
Amazon has as much office space in Seattle as the next 40 biggest employers - eropple
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/thanks-to-amazon-seattle-is-now-americas-biggest-company-town/
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Bucephalus355
Amazon has been pretty careful about their appearances in town. A good example
that I saw when I went to Seattle is the subtle shame you experience as an
employee if you drive yourself to work. Supposed to carpool / do whatever else
you can do so at least Amazon doesn't have to shoulder the blame for rising
Seattle traffic. Probably a nice thing in the end.

Also their well-known frugality principle, while not really meaning a lot when
you consider salaries, helps to stem the "entitled" image that say a company
like Google gets more of.

~~~
jupiter90000
To be fair, I've witnessed people in the Seattle area seem to subtly shame or
otherwise discourage those who don't cycle or take public/shared transit in to
the office, at companies and social situations outside of Amazon. A number of
people in the area seem to think those who don't cycle to work, go
hiking/mountaineering/skiing/kayaking/etc in free time aren't really "doing
Seattle right" or something. Of course this is my generalization based on my
perceptions of what I hear around this area.

~~~
primeblue
It will be ironic when these millennials grow up and have children, then try
cycling to do the weekly groceries with three kids in tow.

~~~
aikinai
As uiri pointed out, transporting a family by bike is very common in other
countries so it's not unrealistic at all. Though with how heavily the US is
built around cars, the first wave of people trying it will have to make sure
to live in the right places in the right cities.

Also, people who don't live the suburban car life typically don't buy "weekly"
groceries.

~~~
walshemj
not in first world countries - you don't want the death rates of say India on
the roads

~~~
sobani
You mean countries like Germany, Holland or Denmark?

I suggest you google for "fiets met kinderzitjes" (bike with child seats) to
get examples of how you can transport 2 small children on one regular bike.

Once the children get older they can get their own bike. If you need to
transport more than 2 children, get yourself a second parent or a bike that's
designed to take cargo (yes I just called your children cargo).

My mother raised me and my sister on her own, using just a bike.

~~~
presto8
Seattle is a very hilly city, increasing the challenges for bike commuting for
normal people. An electric bike can help but increases the price
substantially.

At least in Amsterdam where I biked around a bit, it seemed flat as a pancake.

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barsonme
Obviously I don't foresee Amazon tanking any time soon, but if/when they do I
can't imagine how it'd do anything other than ruin Seattle, just like the
exodus of automobile manufacturers started the decline of Detroit in the '50s.

~~~
samcheng
It happened in Seattle already with Boeing's decline in the 70s and 80s. That
malaise is what spawned the 'grunge' music scene in the early 90s.

~~~
amcnett
I think that's a bit of a reach. That malaise may have contributed to certain
aspects of the conglomeration of groups/sounds that came to be called grunge,
but let's not forget the vigorous marketing efforts around it at the time.
Economically-speaking, the decline of the timber industry in the Pacific
Northwest may have as had as much or more to do with music-impacting
unhappiness.

~~~
samcheng
You're right; the shift away from old-growth timber logging, along with
fisheries decline/regulation, all had significant impact as well. We were
talking about major employers causing city-wide economic trouble, though. Not
sure Weyerhaeuser was as significant an employer in Seattle.

~~~
banku_brougham
Weyerhauser's HQ was a large property along I-5 between Auburn and Fife. Not
really a Seattle phenomenon, especially the logging which happened in the
peripheral counties. So i'll place a vote for the Boeing effect gestating the
grunge era. It was poor, and it was grungy.

Interestingly, Weyerhauser has sold the old HQ and relocated to a downtown
Seattle high rise.

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noodle
> Amazon now occupies a mind-boggling 19 percent of all prime office space in
> the city

I'd be more interested in how "prime" is defined here and what the percentage
looks like if you include what they're presumably defining as secondary office
space.

~~~
wickawic
Also considering the fact that Amazon constructed much (most?) of its office
space. But "Amazon funds 25% increase in Seattle's prime office space" isn't
as interesting a headline.

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tristanj
In comparison, Apple occupies about 70 percent of Cupertino’s commercial real
estate. Though Cupertino isn't a "major U.S. city" so Seattle Times' claim
stills stands.

