Amazon HQ2 bid

[AlwaysMoving]

Originally Posted by Triptychtwo

So Amazon is going to say, after a year of site evaluations, crunching the numbers, discussing incentives and long term company strategy, oh no, Atlanta seems to have jumped the gun here with public discussions of a redevelopment property in downtown, we better go elsewhere? FFS, Amazon doesn't get spooked like a small puppy during a thunderstorm. I'm tired of all these people thinking a couple mansions here, maybe some defense contracts here are going to determine where AMZN lands, it's going to come down to the $$ and the continued growth of the company and where strategically that makes the most sense.

Amazon is being very secretive, so it seems odd that the chosen city and site would conduct business in public.

I still think Atlanta has a great shot at landing HQ2, but I don't think CIM trying to lock down their incentives has anything to do with Amazon.

[Atlanta3000]

Originally Posted by AlwaysMoving

If Amazon is announcing in the next few weeks then CIM and the COA would wait until the deal was in hand. They wouldn't want to risk spooking Amazon. It's far more likely that CIM is using the Amazon HQ2 excitement to push the incentives through.

Not to be nasty or personal, but you need to change your handle from AlwaysMoving to AlwaysDrinkin.

What you are seeing right now is what any logical person would expect to be happening if Amazon is zeroing in on Atlanta. Do you really expect Amazon to announce they picked Atlanta publicly and then work out the city and state incentives afterward? Come on - this isn't rocket science.

[Atlanta3000]

Originally Posted by AlwaysMoving

Amazon is being very secretive, so it seems odd that the chosen city and site would conduct business in public.

I still think Atlanta has a great shot at landing HQ2, but I don't think CIM trying to lock down their incentives has anything to do with Amazon.

There is only so much close door incentive negotiating that can be done. So the stuff happening right now is the stuff that can not be kept from the public. Which confirms, in my opinion, why Atlanta is the chosen city. Remember last week Amazon confirmed to the NYT there would not be a short list. Also, do you see any of the other 19 finalist cities having the public dialogue Atlanta is having right now? Connect the dots...

[AlwaysMoving]

Originally Posted by Atlanta3000

What you are seeing right now is what any logical person would expect to be happening if Amazon is zeroing in on Atlanta. Do you really expect Amazon to announce they picked Atlanta publicly and then work out the city and state incentives afterward? Come on - this isn't rocket science.

I expect the deal to be similar to other corporate location deals. Amazon announces where they are going and the incentives they have negotiated. The local government then follows through on what has been promised.

[Mentallect]

Originally Posted by wonshirim

Oh really? How many engineers have you recruited? How do you conduct algo/DS/DB interviews?

I personally interviewed at least 200 engineers in person, by VTC, and over the telephone, and hired over 3 dozen to include mechanical and electrical engineers. I have a MBA and a MHR. I have more than 15 years in Sr. Management. I now work for one of the most prestigious employers in world history, an organization everyone knows. I am an expert in HR metrics, Performanced Based interviewed, Personnel Perforfance Management, Compensation, Recruiting and Placement, Retention metrics, and various other HR and Business specialties. I am qualified to speak on recruitment.

[Mentallect]

Originally Posted by Triptychtwo

So Amazon is going to say, after a year of site evaluations, crunching the numbers, discussing incentives and long term company strategy, oh no, Atlanta seems to have jumped the gun here with public discussions of a redevelopment property in downtown, we better go elsewhere? FFS, Amazon doesn't get spooked like a small puppy during a thunderstorm. I'm tired of all these people thinking a couple mansions here, maybe some defense contracts here are going to determine where AMZN lands, it's going to come down to the $$ and the continued growth of the company and where strategically that makes the most sense.

Amazon's cite was selected long before their fictitious hunt began. The entire process was for PR, information on location and incentives for other projects, etc. NOVA was the choice before Day 1.

[skyscraperpage17]

Originally Posted by Atlanta3000

There is only so much close door incentive negotiating that can be done. So the stuff happening right now is the stuff that can not be kept from the public. Which confirms, in my opinion, why Atlanta is the chosen city. Remember last week Amazon confirmed to the NYT there would not be a short list. Also, do you see any of the other 19 finalist cities having the public dialogue Atlanta is having right now? Connect the dots...

