There is basically nothing mentioned about Amazon in this article. And it ignores one of the few unique elements that may have attracted Amazon, the Jacobs institute's new intellectual property policy.
That's because the article is primarily about Cornell Tech HELPING make New York appealing, not Cornell Tech as the causal reason. The piece is much more about Cornell Tech than about Amazon's decision.
Per the tweet: CMU has higher female ratios in their CS programs? Is that specific to undergraduate?
I’ve looked into applying to their masters programs and of the ~20 options, only two appear to have higher than 50% female[0]:
(1) HCI and (2) Educational techn. and Applied Learning Science.
Snark aside, it’s unlikely one can link Amazon’s decision to a single factor. New York being what it has has a large number of assets in its favor: a huge, mobile workforce, strong business community, strong sales community, deep tech pool, a strong transit system, legitimately a world-class city...
New York is definitely a world-class city, but Amazon had the opportunity to attract talent to make a city that is not currently a world-class city into one but instead selected an already established one
> Amazon had the opportunity to attract talent to make a city that is not currently a world-class city into one
Not really. Big cities operate at scales and complexities far above what Amazon can bring. Density begets density. Meanwhile, that cities have largely been built—and remained—in similar places (protected harbours with navigable rivers and ideally shallow bedrock) implies there are deeper reasons for why density exists where it does.
I lived in Seattle for a few years, as Amazon expanded. Traffic and housing exploded during that time. Boeing and Microsoft had their large facilities outside of Seattle proper, which I think minimized their effects on the city itself compared to Amazon.
difference is, NYC has all the talented MBAs, engineers and other smart people who will work 60+ hours a week already. that kind of culture just isn't present in many other cities
I'm not aware of another city in the USA with as useful a transit system. In terms of what it could be, it's atrocious. In terms of how it enables the city to function, it's essential.
The $4.6b in subsidies also helped make NY more appealing to Amazon.
>“The taxpayer costs of these two deals is high, both in absolute terms and on a per-job basis, contrary to Amazon’s artful spin. Together, we believe they exceed $4.6 billion and the cost per job in New York is at least $112,000, not the $48,000 the company used in a selective and incomplete press release calculation. [1]
That seems a bit extreme, but that was the response from our engineers in Detroit.
Amazon claimed we didn't have enough programmers, but the reality is that most of our programmers are picked up by automotive companies. There is talent, but they are already high in demand.
If amazon admitted they didn't want to exceed our 6 figure salaries, the response would have been better. Instead I see Amazon as an increasingly crony company.
> it’s unlikely one can link Amazon’s decision to a single factor.
It will never happen but imagine if when articles like this were written you had some understanding of how the article came about? In other words was it floated by Columbia's PR department? Did the author just trip over the subject and then decide to somehow write an article that ended up with the very timely link bait title?
I was a little puzzled how Ithaca would factor in (~4 hours away) but apparently there's a satellite "Cornell Tech" campus on Roosevelt Island.
Clearly the local talent available helps when factoring where to locate, but I can't help but cynically think that this story is a retcon to distract from the public subsidies. It's telling that there's no quote from any Amazon employee that substantiates the headline's claim.
I agree with your general cynicism :-) Cornell Tech was established a few years back as an interdisciplinary grad school on Roosevelt Island that brings together a lot of STEM disciplines (as well as business. Cornell Med School is also in NYC. It's an increasingly common pattern; see MIT's recent announcement of an AI school.
Stanford tried pretty hard to get this campus but, among other things, it's probably fair to say that there was a pretty heavy thumb on the scales in Cornell's favor given that it's a significant university in New York state.
Stanford dropped out before submitting their bid because Cornell got a big donation that Stanford wasn't able to match. Stanford was actually the clear favorite before that happened.
Yes -- that big donation was exactly the thumb GP is talking about. :) It came from / was organized by Bloomberg, who seems to have had a strong preference for a NY school.
But there were also other reasons Stanford withdrew, including the weirdness of how real estate works in NYC.
Ahh that makes sense. Yeah Cornell is fairly incompetent to begin with and they were really doing everything possible to sabotage their own bid, including trying to sue people for promoting their bid on social media, so winning wouldn't have even been a possibility without substantial external help.
> Yes -- that big donation was exactly the thumb GP is talking about. :) It came from / was organized by Bloomberg, who seems to have had a strong preference for a NY school.
First, Bloomberg himself didn't choose the winner; he was detached from the competitive process. Bloomberg launched the competition and also later donated money to the winner (Cornell), but those were separate events.
Second, Bloomberg himself appeared in a promotional video that was campaigning for Stanford. I don't know where the idea that Bloomberg had a strong preference for an upstate NY school comes from (especially since the other finalist - Columbia University - was already based in New York City).