~~~
bsimpson
I wonder what proportion of Mountain View is controlled by Alphabet.

~~~
nostrademons
It's large, but not that large:

[https://goo.gl/maps/RsVxwkZLpir](https://goo.gl/maps/RsVxwkZLpir)

Google owns almost the entire North Bayshore area - that's the area north of
101. They also own smaller campuses or isolated buildings by
Whisman/Middlefield, Shoreline/Terra Bella, and Mayfield/Central.

But Mountain View still has large commercial/industrial zones by San Antonio
Center, on Castro Street itself, and in the 237/85 triangle by
Whisman/Ellis/Dana. The Whisman/Ellis area is particularly large: this is the
home of Symantic, Veritas, YCombinator, Whatsapp, Coursera, Mozilla, Samsung,
and several other companies that aren't household names.

I'd probably estimate it at maybe 50%.

~~~
stevenwoo
If I don't cross 101, I really don't notice Google except for the commute
traffic, Waymo cars and the shuttle busses during the commute. Kind of
surprising that Google makes up 50% of Mountain View business real estate.

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njarboe
Of course the Seattle area is home to Microsoft and Boeing. Both have a huge
amount of square feet. A single Boeing building in Everett, north of Seattle,
is 4.3 million square feet. About half of Amazon's total.

~~~
mmcconnell1618
The chart is a little deceiving considering Redmond (Microsoft) and Everett
(Boeing) are within the metro area of Seattle and just a few minutes drive. It
would be like publishing a stat about Manhattan but skipping companies in
Brooklyn and Queens.

~~~
mulmen
You forgot to mention Bellevue which is home to Microsoft, Expedia, Tableau,
Concur, T-Mobile, Pokemon, Valve and others. All of those companies are more
closely related to Amazon than Boeing.

The chart is also deceiving because they label the next 40 companies as
"everyone else" which is simply false.

Also I don't see the definition of "prime office space". As far as I can tell
the definition is "convenient for the purpose of this story".

~~~
peatmoss
Tableau is entirely in Fremont is it not? And also Expedia is moving to
Interbay, which should make the area along 15th to Ballard... interesting.

Long winded aside: Provided we can get some more high-capacity, high-
frequency, separated-infrastructure transit going, I'm all for more
concentration in Seattle proper. Amazon catches flak for their South Lake
Union campus, but as a person with a background in urban planning, they did
the responsible thing. A suburban office park would have been the
irresponsible thing.

In the ~decade that I've been here, Seattle is already vastly changed from
what it was. In general, I think that's fantastic, we just need to do better
at making sure that our rising tides raise all boats—in other words, we need
to do better at housing affordability for everyone note working in tech. In
the Bay Area, we have a cautionary tale. We can do this.

~~~
mulmen
I'm almost certain Tableau started in Bellevue, I just didn't know they moved.
When I was working on the eastside they had a big office downtown by the
Microsoft towers.

Expedia is moving to the old Amgen campus but currently they are still in
Bellevue.

I agree with your aside completely. What do you think of the light rail
addition on I-90?

~~~
peatmoss
Connecting downtown Seattle and downtown Bellevue is a grand idea—a far better
idea than connecting the airport to downtown. Both are major centers of
employment.

My understanding is that there are some technical / engineering challenges to
running light rail across via I-90, but smarter people than I seem to think
that they are surmountable.

In principle, I think that light rail is just another transit technology, and
an expensive one at that. BRT could easily be done in lieu of light rail. In
practice, however, Seattle seems to do a terrible job at BRT. Rapid Ride got
watered down to the point where I simply call it "bus red transit." So, maybe
we can't actually build good quality BRT, and we need the huge capital
expenditure of light rail to do it right.

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southphillyman
I know Amazon earned a very bad reputation recently with all the complaints
about it's work conditions and employee morale. Does anyone here know if there
has been improvement in that area? It seems like Amazon is recruiting very
aggressively now days and I'm thinking of giving them a chat.

