Amazon HDQ2---if DFW, then where? (Houston, Dallas: fit in, house prices, purchase)

[f4shionablecha0s]

Originally Posted by BLDSoon

Given the amount of $$ that would need to be spent to get them here- I can see where some dont see the benefit. Also, all 50k of those jobs wont be given to locals and i’m willing to bet the vast majority wont.

All that said some people just dont like change/ change is hard and the change of a rapidly growing city can be very uncomfortable. We are not NYC, a relocation like that would have a disproportionate impact on us- akin to what you described- a company town revolving around one main employer where a shutdown would be disastrous. So while i don’t necessarily feel that having HQ2 here is a terrible thing- I understand the relief some feel that it isnt here.

Even if every single job went to a newcomer, those newcomers would move to Dallas and spend their money here. It helps us all no matter what. Also the idea that a 50,000 job employer would turn a metro area of 7.2 million into a "company town" is silly.

[Katana49]

Originally Posted by biafra4life

As you know, I’m a regular on this forum.
I watch as different issues are brought up
So Frisco spent something like $200 million to bring in a freaking golf course
They also spent well over $100 million to get the Dallas Cowboys practice field
Allen ISD spent $70 million on a high school football stadium (which then proceeded to have all sorts of problems after completion.

None of you batted an eye at any of this. There were actually some of you who thought it was all cool.

But now there is a chance to bring 50,000 jobs to the area and you all get your panties in a bunch????

Madness
Quite frankly this is the kind of dumb ish I would expect from California or New York where that moron AOC was celebrating Amazons withdrawal. 20 years from now when NYC is losing jobs and can’t get companies to come there they will all be scratching their heads wondering what happened.

For the record, I've never been in agreement with local governments about spending an obscene amount of taxpayer money on what could be termed "frivolous" things. Allen's decision to spend that much on a stadium was dumb considering what else that money could have been spent on, same goes for McKinney's stadium, I was glad we had moved out of that ISD, as I didn't want my taxes going towards that nonsense.


However, the amount of money thrown at Amazon by NY (over $1.5 BILLION in incentives) was 3 times what VA promised... so there's no way to say that NY was getting a good deal here. That being said, losing Amazon completely was pretty bad. I think they should have tried to renegotiate their incentive package, rather than the open hostility shown to them, but then again, perhaps legally there was no way to renegotiate, and that the only way to negate the deal was to have Amazon back out.

[turf3]

Couple points:

1) I vehemently oppose the use of public funds to pay for sports stadia. In my opinion, that is a far worse use of tax money and incentives than luring companies like Amazon. So your statement that the same people who don't want to spend tax money on Amazon were cheering big sports stadia using tax money, is certainly incorrect in my case.

2) if you really think "Amazon's second/third/fourth headquarters" will ACTUALLY be anything but a giant cube farm filled with code monkeys working under Amazon's well documented "stack 'em deep, pay 'em cheap, burn 'em out, toss 'em aside and get some more" paradigm, you're being very very naive. Mahogany Row for Amazon will always be where Bezos is.

[Acntx]

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[biafra4life]

Originally Posted by Katana49

For the record, I've never been in agreement with local governments about spending an obscene amount of taxpayer money on what could be termed "frivolous" things. Allen's decision to spend that much on a stadium was dumb considering what else that money could have been spent on, same goes for McKinney's stadium, I was glad we had moved out of that ISD, as I didn't want my taxes going towards that nonsense.


However, the amount of money thrown at Amazon by NY (over $1.5 BILLION in incentives) was 3 times what VA promised... so there's no way to say that NY was getting a good deal here. That being said, losing Amazon completely was pretty bad. I think they should have tried to renegotiate their incentive package, rather than the open hostility shown to them, but then again, perhaps legally there was no way to renegotiate, and that the only way to negate the deal was to have Amazon back out.

My point was that it's one thing if the authorities around here were broke and didn't spend money on anything, then you could understand them not being willing to spend big bucks on Amazon, but as we have just seen, these local governments have no problems whipping out the checkbook to pay for deals of hundreds of millions of dollars for enterprises that we can all agree verge on wasteful and frivolous. Yet here is the one deal that spending big bucks for would generate a ton for the local economies around here, now all of a sudden everyone is a fiscal conservative.

[biafra4life]

Originally Posted by turf3

Couple points:

1) I vehemently oppose the use of public funds to pay for sports stadia. In my opinion, that is a far worse use of tax money and incentives than luring companies like Amazon. So your statement that the same people who don't want to spend tax money on Amazon were cheering big sports stadia using tax money, is certainly incorrect in my case.

2) if you really think "Amazon's second/third/fourth headquarters" will ACTUALLY be anything but a giant cube farm filled with code monkeys working under Amazon's well documented "stack 'em deep, pay 'em cheap, burn 'em out, toss 'em aside and get some more" paradigm, you're being very very naive. Mahogany Row for Amazon will always be where Bezos is.

For the sake of argument, let's say that you are right, and the vast majority of the jobs are indeed for "code monkeys" as you put it. So let's put it at 80 per cent code monkey jobs. Out of 50,000 jobs, that still means that 10,000 of those jobs are high paid corporate level jobs in IT, Accounting, Legal etc. You realize that's more than all the jobs gained by Plano from Toyota, Chase and Liberty Mutual? That's still a massive boon.


Second, the idea that the jobs will all be people brought in from elsewhere. That's highly unlikely. There is no way that EVERYONE will gladly uproot their families and move halfway across the country. Yes we all carry the Texas flag and think it's the best place in the world, but that isn't the thoughts of everyone. Also, the same thing was said about Toyota. I know for a fact that locals here have been able to get jobs. I know personally at least 5 locals who work there now, and that's just me, so I'm sure there will be many more locals who get jobs at Amazon.


Lastly, I'm not in IT, so perhaps you can fill me in on this. Are you saying the code monkeys get paid cheaply? Define cheap for me, less than $50K per year? because anything over that in my mind would qualify as a high paying job that would boost the economy. Now if you are saying these guys get paid minimum wages as in McJobs then that's a different story.

[biafra4life]

Originally Posted by f4shionablecha0s

Even if every single job went to a newcomer, those newcomers would move to Dallas and spend their money here. It helps us all no matter what. Also the idea that a 50,000 job employer would turn a metro area of 7.2 million into a "company town" is silly.

Absolutely.
DFW is just too big for it to become a one company town. Do you think people in Fort Worth or Rockwall are bothered in the slightest bit by Toyota being in Plano? I would say the impact is negligible if it even exists. Yet the beauty of the strength of the metroplex is that even the people who are impacted, in Plano and Frisco, still have lots of other options for employment if Amazon should pull out a couple of years later. Amazon would certainly be a big fish in the DFW pond, but hardly the only one.

[TheOverdog]

Lastly, I'm not in IT, so perhaps you can fill me in on this. Are you saying the code monkeys get paid cheaply? Define cheap for me, less than $50K per year?

$50k is a starting salary, ie: straight out of college with very little experience for a 'code monkey'. Some of the analysts in testing might be paid less. Anyone actually writing code with some experience will be making more like $75k-$150k, with team leads making $100k. As an example, in a group of 10, 2 will be making less than $50k, 4 will be making more but less than $100k and 4 will be making $100k plus.

[MinesotaUser1]

Amazon was saying very less earlier. Now, they are paying good as per market.

If it comes to Dallas, it will be big asset to all of us for sure.