Are you referring to this article from the Boston Globe (not the NY Times)?

https://www.google.com/search?q=boston+g...WQyVMKHQ9PCbMQ_AUICygC&biw=1100&bih=2046

"Or the persistent rumor — most recently given life by a story this month in The New York Times — "that the public release of a shorter short list of finalist cities for the project is imminent. It is not, an Amazon spokesman says."

I read that as the spokesperson saying no to a shortlist being imminent, not that there wouldn't be a shortlist.

Think about it, why wouldn't Amazon drag this out further to maximuze their incentives? Deal for example already said he would call a special session to sweeten the state's offer if Atlanta makes the next round. But if Amazon selects us (or whatever city) without another round, there would be no need for Deal or other cities/states to sweeten their offer.

This of course is all assuming there is even a so-called "'Amazon spokesperson" the Boston Globe's referring to. It sounds a lot like the "some people believe" crap that anchors on some news networks do when reporting stories light on facts.

And I tend to think it's BS that an update isn't imminent, like this so-called Amazon spokesperson says. We're already at Labor Day and things are going to slow down significantly by November when it comes to decision-making within companies.

[Ant131531]

By the way, Atlanta metro area is not majority black. It's only about 32%. Atlanta city proper is about 50% black, but it's only 500k in population.

[Triptychtwo]

Originally Posted by Mentallect

I personally interviewed at least 200 engineers in person, by VTC, and over the telephone, and hired over 3 dozen to include mechanical and electrical engineers. I have a MBA and a MHR. I have more than 15 years in Sr. Management. I now work for one of the most prestigious employers in world history, an organization everyone knows. I am an expert in HR metrics, Performanced Based interviewed, Personnel Perforfance Management, Compensation, Recruiting and Placement, Retention metrics, and various other HR and Business specialties. I am qualified to speak on recruitment.

And apparently a Certified Racist™

[Atlanta3000]

Originally Posted by AlwaysMoving

I expect the deal to be similar to other corporate location deals. Amazon announces where they are going and the incentives they have negotiated. The local government then follows through on what has been promised.

Sorry for being a smart@$$ in my earlier post - I like to have fun and bust balls and you are free to reciprocate.

You expect the deal to be similar to other corporate location deals? Hmmmm....

How many other corporate relocation deals do you know that were announced publicly that had cities spanning a continent bidding for the win?

How many other corporate relocation deals do you know that included over 50K jobs with salaries over $100K and a need for 5 Million sqft of office space?

How many other corporate relocation deals do you know of where the city/state offered over $8.5 Billion in incentives as Montgomery County, MD did?

You still stand by your statement?

[Atlanta3000]

Originally Posted by Triptychtwo

And apparently a Certified Racist™

O come on, that is a little harsh - even by my warped standards.

I do believe there is a little truth to what he/she is saying. Maybe not in tech so much as corporate America in general and it really unconscionable this is still happening in the United States of America in 2018. I believe the OP's sentiment reflects this and it shouldn't be discounted.

With that said, I do believe 100% there is a significant bias in tech companies with respect to minorities having positions at the senior level or C-Suite - not so much at the staff level. There is no denying this and it is wrong and it should be discussed, but debatable if it makes sense to here.

I would apologize - just my $0.02.

[Triptychtwo]

Originally Posted by Atlanta3000

O come on, that is a little harsh - even by my warped standards.

I would apologize - just my $0.02.

Originally Posted by Mentallect

A sad fact is ATL has too many blacks,.

Racist.

Originally Posted by Mentallect

tech companies want white males

Racist.

Originally Posted by Mentallect

Asians who are generally racists, and prefer to live and work around others like them exclusively.

Racist.

[Mentallect]

Originally Posted by Triptychtwo

And apparently a Certified Racist™

Brutal and inaccurate reply. Lets keep to the merits of HQ2 site selection criteria.

[Atlanta3000]

Originally Posted by Triptychtwo

Racist.

Triptychtwo - racism is a personal belief where you believe your race is superior (or) one or more races are inferior to your own.

Clearly Mentallect's statements are not his personal belief, but from the perspective of the tech industry. I would however advise Mentallect to stop saying blacks and say African Americans.

Again - I think you should apologize.

[Triptychtwo]

Originally Posted by Atlanta3000

Triptychtwo - racism is a personal belief where you believe your race is superior (or) one or more races are inferior to your own.

