Amazon Announces New Headquarters in Virginia and New York

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

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On its website, Amazon officially announced the locations of its new headquarters. As previous rumors suggested, Amazon is splitting its new operations between locations in Arlington, just outside of Washington DC, and in Long Island City, at the western tip of Queens, New York City. Amazon claims that both headquarters will host about 25,000 high paying jobs, and Amazon will start hiring in 2019 if you're interested. Amazon is also building a new "Operations Center of Excellence in Nashville, Tennessee. Apparently, Amazon's new headquarters has already sparked a real estate boom in Long Island City, and Arlington and Tennessee will undoubtedly benefit from the new developments too.

As part of Amazon's new headquarters, New York and Long Island City will benefit from more than 25,000 full-time high-paying jobs; approximately $2.5 billion in Amazon investment; 4 million square feet of energy-efficient office space with an opportunity to expand to 8 million square feet; and an estimated incremental tax revenue of more than $10 billion over the next 20 years as a result of Amazon's investment and job creation.
 
I guess this is the new fad promise x jobs and investment to get subsidies and have people tripping over themselves to get you. Then announce its actually only x / 2 . But hey it's all good. It only destroyed the governor of Wisconsin. It seems politicians will never wise up to it.
 
LOLOL... I hope the kids working in NYC like to pay taxes... Making $300,000 sounds like a lot of money until you only get to keep 45% of it and housing costs $6,000/mo and food is 4x as expensive as anywhere else in the country.
 
Seventyfive said:
LOLOL... I hope the kids working in NYC like to pay taxes... Making $300,000 sounds like a lot of money until you only get to keep 45% of it and housing costs $6,000/mo and food is 4x as expensive as anywhere else in the country.
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Even taking your worse case estimations (which are wrong), that still nets you an effective $93,000 takehome pay ($300,000 minus $135,000 in taxation minus $72,000 in rent), You kind of defeated your own biased argument by failing to think the math through.

FYI, the *real* Income Tax numbers in NY for that bracket are 6.85%, not the 45% you claim.
 
Define "high paying jobs" please. Are we talking Wendy's Manager "high pay"?
 
gamerk2 said:
Even taking your worse case estimations (which are wrong), that still nets you an effective $93,000 takehome pay ($300,000 minus $135,000 in taxation minus $72,000 in rent), You kind of defeated your own biased argument by failing to think the math through.

FYI, the *real* Income Tax numbers in NY for that bracket are 6.85%, not the 45% you claim.
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That's just the muni tax, right? Pretty sure he was adding them all up.
 
Joust said:
That's just the muni tax, right? Pretty sure he was adding them all up.
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Thats my guess as well. Though effective tax rate would still be lower. NYC is just as bad as San Fran though where 300k might get you a shack on the street. Didnt a parking spot sell for a million dollars there a few years ago?
 
it would be interesting to see if any high ups, aware of the decisions ahead of time.. started buying up land in those spots before the announcement
 
AlphaAtlas said:
Apparently, Amazon's new headquarters has already sparked a real estate boom in Long Island City, and Arlington and Tennessee will undoubtedly benefit from the new developments too.
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You mean it will benefit real-estate owners in these areas. For the average employee, their standard of living will actually decrease similar to San Francisco and Seattle.

I wouldn't take a job in Seattle for Microsoft or Amazon because I realized my commute would be insane for a similar standard of living for my family. That subtracts from my quality of life, not adds to it despite the big pay bump to $250K

This may be a boon to city coffers, but not the people who live there. And if you haven't noticed, Alexandria, even Crystal City has a serious traffic issues already. The infrastructure really wouldn't support that kind of growth. This creates housing pressures for local commutes only. A local military for the Pentagon compromises a large part of that population already.
 
kju1 said:
Thats my guess as well. Though effective tax rate would still be lower. NYC is just as bad as San Fran though where 300k might get you a shack on the street. Didnt a parking spot sell for a million dollars there a few years ago?
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Queens is generally not as expensive as the city (Manhattan) and a short commute from the suburbs.
The million dollar parking spots are in Manhattan.
 
zkostik said:
Not sure housing prices can get any worse, same goes for traffic. Just what we need here is even more traffic on i-495 and i-270.
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It could always get worse.

cattura25.jpg
 
Seventyfive said:
LOLOL... I hope the kids working in NYC like to pay taxes... Making $300,000 sounds like a lot of money until you only get to keep 45% of it and housing costs $6,000/mo and food is 4x as expensive as anywhere else in the country.
Click to expand...

