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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

#61

Post by dalbasal »

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…

This is, unfortunately, how popular/populist political movements tend to work.

First, agree on the enemy/problem. Then, work out why they're the enemy. This can be xenophobic: migrants, jews, black people, brown people, chinese people, etc. There have been massive popular movements against all these in recent history. They all followed this pattern.

Jews were simultaneously accused of being behind banks and capitalism and bolshevism. Migrants are almost always accused simultaneously accused of stealing jobs and living off the dole. Others chime in that they're destroying or diluting native culture.

It can be more abstract. The problem is capitalism, socialism, monopolies, "corporate greed," the monetary system... Everyone will have their own definition of whichever enemy emerges, and their own reasoning for why its the problem.

Those are extreme and indefensible examples. But, popular movements can also be right about things, while being irrational about reasons.

What we are when we gather politically is... not our best selves.

^btw: I don't know enough about the nyc-amazon affair to have an opinion. Also, not comparing anyone to Nazis.

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

#62

Post by gipp »

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

Language is forged by consensus, and consensus won that battle a long time ago.

Besides, that's an extremely narrow view of what those giant companies do. Cloud? Hardware? AI? Car/drone autonomy? Natural science research, even?

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

#63

Post by rb808 »

EnderMB wrote: post #38

I've been wanting to move to NYC for years. I love big cities, and since I was a kid I loved NYC. I went on holiday there a few years ago, and it only reinforced the idea of living there. In practice, finding tech jobs as a Brit has been horrendous. I've applied for countless roles, including roles at all FAANG companies, startups crying out for people with my experience, and established medium-sized companies hiring…

You might want to look at other corporates esp banks. There are usually lots of people moving from London to NY and back again.

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

#64

Post by jakelazaroff »

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…

Anecdotal, but I'm a tech worker in NYC who was firmly against Amazon coming to LIC. I know many other people who were too. NYC tech isn't in trouble — people just want it to be A) ethical companies that B) support local communities and C) don't rely on corporate welfare.

I also don't really understand why AOC is being scapegoated for this — this wasn't her district and she's not a state or city politician anyway.

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

#65

Post by kissickas »

wefarrell wrote: post #50
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…

Politicians (AOC included) represent their current constituents. Not future potential constituents who might move into their district, but people who live there now. The key issue here is rising rent, and this is something Local politicians (AOC in particular) campaign on. A significant portion of people here would see their rents go up without seeing any additional benefits. How would you expect an elected official,…

I am not an all a fan of how Amazon went about this farcical "search" and haven't deeply researched the deal NYC gave them.

That said, addressing rising rents by limiting the number of high-paying jobs in a city seems like one of the worst possible ways to approach the problem.

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

#66

Post by selimthegrim »

Kihashi wrote: post #51
CPLX wrote: post #5

New York is the most important city in the history of world civilization, this shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. Everything genuinely important in this country ends up run from New York City eventually. People forget the Rockefellers made their money in Cleveland. But that aside NYC has always had a serious tech community since the electric grid was invented in lower Manhattan, or the transistor in suburban New Je…

> People forget the Rockefellers made their money in Cleveland. We do? I mean, I live in Cleveland and grew up in Ohio, but this is surprising to me.

How on earth do you think we got Severance Hall? The Orchestra, the Art Museum, all those bougie old Tudors in Cleveland Heights?

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

#67

Post by mandevil »

TuringNYC wrote: post #26
code4tee wrote: post #18

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.

They definitely didn't need to bribe Amazon. There was a time to argue against that. True leadership would have been to have these protests when the incentives package was put together, not later when we already bagged the win and would lose everything.

Amazon figured this out already and took steps to prevent a backlash while the packages were being put together. This was why Amazon required NDA's from every single bid team, to prevent anyone outside from knowing what the package looked like when it was being put together. So they reaped exactly what they sowed: they look terrible and ineffective, because they tried to keep it all secret and present the public with a fait acompli.

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

#68

Post by leereeves »

kissickas wrote: post #65
wefarrell wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politicians (AOC included) represent their current constituents. Not future potential constituents who might move into their district, but people who live there now. The key issue here is rising rent, and this is something Local politicians (AOC in particular) campaign on. A significant portion of people here would see their rents go up without seeing any additional benefits. How would you expect an elected official,…

I am not an all a fan of how Amazon went about this farcical "search" and haven't deeply researched the deal NYC gave them. That said, addressing rising rents by limiting the number of high-paying jobs in a city seems like one of the worst possible ways to approach the problem.

Not limiting the number of high-paying tech jobs in the Bay Area has been terrible for blue collar workers who don't own any land. People have been driven from their (former) homes by higher paid tech workers.

I think it's easy to understand why people in Queens would fight against a similar fate.

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

#69

Post by pboutros »

maxsilver wrote: post #36
TuringNYC wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They definitely didn't need to bribe Amazon. There was a time to argue against that. True leadership would have been to have these protests when the incentives package was put together, not later when we already bagged the win and would lose everything.

> True leadership would have been to have these protests when the incentives package was put together, Which is hard to do, since Amazon convinced most city leaders across the country to keep the majority of the incentives secret , and therefore no one could know how bad it was until it was already too late. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/technology/amazon-headqua... There's a strong argument here that the protes…

To add to this -- even when it was a secret, they were still protesting the idea of providing those incentives.

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

#70

Post by coredog64 »

code4tee wrote: post #28
arcanus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the withdrawal of Amazon, didn't that invalidate the argument?

Amazon didn’t withdraw from NYC. They still have around 5k employees here. Meanwhile Google is significantly expanding their NYC offices and nobody had to bribe them to do it.

Pretty sure Google is eligible for the same Empire State development grants that made up $2.5B of the $3B that Amazon was going to get.
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