Come to my town of Oshkosh, WI. We have some of the highest rates of drunk people.. I mean.. uh.. we have lakes!
Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus
241–250 of 1001 posts
Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus
#242Hey, remember those Amazon insiders that bought property on the cheap? "...Amazon employees are apparently eager to get a head start on the New York City real estate game. Condo sales in Long Island City are soaring following the announcement that the Queens, New York, [a] neighborhood will host part of Amazon's HQ2, The Wall Street Journal reports. According to The Journal, one brokerage firm sold 150 units in four…
It rarely happens, but it's always refreshing to see when real estate investment doesn't just equal free money.
Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's expansion doesn't require its employees to live in a part of the city that lacks adequate schools and parks. Whereas if you work in LIC it's not like you can really commute into the city from New Jersey or Stamford.
What are you talking about? LIC has lots of schools and parks. It's a very residential neighborhood. > Whereas if you work in LIC it's not like you can really commute into the city from New Jersey or Stamford. Why not? Take the Path to the E or the metro north to the 7.
Another fare and another point of failure in what is probably already a long commute? Sounds unappealing.
LIC will never become a second Midtown because its transport connections are so poor.
Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. The 25k number was just to make a splash and notice they aren't doing that again. Because there aren't really any other areas that could give them 25k skilled employees. They will scale up in Nashville which is expected since it is a growing area, and they will still be in NY due to the talent. The "HQ2" show was primarily to extract large concessions which almost worked. My initial reaction as a NY'er was "…
I don't even think they're really gonna scale up in Nashville. At least not in any meaningful way. 10 years from now, both Amazon and Google will have right around 25 thousand workers each in NYC. The reality is that NYC is not Wisconsin, they don't need to give out money. EDIT: I'd even go a step further, and predict that both Amazon and Google will also have ludicrously large presences in the DC-NOVA area in 10 yea…
Wisconsin doesn't need to give out money, either. If anything, they need to not give out money.
The story of the Foxconn factory, for example, is one of Wisconsin acting as if you can give a bunch of money to a company that smells of technology, and they will plunk a bunch of jobs for highly educated and skilled people in the middle of a region with relatively few highly educated and skilled workers. Which, it never worked that way. It never will work that way.
Companies go to places that can fill their staffing needs. Wisconsin, which has been systematically defunding its education system in order to re-route that money toward corporate subsidies, is undercutting its own ability to fill those staffing needs. I don't know that everyone in the state realizes it, but Wisconsin is stumbling all over itself to become the darling dumping ground for companies that are founded[1] in cities and states with the kinds of intellectual and entrepreneurial ferments you get around well-run and well-funded university systems to put their call centers, distribution centers, big boxes mostly full of robots, and other things they don't want to waste money putting in a more affluent area.
[1] I think "founded" is a key word, here, too. Supporting local entrepreneurship is the key to prosperity. Which mostly means getting out of the way of your entrepreneurs. If you get into a bidding wars to acquire the office where a company puts all their jobs that didn't merit being located at HQ, not only do you end up overspending - the people deciding what to bid aren't playing with their own money, so what else did you expect? - but you're also draining the talent pool that supports their growth.
tl;dr: The cart goes behind the horse.
Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. The 25k number was just to make a splash and notice they aren't doing that again. Because there aren't really any other areas that could give them 25k skilled employees. They will scale up in Nashville which is expected since it is a growing area, and they will still be in NY due to the talent. The "HQ2" show was primarily to extract large concessions which almost worked. My initial reaction as a NY'er was "…
There's absolutely no way they are scaling up NY to the same degree they would have with the subsidies. There's no reason to. The value proposition is gone, so now Amazon will slow-roll growth in NY like they will any other office. The fact that you (and many others) consider this a win is an attempt to revise history. This tax deal was all about Amazon expanding very quickly. That deal is gone. But feel free to pat…
Amazon is notorious for paying pennies. 25k jobs paying 150k on average is a pipe dream. ask whole foods delivery people for Amazon fresh or whatever its called. they are counting their pay including $5 mandatory tip they collect from customers.
Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus
#246Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Whatever growth occurs in NY will be organic. Not government-subsidized hyper-growth which can throw things out of whack. It's not going to be organic. Instead, these same deals are going to be spread out to a bunch of other companies, most of which will pay less than Amazon on average and the "subsidies" will take longer to be a net positive. Again, people confuse bribes with standard deals. Any company is eligibl…
> It's not going to be organic. Instead, these same deals are going to be spread out to a bunch of other companies, most of which will pay less than Amazon on average and the "subsidies" will take longer to be a net positive. Only if you assume those other companies collectively hold the same bargaining power that Amazon did, which is an assumption I can't agree with
Man... the misinformation is so stunning. They don't NEED bargaining power because these tax deals were done through programs that already existed in New York. The overwhelming majority of the money involved in this requires you only meet the eligibility requirements.
The biggest aspect of this deal for Amazon was reduced regulatory burden. That was Amazon's actual goal here, the tax offsets were just the icing that every company is going to end up getting by making a major move like this.
Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
A clarification: NYC didn't offer Amazon subsidies. New York State did. That's really the core of the tension - the whole deal was negotiated in secret then announced to the world as a finished product. That tends not to earn you goodwill with city politicians you deliberately excluded from the process.
agreed. the drive to squash this deal was mainly driven from local politicians who were whining that they were cut out of the process.
Yeah, completely sidestepping your largest municipal government (and country's largest for that matter) and negotiating a secret deal with a private company should be completely fine and doesn't shit all over federalism in the slightest!
Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus
#249Of all the places, why did NYC offer Amazon subsidies? NYC actually has too many good jobs for the amount of space... I am also proud of my cantankerous fellow New Yorkers who fought this.
A clarification: NYC didn't offer Amazon subsidies. New York State did. That's really the core of the tension - the whole deal was negotiated in secret then announced to the world as a finished product. That tends not to earn you goodwill with city politicians you deliberately excluded from the process.
My understanding was that Amazon was intending to use existing city programs to fund $1.3B of the $3B in incentives, most of that tied to the number of employees they hire to work in specific zones including LIC [1].
Why do they have to involve the city politicians in the decision-making process if they don't need any special treatment?
[1] "While New York City has not offered Amazon any direct subsidies, the company also plans to take advantage of two city tax breaks that will further sweeten the deal by nearly $1.3 billion.
One is the Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, which offers businesses moving to certain parts of the city a tax credit of up to $3,000 per employee for 12 years. The program will benefit Amazon to the tune of $897 million, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
The other is the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program, which provides property tax abatements. It will be worth nearly $400 million to Amazon, Cuomo said."
(https://patch.com/new-york/new-york-city/nys-amazon-deal-wha...)
Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
As shame. As an employee of a Big N company in NYC, this would have provided upward pressure on my salary. The fact that that's all you can think about ... is exactly why people are starting to lose their love for Big Tech in general.
I was hoping they would move to my city for the same reason. There is nothing wrong with hoping something works out in your own self interest.
There is nothing wrong with hoping something works out in your own self interest.
It is when you're not considering the adverse effects on others. And when you're already doing quite well enough, as it is.