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Comment by timothycrosley | Hacker News Reader

For all the hype Silicon Valley gets, the companies of the world's 2 richest people are in the Seattle area.

One of the reasons Bezos picked Seattle was due to Microsoft having a lot of software engineers he could get. So MSFT is a big reason that Bezos is in Seattle. Also it was close to one of the biggest book distributors. Amazon was originally a book store.

I read somewhere that it was related to tax optimization. That is, if you sell a book from California, you have to apply state tax to California residents (38M) but if you sell it from Washington, you don't. So the fact that Washington had fewer potential customers than California (or New York, where Jeff Bezos was working previously), meant a smaller tax bill for its country-wide customer base.

I've heard this also, and it makes sense. Although Amazon is now finally going to charge sales tax everywhere, it undoubtedly helped their growth that they could undercut others in large markets like NY and CA by not charging sales tax. I'm sure this wasn't the only factor, but if it meant a 9% pricing advantage in CA, it could have been a real consideration.

They also sold under MSRP since their product was basically virtual (aka just in time).

In the book, The Everything Store, the writer tells about Bezos intentions for Washington. It was combination of fewer customers there and a close distance to a large book publisher, there were a few other smaller accompanying reasons like another poster mentioned about msft being in the area as well.

That is the same reason many Seattle startups picked being in Seattle. Software engineers, cost efficient to run a startup (office space), a great startup ecosystem, 2 hours from the valley, and decent ability to raise capital.

Seattle* is an anomaly. Roughly the 100th city worldwide by size, yet has 2 of the 5 largest companies in the world by market cap.

* Technically Seattle metro area

Incredibly, Seattle gets only 2.61% of all venture investment. #8 in the US, behind San Diego [1].

[1]: http://www.citylab.com/tech/2016/02/the-spiky-geography-of-v...

I think that's the point....for all the hype SV gets, Seattle should get some too....

Houses are going for 500k+, please, less hype actually. All we want to do is build cool product and enjoy our life. I don't think anyone in Seattle wants the SV arrogance and lifestyle.

Heh, this is the Seattleite party line. Don't kid yourself into thinking people in Seattle are more humble than the people in SV. They're just not as overt about it. I agree with you that the flashy culture of SV doesn't exist as much here, and that's a good thing, but I'd say Seattleites are some of the most arrogant, standoffish, and surface-polite people I've met anywhere in the world.

   I'd say Seattleites are some of the most arrogant, 
   standoffish, and surface-polite people I've met 
   anywhere in the world.

Could you perhaps expand on this observation? I genuinely find it interesting. This is the sort of thing you don't see measured in those "most-livable cities" indices you see from time to time [1]. Tricky to capture I agree, but doable. It would greatly simplify one's choice when deciding where to build a career.

[1]The 10 most livable cities in the world http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-10-most-livable-cities-...

>>Could you perhaps expand on this observation? I genuinely find it interesting.

Look up "Seattle freeze". It's a real phenomenon sociologists have studied.

Essentially, it's easy to make acquiantences in Seattle, but extremely difficult to make friends. Everyone is polite and friendly on the surface, but any attempt to get to know someone is met with (polite) stonewalling.

Could you list a few other cities which are known for such peculiar mannerisms? I was told Boston has its own stripe of the "Seattle Freeze". I find all of this incredibly interesting. If I could, I'd at least make a quick wiki of these observations. Frankly I think this is one of the elements that would figure prominently when considering places to move to, whether within the U.S. or globally. More so than weather or abundance of restaurants or even neighborhood walk scores!

edit: Earlier, HN didn't let me reply to you perhaps due to some time threshold I'm not aware of. So replied to myself. Deleted that post now.

It looks like Wikipedia beat you to it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_nice (and pointers within).

see: Frasier.

That's happening in Vancouver, New York City, hell, any place even remotely worth living.

unlike SF, we've got land to build on, and are doing so. lots of new apartments south and east of Lake Union - aka Amazonia.

San Francisco has tons of land to build on. The density there is an absolute joke. Whenever someone proposes building something one story too high the local neighborhood groups lose their collective shit and shut it down.

Unrelated, but I wonder what the sweet spot is height/floor wisefor developing affordable units. That is, given zero pushback from local citizenry and groups, if a locality wanted dense housing due to lack of space, at what point does adding a story make average cost per unit slightly more expensive instead of slightly less expensive (assuming it actually is cheaper to add a second or third story than a single story complex).

It's really a function of land cost. A high rise unit costs about $30k more per unit according to here: http://www.humphreys.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/MFT_FL-0...

There are also costs that developers do not directly pay for but a city pays for. Maintaining all of the miles and miles of road, metro, pipes, power lines, police patrols and so on is more expensive than the equivalent amount of people in a smaller space.

