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Comment by virtuallynathan | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised to see Philadelphia eliminated so quickly, it ticks almost all of the boxes, and has a very large number of engineering schools (UPenn, Penn State, Drexel, Temple, Princeton, Rutgers, etc). It's transit is better than many of the other cities, and it has 2 major development plots in the city with existing full tax abatements.

Not to mention its proximity to NYC and Washington, DC via Amtrak (~1h20m to NYC, ~1h50m to DC)

Transit: http://www.septa.org/site/images/system-map-1400-lrg-03.30.1...

Locations w/ Tax Abatements: http://navyyard.org

http://www.schuylkillyards.com

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Philly was dropped by the "job growth is strong" rule, which is also drops many other cities which would otherwise be fully qualified. So the question really is why would Amazon have that rule and how willing are they to bend in it.

Why would Amazon want that rule? Wouldn't it just mean there's more competition for employees? It strikes me as the type of rule put in to ensure their secret favorite gets chosen.

“More competition for employees” translates into higher costs.

Are you purposefully reiterating the GP's point? Because that's exactly why he's questioning it.

I misinterpreted the comment as asking why Amazon would drop cities with strong job growth.

NYT team seems to have misinterpreted Amazon's "Stable business climate for growth" requirement.

I interpret that more as a political requirement, where city and state governments are strongly pro-business (anti-union?).

The current political climate sees a bimodal distribution: * assume the absolute worst in corporations at all times, even if workers benefit * assume that corporations will always do what's right, even if it hurts workers

Yeah, I balked when they made the first cut with such a criterion, that doesn't make sense and probably isn't what Amazon intended.

Amazon is hiring at a pretty good clip, to the point that they really do have trouble finding enough qualified applicants to fill their interviews.

Amazon would rather pay a higher salary for someone with experience than train someone.

I live in Colorado and work at a software company. I have a crew of people here who relocated from Philly.

I've been hearing a ton about this because this crew has been steadily recruiting from there to Denver.

The comments they say when they are doing this:

Philly has worse crime by far. The weather (measured in number of sunny days) is obviously worse. Outdoor activities are limited. Yeah, you can get to pretty places, but it's a few hours drive for the beach or mountains. Culturally, it's not a place that jumps out on the radar. Denver wasn't either, but the weed legalization kind of helped highlight that this place is a tolerant, open-minded location to people who automatically thought of a redneck mountain town.

The Philly burbs are pretty nice.

So are soft-boiled eggs. Similarly, I can get that anywhere.

Out of curiosity, what's the appeal of being near the mountains for a not athletic type. Arguably being near the beach is more broadly beneficial.

If your date is more fit than you, you get a great 'view' of their tuckus all the way up the 14er?

;)

Umm...becoming more athletic?

I can't speak for others, but I'm more fit because I live near mountains and other outdoor activities. I don't choose to live near those things because I'm fit. The causation is mostly the opposite of what you're implying.

Getting out and into nature will change your lifestyle for the better, no matter what your current abilities. And there are plenty of ways to get out there that don't require any fitness level whatsoever. Sitting in a boat and fishing, RV camping...I spent much of the past few weeks hiking in the Sierras and most of the people in our campgrounds were retirees.

I'm unconvinced. It seems like the allure of the mountains is based on the people self-selecting they want that kind of lifestyle. Given the athleticism / outdoorsmanship of the general population, I have a hard time believing these proclivities are universal.

They are still nice to look at, even if you don't climb them.

Not much more than one hour drive to the beach, and two hour drive to mountains (although the mountains probably don't hold a candle to those found in Colorado).

Philly is also a relatively short train ride away from NY, DC, Baltimore, and half a day's drive from everyplace in the Northeast.

Ex-Lockheed Commercial Space?

When I moved from Philly to Boulder, it took me only 3 days to notice that everyone in CO was 'fit' as opposed to Philly, where most people are (generally) shockingly fat and a smelly city/airport. Denver can be pretty stinky, but nothing like anything south of South St. or just outside of University City. Generally, CO had more options to date people than blacking-out in some 'Irish' bar in South Jersey. That said, I liked the demeanor of people of East Pennsy and South/Central Jersey more than Boulder; they were more 'real' and didn't hide feelings or dis/likes at all. You got what you saw, while Boulder/Denver tends to be more 'shy' in demeanor and true feelings. YMMV

I was a little surprised as well. I'm opinionated: I live here, after living in NYC, Chicago, and Portland, and spending a lot of time in Toronto.

Philadelphia doesn't have tech scene like SF or Seattle, but it's well positioned for the next generation for several reasons.

Philadelphia has among the best, or the best, medical institutions associated with upenn and the children's hospital of Philadelphia, and both have signaled that they're very amenable to startups and new ideas. If you wanted to build a medical tech company that's not in San Francisco or Boston, it's great. It has a lot of extraordinary livability: extremely walkable, great public transit, and affordable. And while I'm not defending our politics per se, it agrees with the politics of many developers in NYC and the bay area. It has phenomenal art and food scene that's not copying other cities.

Developers in NYC tired of paying absurd prices for rent would move here in a heartbeat for the right job (and other opportunities if that fell through). In Williamsburg, my grad school roommate and I paid 2400 (plus broker fees) for a 500-700 sq foot apartment, each bedroom big enough to hold a queen sized bed + 3 feet, and a "kitchen/living room" (I'm being generous) that housed a loveseat and not much else. And it wasn't fancy, by any stretch: a five floor walkup with an alley view. It was still 30-80 minutes to work depending on the time of day. In Philadelphia you could live within walking distance to anywhere for half to 2/3 that in a much nicer apartment or townhome: check Zillow/Redfin/Apartments.com if you'd like a fair comparison. Good suburbs are 20-30 minutes by car and 40 minutes by trains that come every 10-20 minutes.

