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

nytimes.com

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

#151

Post by Animats »

gammateam wrote: post #48
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…

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/

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

#152

Post by jzylstra »

ishikawa wrote: post #149

One point, not mentioning if big companies like Amazon are a problem or not, is that this is a market with higher income, coming to a city with a very high living cost. So in my view these companies are moving to NY because they can afford paying employees that want to live in NYC.

I too am concerned that this point is often missed. The choice of where to live, for those who will find well-regarded (and paying) positions in any case, is one given as much weight as the organization for which one will work.

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

#153

Post by swoongoonz »

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…

100% agree. The thing nobody also remembers is that Silicon Valley was called SV because of it's hardware/manufacturing not really it's software development. The software side of things flourished because of the existing hardware work that had already existed (semiconductors, parc lab arpanet, apple, oracle, atari).

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

#154

Post by Itaxpica »

madengr wrote: post #17

NY is not a tech town. Google is not tech, it’s advertising. Amazon is a mail-order company. Uber is a taxi company. Stop calling “tech” technology. The revenue generated by those companies is not the technology itself. A semiconductor fab, a satellite construction facility, a defense contractor; those are “tech”. /rant

Semiconductor fab isn’t tech, it’s manufacturing. Satellite construction isn’t tech, it’s manufacturing. A defense contract isn’t tech, it’s an arm of the military.

If you define words however you want you can say whatever you want, but it doesn’t mean it’s worth saying.

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

#155

Post by ABCLAW »

TuringNYC wrote: post #20
nkozyra wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NYC tech is in trouble. I don't see much support for your argument here. As I see it, the stance is NYC is a strong enough tech city to be able to say no to Amazon; to not need to bend to their every whim to bring them here.

I would agree that we didn't need to bend to their every whim. We could probably have given them no incentives or token incentives and still won the HQ2 deal. There was a time to do that -- when we were making the proposal, not after it was already agreed to by both sides. But that isn't the my argument -- my argument is that the entire rhetoric is nonsensical. My shock is the dual narrative on "tech pays too much --…

>My shock is the dual narrative on "tech pays too much -- down with tech" "tech pays too little -- down with tech."

People can be upset that 1) developer salaries are large enough to disrupt the local real estate market, and 2) that fulfillment center and delivery positions are churn-and-burn jobs that are paid like shit.

Neither of those positions are contradictory.

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

#156

Post by ticmasta »

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…

I'm in Calgary and totally agree with your strategy. After a decade-plus of crazy-good economic times the city and province have had a tough couple of years due to macro (lower demand, increased US production) and micro (no market access) events. They keep talking about diversifying the economy through dramatic shifts in the focus of our start-ups, but (a) we have an entire generation of relatively young, super-educated people who know how to build real companies (from financing through execution) and (b) we have a non-O&G ecosystem of companies that has always been overshadowed by the energy sector. We don't need to radically shift to something new, we need to double down on the companies that are already showing traction in new areas and, more importantly, the people who have already shown they can build something valuable the last time around. In my mind this is defined primarily by what governments (municipal through federal) don't due vs. becoming activist partners. They need to focus on the ecosystem by removing barriers not picking winners. This will also likely require them to trim the fat that's accumulated over the past decade like every private company has been forced to do...

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

#157

Post by ticmasta »

Scoundreller wrote: post #146
0_gravitas wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In seriousness I would totally consider it if it weren't for the fact that I hear getting a Visa is hell

Canada really isn’t a hard place to immigrate to if you have at least a half-specialized degree, a year or two of experience and can pass an English or French test. There are a ton of immigration programs. The current fed gov is letting in a ton of people. If you have a job lined up, go for it. It’s a better situation here than most places.

>> The current fed gov is letting in a ton of people.

No judgement implied, but this is primarily on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. There has been little increase to economic immigration quotas since the last government.

Also, very few new Canadians want to go anywhere outside Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, which is understandable to a degree but not where the need for skilled, employment-aged people is most critical.

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

#158

Post by logfromblammo »

exegete wrote: post #141
okmokmz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> New York is the most important city in the history of world civilization, this shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. I wouldn't even consider New York to be the most important city in the history of the US, much less world civilization

Found the guy from Jersey! Kidding... But, I agree. Obviously NYC is an important city, but to say it is the most important city in the history of world civilization is a bit outlandish and US-centric.

It seems like a very "New York" thing to say, though.

Everyone else in the US knows to enthusiastically agree, quietly raise prices by 40%, and wait to roll their eyes until after the New Yorker's back is turned.

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

#159

Post by rchaud »

TuringNYC wrote: post #11

I realize the anti-Amazon movement was a limited (but loud) group of individuals, but if their level of influence has lasting power, NYC tech is in trouble. Consider NYTimes' own article on the amazon exit. Half the people angry at Amazon were commenting that Amazon wasn't going to pay living wages (thinking that corporate HQ2 jobs are fulfillment jobs.) The other half were angry that Amazon was going to pay too much…

> since when did NYC become a country? Where could/couldnt workers come from -- would it be only from Queens? Would Brooklyn be OK? What if someone commuted from NJ?

This question is coming up because moves of this scale aren't common, especially in big cities. NYC is very densely populated, and affordable housing is already a huge issue.

Nobody worries about Foxconn hiring non-Ohioans because most people aren't going to want to move to Ohio to work for Foxconn.

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

#160

Post by murph-almighty »

CPLX wrote: post #127
vonmoltke wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The backlash was mostly about the tax breaks and government subsidies that would have been given. The argument was that New York is New York and doesn’t need to bribe companies to put big offices here. If that is the case, where are the calls to end the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program[1], the Relocation and Employment Assistance Program[2], and the Excelsior Jobs Program[3]? That is where the vast majorit…

This argument is obvious nonsense. There was no outcry to prevent Amazon from using general programs that were open to all applicants, the problem was with the special extras they negotiated. There's no reason to think that Amazon would have been facing opposition if they'd just announced a new project in LIC and applied for the normal programs. They didn't do that.

Even if this wasn't over the extras, this would still be an obvious indicator that _maybe we're giving away too much money with these programs_.
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