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Google Building Tech Center Near Portland
jdray writes "It seems that everyone's favorite search powerhouse, Google, is building a tech center in The Dalles, Oregon. About 45 minutes by interstate highway from Portland, The Dalles is a small, economically depressed city near the world-famous Columbia River Gorge. The $60,000 average annual salary of Google employees is about double the average for Wasco county. With all the outdoor sports (windsurfing, hiking, mountain biking, skiing) in the area, sports-minded geeks should be flocking to apply for a job at the new facility."
Formerly known as slashdot.
Seriously guys, it's getting to be a bit much.
Google is a company with a nice product. That's about it.
Are they all hoping for stock options, or are they working "for the glory"?
All tech houses seem to be in the North...nothing in the south? Why? Will this be called the GooglePlex?
sports-minded geeks
Who what now?
The coolest voice ever.
Ow, stop throwing things at me!
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Is that some sort of oxymoron? True geeks play video games most of the time.
Did i spy geeks and sports in the same sentence?
Not that we windows users don't enjoy living dangerously.
These sorts of locations are ideal for geek workers. If you're running a design or marketing agency, being out of town is going to really hurt your company, but for the sort of people Google hires, this is ideal. Your money goes a lot further out of town, so you can spend more on gadgets, and since they're indoor types anyway, it's ideal. Perhaps more tech companies should be getting out of the smoke and letting their workers live in more idyllic locations. I certainly appreciate being out in the sticks and getting less distractions.
Locals wonder about "internet" phenomenon.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
This is going to be The Next Big Thing. Such "Rural Sourcing" has been going on somewhat quietly for a while now and is giving offshoring your workforce a serious run for its money.
There's even a company named (imagine that) "Rural Sourcing, Inc." that is consulting companies on how they can open up call centers, technology centers, etc. in economically depressed or extremely rural areas of the U.S.
I'm a big tall mofo.
If you drive 120 miles an hour, maybe. It's at mile marker 82 or so. Do the math.
The Yahoo story I read (several days ago) said that maybe 100 jobs would be created. Not a lot, folks...and that's 100 jobs total. Not "100 techie jobs"...100 -jobs-.
Those jobs won't be doing sexy things. The only reason you put a facility in the middle of nowhere is because it's cheap in terms of space. Skilled labor is virtually nonexistant and relocation expensive.
Google strikes me as being like the Army. They talk a great talk(in Google's case, innovation, exciting workplace, etc; in the Army's, it's "defending freedom" and "jobs skills") and show you eye candy galore, and when you actually get in, you spend your time wading in shit (metaphorically in Google's case).
Nevermind the locals are going to hate you because you're making twice what they are and you're "some city kid", etc. Experience has told me, "trickle down" is never popular until you forcibly remind people (for example, I've heard of companies exchanging cash to silver dollars for employees to use in the local town, to demonstrate to the community just how much of their income comes from employees).
No thanks, I'll pass.
Please help metamoderate.
This is just more proof of an under-reported trend in IT: insourcing. Google gets cheap(er) labor AND avoids bad PR from outsourcing to some foreign locale known for cheap labor. $60k annual for IT work is almost a joke in the Bay Area, but it's Big Bux in rural areas like the Dalles (Hell, even I don't make that much. Hmmmmmm...maybe I should consider getting a job there, despite my aversion to rural living)
I'm just saying...not where I'd put a data center. Many of the major data centers in Portland have moved elsewhere in the last 20 years for reasons such as this. (Yes, there are still some around...I work at one).
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We're all conservative rednecks out here and it's always windy, and we get snowstorms and ice storms.
Even now, taxes in California are high, and so is the price of property. Why else would management explicitly build a technology center far away from an elite university like Stanford University or UC-Berkeley?
If more companies would do what Google is doing, then the Californian government will start to lower taxes and to limit the number of legal/illegal immigrants flooding into the state. The latter is the cause of the high prices of apartments and residential homes.