The biggest downside is that there are not as many backup tech jobs, but compared with Chicago, I see it much easier to bring developers here. The ease of moving here is not hard: I travel to NYC 2-3 days/week, the bus is 10 dollars and takes 2 hours to 6th/Grand, the train is 45 dollars and takes 70 - 90 minutes.

It's also smack dab in the middle of the East Coast megalopolis, but I get the impression that supply-chain logistics are being handled at a different level.

Regarding the talent pool, as someone who works in the Philly area, I agree it has a lot of well regarded engineering schools nearby, but tech talent doesn't necessarily stay here in the quantities Amazon might find compelling.

Granted, it's a chicken-and-egg issue. The top talent tends to go where the top jobs are, and if the top jobs are in Philly, the top talent might be more inclined to stay.

I would move to Philly in a heartbeat, ad a reduced wage. There just isn't the demand there anywhere near the level of other comparable metro areas.

I lived in Philly for grad school in comp sci. There's a reason why software folk do their grad school (or undergrad) at one of the places you mention and then quickly leave. No tech scene, the city always felt unsafe, and there's nothing spectacular about the city other then it's close to some better cities (NYC, DC). Amazon needs to find a city with some tech scene already and with an interesting community for employees to come join.

Philadelphian here. The times has a well known anti-philly bias. They're mad about our cheap houses.

The times is a New York publication and most New Yorkers believe NYC is the best city by far on the east coast. That bias will surely be reflected in their articles.

I don’t think it’s quite as simple as cheap houses.

[edit: I see now TFA settled on Denver, but I don’t think that invalidates my point]

When you say "believe NYC is the best city by far on the east coast", did you mean to say the world =P

Haha, I did not, though that is a fairly common refrain. As a New Yorker, I do not believe it’s the best city in the world, but I think it’s the best in the States.

I noticed that people pushing Philadelphia never mention its bad crime rate. Amazon might not be explicitly mentioning that in the criteria, but I'm sure it can't help.

I lived there for five years, five years ago. We used to joke that drunk driving was a minor league sport and that "It's Always Sunny..." is actually a documentary. Literally half the people I knew had at least one DUI on their records, and the rest all had a scare-story where the cop let them go. "Imagine a town in which everyone has at least a little larceny in their hearts," elicits a few proud chuckles from my friends still there. Camden, NJ is the only city I've ever seen with more litter. They booed and threw icey snowballs at Santa Claus at a football game in 1968 and they still talk about it like it proves how great the fan culture is. They are very proud that their sports fans are the loudest, drunkest, and most violent. It's the only town in which I've been challenged to a fight just because I was in the room.

I loved it in my twenties. The food and drink scene in DC is nothing in comparison, and there is a yuppiness here that is interminable. But too many yoga and spin-class studios and too-expensive beer aren't going to literally kill me. Philly earns all of its bad nicknames.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jMhoGUiIkk

It wouldn't be a good article with a dramatic ending if there turned out to be two cities that matched the criteria.

I said on the last thread we had on this that I think PHL is the weak link. It's not a great airport in terms of runways and other facilities and is at capacity.

A plan to expand it a few years back was killed by local opposition. There was supposed to be an alternative plan developed after that, but I'm not sure whatever happened to it.

I don't know what the time frame on an expansion would be or if the city would be willing to consider it, but as it stands the airport is a real Achilles heal.

The problem with PHL is not a problem with the airport or the facilities or the routes currently flown to and from it. The problem with PHL is that it has "Philadelphia" in its name instead of "New York".

As an airport, it's not that bad; I flew through there plenty of times back when I traveled more and did most of my flying on US Airways. Most of the northeastern airports have capacity issues, but PHL is -- no matter how bad it might seem to you now -- much better off than JFK, EWR or even something further west like ORD.

Though if, as you indicated previously, you want to insist only on cities which currently have nonstop flights to PVG, your choices are very slim. Only three US cities east of Detroit have that. Two of them (New York and Boston) either cannot provide the space or would provide it only at ruinous cost, and the other (Atlanta) has one of the worst "transit" systems I've ever experienced. And honestly, if Amazon were to set up somewhere else in the eastern US with an existing international-capable airport, you can bet Hainan and one or both of China Eastern and China Southern would start sending 787s there pretty quickly. As much as people like to complain about it, that plane was a game-changer, and a lot of secondary-tier US cities/airports now are getting nonstops to Asia that never would have happened before.

Though honestly if we're going to decide this on airports, I'd say Detroit is the clear front-runner, probably with Minneapolis not far behind, in terms of access to the rest of the country and the world, and letting Amazon standardize corporate travel on Delta (which is hubbed at Seattle, and at both Minneapolis and Detroit).

All the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic airports are busy and have non-ideal airport layouts.

That said, Philly is still moving forward with their expansion/improvement plan and fundamentally is one of the few major airports in the region that can practically expand without insurmountable environmental/political opposition.

If PHL is handicapped in some way, I would say the ground transportation experience is one of it's larger problems.

- It has a parking crunch so it runs out of parking, or you wind up with a situation where even if you're a high-earning person, you're still going to have to park in economy and lose a bunch of time with a slow bus to the terminal because the garages are full.

- The Airport Line is infrequent, so transit doesn't work for anyone who values their time.

- Not unique to Philly, but the traffic situation on the highways means Uber/Lyft don't solve transportation issues to the airport unless they put the HQ in South Philly.

- Switching terminals is a bus or walk, no people-mover or the like. There are at least post-security connections.

Lets hope not, for the sake of people living there. Obviously half joking, but phily is one of the places im considering to move eventually, most likely for retirement.

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