
Big technology companies are doubling down on New York City - mkane848
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-real-estate-savors-a-tech-boom-11562760760?mod=rsswn
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prions
The article misses the point that a big part of Amazon's HQ2 was building new
offices in an industrial area of LIC and not using existing real estate
Manhattan.

~~~
rolltiide
True, but one could argue that several east river neighborhoods are just
extensions of the Manhattan density and culture, with the perk of having an
actual view of Manhattan.

I get that some people want their own borough's identity, but LIC doesn't
really represent that.

~~~
wpasc
No borough identity is truly intact. Brooklyn of today bears little to no
resemblance of what it used to. Similar gentrification is happening in queens
and to a lesser extent the Bronx. Staten Island? yeah it's identity has the
best chance of staying intact

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blakesterz
“A company like Facebook and others are expanding because they are running out
of talent in Silicon Valley and San Francisco,” said Paul Leonard, a managing
consultant at CoStar.

Honest question... is that really true? It reads like hyperbole or certainly
an over simplification.

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kcorbitt
Facebook already pays its median employee $240k
([https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Yes-
me...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Yes-median-pay-
at-Facebook-really-is-about-12870786.php?psid=c7FIe)). You can assume that at
those salaries, they've already hired a large percentage of the Bay Area
software engineers who meet their bar and are willing to work at Facebook.

So if they want to hire another, say, 5k engineers, they either have to
somehow convince 5k people to move to the Bay Area or expand in satellite
offices. Word on the street from local recruiters is that you can still get
new grads to move to the Bay Area (for a few years at least), but it has
become nearly impossible to get senior talent to move in because of cost of
living and quality of life issues. So depending on the type of engineer
they're looking for, yes, they may be effectively forced to expand in other
locations.

~~~
blakesterz
I can believe that, but NYC is just as bad, maybe even worse, isn't it? Seems
like "out of the frying pan into the fire".

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ghaff
At a minimum, NYC is just very different from SF and the South Bay. Leaving
aside costs and salaries, which are both probably a bit higher in the Bay
Area, the environments overall are just a lot different.

Lots of people who love the access to nature, the climate, etc. in the Bay
Area would never move to NYC. And lots of people who consider anyplace that's
not Manhattan to be a provincial hick town would never move to the Bay Area.

~~~
tombert
> Lots of people who love the access to nature, the climate, etc. in the Bay
> Area would never move to NYC. And lots of people who consider anyplace
> that's not Manhattan to be a provincial hick town would never move to the
> Bay Area

I'm closer to the second camp (though I live in Brooklyn).

Something a lot of people don't seem to realize is that there are a lot of
very smart people working on trading apps for big banks on Wall Street that
absolutely hate it. High Frequency Trading apps require a ton of programming
talent, but a lot of the engineers who work on this stuff really dislike the
bank atmosphere. When I worked at Jet.com, I had several coworkers who were
substantially smarter than me, who actually took a paycut to work for Jet,
simply because they hated the bank environment so much.

I think some of the tech companies know this fact, and feel that they can
probably poach some of this talent by offering competitive salaries while
having a more interesting atmosphere.

