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Bezos is laughing at us all. He's got a tack on Dallas, Texas and everywhere else is crossed out with thick, red marker. He considers all of us fools and he takes pride in wasting our time.
I don't think he's going to Dallas... or anywhere in Texas for that matter.
Amazon already knows what cities have transit and airports, they don't need anyone to tell them that. They probably have business analysts already crunching the numbers, doing math that no one on city data will be able to match, to determine what city will offer them the best talent.
R u kidding? People on CD dissect things down to dust particles.
At the same time, this pretty much rules out Denver for getting picked. Amazon clearly wants handouts.
I also disagree.
Denver offers a lot including good transit, a well connected airport with rail to downtown link, good universities, a well educated workforce, a liberal minded state and population, and a high quality of life with a low crime rate. Denver may not be offering financial incentives but frankly that is secondary.
All the financial bribes may look nice to begin with but do Amazon little if they can't get the workers to move or stay there. Think about it, Seattle is one of the nicest cities in the US and still can't find enough skilled workers to move there. A staggering 9,000 vacancies at Amazon in likeable Seattle. If it can't get workers there then god knows they won't get workers in an undesirable place with poor transit and high crime.
These are very highly skilled workers who are in high demand all over the world and can get any high paying job they want... anytime, anywhere.
When it's all said and done Amazon knows that being in a city that people WANT to move to and not HAVE to move to is the most important requirement. They have to be in a city that lures workers and just as importantly, one they WANT to stay in. This is not an auto plant or regular office building.
To me, Denver's greatest liability is it's location and time zone. It is relatively isolated in the US and in the Mountain time zone and I think Amazon is looking for a much more easterly location and certainly one east of the Mississippi.
Seattle is one of the nicest cities in the US and still can't find enough skilled workers to move there. A staggering 9,000 vacancies at Amazon in likeable Seattle. If it can't get workers there then god knows they won't get workers in an undesirable place with poor transit and high crime.
These are very highly skilled workers who are in high demand all over the world and can get any high paying job they want... anytime, anywhere.
When it's all said and done Amazon knows that being in a city that people WANT to move to and not HAVE to move to is the most important requirement. They have to be in a city that lures workers and just as importantly, one they WANT to stay in. This is not an auto plant or regular office building.
But these problems exist in Denver, as well as other popular cities like Austin and Portland. Denver's labor market is extremely tight, very low unemployment rate, and companies are having a very hard time finding skilled workers as it is.
It doesn't really matter how desirable a city is, the fact is, not every wants to relocate for a job. We can all assume that everyone would move to a cool city like Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, etc, but that is ignoring the millions of people that are willing to stay put in cities like Boston, DC, Philly, and Atlanta. Those cities have more than 5 million people in their metros, those metros keep growing, proving that these places are not undesirable, which is about double the metro of the "cool" cities. Not everyone has the same preferences, and majority preference says people do not like to move.
If you draw a straight line Philadelphia, DC, NYC, and Boston are what, 7 hours apart by car? And within that entire region, you have approximately 35 million people in those metro areas. Workers that would not have to relocate across the country. Students graduating from world class universities that want to look for high paying jobs that would allow them to stay near their family. An entire mega region already connected by rail. Amazon would have no problem filling 50,000 jobs in that region. There would be thousands of people willing to work that would not have to worry about uprooting their entire life across the country.
If this was a HQ2 with 5-10,000 jobs...absolutely would you see Austin, Denver, Portland, Cleveland, etc be the best fit. But this is 50,000...50,000! For a fully functioning HQ2. I just can't see a non-alpha city being able to sustain this. And like what has been said already, Amazon can't relocate enough people as it is in Seattle with only 40,000 employees. Are they really going to want more of the same?
Just some bias from my own experience: I do the hiring for my dept (IT, Info Architecture, EE, Programmers, Marketing) and we have a very hard time convincing applicants to relocate. We generally start the offer around 20% higher than in the past, and offer a great relocation package. 2/3 offers sent out to the East coast get declined. The most common reason we get for people turning down the offer was due to issues with relocation....and this is in Denver, which is one of the most popular cities to move to in the country. The reality is, people don't like to relocate.
They were always making a operating profit. Their losses came from growth (e.g. Building distribution centers, logistical networks, call centers etc) but if you subtract all those 1 time costs they've been making profits for years.
Other companies can and have made an operating profit and net profit and still invest in the company, not impressive imo. More concerning is the amount of real estate and workforce acquired by a "tech company, I think it's excessive.
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