Since when do AWS engineers make $300,000? :confused: I thought the pay range for that was between the low 100s - 150s Either way just for perspective the condos in the high rises in LIC by the water go for ridiculous prices... 500 sq ft studio for over $500,000...3 BR 1300 sq .. $2.1 mil mortgage in addition to the $1,600 in monthly common charges...etc... lol unless you're willing to live in a shit hole or want to deal with hour long commutes both ways, most of NYC is also priced out.

https://galerielic.com/building/

Having grown up in Queens roughly 15 minutes from that area, the problem is the lack of adequate transportation infrastructure in addition to the cost of living. The subway system is antiquated and reliability has gone to shit over the last 5 years and most likely cannot support the additional traffic above and underground. I turned down jobs at Citigroup and Amazon midtown just because of the the horri-awful commutes and cost of living to pay ratio.

My condo in suffolk brand new construction (1500 sq feet) cost me only $263,000k with 250 in common charges. I still make in the low 100s with a 2% annual raise working on long island but have way more net pay after bills and far less hassle.

I don't understand the logic in Amazon opening another site so close to a city that cannot support it.
 
TheMadHatterXxX said:
Since when do AWS engineers make $300,000? :confused: I thought the pay range for that was between the low 100s - 150s Either way just for perspective the condos in the high rises in LIC by the water go for ridiculous prices... 500 sq ft studio for over $500,000...3 BR 1300 sq .. $2.1 mil mortgage in addition to the $1,600 in monthly common charges...etc... lol unless you're willing to live in a shit hole or want to deal with hour long commutes both ways, most of NYC is also priced out.

https://galerielic.com/building/

Having grown up in Queens roughly 15 minutes from that area, the problem is the lack of adequate transportation infrastructure in addition to the cost of living. The subway system is antiquated and reliability has gone to shit over the last 5 years and most likely cannot support the additional traffic above and underground. I turned down jobs at Citigroup and Amazon midtown just because of the the horri-awful commutes and cost of living to pay ratio.

My condo in suffolk brand new construction (1500 sq feet) cost me only $263,000k with 250 in common charges. I still make in the low 100s with a 2% annual raise working on long island but have way more net pay after bills and far less hassle.

I don't understand the logic in Amazon opening another site so close to a city that cannot support it.
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Go to glass door and find out how much they make. It depends on your rank. Interns make $100K->$150K. Seniors make $200. Principal/Lead make more depending on the project.

Even at $250K, I couldn't afford a 3 bedroom home on 1/8th an acre with a 30 minute commute time. I'm talking millions of dollars for that kind of house. I was looking closer to a 1 hour commute each way. No way Jose.
 
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DigitalGriffin said:
270 already has 6, and sometimes 8 lanes in each direction.
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Yeah thankfully I just take a short hop down 95 from my place. But even thats been getting really bad even at 5 am. Today it took me 45 minutes to get in and I near BWI...thats about twice normal but yeah its getting bad. These days rush hour is 2:30 - 7pm....
 
gamerk2 said:
Even taking your worse case estimations (which are wrong), that still nets you an effective $93,000 takehome pay ($300,000 minus $135,000 in taxation minus $72,000 in rent), You kind of defeated your own biased argument by failing to think the math through.

FYI, the *real* Income Tax numbers in NY for that bracket are 6.85%, not the 45% you claim.
Click to expand...

It might be different for total tax now that the federal brackets got shifted but I was counting ALL of the taxes combined (city, state, federal), not to mention the sales tax which is almost 9%. I have lots of friends who made $250 to $300 in NYC and they all left. After taxes, rent, utilities, you maybe have $60k to $70k for food, entertainment, transportation, etc... Food in NYC is double any other major city unless you love food carts and chipotle. NY is maybe somewhere you can live if you're single but as soon as you start to raise a kid you realize it's a joke. I know a guy still there, he pays $45k/yr for private school because the public schools are garbage.
 
TheMadHatterXxX said:
I don't understand the logic in Amazon opening another site so close to a city that cannot support it.
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They are looking at where most of the talent is. Truth is high tech talent congregates to certain areas. San Fan, Seattle, Denver, DC, New York, Tech Triangle, Houston, Pittsburgh. (I would rank them in that order) Lots of talent = large employee base = large centralized location = cheaper operational cost. It works out great for companies, but not so much for the people who want to work for them. Cost of living calculators prove this.

To be honest I'm surprised the technology triangle in the Carolinas wasn't a choice. It's a large area, mostly suburb, with relatively light traffic, and available infrastructure growth possibilities. That area is on my short list of places to move to. While housing is 20% more the pay offsets would compensate for that.

We have the opposite problem: Finding qualified talent. Only a few places in our area need our high tech skills. But by the same token people with those kind of skills are scarce because the jobs aren't focused here, even though it's extremely cheap to live here. It's a huge problem for Pennsylvania because most of those with hi-tech degrees are leaving the state once they graduate.

