Microsoft to Expand Campus, as Amazon Looks Elsewhere
While Amazon is hunting for a second headquarters away from its hometown, its neighbor in the Seattle area — Microsoft — is doubling down on the region, with plans to invest billions of dollars in redeveloping its existing campus.
The project, which Microsoft plans to announce at its annual meeting of shareholders on Wednesday, amounts to a major overhaul of the company's 500-acre campus in Redmond, Wash., the leafy Seattle suburb that it has called home since 1986.
The company will take a wrecking ball to 12 old buildings, replacing them with 18 taller ones with more open work environments. The construction will add about 2.5 million square feet of new space to the roughly 15 million it has in the area, enough room for an additional 8,000 employees.
Microsoft's redevelopment, which will take five to seven years to complete, would not ordinarily stand out — lots of technology companies outgrow their offices and need new space. But this is Microsoft, a company that spent years fumbling new initiatives, laying off employees and retrenching from key markets. The bet on a bigger, more modern campus is a symbol of its resurgence over the past few years under its chief executive, Satya Nadella, who has made invigorating Microsoft's culture one of his top priorities.
It is also hard not to notice the contrast to Amazon, the area's younger and buzzier technology company. After Amazon announced its plans for a second headquarters, cities and regions laid out tax breaks and other promises to lure the planned 50,000 high-paying jobs to town.
Also at VentureBeat and The Verge.
Related: Cities Desperate to Become the Location of Amazon's "Second Headquarters"
Is A Mega-Deal Like Amazon's HQ2 Always Worth It?
Amazon Receives 238 Proposals for HQ2, Including Multi-Billion Dollar Incentive Offers
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Cities Dream Of Landing Amazon's New HQ And They're Going To Great Lengths To Show It
Officials in Tucson, Ariz., uprooted a 21-foot-tall saguaro cactus and tried to have it delivered to Amazon's Seattle headquarters. Birmingham constructed giant Amazon boxes and placed them around the Alabama city. In Missouri, Kansas City's mayor bought a thousand items online from Amazon and posted reviews of each one.
All of these cities are clearly trying hard to get Amazon's attention. Why? Because they know that otherwise, they don't stand a chance against some big-name cities that are all trying to win the contest to land Amazon's second headquarters.
The retail giant announced a month ago that it has plans for a second home outside of Seattle, where it is currently headquartered. The project has been named HQ2, and the deadline for final bids is Thursday. Amazon has promised to invest $5 billion and said the facility will create as many as 50,000 jobs.
It has led to a mad scramble from cities across the nation and even in Canada. And various publications have analyzed cities' chances of landing this deal. Atlanta, Denver and Pittsburgh have made it to a few of those lists.
Many cities don't really figure as finalists on any of those lists. But that hasn't stopped them. In fact, just like Tucson or Birmingham, cities are pulling out all the stops to get noticed.
The Amazonk Prometheans may be coming to your city...
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'A Major Distraction': Is A Megadeal Like Amazon's HQ2 Always Worth It?
Thursday marks the deadline for bids in Amazon's highly publicized search for the location of its second headquarters, dubbed HQ2. Cities are clamoring to land the conglomerate's project and its unparalleled promise of up to 50,000 jobs paying an average of $100,000, at one of the world's fastest-growing companies.
But with that comes some public soul-searching: How much should a city or state subsidize a wealthy American corporation in exchange for such a shiny promise? [...] Financial incentives are among numerous criteria Amazon included in its solicitation of bids. [...] By multiple estimates, Amazon has already cashed in on more than $1 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies and incentives for its warehouses, data centers and other operations.
[...] "I often thought, as governor, it would be sort of nice, if all the governors just got together and said, 'Look, we're just not going to play this anymore,' " says former Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle. Doyle was at the helm during the financial crisis in 2008, when General Motors shuttered plants, including a factory in Janesville, Wis. But later, the automaker said it would reopen one location, bringing back the jobs. Wisconsin put together its largest incentive package yet — Doyle says he felt an obligation to — but it lost to Michigan's even bigger offer. [...] Since then, Wisconsin has become infamous for its eye-popping $3-billion financial incentive to get a Foxconn liquid-crystal display plant.
Previously: Amazon to Invest $5 Billion in Second HQ Outside of Seattle
Cities Desperate to Become the Location of Amazon's "Second Headquarters"
October 19th was the deadline to submit bids to become the host city for Amazon's second headquarters. 238 proposals were submitted:
Amazon.com Inc's $5 billion second headquarters and its promise of up to 50,000 jobs attracted 238 proposals from 54 states, provinces and districts in the United States, Canada and Mexico, the company said on Monday.
Regions and cities in 43 U.S. states from Maine to Alaska, as well as Washington, D.C., submitted bids by the Oct. 19 deadline, Amazon said. The states that did not bid were Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.
Canadian bids came from the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec. Mexican bids emanated from the states of Chihuahua, Hidalgo and Queretaro. Other bidders included Puerto Rico, which is struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria and is in the process of restructuring its sagging finances in court.
