Hmm, I think there are a lot of those Canadian graduates at Facebook because of large class size, and because they don’t want to work in Canada for some reason. It’s not that the company prefers to hire these Canadian graduates because they are better than US graduates. If Canadian cities have such appeal, why don’t a higher proportion of top Canadian graduates stay in the country?
Amazon could go to Toronto or Vancouver. I’ve seen these locations being discussed. However, having a Canadian headquarters to service a primarily US market would be inefficient. Only some of those employees will be engineers. The rest will be marketers, business planners, lawyers, and other people who need to be experienced in US business. Canada contributes a small fraction of Amazon’s revenue for now, and is not nearly as important as even some regional US markets.
Plus, it’s going to be hard to convince Harvard or Stanford’s business school class that they should move to Canada. Educated Canadians come here for school and jobs, not the other way around. Even if you can make the case that Canada has good engineering talent, on par with the US, which is doubtful to begin with, it’s harder to make the same argument for graduates across a wide range of business relevant disciplines, particularly when being well versed in US norms is a prerequisite.
Finally, Amazon might be sensitive to the political appearance of sending jobs to a different country. The White House holds trade and international taxes as somewhat high priorities, and Trump has even criticized Amazon specifically. On the other hand, if Amazon were to create thousands of high paying US jobs and rejuvenate a metro area, that would be positive for their public profile in the US.
None of these are deal breakers alone, but they will help discourage Amazon from choosing a Canadian location for their new headquarters, which is supposed to be equal to their main office in Seattle.
I’d love it if the new HQ was in Philly as that would be great for me financially. It really all comes down to the best deal. Toronto, Boston, NYC, DC and Philly can all supply the requisite tech talent. It will all come down to incentives and real estate. The main reason it may not be in Philly is because “OMG, gentrification bad!!” attitude will lead the city of offer fewer tax breaks and RE opportunity.
good points and public perception could deter amazon. i think that is the only reason why they may not pick toronto but i doubt bezos is big on fleeting public perception.
other questions. why are they building an equal HQ to seattle? to perform the same function? or perhaps they are looking for an HQ to service non-US business, in which case a non-US location would be appropriate.
saying FB doesn’t prefer UW grads because there are lots of UW grads doesn’t make much sense. if UW grads sucked, they wouldn’t work at FB, nor would FB incur additional costs to accomodate UW grads. if they’re awesome, they will work at FB.
Canadian graduates move to the US because there aren’t enough high paying tech jobs in Canada. if you create the high paying tech jobs, they will stay. simple as that. AMZN has a talent problem. locating in toronto solves that talent problem as it is the one place in north america with a talent surplus. toronto is top of the list for solving the talent problem and i think talent is AMZN’s #2 issue with this initiative.
another factor, AMZN ceded its small business marketplace business to Toronto-KW based Shopify a few years ago. this shows that Toronto-KW is a perfect place for AMZN as it houses one of AMZN’s most direct competitors and employers of employees with skills that AMZN requires.
you will not need to convince many US AMZN employees to immigrate to Canada as the talent pool already exists here. if they are creating an equal HQ then they are hiring mostly new talent.
the #1 issue will be real estate. toronto is top of the list for this as well. not only does toronto have the cheapest commercial real estate of the global cities, it has room. what AMZN is asking for is massive. there are no global cities with a strong talent pipeline near mass transit that can accommodate what AMZN is asking for… except toronto. toronto is an industrial town, like pittsburgh, but unlike pittsburgh it is now a global high finance and high tech hub. as a result, it has talent, it has an international airport and it has acres and acres of beautiful prime commercial real estate just a few minutes walk from union station. toronto’s waterfront has been waiting for a massive investment like AMZN’s for decades. no city except toronto can immediately accommodate tens of thousands of new AMZN employees.
DC makes a ton of sense. 3 airports (including BWI); Bezos already has a house mansion there; Bezos also owns the Washington Post, easy access to government officials, loads of well regarded colleges/universities within a reasonable distance, and okay climate.
I don’t think Bezos’ house makes a difference. He can buy a mansion wherever he wants… or another newspaper for that matter. I think Washington DC is interesting to consider, but I don’t know if the city will be aggressive in submitting a bid. All those government related workers aren’t going to get paid more if Amazon drives up housing prices, so it might cause some political issues.
Boston also has a lot going for it and they’ve shown their willingness to throw money at companies to bring them there. Like DC though, I think you have to go outside city limits for find enough space for what Amazon wants to build.
Matt, I know you have a mooseboner for the frozen wasteland, but come on.
They are building another location because they need a bigger corporate headquarters. They are one of the largest, most complex companies in the world. If they grow to become twice as big, they just need more staff, more than Seattle can accomodate.
No they are not looking to expand into Canada through this headquarters. Canada is not important to Amazon now. Their most important markets outside the US are in Europe, which can be serviced by an East Coast US office. Maybe Japan. There is no benefit from managing these operations from Canada.
You know, you have been mentioning “UW”, but I have no idea which university you are referring to. I don’t think this place is as good as you think it is.
There is not sufficient Canadian worker talent, like you said. We are talking about the headquarters of one of the most important businesses in the world. They are going to need C-Level talent in all divisions. There are 10x as many of these people in the US than in Canada, and it will be 50x easier to find the next Bezos successor by cultivating talent in the US. As previously mentioned, changing countries is a huge deal, much more so then convincing say, New York executives to move to Philadelphia.
As for real estate - there is cheap office space in the US too. Many cities that are submitting bids, let’s say Memphis, TN - are not that expensive. And anyway, tech companies do not scrimp on real estate cost. Talent is far more important. Otherwise, they wouldn’t already be spending lots of money to build huge campuses in some of the most expensive areas of the country.
Philly to NYC is an hour and fifteen minutes on the train. There are some prime locations next to the train stations too, so talent should not be an issue. I say this as someone who used to commute to NYC a few days a week from Philly and who now works with a lot of people who do the opposite. This map has some good locations. The Schuylkill Yards option actually looks like AMZN’s Seattle HQ.
