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Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia

washingtonpost.com

311–320 of 412 posts

Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia

#311

I'd be willing to bet Bezos knew with 90% confidence where he'd want HQ2 a year ago and put on this prisoner's dilemma game amongst states to reap the most benefit possible before moving there.

Jeff Bezos owns a $23m house in DC. The entire HQ2 process was a farce to get cities to game theory themselves to death in favor of Amazon. HQ2 was always going to be in NOVA.

Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia

#312
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this often. I would like to see an analysis, breakdown, or a real life comparison that suggests this, and for which tier of engineers this is true. I think two things; 1) non bay area tech workers severely underestimate the total comps that bay area workers are earning right now. 2) many renters in the Bay Area may actually have more in their pocket. If you are willing to rent a room (i.e not have a studio or…

You need to apply the marginal tax rate for California workers, which would typically be ~41% (24% federal + 9.3% state + 7.65% Social Security + Medicare), to figure out how much more is needed on a pre-tax basis. You need an extra $2.5k/month ($30k/year) pre-tax to make up a $1.5k/month difference in rent, or $3.4k/month ($40k/year) pre-tax to make up a $2k/month difference in rent, which is more realistic if you w…

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Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bay has a kind of a specific moral view, which is sometimes applied in a fairly authoritarian manner. ... For example, all sorts of activities which are common and normal in the rest of America and the world are either frowned upon, or considered fully uncool in the Bay. Things like fishing. Hunting. Most sports. Talking about sports. Twangy accents. Country music. This is a long list. So true.

To be fair, pro sports are an obvious waste of valuable time and attention. Personally, I’d rather actually connect with someone (or not) than use such mindlessness as a social crutch. I don’t find the extremely common phenomenon of people who don’t like sports forcing themselves to pretend they do for career-related reasons to be particularly healthy, either.

The New Yorker is an obvious waste of valuable time and attention but I don’t hold that against an entire region.

Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia

#314
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the South has a long way to come before the average tech worker would want to live and work there. You couldn't pay me enough (literally since comp is so low out there, but also kind of metaphorically as well) to go work and live in any Southern state. Maybe you need a critical mass? - fellow Bay Area tech worker

Can you elaborate why the south has a long way to go before the average tech worker would want to live there?

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Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia

#315
post #283
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but also for a long time (8+ years).

Oh, wow... when and why did that change?

Google embarked on a long mission to consolidate in the Bay Area and close small engineering offices. When Larry was the CEO he expressed his desire to have millions of engineers at Google, all in Mountain View. I can only attribute this strange desire to the fact that billionaires don’t notice housing crises and don’t have to sit in traffic. Sundar isn’t as much of a space cadet as Larry but he continues to consolidate. Some offices are established enough to survive, like Seattle and Chicago and New York, and others have to be kept open to attract specific people, but the company is really centered in Mountain View (and now Sunnyvale because obviously Mountain View is too small to contain the company).

Even San Francisco is to some degree a backwater office for engineers. Many projects have been “defragged” out of there, which is a term that means the project is given to some engineers in Mountain View and the original developers have a choice of finding a new project or moving there.

Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"quite liberal and tolerant" The Bay has a kind of a specific moral view, which is sometimes applied in a fairly authoritarian manner. It's not very Liberal, and arguably not hugely tolerant either. For example, all sorts of activities which are common and normal in the rest of America and the world are either frowned upon, or considered fully uncool in the Bay. Things like fishing. Hunting. Most sports. Talking abou…

I’ve had no trouble finding fishing and hunting partners in SV. I’ve never personally felt anyone hugely opposed to hunting either, unless it some how conflicted with how they feed themselves. I do find it interesting thatduck hunting during season can be done just a maybe a mile from the Yahoo/Google Cloud buildings in north Sunnyvale. I have frequently seen full camo duck hunters carrying shotguns from the water tr…

Protip if anybody wants to talk sports at a tech company and is finding the technical teams lacking, head on over to the Go-to-Market teams; knowing what's going on in whatever sport is in season is basically in their job description.

Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia

#317
post #308
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by FULL OF you mean less than a half a percent of the population, then maybe you are right. Seriously, this is offensive and inaccurate and wrong. It is just as bad as saying all Muslims are terrorists. Only people who have never been to the South, and let New York media and Hollywood caricatures inform them ACTUALLY believe this. It is terrible that CNN and MSNBC have followed the Fox News model of peddling fear,…

There’s a statue of a confederate soldier right in front of the Arkansas Capitol in Little Rock. If you think it’s still standing because of the efforts of only .5% of the citizens of that state, that suggests that those few citizens wield disproportionate power, although the more likely explanation is that your estimate is very low. In fact the state of Arkansas has a systemic racism problem that begins at the Capit…

There is a major highway named after Robert E. Lee running through Hilary voting Northern VA. Shit is more complicated than you think.

Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia

#318
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the South has a long way to come before the average tech worker would want to live and work there. You couldn't pay me enough (literally since comp is so low out there, but also kind of metaphorically as well) to go work and live in any Southern state. Maybe you need a critical mass? - fellow Bay Area tech worker

Do you not realize that this is a bigoted statement?

I'm a transgender woman. I use the women's bathroom. Should I move to the South? It's not bigoted to call out bigots. It's not bigoted to prefer to live somewhere without bigoted local government.

Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, pro sports are an obvious waste of valuable time and attention. Personally, I’d rather actually connect with someone (or not) than use such mindlessness as a social crutch. I don’t find the extremely common phenomenon of people who don’t like sports forcing themselves to pretend they do for career-related reasons to be particularly healthy, either.

"To be fair, pro sports are an obvious waste of valuable time and attention." Ha ha ha - this is so funny. If this comment is not satire, then I think I just made my point! I hope that readers here realize how fairly uncommon (and elitist, i.e. everyone is obviously wasting their time) this kind of statement is. Surely, a lot of people don't like pro-sports, but most are not so antagonist about it. My gosh, if you wa…

pretty sure that was a joke

Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia

#320
post #4

Just a stones throw away from Washington DC, imagine that. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Amazon is in talks to do billions of dollars worth of work with the DOD and that the location choice of the second headquarters might have a lot to do with that.

Yeah, congratulations to everyone who called it ages ago or pointed out that a CEO is going to put HQ2 near an already established home. Good work on 6+ months of press and making cities embarrass themselves for what seemed obvious from the start. https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/news/a...

It seemed like the leader after 3/20 location choices were in the DC area (Montgomery County, DC, Northern Virginia). DC and Montgomery were kinda thrown in there to make it look like they could be contenders, but logistically Northern Virginia makes the most sense. It’s near metros, near IAD and Reagan airports, has land available for a large campus, has a lot of offices of other businesses doing work for the government, is a fairly rich suburban commuter area.
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