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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

I can't be the only one concluding that we're near the end of a nice run for tech, with all these expensive real estate moves. I don't know, maybe we've been there for a while now.

What better way to spend piles of cash you have no idea what to do with than extort local governments for billions in tax breaks and park that money in a some commercial real estate you can depreciate? I'm not judging these companies for doing this per se (Amazon, Apple, and Google have all recently done this as far as I can tell - haven't noticed anything from Microsoft), but I do consider it a bit ominous that they've all picked expensive places that certainly seem like good picks.

It really does seem like these companies have no idea what to do with their money. Buying up land and taking the next 3-5 years to build billion dollar campuses seems so boring to me.

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What do you want them to do without people? Spend money on what? Raw materials? They need people to develop IP. And they need somewhere to put those people.

If a FAANG's fundamental bottleneck is people, then the money should first be spent on improving the hiring pipeline. If traditional pipeline sources are insufficient or non-compliant, that means building their own pipeline sources - in-house degree or certification programs. The most well-known case study is the military, which runs all of its own training, the question is only whether a) a given FAANG company has reached an organizational scale where this makes sense and b) how to tinker with the military's model given that the military relies on people not leaving after finishing training but only after enough value has been extracted from their education.

Where do you think they should put all the new people they are hiring? Or maybe they should stop hiring? That would not be good for us, their demand keeps the market rate for programmers absurdly high.

Hmm maybe there’s more to technology than “keep[ing] the market rate for programmers absurdly high.”

Not for programmers there isn’t.

Google hasn't extorted local governments for tax breaks in their recent San Jose deal.

https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/12/san-jose-deal-google-ca...

>Liccardo says, the city didn’t offer the company any tax incentives in exchange for its business. “More importantly,” he added in a Medium post, “Google never asked for a dime.”

>While Google won’t get outright public subsidies, as Liccardo noted, the company will benefit as much as the community from Diridon Station, which will cost taxpayers $10 billion.

Why are you holding the bag for Google?

Of course not directly, they have their lobbyists to do their dirty work for them.

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