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Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

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Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#281

Post by amyjess »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #127
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…

> The rest of the country desperately needs real industry and good paying jobs - and will go to huge lengths to try to get them No they don't. Tax breaks aren't enough. One of the big reasons a lot of people really like NYC is that it's one of the few cities in the US that actually feels like a city. NYC is urbanist in a way that relatively few American cities are (and most of the other cities in this category are al…

So, I just got back from a week-long vacation to NYC, and it's reinforced what I've always felt about it: NYC is a wonderful place to visit, but I'd never want to live there.

I had a lot of fun, and I wish I could've stayed another week, but actually living and working there? No thank you. I actively do not want to fight through crowds and run to catch connecting trains just to get to and from work every day. I don't want to live in a tiny apartment with no cooling but a room air conditioner sticking out the window. I don't want to be surrounded by noise 24/7.

Trust me, for every person who wants to live in NYC because it's actually a city, there's at least one person like me who only wants to set foot in cities to play tourist and would rather live and work in the suburbs.

And I'd rather live in modern suburbs at that... in NYC suburbs like Westchester (where I stayed during my trip), the housing stock is so old that even a nice place will be a fixer-upper, and the street layout is horrendously bad because nothing was planned in advance. I strongly prefer living in southwestern suburbs where nothing is older than the late '70s, half the neighborhoods were built in the 21st century, and the suburbs are built around a one-mile grid of six-lane divided highways (e.g. Dallas, Vegas, Phoenix).

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#282

Post by chuckgreenman »

dionidium wrote: post #252
del82 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Michigan and moved to greater NYC after grad school, and I want to push back a bit against the idea that nobody on the coasts even considers the middle of the country. My spouse and I would love to move somewhere less expensive than NYC, but we just can't make it work. We're both in fairly specialized tech fields, and prioritize walkability, diversity, great schools and career growth opportunity. Outside…

It would be pointless to try to speak to your particular situation, but I think a lot of people who think they can't get this or that thing out of, say, Nashville or Minneapolis, or whatever, are wrong . I don't mean to say their opinion is wrong. Live wherever you want! I mean to say that they have objectively false impressions about quantifiable aspects of those cities.

Minneapolis does have a growing tech field, and it is laid out in such a way that you can get out into the country quite quickly after the work day.

However, unless your working in medical devices I wouldn't call it a hub like New York, Boston or the valley.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#283

Post by yesimahuman »

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…

Many midwestern cities are seeing strong growth right now, especially in tech. Madison is one of them. I think we’ll be fine.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#284

Post by TulliusCicero »

kyrieeschaton wrote: post #183

Meanwhile, the executive team openly laughed at the idea of investing in offices any distance from the coast.

Munich and Zurich are both quite far from the coast.

Of course, they're also expensive cities: Zurich is one of the most expensive in Europe, and Munich is the most expensive city in Germany.

Now, maybe this is because the Google executive team loves throwing away money on the most expensive cities for no reason. But I think a more likely explanation is that the same desirability that drives up prices also makes it more attractive for talent and employers.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#285

Post by PLenz »

vonmoltke wrote: post #55
zjaffee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to point out about the NYC metro area is that there is a ton of land surrounding it with reasonably priced homes in safe areas with less than a 45 minute commute by public transit, where in the Bay Area and Seattle, the waterways are far larger, and transportation options more restricted. Within huge portions of nearby suburbs, you can buy a sizable 3+ bedroom house for <400k in a town with a train stop and…

> Within huge portions of nearby suburbs, you can buy a sizable 3+ bedroom house for A train which sometimes get you there in 45 minutes, sometimes in 60 minutes, sometimes gets cancelled because of (Amtrak signal problems | disabled Amtrak equipment in the Hudson tunnel | overhead wire damage | $ PROBLEM_OF_THE_DAY). He says while crammed in to an NJTransit train.

