Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

1) Support the 50k jobs, but want extra effort to be taken to support existing populations/communities

2) Prohibit the 50k jobs so things can stay the same

3) Let the 50k jobs go elsewhere so they're not a local problem

4) Something else entirely that I'm missing

Workforce? Arguable. You may have a point.

But universities?

The Research Triangle has 2 really good schools: Duke and UNC. State is OK.

The Greater Toronto Area has the University of Toronto, Waterloo, McMaster, all of which outrank State. Waterloo and Toronto are especially strong, and beats Duke and UNC in technical disciplines.

Cities are the same way. Between New York and San Francisco on one hand, and Gary on the other, there are dozens of perfectly fine cities and the only reason to pick one versus the other is how good of a tax deal you can get. Nobody is going to pay a significant tax premium to be in Columbus versus Raleigh.

https://www.suny.edu/smarttrack/residency/

Non-resident students, including undocumented students, who attend for at least two years and graduate from a New York high school may be eligible for resident tuition. See the campus Student Accounts Office (Bursar) for details and to apply for resident tuition.

https://admissions.tc.umn.edu/PDFs/ResidencyReciprocity.pdf

Nonimmigrants residing in this country or state under a temporary visa that bars them from establishing domicile in the U.S. (visas B, F, H [H4 visa holders who have graduated from a Minnesota high school should contact the Resident Classification Office on campus about their resident status.], J, O, and M) shall be classified as nonresidents. Nonimmigrants holding a valid temporary visa that does not bar them from establishing domicile in the U.S. (visas A, E, G, I or L) may be considered for residency, assuming they otherwise meet the Basic Definition of Resident Status.

An then many states seem to recognize refugee and asylum visas, which aren't the same as permanent residence (but that is more of a technicality compared to the above).

http://www.techinmotionevents.com/blog/post/2017/05/04/the-2...

That being said, I do not like what Amazon has done to Seattle. The culture, infrastructure housing, etc, etc. I have been hoping that they don't end up in Philadelphia. I feel one other big player, then more startups would be good. I guess put another way some new blood. As the east coast feels a bit old blood at times.

As noted with the tax breaks to Comcast the other resident tech giant. The city needs more investment, not more tax cuts. There were issues with septa, schooling, public services, etc.

I did a few stints at Comcast. It was a good place to work, but they weren't pushing the boundaries generally. There were some internal teams that were pushing tech. Contributions to OpenStack was very large. Some video encoding stuff, but I think that team was largely located elsewhere. To get to the more technically advanced stuff you needed several rounds there.

Comcast in the meetup scene though was great. A number of directors and seniors presented at software as craft, devops, various code katas. I also knew a number of comcast employees going to the open philly code meetups. See for the cities open source stuff.

https://github.com/CityOfPhiladelphia

There was a definite real estate boon when I left. With a number of areas being built up. But there was also gentrification issue as well. I lived down in Grey's Ferry area for a bit. The post office had been closed, and the local grocery store I think path mark as well. It went from a nice little area to a bunch of bodegas and boarded up houses. It was very hostile trying to force the people to leave to make room for improvement/rebuilding. I think something was going on around temple university. With subsidies being ended or modified.

The city has it's problems for sure, but it's still a great place.