Talent doesn't want to work in the middle of nowhere.
I wish it did, but it doesn't.
I wish it did, but it doesn't.
Personally, I find Amazon's decision disappointing, and I regret getting caught up in the hype. I was hoping that they'd do something bold and interesting, not open a couple of satellite offices in obvious places.
That's true. Although I'm not sure you can build a campus on this scale that doesn't need to function as an urban core in at least some respects. I'm not sure how you plop something like this down on a prairie someplace and expect it to function. (Especially given that employees may not want to live in an urban core but don't necessarily want to live in a company town in the middle of nowhere.)
I agree that, if something like this is as reported, it's sort of a boring outcome in that it was entirely expected and safe.
Amazon cannot replicate NYC in the middle of nowhere, or even the middle of somewhere. The confluence of geography, history, commerce, culture and sheer verve can't be bought.
They want to attract talent and the way to do that is to go where the talent is or wants to be. The bay area is such a place. Seattle is such a place. New York is such a place. But they couldn't turn Mt Tinroof Springs into a world centre no matter what they did.
You felt nothing in Perth because Perth is just... there. :)
Two big differences:
1. The talent crunch for Exxon and FedEx isn't nearly as bad as the crunch for engineering talent that Amazon is facing. Simply put, engineers that can get offers from Amazon have many options, and moving to Buttfuck, Nowhere won't be the best of them.
2. Exxon and FedEx employees, especially the senior, harder-to-secure talent, tend to be older folks with families. The talent Amazon would typically go after is much younger, often recent graduates.
Not accurate (IMO).
1. ExxonMobil is now, and has been for years, hurting for petroleum engineers. It's a discipline that isn't taught at many universities, so the supply is rather constrained. In recent years new grad petroleum and chemical engineers have been pulling in offers that rival FANG offers.
2. If Amazon, or any other FANG, was really hurting for talent they would do something about their false negative problem in interviews. That they aren't indicates to me that they are either passing enough people or just being choosing beggars.
Amazon on the other hand is opening a new campus, so they are more flexible to locate it in the most advantageous area.
Moreover, not sure how many petroleum engineers Exxon is hiring, but guessing it's far fewer than the amount of software engineers Amazon is looking to hire, which is in the tens of thousands.
Recruitment is a much bigger factor for Amazon. The article says basically the entire reason for opening not one but two new big offices is to tap into more talent.
2. FAANGs don't agree that they have a "false negative" problem. They think they are accepting and rejecting the right people. Right or wrong, this is their position.
Houston is still a crucial area for an oil company, and will continue to be so until the Gulf Coast fields stop producing. Their "huge, now-misplaced campus it won't relocate" is their headquarters in Irving/Las Colinas (since Dallas is no longer very important to the industry). In fact, Chevron is moving their headquarters operations to Houston.
Also, the original point was about the perceived difficulty of getting highly-paid, highly-educated people to move to "uncool" places. This is only relevant if you think ExxonMobil would have chosen a different location if they got a free do-over again today.
> Moreover, not sure how many petroleum engineers Exxon is hiring,
As many as UT, TA&M, OU, and the few other schools that graduate them can pump out. I'd have to bug my wife for numbers, but I think it is in the thousands (if they can get them).
> guessing it's far fewer than the amount of software engineers Amazon is looking to hire, which is in the tens of thousands
You think Amazon is looking to increase their SWE head count by 50% or more in a short period of time? I question the "tens of thousands" assertion, as that is a fair description of the entire size of Google's software engineering population, and larger than Facebook's. Are you actually claiming Amazon is looking to hire multiple Facebooks worth of software engineers in a short period of time?
> FAANGs don't agree that they have a "false negative" problem. They think they are accepting and rejecting the right people. Right or wrong, this is their position.
Assuming your statement is correct, I would classify them as choosing beggars.
FWIW, the party line I hear from their engineers is that they know they have a problem with false negatives, but that it is OK because it is worth it to keep out the false positives. They also (sometimes) claim they have more qualified applicants than they have head count.
Every article about the HQ2 project says it's an effort to recruit tech talent. Amazon is hiring 50K new employees for these offices. Assuming a very conservative 25% of them are going to be engineers, that's already over 10,000 engineers.
> Assuming your statement is correct, I would classify them as choosing beggars.
If FAANGs thought their recruiting practices are broken, they would fix them.
Also, while we're all aware of how much bargaining power top software engineers have in this market, it doesn't seem right to call a bunch of companies worth the better part of a trillion dollar each "beggars".
FTFY
I share this sentiment. I feel sort of silly about thinking that the outcome would justify the groveling and begging that Amazon invited. But at the end of the day it is the same as it ever was.
Raleigh/Durham would have made for a fine urban or suburban campus and would've capitalized on the presence of tech talent already drawn to the area; Austin would have been another obvious choice for pre-existing tech talent. A pick like Nashville or Columbus would have been bold, picking a rising star midsize metro with diverse strengths and no strong background in tech and lifting it further. Instead, it's looking to be NYC and DC. Much ado about nothing.
They aren't looking to build up a city. It's a foolish business decision to put something with the needs of HQ2 in a place with no transit. Sure, you can build transit, but A - it's expensive, and B - it's not your job or expertise.
Instead of lamenting the jobs they missed out on with HQ2, a forward thinking city would get to work building out its transit system. Many cities are doing just that. Houston for instance.
If places like Columbus or Nashville have a better strategy than building attractive infrastructure for competing with places like Houston and NYC for such jobs, then let them pursue that strategy. The market will settle the issue in the end.
Was this all a ploy to test how far local governments be willing to bend over for Amazon? A PR spectacle to show how important and influential Amazon is to warrant that kind of kowtowing from mayors and governors? If you're going to claim that Amazon earnestly pursued the search for HQ2, only to decide that NYC and D.C. were the best choices at the end, then their strategists must have done a poor job in not figuring that out before the city talent show.
And for us HN commentators: these picks are just boring. So much for innovation, imagination, and daring. Ho-hum.
Maybe you shouldn't have ascribed those qualities to Amazon's search for a new HQ?
You can probably bribe enough people enough to work just about anywhere but it's going to be an uphill battle.
given their history of labor violations in their warehouses, I don't see any reason to think that Amazon creating a city would be "nice".
Nope.
FAANG companies want top talent. Top talent has many options. Most top talented engineers, in this market, get multiple offers and can basically choose where they want to live.
Not to mention that all FAANG companies have offices in attractive locations. So the office in Buttfuck Nowhere would be competing against offices in cool cities like LA and NYC, for the same position with the same FAANG. Good luck with that.
How many candidates are already in or willing to relocate to NYC versus Houston.
That's all Amazon really cares about: the absolute numbers.
They're looking to hire tens of thousands of engineers and that's pretty much the only reason they're going through with this huge investment in new campuses.
Regardless of my personal preference, I think it's pretty obvious that the numbers work in NYC's favor.
Besides, weather, why has California been so successful. An outstanding UC educational system. The same is true of the NorthEast with several excellent colleges spread throughout the region.
Of course, Boston would have been a strong candidate just because of that, but NYC gives you access to a bunch of ivy leagues, and a bunch of some of the best colleges in the country, while also giving you access to large successful public institutions like Rutgers, CUNY and SUNY.
In addition to that NYC is also an easier gateway to Europe and pretty much the rest of the US.
If Amazon is offering a job to a kid out of college in a place that is not considered exciting, and Google is offering the same kid a job in a place that is, why would they take the Amazon one.