EDIT: DISCLAIMER

I work for one of these "primarily California companies expanding stuff to
NYC".

~~~
ghaff
I actually like visiting Manhattan but I don't think I could ever tolerate
living there. I spent a summer interning in Midtown for a small consulting
firm while in business school. We're admittedly talking pre-Giuliani New York
in the summer with very little money but it still wore on me to the point
where I pretty much decided I wasn't interested in working there.

I do, on the other hand, understand the attraction of the Bay Area given
enough money although, in this case, the negative side of the balance sheet
has gotten much longer and redder.

I agree with your basic point. Another reason I never seriously went after an
investment banking job was that the sort of thing I was interested in was
pretty much viewed as grunt stuff that techies did, i.e. not really respected.

(ADDED: I was using Manhattan as a term for the [nice uber-urbanized] parts
generally although I know that's not accurate. I don't think I ever set foot
in Brooklyn until relatively recently.)

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bobthepanda
The nice thing about New York is that the transport infrastructure, while
unreliable, exists so that you could live anywhere in the five (well, four)
subway connected boroughs that pleases you. Want to live in a leafy suburb
with a modest front and back yard? Head to Queens!

The Bay Area’s transit system is a joke in comparison; if companies have to
resort to a private shuttle system to get anything done, it’s reflective of a
failure in planning.

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Apocryphon
Further underscores how much of an immense scam the HQ2 sweepstakes / city
talent show was. It should always be brought up the next time a company,
sports franchise, or other organization tries to get sweetheart deals to build
somewhere. Amazon should be forced to wear this millstone around its neck
every time it tries to extort a community for land.

~~~
rolltiide
Does it? Amazon chose NYC because it wanted to be in NYC.

The whole point was to show what the movers and shakers actually think of
Middle America and every culturally irrelevant place on this continent. It
succeeded.

Were any of those places whoring for yield ever in the running?

No.

~~~
TulliusCicero
The things Amazon wants and needs -- particularly, desirability by young,
affluent techies -- don't really exist in "middle America".

For example, public transit. Only a handful of US cities have decent public
transit at all, probably the only cheap city in that group is Philly. You're
not gonna find good transit in Cleveland or Phoenix or Nashville, because
they've chosen not to seriously invest in it. Is that Amazon's fault somehow?

~~~
keenmaster
Chicago alone is a glaring exception.

\- It's not constrained for space, rent is relatively cheap

\- Good public transit and airports

\- Great food scene

\- Cultural mecca

\- Young people love it

\- Several great universities are either in it or nearby

\- Pedestrian/biker friendly

\- Each of the many neighborhoods is like a different town with its own
character

Google and Facebook recently made minor expansions into Chicago, but why the
trickle? I get that in the short-run the elite want to be "where it's at" i.e.
SF and NYC, but Chicago has so much to offer. Tech companies would get a lot
for their money if they start a virtuous cycle of investment and employment
here. Many STEM students from UChicago, Northwestern, and UIUC would rather
stay home but the opportunity in California is too great to pass up.

~~~
SilasX
\- They will tax the crap out of anything that moves because of impossibly
high, undischargeable pension obligations, and techies will be an attractive
target.

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javagram
“Many of these companies are willing to spend big dollars renting high-end
Manhattan real estate, rather than the older office stock in Queens that
Amazon was prepared to lease.”

In other words, development in Queens/LIC isn’t attractive and needed
government subsidies to make Amazon consider going there.

In general it seems like tech companies are willing to pay top dollar for
locations in the most expensive areas like SF and manhattan rather than try to
find cheaper areas.

~~~
TulliusCicero
The most expensive areas tend to be more "central"/have better access by
public transit.

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betterunix2
LIC is served by 5 subway lines, a commuter rail line with two stations in the
area (and a third in progress to serve a new commuter rail connection to
Manhattan), a ferry, and multiple bus lines, with various connections between
them all. It is one of the best served neighborhoods as far as transit goes,
even compared to Manhattan.

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jacques_chester
And if you want to get there from neighbouring Brooklyn, by itself containing
2.6 million people, you will probably have to go through Manhattan anyway.

~~~
betterunix2
Actually the 'G' train, which only serves Brooklyn and Queens, terminates in
LIC at one of the major transfer stations (where one can connect to the 'E',
'M', or '7' trains).

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danharaj
Having the G in your commute is almost as stressful as taking the L.

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betterunix2
True, though it was (slightly) better when I was a teenager -- back then it
went all the way to Forest Hills and the trains had six cars (R46 equipment
for the subway nerds).

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commonsense1234
are there other instances in history were local governments have successfully
driven out or not fallen for giant corporates?

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fred_is_fred
The State of WV for most of the early 20th century was run by coal barons.

