
Amazon expected to announce NYC and Northern Virginia as new headquarters - uptown
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-chooses-new-york-city-and-northern-virginia-for-additional-headquarters-1542075336
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SQL2219
Did the world’s smartest company really need 13 months, and applications from
238 cities, to reach the striking conclusion that it should invest in New York
and D.C.? The former is America’s heart of capital, and the latter is
America’s literal capital, where Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon,
already owns a house and a newspaper.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/amazons-
hq...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/amazons-
hq2-spectacle-should-be-illegal/575539/)

~~~
gcatalfamo
Because that made them receive offers and tax cuts from city governments.

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Aloha
I feel this choice is a mistake for the company long term, they're putting
resources into two very hot housing and real estate markets, that have no real
draw (in my opinion) for technical employees. Hew York is high tax (compared
to Washington), unpleasant weather, overall high costs, and has a housing
shortage, Washington DC, once described has having "Southern Efficiency, and
Northern Charm" has similar issues of an overheated housing market, and
overall high costs, given the choice of a coequal salary in Seattle, DC, or
NYC, I'd pick Seattle - as much as I hate Seattle.

NYC has some advantages for access to capital markets - but Amazon seemingly
has no shortage of capital, DC, access to policymakers - but I see no real
strategic advantages here.

If I were picking, I would have picked Atlanta and Detroit, or two other lower
cost large cities with convenient air travel to Seattle.

~~~
CPLX
New York is literally the greatest city in the history of world civilization
and the planetary capital of finance, media, business, fashion and culture.
It’s easily the largest city in the country, and iconic globally.

But you’re finding it hard to understand why people might want to live here?

I’d post more but my New York life is veritable cornucopia of novel and
enriching experiences and I’d better get back to it. Enjoy your stripmalls.

~~~
cm2012
Saying things like, "Enjoy your stripmalls", actually hurts your argument by
indicating a lot of insecurity.

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dmead
The west has a lot of strip malls.

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c3534l
So does the state of New York.

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rayiner
New York doesn’t put Michelin star restaurants in strip malls.

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c3534l
Show me a single Michelin Star restaurant in the entire United States located
in a strip mall. And besides, if they put Michelin Star restaurants in strip
malls, they probably wouldn't be the marker of not much going on that they
currently are.

~~~
tptacek
It didn't even occur to you to simply Google "michelin star" "strip mall"?

Of course there are starred restuarants in strip malls.

~~~
c3534l
I searched Michelin Star restaurants in the US and looked through them and
couldn't find any, then posed the challenge. So, yeah, no I didn't actually
Google that and I should have.

~~~
tptacek
There's even a three-star in a strip mall if you consider all of Los Gatos a
strip mall. (Hey-o!)

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untog
In New York, at least, this is going to be quite a mess. Many within the city
- politicians included - are against it. But Cuomo, the governor of the state,
is all in, and is planning to remove the city council from the decision:

[http://gothamist.com/2018/11/12/amazon_cuomo_city_council.ph...](http://gothamist.com/2018/11/12/amazon_cuomo_city_council.php)

As if it needed to be said, there are other cities that would be a lot more
receptive, and would benefit a lot more. Even just over the river in New
Jersey would be an improvement. Just go there.

~~~
cddotdotslash
I'm normally not in favor of side stepping the processes in place, but I can
guarantee you that if the community board was allowed to inject themselves
into this process, you would be unlikely to see Amazon in NYC in 2050, let
alone this decade. Nimbyism would never let this kind of thing progress.

~~~
untog
City council != community boards. I agree with you about community boards, but
to sidestep the city entirely feels wrong.

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gkanai
I agree with Scott Galloway who has both predicted the outcome and has called
this a sham 'contest.' Galloway said that Bezos was always going to pick one
of the coastal cities where he has a second/third home. By doing this
'contest' Amazon was able to get cities to compete with each other to provide
tax incentives to Amazon and was also able to get valuable private information
on the cities that Amazon can use in their business strategy. Galloway told
cities not to participate.

~~~
wpietri
Whoa. Bezos indeed has homes in NYC and Washington DC. (As well as Seattle,
Beverly Hills, and a ranch in Texas. [1])

I can't find it now, but years ago The Economist ran an article about a study
that said a key factor in corporate headquarter moves was where the CEO lives.
Disappointing to see it play out like that on such a grand scale, and after
such a pretense of a nationwide search. Yet another thing that convinces me
I'd never want to work at Amazon.

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-owns-five-
massive...](https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-owns-five-massive-
homes-across-the-united-states-2017-10#manhattan-7)

~~~
dunpeal
Doubt it was a factor with Bezos. The guy is rich enough to live anywhere, and
has houses everywhere, as you also observed.

Somehow the office didn't land in Beverly Hills or the Texas ranch.