I'm going to be a Visiting Professor there in 2019, and I'll be teaching a deep learning course.
One interesting thing about Cornell Tech is that the faculty all work in an open office space, and I think that's to embrace start up culture. Faculty have "huddle" rooms for meetings. At my home institution, I spend 20 hours per week in meetings. Faculty do have dedicated huddle rooms, though.
Why embrace the bad parts of startup culture (open plans)? Seems cargo cultish: open plans exist as a cost control measure, and make it easier to grow/shrink. Academia has endowments and tends to have a more stable labor force.
As you mention, it would make little sense for academia to do this as a cost-cutting measure. The same goes for companies like Google or Facebook that are swimming in cash. Is it that hard to believe that they're doing this because they value the additional opportunities for informal communication and collaboration that open-plan offices provide?
I realize this is a polarizing topic, but personally I've always preferred working in open-plan spaces to having a private office for precisely that reason.
"More stable labor force": you are thinking of faculty, who make up a small percentage of research labor at universities.
Graduate students & postdocs—who make up the majority of research labor—come and go, on the order of months-to-years, making open plans actually somewhat reasonable.
Yet the comment here was that it's faculty who have the open floor plan. Why are they using the agile aspect of startups for the most stable asset in academia?
That is what the comment said, however, the open floor plan is not just all faculty in one open space, it is all researchers (faculty, students, postdocs, other research staff) in one open space.
Faculty additionally have huddles where they can take meetings.
honest question: Do you think open offices are or should be an "embraceable" aspect of start-up culture?
Are the common activities of faculty compatible with rows of desks, no privacy and constant interruptions? I'm thinking about administrivia and deep, contemplative thought.
The only (perhaps) valid use-case I've seen for open office is highly collaborative tactical execution. The minute you need individual thought-space or strategic focus it's a massive hinderance.
I wonder this too. My guess is it could be similar to programming-- there's times when it's just me and my computer-- everything else is a distraction. Other times though, I'm working with others, asking questions, helping people or socializing. I have friends at places where they have offices, and I work on an open-office space: we each like and dislike different aspects of our respective setup.
From my experience in college (anecdotal observations), there's professors who seem to spend a lot of time working with others. They were solving problems with grad-students or at meetings-- though there's some I always found alone in their offices too. I'm sure this varies by person and by field, but I'd be interested in knowing if the open office is working for the faculty here.
I don't use it except for holding office hours and 1:1 meetings that require confidentiality. I spend most of my time near the entry of an open plan area where I bump into people at a much higher rate. I love it.
I do sometimes hide in my office or home for some things, but much less than you'd probably guess. I also spend a lot of time walking around - I find that things like reviewing papers is best done away from all distraction, including electronic , so I'll walk over to a nearby park while reading. I often do the same for editing my student's papers.
I'm a Cornell alum (Comp Sci undergrad, Class of 2001.) For my current startup, we go to Cornell Tech to recruit. I'm taken aback at the campus -- it is beautiful, just the right blend of remoteness in an urban setting, and I think it would be a great place to study. The various buildings and diverse meeting/sitting/study places is great and I think will get even better as the campus builds out.
Although Cornell is a great school and I know a few smart and capable alumni from Cornell, the nytimes is really reaching here. Certainly having top schools didn't hurt NY, but amazon's decision had nothing to do with cornell or their roosevelt island tech school. It had everything to do with political influence and vote buying.
The article is nothing but empty PR for Cornell. It would be like washingtonpost writing an ad for Georgetown by claiming Georgetown made DC area attractive to amazon. My suspicion ( and it's only a suspicion ) is that bezos wanted a headquarters in the DC area to buy good will amongst the politicians in DC and to be closer to the lobbyists and of course politicians.
If cornell and georgetown decided to move to wyoming, I doubt amazon is going to follow along. Now if the politicians, lobbyists and "influencers" in DC and NYC decided to move to wyoming, I'm betting amazon would be right on their coat tails.
Isn't this a little weird? Why not choose Boston that is very close to MIT and Harvard. Why not choose SF which is very close to UC Berkeley and Stanford? NYC isn't even close to Cornell (~4 hours).
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] thread(BTW I've known Dan for over 35 years and don't mean to imply there's anything improper -- quite the opposite)
Sure, but why does the article title mention Amazon and not Cornell Tech? It's dumb.
See the comment by the CEO of Duo Lingo:
https://twitter.com/LuisvonAhn/status/1050426808393506817?s=...
I’ve looked into applying to their masters programs and of the ~20 options, only two appear to have higher than 50% female[0]: (1) HCI and (2) Educational techn. and Applied Learning Science.
[0] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/sites/default/files/SCS_Masters_Progr...