There's another thing working against you. Once you hit $125K/year you hit the "Highly compensated employee" rule by fed standards. This means a lot of your benefits start to wane or be phased out including 401K/Roth, healt care discounts, etc. So making more money really does work against you above a certain point at certain locations.
 
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TheMadHatterXxX said:
Since when do AWS engineers make $300,000? :confused: I thought the pay range for that was between the low 100s - 150s Either way just for perspective the condos in the high rises in LIC by the water go for ridiculous prices... 500 sq ft studio for over $500,000...3 BR 1300 sq .. $2.1 mil mortgage in addition to the $1,600 in monthly common charges...etc... lol unless you're willing to live in a shit hole or want to deal with hour long commutes both ways, most of NYC is also priced out.

https://galerielic.com/building/

Having grown up in Queens roughly 15 minutes from that area, the problem is the lack of adequate transportation infrastructure in addition to the cost of living. The subway system is antiquated and reliability has gone to shit over the last 5 years and most likely cannot support the additional traffic above and underground. I turned down jobs at Citigroup and Amazon midtown just because of the the horri-awful commutes and cost of living to pay ratio.

My condo in suffolk brand new construction (1500 sq feet) cost me only $263,000k with 250 in common charges. I still make in the low 100s with a 2% annual raise working on long island but have way more net pay after bills and far less hassle.

I don't understand the logic in Amazon opening another site so close to a city that cannot support it.
Click to expand...

Base might be $100 or $150 but then they get another $100 or $150 in stock but there are interns making over $100k so definitely the numbers are safely into the mid 6 figures.
 
I live 5 minutes from where the DC HQ will be. Jesus, traffic is going to suck now and everything is going to get more expensive. I actually was not huge on this.
 
AthlonXP said:
I live 5 minutes from where the DC HQ will be. Jesus, traffic is going to suck now and everything is going to get more expensive. I actually was not huge on this.
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The good news is, wherever you live now is worth a fortune. Bad news is you'll need to find a new job and move if you sell.
 
tetris42 said:
What's that from?
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Dr. Who - Gridlock

DigitalGriffin said:
They are looking at where most of the talent is. Truth is high tech talent congregates to certain areas. San Fan, Seattle, Denver, DC, New York, Tech Triangle, Houston, Pittsburgh. (I would rank them in that order) Lots of talent = large employee base = large centralized location = cheaper operational cost. It works out great for companies, but not so much for the people who want to work for them. Cost of living calculators prove this.

To be honest I'm surprised the technology triangle in the Carolinas wasn't a choice. It's a large area, mostly suburb, with relatively light traffic, and available infrastructure growth possibilities. That area is on my short list of places to move to. While housing is 20% more the pay offsets would compensate for that.

We have the opposite problem: Finding qualified talent. Only a few places in our area need our high tech skills. But by the same token people with those kind of skills are scarce because the jobs aren't focused here, even though it's extremely cheap to live here. It's a huge problem for Pennsylvania because most of those with hi-tech degrees are leaving the state once they graduate.

There's another thing working against you. Once you hit $125K/year you hit the "Highly compensated employee" rule by fed standards. This means a lot of your benefits start to wane or be phased out including 401K/Roth, healt care discounts, etc. So making more money really does work against you above a certain point at certain locations.
Click to expand...

Yeah I dread having to work in the DC area. Right now I work not too far from BWI but its for a "low" (by my standards) paying job. With the scale of what I handle in my day job I should be making 150+. 100+ employees and several thousand servers in a 24x7 mission critical environment. And I am lucky to break 120...Ive been actively looking but surprisingly the pay seems to be shit around here.
 
kju1 said:
Dr. Who - Gridlock



Yeah I dread having to work in the DC area. Right now I work not too far from BWI but its for a "low" (by my standards) paying job. With the scale of what I handle in my day job I should be making 150+. 100+ employees and several thousand servers in a 24x7 mission critical environment. And I am lucky to break 120...Ive been actively looking but surprisingly the pay seems to be shit around here.
Click to expand...

I suggest you avoid Micros. The managers walk the parking lot and they have a continuous improvement policy where people are fired every year even if they meet requirements. It creates a lot of back stabbing to place blame when projects don't succeed.
 
zkostik said:
Not sure housing prices can get any worse, same goes for traffic. Just what we need here is even more traffic on i-495 and i-270.
Click to expand...

Yeah, not the housing prices im worried about, its the traffic.

I graduated from University of Maryland recently and moved out to Illinois for school temporarily, getting away from traffic felt really nice. Now I don't even want to go back...

I'm from Maryland..
 
