
Cornell Graduate School Helped Make New York Appealing to Amazon - angpappas
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/nyregion/cornell-tech-startup-jobs-amazon.html
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allengeorge
New York made New York appealing to Amazon.

Snark aside, it’s unlikely one can link Amazon’s decision to a single factor.
New York being what it has has a large number of assets in its favor: a huge,
mobile workforce, strong business community, strong sales community, deep tech
pool, a strong transit system, legitimately a world-class city...

~~~
jeron
New York is definitely a world-class city, but Amazon had the opportunity to
attract talent to make a city that is not currently a world-class city into
one but instead selected an already established one

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JumpCrisscross
> _Amazon had the opportunity to attract talent to make a city that is not
> currently a world-class city into one_

Not really. Big cities operate at scales and complexities far above what
Amazon can bring. Density begets density. Meanwhile, that cities have largely
been built—and remained—in similar places (protected harbours with navigable
rivers and ideally shallow bedrock) implies there are deeper reasons for why
density exists where it does.

~~~
stochastic_monk
I’m not sure about that. Amazon turned Seattle into a truly big city, which it
wasn’t before.

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secfirstmd
Eh, Microsoft and Boeing?

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stochastic_monk
I lived in Seattle for a few years, as Amazon expanded. Traffic and housing
exploded during that time. Boeing and Microsoft had their large facilities
outside of Seattle proper, which I think minimized their effects on the city
itself compared to Amazon.

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porpoisely
Although Cornell is a great school and I know a few smart and capable alumni
from Cornell, the nytimes is really reaching here. Certainly having top
schools didn't hurt NY, but amazon's decision had nothing to do with cornell
or their roosevelt island tech school. It had everything to do with political
influence and vote buying.

The article is nothing but empty PR for Cornell. It would be like
washingtonpost writing an ad for Georgetown by claiming Georgetown made DC
area attractive to amazon. My suspicion ( and it's only a suspicion ) is that
bezos wanted a headquarters in the DC area to buy good will amongst the
politicians in DC and to be closer to the lobbyists and of course politicians.

If cornell and georgetown decided to move to wyoming, I doubt amazon is going
to follow along. Now if the politicians, lobbyists and "influencers" in DC and
NYC decided to move to wyoming, I'm betting amazon would be right on their
coat tails.

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wyldfire
I was a little puzzled how Ithaca would factor in (~4 hours away) but
apparently there's a satellite "Cornell Tech" campus on Roosevelt Island.

Clearly the local talent available helps when factoring where to locate, but I
can't help but cynically think that this story is a retcon to distract from
the public subsidies. It's telling that there's no quote from any Amazon
employee that substantiates the headline's claim.

~~~
ghaff
I agree with your general cynicism :-) Cornell Tech was established a few
years back as an interdisciplinary grad school on Roosevelt Island that brings
together a lot of STEM disciplines (as well as business. Cornell Med School is
also in NYC. It's an increasingly common pattern; see MIT's recent
announcement of an AI school.

Stanford tried pretty hard to get this campus but, among other things, it's
probably fair to say that there was a pretty heavy thumb on the scales in
Cornell's favor given that it's a significant university in New York state.

~~~
Alex3917
Stanford dropped out before submitting their bid because Cornell got a big
donation that Stanford wasn't able to match. Stanford was actually the clear
favorite before that happened.

~~~
zamfi
Yes -- that big donation was exactly the thumb GP is talking about. :) It came
from / was organized by Bloomberg, who seems to have had a strong preference
for a NY school.

But there were also other reasons Stanford withdrew, including the weirdness
of how real estate works in NYC.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Yes -- that big donation was exactly the thumb GP is talking about. :) It
> came from / was organized by Bloomberg, who seems to have had a strong
> preference for a NY school.

First, Bloomberg himself didn't choose the winner; he was detached from the
competitive process. Bloomberg launched the competition and also later donated
money to the winner (Cornell), but those were separate events.

Second, Bloomberg himself appeared in a promotional video that was campaigning
for Stanford. I don't know where the idea that Bloomberg had a strong
preference for an upstate NY school comes from (especially since the other
finalist - Columbia University - was already based in New York City).

