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Comment by shawnee_ | Hacker News Reader

Q: Where can I deliver with Amazon Flex? A: Amazon Flex is available now in Seattle. It will be available soon in New York, Baltimore, Miami, Dallas, Austin, Chicago, Indianapolis, Atlanta and Portland.

Smart move by Amazon to refrain from making any Bay-area city one of its test markets. It's like Amazon is saying "we don't need to prove this will work in the bubble; let's base our test data set on realistic markets."

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Or Amazon is worried about a bunch of contractors being reclassified as employees as has happened to various "on-demand economy" companies in California: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0OX1TE20150618

Ah, that would explain why they skipped Los Angeles too.

Also, gentrification and the rights of workers in a sharing economy are still hot-button political issues in the Bay-area. Who's going to picket Amazon Flex in Indianapolis?

I don't know about the Bay Area, but there's a huge Amazon distribution facility just outside of Indianapolis so I'm guessing there are similar facilities in/near each of the cities they're launching in.

Considering the variety of items I can get delivered same day there must be a large distribution facility nearby. But maybe not near enough to support this (most same day deliveries come around 8pm for me)

I don't think that's the reason - Amazon is incredibly unpopular in Seattle and anything they do there is certain to generate massive amounts of vitriol, so they wouldn't lose anything on that front by going to SF instead.

Why are they so unpopular there?

Several reasons, but I think the main one is filling Seattle with lots of people (programmers) that don't really culturally fit in with the rest of the population. There's also a lot of resentment about rent prices etc., but unlike the Bay Area there is one company (Amazon) for all the anger to be directed at, because Microsoft is far away in the suburbs and everyone else participating in the tech boom is tiny by comparison.

What would be a cultural fit for Seattle? Seems like such a diverse place.

Well, I'm not defending it. I agree it doesn't make sense. I'm just trying to explain.

Edit: also, seattle's not that diverse. Most of the centrally located neighborhoods are filled with just three cultural groups: yuppies/programmers, students, and hipsters/artists. You have to get as far away at least as Walligford before you even find something as exotic as families.

It's what racists say to pretend they're not racist.

Well, in this case, one of the big concerns is new Amazon hires pushing families of color out of the central neighborhoods they've historically resided in. The CD is a very traditionally PoC neighborhood (there was recently a GREAT docu about Yesler Terrace housing projects), but it's also very conveniently located for a lot of new tech workers. Rents are skyrocketing.

I feel for anyone who can't pay their rent, but the rhetoric that tech employees are "pushing" anyone out misses the mark.

Tech employees aren't evicting people or raising their rent. They're finding vacant units, offered at a given price by landlords, and accepting the deal. Yes, those rents are often high -- but the problem emerges from a complex system, not from the deliberate behavior of a specific subgroup of actors.

FWIW, as a life-long Seattleite, I disagree with this. There's definitely an Amazon backlash (particularly in the hipper neighborhoods) but it's not incredibly unpopular, most people like and use the service AND many like what they've done for the local economy.

I don't think most of the people who hate Amazon are life-long Seattleites. You're right that it's concentrated in places like Capitol Hill. But I don't think I've talked to anyone who like how Amazon has changed Seattle; at best they don't care.

Just my experience though, living there for two years -- I admit I haven't experienced every neighborhood or social group and might have a skewed viewpoint.

Can we please stop calling it the "sharing" economy? There is no sharing going on.

We're all part of the sharing economy. You share your labor with your employer. /s

And your employer (sometimes) shares with you (some of) the spoils. :).

The biggest reason is because it's extremely difficult to find cost effective labor in SF and LA, due to (a) higher than average cost of living, (b) difficult geographic structure [e.g. most people who do deliveries in SF live 1+hr away, and SF and LA are impossible to get around in), and (c) too many companies competing for the same labor.

I'd also argue that since most co's start in SF, there is very little brand loyalty (95% of my friends use the ridesharing service that's currently not surging) so it's hard to make your mark anymore.

As someone who previously ran ops at a similar on demand company, they're probably testing a cross section of markets. E.g. does this work in a big city with difficult traffic (NY), a smaller city that has tech savvy millennials but isn't a tech haven (Indianapolis), somewhere in between (Chicago). I'm sure their fulfillment center locations also played a role in the location choices.

I don't think they're avoiding CA due to lawsuits. Labor laws are very similar in other states (except for MA, which is oddly one of the few states that has ruled pro-contractor recently). The class actions are happening here since the co's have the largest presence, started here, and labor laws are definitely pro-employee. Even the DOL at a federal level released a paper basically saying "if there is any element of control, they are an employee".

[Edit: added last paragraph about laws.]

It's probably best to avoid California all together.

Amazon has five fulfillment centers in California: Moreno Valley, Riverside, Redlands, Tracy and Patterson. Here are their fulfillment centers nationally:

http://www.amazonfulfillmentcareers.com/amazon-fulfillment/l...

I think he meant for this service only. The debate between "independent contractor" vs "employee" has been pretty fierce in the state legislature.

Ooops, I forgot about that. Though per that link they are definitely heavily invested in here. In the long run they don't have a choice or Macy's will beat them. (Each store here is now a fulfillment center.)

California's interpretation of employment law (ala Uber) makes it much less attractive to establish such a business.

Consider they are based in Seattle, I think they have better luck with Seattle. I am not dismissing other point you said, but Seattle is no different from being also a tech area :-)

I'm not sure what it says about the Bay Area, but there does seem to be a bit of a correlation with avoiding certain cities. For example Baltimore is interesting in that Washington, DC is not included but very close and almost part of the same metropolitan area.

I was a little disappointed about this too. It could be that their distribution center is close to BWI, and traffic between BWI and DC is epically bad during rush hour. Many of my packages seem to come through BWI over Dulles. DC is relatively open to the on-demand economy, being one of the first cities to fully legalize Uber.

Washington D.C. hasn't been too friendly to Uber and they probably want to avoid dealing with that political mess.

They just built a massive distribution center in Baltimore, that's why it's available there before DC.

In Sunnyvale, Amazon packages are already delivered to me by a plainclothes dude in an unmarked white van. It seems they have some other fulltime staffing of a similar operation here, so no reason to add Flex to the bucket.

I'm not surprised to see Houston excluded from this list due to size and low urban density, but I am disappointed.

Do you have Prime Now? I think the expanded list is the cities currently served by Prime Now.

We do not and probably for the same reason: Amazon can't guarantee one hour delivery in a 640 square mile area without drones or multiple distribution hubs.

Bay area is Uber's home base. It is also where Uber will compete with a similar idea the first, I believe.

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