$200,000 gets you an excellent, spacious house in most places in Oregon or Texas. That same $200,000 gets you, barely, a small noisy condominium in Silicon Valley.
The Dalles is a depressed area that suffers from a heavy criminal activities. Meth labs are common place in the area and meth junkies are prevalent everywhere. The drug has reached epidemic proportions there and I'm amazed google hasn't taken that into considering when deciding where the facility should be located.
Hopefully any geeks that decide to move there are well armed incase of any incidents.
Is anyone else noticing an interesting trend here as far as company location goes? Though Oregon already has a ton of high-tech companies(including Intel R&D), this is the second major Microsoft competitor to set up shop there in a year(the first being the OSDL). As an Oregonian I certainly welcome this, though I'm starting to wonder if I should get a bomb shelter should MS want to obliterate the competition in more ways than one.
When many of the pioneers of "the Valley" first set up shop, they were building on cheap farmland far away from the sky-high rents of San Francisco, and even Palo Alto. Look at a map of a place like Cupertino in the 60s...you will be blown away...nothing but farms. Some tech companies looked for cheap digs...and look at things now.
You have to float your wagon down the Columbia and avoid the rocks.
"Google, based in Mountain View, California, is expected to pay $1.87 million for the parcel of industrial-zoned land 85 miles east of Portland, with an option to buy three other area sites."
:)
Dude, around here, (Mountain View) 1.87 million will get you diddly squat. 1.87 million for 30 acres near Portland, OR isn't all that bad. That's a beautiful area, not far from Portland or the PDX airport (lots of flights to Seattle and down here to the Silicon Valley every day) and Portland also has a lot of young professional types.
Not a bad move overall.
Um. Obviously you've never been there, but I still don't understand why you posted that. There really aren't that many trees in The Dalles. It's mostly prarie-type high plateu... halfway between grassland and desert, and very dry.
--
Vote for your hopes, not for your fears - Vote Third Party
windsurfing is so 80's.
No, I know for a fact they aren't going to build a Google complex in The Dalles.
How? I asked Google Maps
:P
I would assume you don't consider Texas part of the south than. There are probably as many tech companies there as the Silicon Valley.
Also RedHat and Epic Megagames are in N.C. Tiberon (makers of Madden Football for EA) is in Florida. There's definitely some.
CmdrTaco has cholera.
Found 32 pounds of food.
You broke a wagon tongue.
Ah, those were the good old days.
You are not the customer.
yeah but $60k doesn't go nearly as far in NYC than it does in portland - the land of no sales tax (god do i miss it)
I live in a 4 bedroom house on 7 acres 15 mins from my job and the payment is 650 a month.
Of course the DSL is about 400kb down on a good day.
The problem with this is that the town growns so dependent on the two industries here that when trends cause employee moves, have the town goes belly up. The whole company used to be here but then they moved our merchandising and logistics departments to a new complex in the nearest big city and about half of this town has shutdown. Not to mention you are an hour away from any real forms of entertainment or good shopping.
This is positive as it's cheap, beautiful, and quiet.
It's negative because it's quiet, less technologically advanced, small town minded.
/My 2 cents.
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
Do I still have to raft up the Columbia River, or have they opened the newfangled "toll road" yet?
Finally someone said it and managed to do so without getting modded as flamebait or trolling.
Now there's *two* employers in The Dalles, Wal Mart and Google. Could there possibly be two more diametrically opposed businesses in one small town?
Talk about your 'have's' and 'have nots'... Now we'll have a textbook example to follow along with.
...not that I'm a pirate.. Hell I've never even fired a cannon. - oldwolf13
- Typical Slashdot Reader
On the TheDallas page the article refers to, they have a link to a Yahoo Maps map of the area. I'm fairly certain they meant to link to Google Maps instead.
Better a sales tax than an income tax, especially if you're making a good wage.