You are wrong.

Racist - a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.

Each one of those is prejudice statements against another race or a generality about a race, which has no basis in fact.

I'm done after this.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by wonshirim

Okay, I would usually pass on racist nonsense but I'll bite. I'm an Asian male EE PhD from a top program and I worked at one of the FANG companies in an engineering role and interviewed at many places.

Let's just say one would be crazy to assume Atlanta's tech talent pool is subpar. Of course Atlanta isn't Seattle or the Bay Area. But we have Georgia Tech churning out talent in both hardware and software ends. The only problem is that Atlanta lacks an anchor tech employer HQ, which leads to us bleeding freshly minted tech talent to other cities.

Georgia Tech's presence is extremely important and you will understand if you have worked in the tech industry. Tech talent vetting isn't a regular job interview--you need to fly kids in from elsewhere and challenge their thinking at each stage to really see what they're made of. And "school prestige" is not as critical as business/law schools in tech because its all about the projects you worked on and problems you solved--which might be correlated but not the causally linked to--say an MIT degree over a flagship state school degree. It's why tech companies often overlook GPA and instead focus on cores like data structures, algorithms, operating systems, and capstone project courses.

Tech companies want to vet kids who can solve tech problems QUICKLY and the best way to do it is to have those kids available to come over when an interesting project appears. It's why UW in Seattle poaches so many top CS faculty and Microsoft/Amazon fund their research and vice versa. Unlike say Wall Street, who care about client presentability, prestigious image and possibly even race or sex, tech companies don't and can't afford to care because the competition is extremely cutthroat and industry standards can change over weeks.

Tech companies don't care whether you're an MIT 4.9/5.0 grad or whether you dropped out from the Colorado School of Mines (where one of my BEST engineer hire briefly attended). They don't care whether you're heterosexual, transexual, homosexual. They don't care whether you're a 5th generation citizen or you need an H1B visa. They want the job done. That's why the racial engineering BS is not true.

Of course I'm speaking generally about big companies like Amazon so you might find corner case exceptions, but tech companies in general do not discriminate based on race. Well I'll say they're the LEAST likely of industries that might consider race as a factor in recruiting.

Sorry to thread-snipe, but many tech companies do care about "culture fit," which is usually a good way to discriminate against people from other backgrounds (older, female, or not bro-y enough).

[AlwaysMoving]

Originally Posted by Atlanta3000

You expect the deal to be similar to other corporate location deals? Hmmmm....

How many other corporate relocation deals do you know that were announced publicly that had cities spanning a continent bidding for the win?

How many other corporate relocation deals do you know that included over 50K jobs with salaries over $100K and a need for 5 Million sqft of office space?

How many other corporate relocation deals do you know of where the city/state offered over $8.5 Billion in incentives as Montgomery County, MD did?

You still stand by your statement?

Definitely.

I don't see anything in CIM's Gulch proposal that couldn't be handled behind closed doors or after the announcement.

[Atlanta3000]

Originally Posted by AlwaysMoving

Definitely.

I don't see anything in CIM's Gulch proposal that couldn't be handled behind closed doors or after the announcement.

To my knowledge the City Council of Atlanta has to meet publicly and publish their minutes for all to see.

[megalopolis]

Originally Posted by Atlanta3000

FYI - stay off the NSFW areas of Reddit or you may see more of me than you care to - just sayin.

And what if we do?

[Mentallect]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Sorry to thread-snipe, but many tech companies do care about "culture fit," which is usually a good way to discriminate against people from other backgrounds (older, female, or not bro-y enough).

Cultural fit is code language. If you observe white men and Asian men as they pass unknown black men, you see their eyes turn away, heads go down, and other avoidance cues. These feelings factor into their hiring decisions. This may not be racism 101, but it signals a extreme discomfort which trickles into their hiring decisions. Justification of denying minority hires include their not being enough qualified of this or that, however, when data mining their applicant pool, you discover an abundance of fully qualified black male applicants. Many tech companies acknowledge their hiring practices effectively discriminate which a simple Google search proves. How does this behavior factor into HQ2 decision? White male executives prefer locations with a white majority. This is as often a subconscious factor as not. ATL demographically may not be majority black anymore, but the perception remains its a black city. Additionally, a new black influx to the ATL is occurring.