Now that it's wrapped up, some thoughts on HQ2 and how I had been / still am thinking about it...
I'm kind of surprised that so few people anticipated they'd split into two new HQs or pull some similar kind of shenanigan. Out of all the things they need most, two are most urgent IMO: 1) access to talent, and 2) political diversification.
Northern Virginia kinda of seemed like a no-brainer to me. (I did not, however, think they'd pick NYC at the time.) Proximity to Washington for lost of reasons + a lot of internet infrastructure is there; matters for AWS I'm guessing although I don't really know how that factors.
But what I DID think they were going to say was, "ok, the best way for us to diversify both politics and talent would be to go to Toronto" (They've been talking with the Canadian government for a while, and supposedly almost pulled the trigger on moving there a few years ago.)
(Note that this is not an outcome I really wanted to happen. It'd make my house worth more, sure, but at the expense of destroying everything that's good about this place. And anyone who knows me knows how much effort I put into NOT living in the tech bubble.)
Anyway, I had thought, Well, if it's one new HQ only, it's sure not going to be TO. No way they'd piss off the US that much; doesn't make sense. But if there's going to be two new HQs, they address both problems: broader pool of talent to draw from, and more political diversity.
Hence my belief it would be DC / Toronto, or possibly Texas / Toronto should there have been two.
But Amazon's picking NYC and DC as HQ 2A & 2B suggests something pretty different to me. That's not really diversification; that's concentration. It means there's a good chance they won't remain 2A & 2B for long because...
Amazon may break itself up. Into two or three different companies: Retail versus AWS is an obvious split for a bunch of reasons, but there could be other ways to divide it up that I'll save for another day. Now why would they do this?
Not just for stock price reasons (retail business is judged & rewarded by different metrics than AWS, for instance), or for antitrust preemption (can't break us up if we break ourselves up first!) but Because They Can.
If you haven't read the famous Steve Yegge post on how Amazon thinks about platforms, now's the time to do it:
gist.github.com/chitchcock/128…
gist.github.com/chitchcock/128…
IMO there are few greater power moves that a huge company like Amazon could do than to say, "we're going to split into three hydra heads now, because we've been architected to be able to flip a switch and do that from the very beginning"
(Not going to go into detail about why this is; just read the Yegge post and you'll get it)
Anyway, I think if they've been planning on doing this all along, then you don't shoot for diversification; you don't shoot for "here's a city with lots of specific experience we need" e.g. Dallas & logistics, for instance. You don't get cute. You go for Best City Available.
Or two, in this case. No way Amazon would pre-emptively commit to headquartering one of its hydra-children in anything but a Tier 1, top-four US city. No messing around with Canada; no off-the-board choices; none of that.
Oh and btw the "Amazon is only doing this for the data" ploy I think is kinda dumb. Amazon's internal data about what they care about is more likely than not so much better than anything these cities gave them, I don't honestly think that moved the needle much
