productive remote team started without a nucleus of strong local staff. It’s hard for a company like Google to open a big office in a new city without an established tech base, and videoconferencing tech doesn’t help much.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#113

Post by thaumasiotes »

ramraj07 wrote: post #91
tokyodude wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and has a dampening effect on rent increase Is that really true? I don't know if this data is accurate but googling "average rent new york city" vs "average rent san francisco" brings up these 2 results as the first hits. They look almost identical. The site claims average rent for NYC is $3634 vs SF at $3735. It also claims prices increased in NYC by 9.46% over last year vs SF at 0.62% https://www.rentjungle.com/a…

I'm a tech worker in NYC and none of my firends (except one idiot) pays more than 2500 for their studio apartment within Manhattan. I share a super fancy apartment in a hirise in Brooklyn and pay less than 2K. If you're okay living in Queens you can get a 2BR with less than 1h commute. And this is not even talking about distant Brooklyn, Bronx or jersey (also less tax)

You can also get a 2BR less than one hour's commute away from San Francisco for under $2000 / month.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#114

Post by chupasaurus »

nostrademons wrote: post #90
umeshunni wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a classic chicken and egg problem. Companies don't want to establish new offices in cities where they cannot attract new talent or there isn't a large existing base of talent. This limits large new offices to large metro areas (5M+ people) People don't want to relocate to cities where there aren't multiple job possibilities - you lose your job/hate it and don't want to have to relocate to find a new job or you w…

"Things that can happen that could break this cycle include" Also: universities, new natural resource discoveries, natural disasters, different regulatory environments, developments in transportation. I have a hunch that the North Coast of Canada is going to become a huge boom town within my lifetime, but it's likely to take a couple decades, and I don't yet know where the major cities will be. Am tempted to take a N…

I live at 55°N for 25 years and counting, as well as some time in a comparable climate (St. Petersburg), the wombo combo of very low temperatures in winter and constantly high humidity (temperatures are feeling way colder than with <50% humidity) with addition of low sunshine hours is not attractive one.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#115

Post by sumedh »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #94
bilbo0s wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know man? You'd be surprised how attached people are to their spouses or partners. Doesn't matter how badly you want to work at Google, if your spouse is an IP attorney or VP at an academic hospital, as a family you just can't go moving to the middle of nowhere. It's not ALL about being able to work at Google. There's a lot more going on in making these decisions. (At least there is for the type of people tha…

That's now a small minority of a minority. It's more usual for just one partner to have the especially high powered career. Even more so after starting a family. For those that have both then sure, it's more nuanced and may come down to which of the two has the better future chances, or to make different decisions. Most potential workers will not be in that situation at all.

> It's more usual for just one partner to have the especially high powered career. Even more so after starting a family.

I believe the few high profile people who actually make the big decisions will usually have a partner who has a high profile career as well. Those key people wont move because their partner wont move.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#116

Post by Arnt »

choot wrote: post #108

One of the reason is that, people who are incharge of these decisions are invested in these cities. They've real estate in these cities. So, using public money of the company to invest in these cities increase the value of their personal investments :) It won't be changing anytime sooner. Shareholders aren't bothered. I wouldn't be surprized if majority of shareholders by value live in these cities too.

The names of senior management and board members are public, so you can name the ones you have in mind.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#117

Post by hoaw »

Xcelerate wrote: post #106
taurath wrote: post #4

This coupled with the Amazon news is starting to get distressing. With the amount of companies that copycat them it’s like the rich are getting richer and the economic benefits are still going to be concentrated only in the most affluent cities. The rest of the country desperately needs real industry and good paying jobs - and will go to huge lengths to try to get them but it appears nobody can come up with a busines…

I worry about this as well. I wouldn't be surprised if SF, NYC, and DC encompass the majority of the country's wealth in a few decades. It genuinely amazes me that remote tech jobs haven't taken off. I just can't fathom why—unless companies have honestly found that it doesn't work for some reason unknown to me. What other incentive could there be? You get good workers at a fraction of the cost. And with companies lik…

Things like teleconferencing usually isn't a problem as such. If you work in a large enough organization, you are essentially working remotely already. It is just that people misunderstand what is happening.

It used to be that jobs where distributed as every town had their own businesses, but the work itself was centralized as one business mainly served one area.

What has happened is that large companies can now distribute their work all over the planet without the need for local branches. All the action is at the headquarters and therefor jobs are being centralized.

You can compare this to, say, how we used to and now use e-mail.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#118

Post by oblio »

choot wrote: post #108

One of the reason is that, people who are incharge of these decisions are invested in these cities. They've real estate in these cities. So, using public money of the company to invest in these cities increase the value of their personal investments :) It won't be changing anytime sooner. Shareholders aren't bothered. I wouldn't be surprized if majority of shareholders by value live in these cities too.

I don't remember the actual source, so it might just be a funny anecdote.

But I remember reading that after WW2 a lot of US companies were expanding and looking for new headquarters. They'd commission huge research teams to find the best location for the new headquarters, spend a lot of time and effort to find a good place.

A book written about 10 or 15 years after many of these companies found that almost invariably the result of the research placed the best location within a short distance of where the CEO was from/currently lived.

So what you're saying doesn't really surprise me :)

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#119

Post by baxtr »

choot wrote: post #108

One of the reason is that, people who are incharge of these decisions are invested in these cities. They've real estate in these cities. So, using public money of the company to invest in these cities increase the value of their personal investments :) It won't be changing anytime sooner. Shareholders aren't bothered. I wouldn't be surprized if majority of shareholders by value live in these cities too.

There is the anecdote that after WWII Bonn was favored over Frankfurt as new capital of West Germany because of its proximity to Adenauer’s home town of Cologne.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#120

Post by seanmcdirmid »

closeparen wrote: post #100
tokyodude wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and has a dampening effect on rent increase Is that really true? I don't know if this data is accurate but googling "average rent new york city" vs "average rent san francisco" brings up these 2 results as the first hits. They look almost identical. The site claims average rent for NYC is $3634 vs SF at $3735. It also claims prices increased in NYC by 9.46% over last year vs SF at 0.62% https://www.rentjungle.com/a…

You can live in many places that are not New York City and have a reasonably timely public transit commute into it.

New York City is huge though. To live in a place that isn’t NYC while still in state means Yonkers or White Plains. Reasonable commute is like an hour, maybe more.
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