I expect the fact that he already has homes in NYC and DC is related to the
fact they are in fact important locations for his business.

~~~
wpietri
Most CEOs are rich enough to move. But they are also powerful enough to get
the company to move to a location more convenient or appealing to them.

~~~
dunpeal
Sure, but he has lived in Seattle for a long time, what makes you think he
wants to move to NYC?

The office in NYC is going to be nothing more than a big satellite office
compared to the huge HQ in Seattle, so it's not like he's actually moving
Amazon's HQ and himself to NYC. In fact I doubt he'd spend that much time
there. Given his duties, he'll probably be in Seattle most of the time.

Also, I very much doubt the office in DC is there because Bezos is just dying
to spend more time in DC ;-)

~~~
wpietri
I never said he wanted to move. And I agree he'll probably spend less time at
the other offices. But that still doesn't mean it's a pure coincidence that
the two new offices are exactly in locations which he liked enough to buy
homes.

If the guy really didn't like DC, I'm thinking he wouldn't have bought a $23m
home there. As you say, he's rich enough he can do what he wants.

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keammo1
If they are picking NYC, I see why Long Island City makes sense with proximity
to Manhattan (and maybe Cornell on Roosevelt Island) plus its explosive
growth, but still so much unused space.

I have to say I haven't heard from one person in Astoria or Long Island City
(where I live and work, respectively) that's excited about this. And there has
been a lot of buzz about it over the past couple weeks. The strain on the
transit system and increasing rents that are already skyrocketing is
definitely freaking out a lot of people.

Maybe it's a little selfish of me, but I'm pretty terrified of what it will do
to our office's rent in particular...even though it's been expanding rapidly
and getting more expensive, Long Island city has been a great place for
cheapish space in old industrial buildings for new/small businesses. I figure
we and a lot of the surrounding small businesses will be pushed out at the
ends of our leases.

I am very curious to know where in Long Island City they are targeting. There
are so many big industrial lots that they could build on or new construction
that they could move into. I had heard they were looking at one of the
Plaxall-owned buildings, but can't remember the source.

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sonnyblarney
I'm saddened by this because it just adds to hyper concentration.

DC is already woefully over staffed with overpaid folks living off of
guaranteed tax revenues, I don't believe in the inherent productivity there,
and just cynical enough to believe it's a means for AMZN to leverage political
power and government contracts.

NYC is understandable ...

... but it would have been really nice for business diversity for that to go
to so many other places. Chicago, Texas, Toronto, Raleigh, New Jersey etc etc.

~~~
api
I dont understand it. We seem to have decided as a culture that absolutely
everything had to be in like five cities. Its a major contributor to division
and polarization and a trend that is destroying the middle class.

~~~
jowiar
Taking the slider to the other extreme, you end up with company towns
everywhere, and there are a whole lot of burned out husks of civilization that
are memories to that.

Until we truly solve remote, there will be some concentration. And there's
value to that as an employee. If your employer goes kaput, or you're
stagnating in your career, or you have an abusive boss, there are plenty of
opportunities available, and enough of them that one shock to the system won't
break the local economy.

Of course, the flip side of that is that real estate values go through the
roof.

~~~
hueving
>Taking the slider to the other extreme, you end up with company towns
everywhere

Why would you go to the other extreme? There are hundreds of large cities
around the US that could easily headquarter these big companies and not become
company towns.

~~~
jowiar
Hundreds is a stretch. When you get down to the hundredth-largest city you’re
at Des Moines, population 217k. At that point, if the company were to say
“zero our taxes or we leave”, the city would do as told.

How small can a city be and have a healthy relationship with an employer of
25,000?

~~~
api
These kinds of demands for special treatment need to be made illegal. That
would help.

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Beefin
This is no longer an HQ2 it’s a satellite campus. Amazon took advantage of
cities vying for this HQ and in the end of the day its 20k employees maybe.

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justapassenger
This whole "contest" has to be greatest PR and marketing campaign of last few
years

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dlgeek
What's new here that the NYT didn't report a week ago?

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nrjames
Northern Virginia is a hot mess of congestion. If they're smart, they'll go
west of Dulles, or at the very least, not go further east than Reston. Better
to stay out in Ashburn or something.

~~~
snowwrestler
The story says Crystal City, which is close to DC but has a lot of nearby
residential and transit options. And it has been losing tenants for a while so
there is some slack for Amazon to take up.

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mcculley
I have been wondering if any of the cities that proposed will make their
proposals public now that the final decision has been made. My own city,
Orlando, released only a redacted version of the proposal. How should cities
and states manage the tension between their duty to transparency and the
competitive advantage of keeping proposals secret?

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dmode
Hot take: none of these are headquarters. These are just big sattelite
campuses that every company has. I will also predict that hiring in these
offices will be far lower than projected, especially engineering hires

~~~
geodel
Very reasonable thought. I'd think Amazon is now expanding to level of IT
consulting companies who send hordes of consultants to sell/implement pre
packaged solutions of their own or third party.