NJT is a mess but Metro North is pretty great. I walk to the train and then walk GCT to our office on Park. I grew up in Queens and my commute to Manhattan is shorter now when I live 30 miles outside the city. But I also pay for that with Westchester taxes.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#286

Post by adventured »

chickenfries wrote: post #253
redblacktree wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have kids yet? Genuinely curious.

1200 sqft is plenty of room for a 4 person family. I mostly grew up in the city, in a small apartment, but for a while we did live in the Midwest, in a big house. The only problem with apartment living was that we had too much furniture we didn’t need from when we lived in the Midwest.

> 1200 sqft is plenty of room for a 4 person family.

That's a projection of your subjective preference.

1200 sqft is not enough space for just me, that's my subjective preference. I currently occupy a home by myself with about ~2,500 sqft. I don't utilize all the space regularly. My bills would not go down by much if I reduced that space to, say, 1,500 sqft. Housing where I live is spectacularly affordable. I consider not having to live in a tiny, cramped space to be a quality of life benefit. I enjoy that my kitchen is the size of a small studio in San Francisco or NY, and it costs me perhaps $120 per month as a share of my mortgage.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#287

Post by ardy42 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #279
joey-bob wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, your fundamental assumption about what "techies" want is at least partially flawed. Not that no one in tech wants bike Lanes, public transit, and authentic South Indian cuisine. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people who work at FAANG consider these things important in their life. But there is still a large portion that truly don't care for all that. They live in the bay because if…

You are not wrong, but I'm not saying this is the sole factor in city attractiveness here. It's just one factor. Other things equal, I think it's easier to attract top talent to cities with halfway decent urbanism than to cities that are more like giant suburbs. I focused on it in my original comment mostly just because it's an area I'm particularly familiar with, and it's an area where the cities that are supposedly…

> You are not wrong, but I'm not saying this is the sole factor in city attractiveness here. It's just one factor. Other things equal, I think it's easier to attract top talent to cities with halfway decent urbanism than to cities that are more like giant suburbs.

I wonder if the real situation is that it's easier to attract young "top talent to cities with halfway decent urbanism than to cities that are more like giant suburbs." That's also tends to be kind of talent that's willing to work way more than is really good for them. The suburban lifestyle is more suited for established families and older "top talent."

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#288

Post by amyjess »

umeshunni wrote: post #16
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…

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…

> 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)

I wish more companies would do what TI did.

TI set up their headquarters in Richardson, TX, where there were very few people with any engineering background. So they opened their own university in order to farm talent, and once it got large enough, they had the state take it over from them. It became the University of Texas at Dallas, and it's now probably the most important university in the southwest for engineering and CS (I've heard the phrase "MIT of the southwest" before, but I don't want to call it that because I went to UTD and that's a bit of an exaggeration).

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#289

Post by hoaw »

dionidium wrote: post #252
del82 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Michigan and moved to greater NYC after grad school, and I want to push back a bit against the idea that nobody on the coasts even considers the middle of the country. My spouse and I would love to move somewhere less expensive than NYC, but we just can't make it work. We're both in fairly specialized tech fields, and prioritize walkability, diversity, great schools and career growth opportunity. Outside…

It would be pointless to try to speak to your particular situation, but I think a lot of people who think they can't get this or that thing out of, say, Nashville or Minneapolis, or whatever, are wrong . I don't mean to say their opinion is wrong. Live wherever you want! I mean to say that they have objectively false impressions about quantifiable aspects of those cities.

I don't think that is generally people's concern. What people in bigger cities would want from smaller cities are things that are significantly better to offset the lesser verity and upside. If you to a large degree still have to deal with commuting, the housing market, education and health care (or whatever) it doesn't really do that. If these cities want to be competitive they have be attractive in their own right, not relative to a bigger city.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#290

Post by ttobbaybbob »

I wonder if the banks, who are increasingly branding themselves as "tech companies"[1], are worried about Google and Amazon encroaching on their territory.

My understanding is that at least part of the appeal of NY to Google and Amazon is the quality and quantity of systems engineers at banks and hedge funds.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-02-15/lloyd-... (among many other such articles)

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