Thanks, that's useful information, but it looks like it's already heavy on one one of the spectrum. 40 unit and 160 unit comparisons are interesting, but I assume those are already from 6-8 floors to 30-40 floors. I'm also interested in the costs of units between 2-3 floors to 5-6 floors. As floors increase, that report shows an increase in construction costs (I assume because of the pain of building higher and the extra support needed to bear the load). If it's not always an entirely smooth curve of cost as floors increase, there may be some sweet spots (local maxima) in there were you maximize per-unit value. E.e. if an 11 floor building requires different, more costly building methods, it's entirely possible that a 10 floor building may be a better investment than 11, 12 or 13 floor building, and then at 14 floors it's a better value than 10 floors again. It would make sense to have building and ordinance codes line up with building realities, but they likely don't.

Judging by rental and house prices in my neighbor I think we get plenty of hype.

Turns out reality is more evenly distributed than HN.

Seattle has one of the lowest amounts of sun per year of all metros in the USA. It selects for those who are serious about work, more than weather.

The weather isn't that bad here. It's overcast a lot and there are a lot of "rainy" days but it's usually a light mist or sprinkle. It rarely drops below freezing in the winter and the summers, while short, have long days and are quite dry. Maybe the bay area has better weather but I'd take Seattle weather over most of the US (Chicago, Austin, NY, DC, etc)

Perhaps this is because I am from California, but having lived in Seattle for the last 3 years, the hardest part isn't the rain or cold but the lack of sun.

My previous manager at Amazon told me he recommended everyone who came from California to take a vacation back during the winter lest they get too depressed.

I will take my Southern Cali weather - 75 and sunny all year round.

> It selects for those who are serious about work, more than weather.

Uhhh, Seattle, Portland, and the rest of the PNW have some of the most outdoorsy people in the country. We're less than 2 hours from the ocean or the mountains.

eh. But also filters people who are serious about work but also serious about their mental health.

I know myself well enough to know that I am less productive when I don't get sunlight. I suspect many other people are the same.

The results of Seattle area companies beg to differ. I live in Seattle and I find that if I walk outdoors during the day at least once per day, I'm fine.

What does mental health of people living there have to do with the success of a few companies?

There are successful companies that eat their workers alive, employee happiness isn't related with their success in a lot of cases.

Tech companies can only produce what their employees output. If people were so miserable in Seattle there's no way that any company based there would thrive enough to be a top company in the world.

I used to live in Seattle and that was a major contributing factor that caused me to move to Atlanta.

Seattle isn't going to suffer a fresh-water shortage any time soon, either.

You would think, but just because it frequently rains doesn't mean it is all captured and can be treated for use. In the late 80s there were water shortages in King County.

There's a wide gulf between what can be captured and what is being captured.

I guarantee you anyone with a roof and a rain barrel is not hurting for water for their plants.

If you count the number of billionaire, Palo Alto alone has 13 billionaires in a town of 66,000 people. It's ranked #25 on the list of cities with most billionaires and Seattle is not even on the list.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilycanal/2016/03/09/the-citie...

i think (based on the patterns of life/work/commuting around here) that palo alto should not count so much as a town as the rich neighbourhood of the bay area.

and Palm Beach has 29 billionaires in a town of 10.5k people.

How do you get to this data? I would like to see the number of billionaires in my town if at all.

Forbes & local Palm Beach news: http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/local/island-rich-ter...

Homes in the Bingham / Hunters Island (south of Mar-A-Lago) and Manalapan areas of Palm Beach are some of the most expensive and outrageous in the world.

Fun to fly around there on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/@26.6676348,-80.0368289,548a,35y...

I think it's moreso the fact that nothing 'new' has really come out of Seattle.

Kind of hard to build hype if your two main talking points are 20+ and 40+ year old companies.

I bought my house through Redfin and I think Twilio and Box originally started in Seattle.

Well that's def not true: Tableau, Rover, OfferUp, and countless more http://www.geekwire.com/startup-list/ and that's with only 2.61% of venture investment.

Literally who

Username checks out

People are usually including Amazon and MS when they use the metonym "Silicon Valley".

I've never heard someone say SV to include Washington.

Though now that you mention it, I have heard that commute times around the valley are terrible....

Similar to how the term "Wall Street" isn't limited to the firms physically located on Wall Street in lower Manhattan.

Really meant San Fran. An extreme disproportionate amount of investment dollars go there considering just how much value has come out of Seattle with much less starting capital.

Wasn't Microsoft founded in Albuquerque?

Yes. And Bezos is from New Mexico also.

Strange because New Mexico consistently ranks near last in quality of life, employment prospects and education.

Not surprisingly both left New Mexico and set up shop somewhere more civilized.

Yes, but Bill Gates grew up in and returned to Seattle to build the company up

a) "San Fran" is not used by most locals.

b) Silicon Valley is 30 miles or so south of San Francisco.

A) I'm not a local. Never claimed to be

B) 30 miles makes it part of the same metropolitan area.

It's a long valley!

cause seattle never sleeps

(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108160/)

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