This is not some SV level talent that Amazon will be looking for these
positions. So I do not see why salaries will be SDE 2/3/4 or whatever.

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moron4hire
NoVA is a great place to raise a family. For that reason, I'm actually kind of
disappointed in Amazon choosing to setup HQ here. We have our own tech
industry here, one that is very focused on and around professional services,
and it works for us. We aren't defined by dude-bro culture--I think it's
difficult to say that any East Coast city is defined by any specific culture.
If Amazon comes to DC in the same way they set up in Seattle, it's not going
to be a nice ride for the 20 million rest of us who live and grew up in this
area.

~~~
pratik661
Regardless of Amazon's culture, it will still have an upward competitive
pressure on your salary as a developer. That is always a good thing.

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amanzi
I'm sure everyone knows this already, but just search Google or DDG for the
URL and click the first search result to read the article.

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syndacks
What do you think this means for software engineering in NYC? IMO it's a good
thing; more tech talent and the most legit tech company in NYC (besides maybe
Google).

But that about the tech economy and SE profession? What will the impact be?
More demand for SEs, sure, and more SEs will be attracted to NYC too.

These are all obvious first wave affects, but what will second, third wave
affects be?

~~~
zjaffee
Could very easily trigger a switch that leads to NYC being the city with more
second offices for Bay area companies than Seattle. And possibly over time,
NYC gaining dominance in the tech industry beyond what the Bay Area has today.

The largest cities have historically always held dominance in every industry
over the long tail, and I imagine that will ultimately be the case here too.

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jorblumesea
How much of this is really going to be a "second HQ" and how much of it is
going to be a handful of engineers and a small force business/lobbyist folks?

The locations seem to suggest business and lobbying interests. I'd be
surprised if any of these offices number more than 20k. It feels like one
giant sham for some glorified satellite offices.

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drfuchs
Since each city is only receiving half the benefit they thought they were
bidding on, presumably they’ll each get to cut their bids in half — the
subsidies, tax abatements, infrastructure spending promises, etc.? But I
haven’t seen any notice of this in the news coverage.

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Gabriel_Martin
As a Bostonian, woot!

~~~
ghaff
The already planned Amazon Seaport expansion actually makes more sense than
the HQ2 proposal did. We'll see what happens with the GE HQ in the area
anyway. Suffolk Downs was always a bit of a weird location for the HQ.
Technically on the subway (Blue Line) but north of the city in working class
areas that would presumably not have been preferred young tech worker housing
in the near term.

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tptacek
Did either NY or NoVA offer significant incentives for Amazon?

~~~
detcader
David Sirota writes that Amazon Cuomo is offering something like a billion
dollars in tax incentives but a Democratic Assemblyman is now introducing
legislation to block it.

Source: [https://capitalandmain.com/will-new-york-fund-amazon-
subsidi...](https://capitalandmain.com/will-new-york-fund-amazon-subsidies-or-
student-debt-relief-1113)

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Rebelgecko
What will it mean for a company to have three "headquarters"? Will each
location focus on a different part of the business?

~~~
ghaff
It's actually not uncommon at even medium-large companies. Once you're spread
among large or even not-so-large campuses, you might almost just as well be in
different cities anyway. They don't tend to be called HQs but they are
effectively divisional HQs.

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arcaster
Really - they had to ruin New York City...

~~~
CydeWeys
Huh?

This will be pissing in the ocean compared to the overall size of NYC. 10k
employees added gradually? No one will even notice. Google has almost that
many employees working within two blocks.

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danso
WSJ was the outlet to break this story, before anyone asks why a link from a
paywalled site was submitted.

~~~
dgemm
Isn't this article still speculation, since nothing has been confirmed?

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danso
WSJ isn’t speculating, they say they have confirmed this with their sources.
The difference is that no one cares about the former, but in the latter case,
if WSJ is wrong, their credibility takes a hit.

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not_kurt_godel
Would someone mind pasting the article content for those of us who aren't WSJ
subscribers (assuming such is at least tacitly allowed by mods)? Seems WSJ has
gotten more aggressive in enforcing their paywall.

~~~
stevewodil
Use outline.com

~~~
not_kurt_godel
Thanks. FYI the content shown by Outline is, as of 18:45 PT:

> New York City and Northern Virginia will be the homes for Amazon.com Inc.’s
> second and third headquarters, according to people familiar with the matter,
> ending a more than yearlong public contest that started with 238 candidates
> and ended with a surprise split of its so-called HQ2.

> The imminent announcement is expected as soon as Tuesday, according to the
> people. Other cities may also receive major sites, some of the people said.

> More to Come

