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Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

I feel as though there are too many cities. I'd be curious to know what the top 5 are. My picks, in no particular order:

- Boston

- Dallas

- Atlanta

- Chicago

- Denver

In all likelihood it'll be Boston or Denver.

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I just don't see why Boston is in that all likelihood...

The apartment rent in Boston is already hiking towards the level of Manhattan while the living condition in many places is old and antique; and the traffic there can be as slow as 10-15 miles/hour in the area around I-95 crossing I-90 between 3pm to 6pm...The subway system is well confined within the Boston proper;and outside the Boston proper, the public buses and trains come to a stop once each hour...

The current population in the city is roughly 670,000; a 50,000 growth would be an increase of 7.5% (approximately)...and if we take account of their partners and kids, the increase would be more than 10%...

I really feel that, at least for the Boston proper, the trend of gentrification has already been pricing out many residents with regular income; and the capacity is quite saturated to accommodate another large corporation with 50,000 employees...

The location the Boston group has proposed for Amazon is the Suffolk Downs race track site on the East Boston - Revere town line. Perhaps with all the Amazon building the area would improve, but the place feels like a wasteland right now.

It's on the other side of Logan airport so there's a lot of airport service infrastructure around. There is a huge field of fuel tanks, big box stores and highways. It's also very cut-off from the city proper. There's no way to get to downtown Boston without going through the harbor tunnel and dealing with the associated airport traffic.

If might be interesting if they could build some sort of bridge directly over the Chelsea River into Chelsea.

The prospect of traffic and rent in that area can be a bit dismal, if they are to make the move....

East Boston, Revere, Chelsea. That whole swath north of the airport up the coast is sort of a combination of industrial sites and working class neighborhoods (until you reach the swanky areas of the North Shore which are very swanky). It's technically connected to the city and has a T link but you're right that it's not "in the city." I think you can walk to Winthrop from there though so it's not a total wasteland but it is sort of disconnected from the city proper.

I'd love Amazon to come to Boston, although admittedly it would not help our existing transportation and housing problems. Maybe Bezos could strong arm the state into actually fixing the T XD

Don't overlook Nashville. It has an educated workforce; it's a transportation hub, Fed Ex is right down the road in Memphis. It has the 3rd fastest growing economy in the country. The tech scene is booming. There is plenty of developable land downtown. It's a low tax state with a permissive business environment, and both state and local governments in TN have shown they are willing to play ball to attract large employers.

Based on what Amazon has listed as it's own criteria I would say the top 5 are probably:

- Nashville - Atlanta - Raleigh - Dallas - Denver

Also in no particular order.

These are 5 of the most likely but who is giving the biggest tax breaks?

Knowing how Bezos works, I guarantee he has a team who are creating spreadsheet after spreadsheet, and the winning city will be chosen by some algorithm which saves them the most money over time.

Are these dev jobs? If so, time zone coverage = less hours on call

Are what dev jobs? HQ2 should have a pretty large mix of roles, similar to HQ1.

Rephrased: will this new HQ be hiring primarily developers? I’m not familiar with HQ1.

My understanding is that it's literally another HQ. So they'd be hiring all roles -- developers, marketing professionals, sales, etc.

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