~~~
zamfi
Rumors and idle speculation of course. As mayor, Bloomberg would have had to
keep his opinion obscured anyway...

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boomboomsubban
There is basically nothing mentioned about Amazon in this article. And it
ignores one of the few unique elements that may have attracted Amazon, the
Jacobs institute's new intellectual property policy.

~~~
the_watcher
That's because the article is primarily about Cornell Tech HELPING make New
York appealing, not Cornell Tech as the causal reason. The piece is much more
about Cornell Tech than about Amazon's decision.

~~~
boomboomsubban
>The piece is much more about Cornell Tech than about Amazon's decision.

Sure, but why does the article title mention Amazon and not Cornell Tech? It's
dumb.

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chriskanan
I'm going to be a Visiting Professor there in 2019, and I'll be teaching a
deep learning course.

One interesting thing about Cornell Tech is that the faculty all work in an
open office space, and I think that's to embrace start up culture. Faculty
have "huddle" rooms for meetings. At my home institution, I spend 20 hours per
week in meetings. Faculty do have dedicated huddle rooms, though.

~~~
spamizbad
Why embrace the bad parts of startup culture (open plans)? Seems cargo
cultish: open plans exist as a cost control measure, and make it easier to
grow/shrink. Academia has endowments and tends to have a more stable labor
force.

~~~
zamfi
"More stable labor force": you are thinking of faculty, who make up a small
percentage of research labor at universities.

Graduate students & postdocs—who make up the majority of research labor—come
and go, on the order of months-to-years, making open plans actually somewhat
reasonable.

~~~
ken
Yet the comment here was that it's _faculty_ who have the open floor plan. Why
are they using the agile aspect of startups for the most stable asset in
academia?

~~~
zamfi
That is what the comment said, however, the open floor plan is not just all
faculty in one open space, it is all researchers (faculty, students, postdocs,
other research staff) in one open space.

Faculty additionally have huddles where they can take meetings.

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gnulinux
Isn't this a little weird? Why not choose Boston that is very close to MIT and
Harvard. Why not choose SF which is very close to UC Berkeley and Stanford?
NYC isn't even close to Cornell (~4 hours).

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rm_-rf_slash
Did you even read the article? Cornell Tech is in New York City.

~~~
gnulinux
My question still stands?

> Why not choose Boston that is very close to MIT and Harvard. Why not choose
> SF which is very close to UC Berkeley and Stanford?

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morpheuskafka
Isn't NYU Courant also known for being strong at mathematics/CS?

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tareqak
Why can't some of the different cities and states "unionize"/show solidarity
and basically say that they won't give concessions to businesses?

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catchmeifyoucan
If this is a PR Article, it works. This school seems kind of cool

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throwawayr0yM9
Massively taxpayer-subsidized wealthy private institution helped make New York
appealing to massively taxpayer-subsidized wealthy corporation.

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travisgriggs
Good news for Andy Bernard!

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thewawy
Do top companies prefer recruitment from elite schools?

See the comment by the CEO of Duo Lingo:

[https://twitter.com/LuisvonAhn/status/1050426808393506817?s=...](https://twitter.com/LuisvonAhn/status/1050426808393506817?s=20)

~~~
loosetypes
Per the tweet: CMU has higher female ratios in their CS programs? Is that
specific to undergraduate?

I’ve looked into applying to their masters programs and of the ~20 options,
only two appear to have higher than 50% female[0]: (1) HCI and (2) Educational
techn. and Applied Learning Science.

[0]
[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/sites/default/files/SCS_Masters_Progr...](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/sites/default/files/SCS_Masters_Programs_in_Brief_2016.pdf)

~~~
kss238
Not CMU, but Cornell's College of Engineering most recent class enrolled more
women than men.

