

Apple Should Open a Seattle Office - ingve
http://shapeof.com/archives/2014/8/apple_should_open_a_seattle_office.html

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dsjoerg
I find this article strangely unnecessarily specific without justification.
Why not just say All Good Companies Should Open an Office In Every Major City?

What is so special about Apple and Seattle that notably that company should
open an office in that city?

~~~
psykotic
Two possible reasons: Seattle is the largest tech center outside of the Bay
Area, and the cost of living is still manageable.

~~~
jseliger
_the cost of living is still manageable_

True, though they are rising rapidly:
[http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021673014_rentincrea...](http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021673014_rentincreasesxml.html)
.

Seattle has had a better response than San Francisco's:
[http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-
exodus/...](http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/7205/)
("Over the past two decades, San Francisco has produced an average of 1,500
new housing units per year. Compare this with Seattle (another 19th century
industrial city that now has a tech economy), which has produced about 3,000
units per year over the same time period (and remember it's starting from a
smaller overall population base)"), but it is still subject to many of the
dysfunctional political-economic-legal beliefs described in _The Rent Is Too
Damn High_ :
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078XGJXO](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078XGJXO).

It's worth noting too that Seattle and Washington don't have income taxes,
which can be a substantial issue for many tech workers.

~~~
jsolson
> It's worth noting too that Seattle and Washington don't have income taxes,
> which can be a substantial issue for many tech workers.

This, combined with the substantially lower cost-of-entry on home buying are
the main things keeping me in Seattle. In particular the income tax means that
even a substantial bump in the number at the top of my paystub doesn't
necessarily translate into a bump at the bottom, and it certainly doesn't
after I look at what it would cost me to buy a home in a part of San Francisco
similar to the condo I own here in Seattle. There's also the commute: right
now I have a ~15 minute drive to work compared with the ~one hour (I think,
roughly? I've only done it a few times when visiting) it takes to get from
downtown SF to the Googleplex.

One of the nicer bits (in my opinion anyway; I know it's not shared by
everyone) about the new housing going up in Seattle is that it's mostly
replacing one-story retail with multi-story retail+residential, and they've
incentivized developers to preserve the facades (street feel) of the original
buildings with new interiors that are up to code w.r.t. earthquakes, etc. Yes,
the buildings are bland and the apartments in them are expensive and sterile,
but _if_ it can get ahead of the influx of engineers coming into Amazon we
might stem the tide of rising rents in older residential properties in the
area.

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chillacy
Cached version (site is down right now):
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:paCgkFw...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:paCgkFw-30YJ:shapeof.com/archives/2014/8/apple_should_open_a_seattle_office.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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btgeekboy
Apple already made their choice in second location - Austin, TX, where the
cost of living is cheaper and the Vitamin D is plentiful.

~~~
millstone
The Austin location wasn't an engineering office last I checked, though that
may have changed. However, Apple does have an engineering office in Paris, and
one in Pittsburgh (I think), so they certainly aren't against having multiple
engineering locations.

~~~
cfallin
Their Austin location is where they do their CPU design (or at least large
parts of it), from what I've heard.

~~~
johansch
There's a very well-defined interface between CPU and software; the
instruction set. Sure, they do need to talk (figure out clever ways to
optimize the whole stack), but not every 10 minutes.

I think it's quite smart to put all software engineering in one physical
location. Physical distance kills cooperation so badly :/.

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santaclaus
Purchase the Apple orchard that Steve Jobs worked on and open a mini
mothership near Portland.

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peterkelly
You could make the same argument for most major cities in the world that have
a strong developer community.

~~~
jsolson
You could, although in Seattle they'd be joining Amazon (HQ), Google,
Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and Adobe (among many others). I don't know how
many other cities can claim all of those companies having a significant
presence there.

~~~
morgante
All those companies (and many more) also have offices in NY.

~~~
jsolson
Ah, fair enough. I knew we (Google) had one there, but I didn't know all of
the others did as well. I'm not surprised, though.

That said, I think my point still stands: Seattle (and apparently New York)
have good representation from the other what I'll (I suppose somewhat
arrogantly) call 'tier one' tech companies. Most cities, even those with
strong tech employment, don't have remote offices for the other large players.
One could argue that this is simply because they haven't gotten around to it
yet, but it's also a point in favor of the notion that there isn't a
sufficient concentration of developers who are both (a) at the level the
companies are looking for and at least as importantly (b) are willing to work
for one of the big players.

Elsewhere someone pointed out that there are smart people everywhere. I don't
dispute that in the slightest. I also expect there are people who want to work
for Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. everywhere (and who are unwilling to
move to the places where those companies are). I'm not certain that the
intersection has a high enough density in, say, Atlanta (which has rather a
lot of software engineering) to justify a remote office there. NY and Seattle
have already demonstrated that they have a sufficiently high density in the
intersection via an existence proof: a half dozen other tier one tech
companies operate large successful remote offices in these cities.

