NYC isn't known for small salaries, partly because it's not easy to live in Manhattan on a small salary.
A major industry in Manhattan is banking, and folks in investment banks pull salaries that easily rival engineers, even fresh out of school.
In fact that's a big reason that tech stayed out of NYC for a long time. It used to be that even senior engineers made half of what a junior investment banker would get.
Not all among these 25k employees will be paid over $200k. Not even among engineers. Amazon doesn't pay that well, for a FAANG.
This isn't the Bay, where if you're not an engineer, you're a starving artist. More than anywhere else in the US, engineers who think of themselves as "handsomely paid" will be up for a rude awakening in Manhattan.
For the sake of argument, let's say 5,000 of the new employees will be making $200k+. That means that their effect will be less than 15,000 employees making about $80k each, which I bet is about average for Manhattan.
Not a ton of effect.
> And yet they still submitted a bid, even while Mayor de Blasio was badmouthing the company
It would be outrageous if they didn't. Even 100 well paying jobs should be enough for the mayor to try to court them. He's a public servant, and these jobs serve the public.
Moreover, this will help establish NYC as a tech hub, something it's been striving for for quite a while, generally without great success.
Finally, I bet the incentive package isn't as aggressive as others that were submitted. Amazon wants to be in NYC quite as much as NYC wants Amazon.