Snark aside, it’s unlikely one can link Amazon’s decision to a single factor. New York being what it has has a large number of assets in its favor: a huge, mobile workforce, strong business community, strong sales community, deep tech pool, a strong transit system, legitimately a world-class city...
Not really. Big cities operate at scales and complexities far above what Amazon can bring. Density begets density. Meanwhile, that cities have largely been built—and remained—in similar places (protected harbours with navigable rivers and ideally shallow bedrock) implies there are deeper reasons for why density exists where it does.
NYC doesn't compare to Europe or Asia, of course, but it's streets ahead of anything else in the US.
*Note: there is SO MUCH wrong with the MTA and the NYC subway system, but it's currently the best in the country, unfortunately.
>“The taxpayer costs of these two deals is high, both in absolute terms and on a per-job basis, contrary to Amazon’s artful spin. Together, we believe they exceed $4.6 billion and the cost per job in New York is at least $112,000, not the $48,000 the company used in a selective and incomplete press release calculation. [1]
[1] https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/news/releases/amazon-hq2-hq3-s...
Amazon claimed we didn't have enough programmers, but the reality is that most of our programmers are picked up by automotive companies. There is talent, but they are already high in demand.
If amazon admitted they didn't want to exceed our 6 figure salaries, the response would have been better. Instead I see Amazon as an increasingly crony company.
Detroit has a good tech talent base, but sadly, it isn’t up-to-par with the coastal tech hubs.
It will never happen but imagine if when articles like this were written you had some understanding of how the article came about? In other words was it floated by Columbia's PR department? Did the author just trip over the subject and then decide to somehow write an article that ended up with the very timely link bait title?
Paul Graham's 'The Submarine' for context:
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Clearly the local talent available helps when factoring where to locate, but I can't help but cynically think that this story is a retcon to distract from the public subsidies. It's telling that there's no quote from any Amazon employee that substantiates the headline's claim.
Stanford tried pretty hard to get this campus but, among other things, it's probably fair to say that there was a pretty heavy thumb on the scales in Cornell's favor given that it's a significant university in New York state.
But there were also other reasons Stanford withdrew, including the weirdness of how real estate works in NYC.
First, Bloomberg himself didn't choose the winner; he was detached from the competitive process. Bloomberg launched the competition and also later donated money to the winner (Cornell), but those were separate events.
Second, Bloomberg himself appeared in a promotional video that was campaigning for Stanford. I don't know where the idea that Bloomberg had a strong preference for an upstate NY school comes from (especially since the other finalist - Columbia University - was already based in New York City).
One interesting thing about Cornell Tech is that the faculty all work in an open office space, and I think that's to embrace start up culture. Faculty have "huddle" rooms for meetings. At my home institution, I spend 20 hours per week in meetings. Faculty do have dedicated huddle rooms, though.
That's really just your opinion, not a fact. I for one love open plans, I find they make working a more social activity, which suits me.
I realize this is a polarizing topic, but personally I've always preferred working in open-plan spaces to having a private office for precisely that reason.
Graduate students & postdocs—who make up the majority of research labor—come and go, on the order of months-to-years, making open plans actually somewhat reasonable.
Faculty additionally have huddles where they can take meetings.
Are the common activities of faculty compatible with rows of desks, no privacy and constant interruptions? I'm thinking about administrivia and deep, contemplative thought.
The only (perhaps) valid use-case I've seen for open office is highly collaborative tactical execution. The minute you need individual thought-space or strategic focus it's a massive hinderance.
From my experience in college (anecdotal observations), there's professors who seem to spend a lot of time working with others. They were solving problems with grad-students or at meetings-- though there's some I always found alone in their offices too. I'm sure this varies by person and by field, but I'd be interested in knowing if the open office is working for the faculty here.
I don't use it except for holding office hours and 1:1 meetings that require confidentiality. I spend most of my time near the entry of an open plan area where I bump into people at a much higher rate. I love it.
I do sometimes hide in my office or home for some things, but much less than you'd probably guess. I also spend a lot of time walking around - I find that things like reviewing papers is best done away from all distraction, including electronic , so I'll walk over to a nearby park while reading. I often do the same for editing my student's papers.
The article is nothing but empty PR for Cornell. It would be like washingtonpost writing an ad for Georgetown by claiming Georgetown made DC area attractive to amazon. My suspicion ( and it's only a suspicion ) is that bezos wanted a headquarters in the DC area to buy good will amongst the politicians in DC and to be closer to the lobbyists and of course politicians.
If cornell and georgetown decided to move to wyoming, I doubt amazon is going to follow along. Now if the politicians, lobbyists and "influencers" in DC and NYC decided to move to wyoming, I'm betting amazon would be right on their coat tails.
> Why not choose Boston that is very close to MIT and Harvard. Why not choose SF which is very close to UC Berkeley and Stanford?