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Comment by ironlake | Hacker News Reader

So five years after cities collectively lost their minds trying to get Bezos to like them [1], Amazon is backtracking. The original search was for just one Second HQ, then they selected two: Virginia and New York. But when New York complained about the new altered deal, Amazon backtracked from that.

I suspect this is a move to extract new concessions from Virginia government.

Corporations can't be trusted, and shouldn't be trusted, this is why contracts exist. Amazon would never sign a contract that allowed another corporation to do this to them, why should Virginia allow Amazon to abuse the Second HQ selection process?

[1] https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/04/technology/amazon-second-he...

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It's worth noting that Virginia was unusual in that it didn't really offer any specific concessions to Amazon. Most jurisdictions have some sort of standard incentive program for business investment (https://www.vedp.org/incentives is I believe the relevant stuff here), and compared to other cities, the Arlington bid was extremely stingy (note that it's not one of the examples in your article).

My belief is that the VA site was preselected before the HQ2 process begin, and the process was primarily an attempt to extract as much concessions as possible by creating a very public competition.

You're saying that the process failed, then?

Yes, that is my belief.

They did get some small non-standard incentives from Arlington County in the form of giving Amazon 15% of hotel taxes that the county collected above the baseline amount that was projected without HQ2.

That was projected to be $23 million (the standard state incentives were projected to be $750 million), but they will most likely never receive a dime because hotel stays have dropped significantly below the baseline set when the deal was made.

As someone who has worked for an Amazon supplier (as in, Amazon uses our components for their data centers), they are well known to be extremely cheap and capricious. They are the worst of the big tech companies to work with

Their "leadership principles" note "Frugality" as a core trait. It's possible that may be related

But you get a door as a desk! How cool is that.

It seemed cuter when Bezos was driving one of those as opposed to a half billion dollar yacht or a penis rocket.

Another company with that reputation is Walmart. Further evidence Amazon is not really a tech company, they just like those multiples so dabble in enough tech to get them. It seems like the longest running con to me that people even see them as a tech company.

What sector would you say that AWS operates in?

I’d say their reputation as a tech company predated AWS and AWS/Kindle/Alexa were pushes to create the multiple expansion across their retail revenue which is enormous. The fake hype around drone delivery was another push to display they were innovative which they really just made a commercial.

The fact AWS ultimately was successful particularly at driving profit was luck. The core of their business and culture is still retail.

Their retail strategy and scale on the internet meant they needed technical expertise the same as how a traditional retail company needs real estate, construction, and merchandising expertise. It doesn’t make them a tech company because they utilized tech in a large scale and had the physical assets and data center expertise to launch a product like AWSes.

At the time that amzn started, they were absolutely a tech company, doing things with tech that nobody else was, in the retail realm.

I would absolutely agree that it doesn't make much sense to talk about the retail arm as a tech company any more, although it's not 100% clear cut since the company's apparent strong interest in aggressive automation may undercut that argument.

However, AWS appeared before the retail division even made a profit, and it continues to be the real revenue generator, and in this sense, regardless of the state of the retail division, it still seems fairly useful to categorize the company as a tech company.

To say AWS is luck is like to say iPhone is a luck.

Timing the market is always luck. Smart phones had been around and many failed when the iPhone succeeded. Luck often requires exceptional execution and that’s where they succeed.

Apple isn't much better. I spoke to a person in China responsible for supplying components for MacBooks and they had the same experience. Although I did learn a lot of interesting trivia about the choice of plastics and colors, one thing that did stand out is not only how cheap but also how abusive the Apple reps are.

I imagine this is standard across the board.

I have never met anyone who worked harder than people in supply chain at Apple. The leadership is very demanding of them, and it clearly trickles down

The CEO comes from the world of supply chain management, and a large part of Apple's success as a company comes from their ridiculously-well-managed supply chain.

Unsurprising that it's a stressful job — but I'm sure it's also the best training in the world for how to manage a supply chain.

> I'm sure it's also the best training in the world for how to manage a supply chain.

I wonder if it is, though - as noted, Apple is almost unique in that their size allows them to demand vast concessions from their suppliers. I wonder how much of what you'd learn still applies when you're working for a regular company and suppliers can just say no and drop you as a customer if you get to be too much of a pain?