~~~
SomewhatLikely
Everyone I've talked to says it's highly dependent on which team you join.

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ausjke
I was wondering why the two richest guys are both from Seattle, Bill Gates and
Jeff Bezos? Must be a super good location to start business.

Anyway, with Amazon growing uncontrollably these days, monopoly lawsuit is
probably on the horizon somewhere soon.

~~~
guyzero
Lack of state income tax?

~~~
mywittyname
Gates moved MS there because he's originally from the area and the pool of
technical talent was large due to UW.

Amazon was founded in the area due to the pool of technical talent and because
of its proximity to one of the largest book distributors at the time.

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banku_brougham
My favorite Seattle downtown office building occupant: Cray Supercomputers.

~~~
mncolinlee
I worked there years ago, so here's a bit of trivia. The Cray Supercomputers
you see in Seattle is an acquirer of Cray Research. The original Cray was
bought by SGI in the late 90s and sold to a Seattle supercomputer startup
named Tera in the 2000s with some help from the US government-- unhappy about
how SGI ran Cray. The company still kept a surprising percentage of its early
engineers, despite passing through several owners and changing HQ locations.

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jimrandomh
From Wikipedia:

> A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned
> by the one company that is also the main employer.

From the article:

> Amazon now occupies a mind-boggling 19 percent of all prime office space in
> the city

True company towns are known for an abusive power dynamic where employers, by
controlling employees' income and expenses simultaneously, can force them into
debt and make them unable to leave. It's a sort of societal anti-pattern,
which our culture recognized and gave a name to. But Amazon in Seattle doesn't
fit that antipattern, because it doesn't control its employees' housing or
other expenses. I'd rather we didn't dilute the "company town" phrase to refer
to cases where a company merely owns lots of office space.

~~~
devindotcom
Not sure if you've been to South Lake Union recently (I live nearby) but I
think it does fit that description, at least a modern version of it. TONS of
Amazon employees live and work in SLU and very close and spend a large amount
of their time there. There's a huge internal system of restaurants, cafes, and
stores and of course Amazon's own dogfooded grocery stuff.

I mean it's pretty far from a scrip system at a mining town but they're
capturing as much of the lives as possible of the people who work there for
the two years or so they stick around on average.

So yeah, while it isn't a 'company town' by the original definition it's a
modern interpretation of it. Of course Google, Microsoft, FB and others have
the same idea - it's a great way to squeeze every drop out of your employees.

~~~
bogomipz
>"I mean it's pretty far from a scrip system at a mining town but they're
capturing as much of the lives as possible of the people who work there for
the two years or so they stick around on average."

Interesting, is two years a real average for an Amazon relocation hire in
Seattle?

~~~
Analemma_
Yes. I have a friend at Amazon who just finished his fifth year and he
confirmed he's already an in the upper quartile of longevity. He estimated a
median 'lifespan' of 18 months for Seattle-based devs; it was admittedly a
back-of-the-envelope calculation but their turnover is definitely sky-high.

~~~
bogomipz
Thanks, any insight into whether this is because of work life balance and
culture at Amazon or people simply deciding that Seattle isn't for them?

~~~
pinewurst
Oh it's Amazon alright:

[https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/)

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chairmanwow
Comparing modern Seattle to the insane totalitarian, 100% owned by Steel and
Coal refineries company towns of the 19th century is sensationalism at it's
prime. These towns controlled everything about your life and were willing to
use night sticks and rifles to prevent unionization.

Amazon owning 19% of "prime-office space" is even remotely comparable.

~~~
dang
No question. But anti-title-hyperbole isn't great for substantive discussion
either. We've changed the title to get rid of the baity bit.

