Hacker News Reader

Comment by bovermyer | Hacker News Reader

The Twin Cities are looking at courting Amazon for this. IMO, Minneapolis would be a great location for it. We fit the RFP criteria.

View on HN

Yeah, the article doesn't address the Twin Cities, but it meets his criteria:

- 3.5M metro area population

- Very high education levels

- Diverse population protected by strong civil rights

- Major international airport (Delta hub; 16th largest in the US)

- Very affordable

- Large business community already (Cargill, Target, Best Buy, major Wells Fargo office, etc.)

On the negatives, it is growing slower than other metros and the weather will be a turn off.

Honestly, I think Amazon has a pretty good idea of where they want their new HQ to be. They are using this process to extract concessions.

> and the weather will be a turn off.

Wow, one of the few cities that competes poorly with Seattle weather.

Seattle weather is actually pretty good. You don't need much AC in the summer (these last couple of weeks being an exception), and it hardly ever gets cold enough to snow in the winter. There is rain, but being able to keep your window open year a.round is great for fresh air at least.

The weather here is beautiful a little more than half the year, but winter here is definitely a hard pill to swallow for those not used to it.

Minneapolis would definitely be a great choice.

For those that don't know Minneapolis like the parent commenter and I do:

- Amazon already has an engineering office in Minneapolis. Check out some of the jobs here.

- Amazon has a fulfillment center in Shakopee, MN -- a third ring suburb ~30 miles away from Minneapolis.

- This is mostly anecdotal on my part, but it's pretty typical for top computer science students at the University of Minnesota to go to Amazon / Microsoft in Seattle. Silicon Valley doesn't seem to bother recruiting in Minnesota, but Seattle-based companies seem to have good luck recruiting out of Minnesota -- where the weather is even worse.

- Minneapolis has the headquarters of some of Amazon's biggest "old retail" competitors -- Target and Best Buy. A large Amazon presence in Minneapolis would go a long way to poaching the top 10% of talent at both companies.

- Minneapolis also has a small but promising tech community. BuzzFeed and a few other tech companies have an engineering office in Minneapolis.

Seattle and Minneapolis definitely have some chemistry with each other. I call it the "flannel belt".

There's a fulfillment center or two 30 miles away from every major city, I'm not sure if that's actually a unique attribute. ;)

Touché. I went to Shakopee High School, so my Facebook feed blew up when Amazon opened there. I guess it is not as big of a deal as I thought. :)

Minneapolis is such a long shot in my opinion, because very ambitious people tend to move to the coasts.

That's a common theme parroted by many, and a lot of ambitious people do indeed move to the coast. However, I think you are underestimating the amount of ambitious people in minneapolis and the surrounding area. We have tons of fortune 500 companies here and lots of world class smart ambitious people.

Not everyone is a 20 something who has no family obligations and is willing to go work anywhere in the country. Furthermore, in minneapolis we have very high salaries relative to cost of living. If you make 120k here you're basically rich and can save an enormous amount per month. This kind of salary to cost of living ratio allows an ambitious person to save tons of money each month and invest it how they please.

Anyhow, I don't think minneapolis is a long shot. We have a very good economy and infrastructure and lots of people doing smart/ambitious things.

But some of us might move back if Amazon were there..

because they want to or because they feel they need to?

A lot of people put up with some really stupid crap "because money"

Fulfillment centers are not going to be a consideration, sorry.

This would be interesting just for the Amazon vs. Target vs. Best Buy show down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com