Amazon HQ2 selected - and not Boston

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Huge win for Boston. NY has arguably already overtaken us as the East Coast's main tech hub, and having Amazon HQ2 there would've been the point of no return. This way, the planned 25,000 jobs in NY will likely get redistributed to existing Amazon offices, including Boston.
 
lexicon506 said:
Huge win for Boston. NY has arguably already overtaken us as the East Coast's main tech hub, and having Amazon HQ2 there would've been the point of no return. This way, the planned 25,000 jobs in NY will likely get redistributed to existing Amazon offices, including Boston.
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I agree with this assessment. HQ2 in New York was going to solidify NY as the tech capital of the east. This pumps the breaks on NY. DC/NoVA elevates considerably, but I don't see it breaking away as a front-runner because they were starting further behind. And Boston stays a comfortable neck-and-neck(-and neck) with the lead pack.

Google's announcement of 1500 new jobs in Cambridge (on top of 1500 already there) was a nice indicator that steady growth among tech giants continues unabated here. It will make Google the 4th largest employer in Cambridge (behind Harvard, MIT, and the City itself), surpassing all biotech and pharma companies.
 
NY is only competitive with Boston in raw numbers for tech. Per capita, Boston has all other east-coast cities surpassed
 
^ Yeah and at this point the idea of a 'tech capital' is an anachronism. 'Technology' has permeated all industries and elements of the economy.

Now - a lot of people use 'tech' as a shorthand for 'consumer electronics & internet media'. And if that's what we're talking about then Boston has never really been in a commanding position.

But if we mean something broad when we say 'tech capital' - like, a high proportion of high-value engineering work happening, with a strong concentration on ancillary services (finance, law, PR, etc.) - then Boston is as strong as ever. It's just that we're strong in life sciences, enterprise IT, robotics, etc....rather than consumer tech & digital media.

Which is good, because the alternative to tech-centric high-value work is either commodity extraction or commodity labor .... i.e. back-office cities like Nashville. And we're not anywhere close to that.

But its also true that we're probably better off as a leader in 'our' tech sectors than we would be trying to compete with SF and (to a lesser extent) NY for the consumer electronics and digital media clusters...
 
Gameguy326 said:
NY is only competitive with Boston in raw numbers for tech. Per capita, Boston has all other east-coast cities surpassed
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Per capita? How important is THAT?

If you're talking tech talent per capita, then Israel is far ahead of the US and China combined.

Per capita is largely irrelevant when you're talking world tech center of gravity.
 
My impression is that the NYC technology scene is to a large extent centered around froufrou retail and consumer goods startups that give recent college grads the opportunity to hustle and hipsterize for a couple of years before getting a real job. There's a lot of action, but it's not taken very seriously. SF/SV is much more focused on building serious, forward-thinking tech-enabled companies. Boston is more focused on life sciences, engineering, and serious R&D, which could arguably be a lot less startup-focused.
 
shmessy said:
Per capita? How important is THAT?

If you're talking tech talent per capita, then Israel is far ahead of the US and China combined.

Per capita is largely irrelevant when you're talking world tech center of gravity.
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Not at all. Density of tech talent is very important. Look at Kendall Square. Look at Silicon Valley.

The thing about NY is that it's HUGE. It's 18 million people. I'd bet NYC has more tech jobs than San Jose. But which is the tech capital?

EDIT: https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/10/venture-capital-concentration/539775/

You cannot tell me that NY is considered a better hotbed for startups than Silicon Valley. It only dominates here because of the huge population difference.
 
I know a guy that is, maybe now was, putting together a REIT to invest in dozens of LIC condos. I bet plans will change. However, LIC real estate is blowing up no matter what - close to midtown and very under-developed, even with all the new buildings going up.

NYC eclipsing Boston as a tech hub? In consumer and retail digital, NYC is way ahead. People here look at Boston tech as dusty, old school enterprise scale stuff, like EMC, etc.
However, I think Boston still has a big edge on NYC with tech, especially once you add in biotech, etc.

The other thing to remember is that NYC is over 10X the size of Boston and NYC metro is 3-4X the size of Boston. There is so much other stuff here, that yes, it would have been a draw, but remember the scale and diversity of NYC market. Citi employs close to ~25K people and JP Morgan employs ~38K people in NYC.
 
In a world where Yahoo then Google then Facebook (and others) depended on advertising, New York always had a vast head start in people who understood, funded, and ran the ads.

Then add the banks, the export-import folks, and the quants, and you've got everything you need for a tech company except the core value proposition.

And plenty of people cooking up value propositions.

Boston owns some of those key value propositions (biotech/health, collected data, & AI) but it is a big world, and being (as Czervik points out) 10x the core and 4x the Metro size is a difference of kind, not just of size.
 
lexicon506 said:
Huge win for Boston. NY has arguably already overtaken us as the East Coast's main tech hub, and having Amazon HQ2 there would've been the point of no return. This way, the planned 25,000 jobs in NY will likely get redistributed to existing Amazon offices, including Boston.
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Remember that Amazon's lease in the Seaport lets them lease additional space for another 2,000 employees.
 
whittle said:
Remember that Amazon's lease in the Seaport lets them lease additional space for another 2,000 employees.
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And I hear there is some waterfront property along Fort Point Channel for sale..
 
The chance of Amazon executing its additional Seaport Square lease just went up.
 
Can someone provide a brief summary for what buildings vs sq feet Amazon has already committed to in Boston & Cambridge from birth? i'm at dinner and someone's arguing Amazon isn't really in Boston yet... and i don't have my laptop handy to begin a detailed search. :D
 
odurandina said:
Can someone provide a brief summary for what buildings vs sq feet Amazon has already committed to in Boston & Cambridge from birth? i'm at dinner and someone's arguing Amazon isn't really in Boston yet... and i don't have my laptop handy to begin a detailed search. :D
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They've signed a lease for 430,000 sq ft in Seaport, with an option for more. https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2018/11/13/amazon-is-expanding-in-boston-even-without-hq

Don't have numbers for what they already have.
 
Thanks it's a start. i would love it if we could get a list of Amazon's emerging presence in the City/Metro.
 
Curious what people here think was the louder, more consequential "No" - Boston to the Olympics bid, or NYC to Amazon?
 
I'd say the Amazon debacle. I'll begin by stating I'm no fan of Amazon, which in some ways may be the 21st century walmart, and all the collateral damage it's left in it's wake. For many in the public, Amazon and many tech companies like Apple have this idolized image, which I personally don't think is deserved. For example, apparently Mayor Di Blasio states he won't shop on Amazon as a matter of principle for these same reasons.

But I can't help think what a huge image failure this is for NY. Although the city is huge, it's seems highly dependent on finance/wall street type jobs to keep it's economic mojo going. Accordingly it has had rather pronounced boom and bust cycles. Now it's booming. This was a chance substantially diversify the NYC economy in the long run with a massive tech sector.

NYC lost the economic impact of what could have been and for what? NYC residents are going to spend just as much buying goods on Amazon as before. No one has won the battle against Amazon, they are going to just redistribute the jobs to different cities/regions and keep on doing what they were going to doing anyway but now in a different location.

I can understand NYC residents fears over gentrification and the lack of affordable housing but why turn away a chance to strengthen, diversify and build resiliency to your economic base. Bring in the business and benefit from the spin off tech businesses and then leverage that wealth through income tax revenue, corp taxes etc. to lower property taxes and improve public services such as the subway etc.

Critics complain about Amazon, perhaps for good reason, but issues like income inequality etc. are best handled at the federal level, shooting yourself in the foot doesn't help in the long run imo.
 
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