DigitalGriffin said:
They are looking at where most of the talent is. Truth is high tech talent congregates to certain areas. San Fan, Seattle, Denver, DC, New York, Tech Triangle, Houston, Pittsburgh. (I would rank them in that order) Lots of talent = large employee base = large centralized location = cheaper operational cost. It works out great for companies, but not so much for the people who want to work for them. Cost of living calculators prove this.
.
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Definitely agree, the biggest school in the DMV is The University of Maryland. I just graduated from there and within the last year they've been building this massive technology based building that is conveniently showcased at the entrance of UMD. See link for the new building, funded by the founder of Oculus.

https://iribe.cs.umd.edu/

I think Amazon knows this and has had a part to do with the building.
 
When I worked for a Japanese company they had the concept of "company apartments" The company had sponsored housing for you to stay at because the cost of owning land in those cities was so outrageous no one could afford it. (ie: Kyoto, Tokyo, etc) So they would house you up in what is essentially a 8x10 room about the size of a dorm room, and you have a shared bathroom. Then on the weekends employees would travel home by train 4, 5, 6 hours to see their famly.

It's only now that business is realizing the negative side effects including lower birth rates, higher depression, suicide, and Karoshi (death by overwork) Areas like San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver are heading that way.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
I suggest you avoid Micros. The managers walk the parking lot and they have a continuous improvement policy where people are fired every year even if they meet requirements. It creates a lot of back stabbing to place blame when projects don't succeed.
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Noted, thanks for the heads up. I have been in govt work for so long that its been rough trying to find something that I feel would be a good fit.

TrevorR said:
Yeah, not the housing prices im worried about, its the traffic.

I graduated from University of Maryland recently and moved out to Illinois for school temporarily, getting away from traffic felt really nice. Now I don't even want to go back...

I'm from Maryland..
Click to expand...

Most Marylanders love it here. I never understood why.
 
katanaD said:
it would be interesting to see if any high ups, aware of the decisions ahead of time.. started buying up land in those spots before the announcement
Click to expand...

Almost always is, my family is part of a start up company and its amazing when you know the inside of what is happening how corrupt and messed up everything from small city politics to state to federal is. Its also amazing how fast politicians will jump claim credit for things when it looks good and pretend they had nothing to do with it when it isn't panning out.
DigitalGriffin said:
When I worked for a Japanese company they had the concept of "company apartments" The company had sponsored housing for you to stay at because the cost of owning land in those cities was so outrageous no one could afford it. (ie: Kyoto, Tokyo, etc) So they would house you up in what is essentially a 8x10 room about the size of a dorm room, and you have a shared bathroom. Then on the weekends employees would travel home by train 4, 5, 6 hours to see their famly.

It's only now that business is realizing the negative side effects including lower birth rates, higher depression, suicide, and Karoshi (death by overwork) Areas like San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver are heading that way.
Click to expand...


I think that in general humans as a whole still never learn the lesson, work life balance has to be reasonable. But companies aren't going to care I said from the start that amazon should have put at least one headquarters in a place with a decent cost of living. They could have went to lots of big Midwest cities like Detroit put a facility in one of the decent suburbs and created a place where they could pay employees whom wanted a decent life 60k less to live like kings. Now that we know they are doing 2 headquarters its even more disturbing to think they only selected 2 other ultra high cost of living areas.
 
TheMadHatterXxX said:
Since when do AWS engineers make $300,000? :confused: I thought the pay range for that was between the low 100s - 150s Either way just for perspective the condos in the high rises in LIC by the water go for ridiculous prices... 500 sq ft studio for over $500,000...3 BR 1300 sq .. $2.1 mil mortgage in addition to the $1,600 in monthly common charges...etc... lol unless you're willing to live in a shit hole or want to deal with hour long commutes both ways, most of NYC is also priced out.

https://galerielic.com/building/

Having grown up in Queens roughly 15 minutes from that area, the problem is the lack of adequate transportation infrastructure in addition to the cost of living. The subway system is antiquated and reliability has gone to shit over the last 5 years and most likely cannot support the additional traffic above and underground. I turned down jobs at Citigroup and Amazon midtown just because of the the horri-awful commutes and cost of living to pay ratio.

My condo in suffolk brand new construction (1500 sq feet) cost me only $263,000k with 250 in common charges. I still make in the low 100s with a 2% annual raise working on long island but have way more net pay after bills and far less hassle.

I don't understand the logic in Amazon opening another site so close to a city that cannot support it.
Click to expand...
Bezo's is a leftist - he's supporting a leftist city that has been losing residents.

Practically speaking, New York is a key port and international hub that can reach Europe, while also serving the Northeast.

Atlanta would have made more sense than Virginia, but I think Bezo's wanted to be able to grease the wheels in Washington DC.
 
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