Details of the bids, including tax breaks and other incentives being offered to entice the internet retailer, were scarce as some bidders cited competitive reasons or nondisclosure policies.
New Jersey offered $7 billion in tax credits for a Newark headquarters, while Chicago offered $2.25 billion of incentives, including tax credits, property tax breaks, $450 million in infrastructure improvements, $250 million in "Neighborhood Opportunity Funds", and potentially free land. The mayor of Stonecrest, an Atlanta suburb, offered 345 acres of industrial land on which a new city called Amazon could be built, with Jeff Bezos as mayor-for-life.
Also at First Post, NYT, and the Chicago Tribune.
Previously: Amazon to Invest $5 Billion in Second HQ Outside of Seattle
Cities Desperate to Become the Location of Amazon's "Second Headquarters"
Is A Mega-Deal Like Amazon's HQ2 Always Worth It?
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday December 03 2017, @01:04AM (2 children)
Do you think the architects and construction workers of Seattle will say "thank you, President Trump"? The economy there was TANKING under Obama. Microsoft, Starbucks and Amazon all moved to Ireland. Now they're coming back. They're bringing thousands of jobs and making huge investments in the USA. When we do the tax cut, it will get even better. Folks, we're doing a MASSIVE cut to the corporate tax. My taxes, believe it or not, will go up. They'll go up hugely. So our great corporations will BRING BACK their money. So, thank me and thank our terrific Republicans in Congress!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Pav on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:00AM (1 child)
As an I.T person one would expect you to think systemically. After WWII America was not only funding its own welfare state, but also that of Europe and Japan through the Marshall Plan and other aid programs. This was to give the rest of the world liquidity and create a world market that could buy Americas surplus production. All of this "world socialism" created the liquidity to turn Americas wartime prosperity to peacetime prosperity as the G.I's came home looking for employment. This was why postwar marginal tax rates in the US were 90%. High taxes do the same within an economy - it redistributes wealth so a high growth economy can exist. The wealthy produce a surplus, and the poor are in deficit... if that flow of weath isn't balanced through redistribution eventually the real economy runs out of money, leaving a few mega-rich unwilling to invest because the average peasant has so little wealth as to not be worth the effort. This has already happened in conservative areas of America where there has been lower tax and more austerity - Walmart is even leaving town.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @08:17AM
That's not a good description of the Marshall Plan.
A good description would be "blackmail".
**Do what USA.gov wants or we'll do to your place what we're doing to East Germany (propaganda, sabotage, and murder).
If you have any notions about anti-Capitalism, we'll not only not have healthy trade|relations with you, well throw a blockade on you** (as USA did to Cuba years later).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Sunday December 03 2017, @01:08AM (1 child)
They're going to bulldoze all those private offices so the engineers can "collaborate" in an "open, unfettered" way, be more tuned into the office vibe, be more approachable, and have much better interoffice communication.
Just guessing, but I'm not seeing management spending $$$ to improve workers productivity nowadays. Better yet, I'm not seeing management giving up their private offices.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday December 03 2017, @01:43AM
From the second linked article:
You'd think a Halo alpha tester would want a better gaming rig.
Maybe if they weren't wasting so much time meditating, they could finally implement record-locking instead of dumping all changes with no recovery if 2 people are editing the same record. How many decades has record-locking been understood? And why do corporations pay out the ass for that shit when a second-year computer science student could roll a better solution?
So you cram them all into a confined space because you're gonna get back in square footage costs the productivity you're gonna lose from millennials bullshitting and Facebooking all day? Who the fuck would rather work on only a laptop on a tiny-ass lunch table when they could sit at a desk with a dual-monitor workstation and with room to lay out all their hard-copy and hand-draw diagrams on the fly?
I never understood what was wrong with the good ol' cubicle. They are smaller than "open spaces", cheap, and yet allow the worker to have their own personal space in which they can have their own small whiteboard and space for a small bookshelf and maybe a few pictures of the ol' family pinned to the wall. They have a space to hang the nice shirts to be put on in a hurry when customers pull surprise visits, and there's always the conference rooms when physically open space is necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:37AM (2 children)
So Micro$oft is doing in the physical space what its users had to countless times on their computers - throw it all away and reinstall themselves afresh.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Sunday December 03 2017, @03:27AM
The new buildings will be based on Windows: full of ways to spy on their employees, with the whole place locked down and a nice padded room in which to crash!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @06:29PM
Have they tried Ctrl-Alt-Delete?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Sunday December 03 2017, @03:30AM (1 child)
Had a look over the nytimes article. Saw the "phone booth" style isolation cell. Looked to me like something that 20 years ago would have been laughed out of a dystopian sci-fi flick for being unrealistic to the point of being silly. I'm probably getting old or something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @07:03AM
I see a sign that reads "Phone."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:41PM
They have the technology.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday December 03 2017, @04:51PM
collaboration for sales, marketing, program management. Not such a bad thing. If your business is going to be directing and selling software written off-site (India, China, Eastern Europe) then maybe an open office system makes sense. You can have way better office parties with an open plan. Next step, fire all of the local software people and hire hot program managers.