Is true with other large orgs, e.g. Walmart and Rubbermaid.

No, Amazon is the standout worst. Even Apple will fund R&D efforts if needed. Amazon tells us to do something, makes no commitments, changes their mind, then 6mo later asks us why we don’t have it ready

They are competing with Walmart, who is similarly draconian with their suppliers. It's a tough business

Then just don’t sell them your stuff, there are bunch of Chinese suppliers I bet waiting on the line. And probably that is also part of the reason you did not see Apple as the same thing.

The first thought that came into my head was that AOC should be taking a victory lap over this. I clearly remember all the hate she got not only from the collective of right wing people but also her own party.

Sure enough after this news, she has brought it up:

"When I opposed this Amazon project coming to New York bc it was a scam of public funds, the whole power establishment came after us.

Billboards went up in Times Sq denouncing me. Powerful pols promised revenge. Op-Eds & CEOs insulted my intelligence.

In the end, we were right."

"I know I’ll never get an apology for that time, but it was worth it.

We protected NYers from a scam deal to drain public dollars from schools & infrastructure in exchange for empty promises of “Amazon jobs” w/ 0 guarantees or guardrails. Sadly, cities who took it are suffering."

[1]:https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1631706682597179405

[2]:https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1631708752737861665

which cities who "took it" are suffering exactly?

Did you read the article? We are only talking about two locations.

I can't read the article without turning off my ad blocker, but based on other comments in this thread, Virginia doesn't actually seem to be suffering because they didn't offer anything beyond standard development incentives they would offer to anyone. Those incentives are performance based, so they aren't paid if Amazon doesn't follow through.

The whole reason activists in NY made a stink about this is because these "jobs" Amazon promised were all hypothetical white collar jobs that would not benefit the existing residents at all and instead serve as a forcing function to push them out of their communities through price increases. Imagine you are a representative of the people currently living there. If you actually wanted to benefit your constituents you'd attracts jobs that your voters are actually qualified for(Maybe an Amazon warehouse which they already have). There was a massive surge in real estate purchasing and speculation in the weeks leading up the Amazon decision in NY. All AOC and the activists really did was request Amazon answer some additional questions and that was enough for them to totally flip the table and announce they are leaving. What followed what the shit show that AOC described in her tweet.

In the end those white collar jobs didn't even materialize in Virgina but they got all the downsides that NY avoided.

One of the few things I didn't entirely disagree with AOC on. Too bad she comes with a lot of baggage, so the argument she fights for the "little man" falls flat.

Nobody's perfect but most of the "baggage" originates from Tucker Carlson rather than AOC herself.

How would you or I look if we were the target of that kind of campaign?

I don't think OP was talking about that. There are a number of short-sighted policies that she supports which definitely don't hold economic water. ex. rent control expansion, extremely high % of affordable housing designation in new construction. They are popular policies but don't necessarily make a real difference to the environment.

A focus on achieving outcomes unfortunately isn't really valued in our current political system so instead of us being able to debate which policies would most effectively achieve shared goals we debate how ideologically pure the policies are, or even just reflexively reject ideas based on who delivered them.

This is a universal problem across political parties.

She appears to have very high approval ratings among her constituents. At the end of the day they are the ones who matter, not HN downvoters, not the people who criticize her or don't like her, not anyone else.

There have been moments where she has disappointed her greater base (this includes people outside her district) by not being stronger on pushing back at her own party.

It seems like a losing proposition. She is only a small handful of progressive candidates and anyone of her cohort who speak out have their reputations cemented in a negative fashion.

Just ask Ilhan Omar: Among the many right wing attacks against her are stupid things like her supposedly marrying her brother and on the left wing she is constantly attacked for being anti-semitic despite raising obvious points on the corruption of the Israel lobby. AOC, Ilhan, and the squad are used by the Democratic party when it suits them but at the same time all their bills are quickly killed so whats the point?

There has been so many decades of left wing apathy that every single entity that musters up any little bit of courage to fight the right wing using their own tactics are quickly branded as a dangerous being and that negative emotion is permanently sewn into people heads.

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