Many of these Valley firms are hiring developers from the east coast, IIT (India) and universities in Russia and China. The proximity to Stanford and Cal is not relevant anymore. In fact I might say it is even irrelevant. These universities have moved on to biotech and to a lesser extent nanotech anyway as "big idea" fields.
Hanford Nuclear, where uranium becomes weapons grade plutonium, is not too far from The Dalles either. So when the earthquake comes, it will 1. Cause the dams to brake, which will create a flood, which will let free the nuclear materials and the gas. Of course, The Dalles is upwind. Chicago and Idaho and such are downwind....
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
"the number of legal/illegal immigrants flooding into the state. The latter is the cause of the high prices of apartments and residential homes."
Say what now?
What fraction of the homes in california are populated by illegal immigrants? Now, what fraction of the NICE houses? Do you think that most illegal immigrants are taking high paying jobs and moving to Los Altos and Palo Alto and driving up the cost of property? You really think they're having such a dominant effect on the market, or are you just scapegoating?
I'm all for creating and enforcing reasonable immigration laws rather than the current don't as/don't tell open border situation, but someone's gotta pick the lettuce and I'm quite sure that nobody posting here is doing it.
In Oregon Trail The Dalles was the place where you got to control the raft going down the river. Everybody always chose that option. You were just dumb if you took the Barlow Toll Road. Looks like Google didn't crash into any rocks.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
you can find and afford solitude. thats the benefit of the boondocks, its something which is just not possible in the city. cost of living and all that, meh, details compared to a lifestyle.
i think we're slashdotting the google map servers with The Dalles, Oregon on them. in other news, my first official complaint about the google map server is there's no scale. LAME.
driving directions are 82 miles, which is a little over comfortably close enough range to portland, particularly when route 84 is about to get a heckuva lot busier. on the plus side you should be pretty far out of the city lights effect.
my real question is what is the primary focus of this location? just another datacenter, or some R&D too?
...if you don't get to take advantage of them b/c you are working 70 hour weeks?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Christ here we go with the typical /. attack on all those who have the gall to succeed.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
"if there were no illegal immigrants, then the entire American population will starve because no one is picking the vegetables."
This is most certainly not true, but I would think that due to the higher wages required to pay American workers, the cost of food would rise and our overall standard of living would drop.
I have no idea how significant the effect would be just for illegal immigrants into california, but if we decided to stop using any labor from other countries with lower standards of living in areas like manufacturing, we'd see a pretty drastic effect.
But I guess it's cool to have some Asians in a sweatshop someplace far away making our jeans and sneakers, but can't they find a way for Mexicans to work the fields without coming into our country?
I picked up on the inclusion of illegal immigrants as it was to me the objectionable part of the parent post. Did he say "legal/illegal" and really just mean legal? If not, then I'm assuming that he was arguing that illegal aliens are a non negligible part of the problem, and the direction of my response to that part of the post is sensible.
The issue of legal immigrants is a whole other can of worms for many reasons, not the least of which is the typical types of jobs affected is entirely different.
With all the outdoor sports (windsurfing, hiking, mountain biking, skiing) in the area, sports-minded geeks should be flocking to apply for a job at the new facility
;-)
All two of them
Why do they have to build a center so close to that cursed state of Washington, where you know who develops you know what.
Perhaps it was a result of Google Hacking?
They may not want to be seen as the exploration tool of choice.
"Another angle here is that the liberal f*ckwad wants to have poor people in the world. The f*ckwad says that we need to have poor, desperate people in the world so that we Americans can live well.
Mainstream Americans say that we can still live comfortably even if there are no desperate, poor people in this world."
I accept the fact that my lifestyle as it is depends on the fact that there are poor people in the world, and by poor I mean poorer than me. Apparently you (and you claim mainstream america) can't accept that. Am I happy that there are poor people? No.
Is it possible that technology will continue to improve and the standards of living of people across the globe can be improved to match ours? Sure, why not. But given the way that a typical country is going to do its best to improve things for its own population relative to the rest of the world, it's hard to imagine that there won't always be inequities, and that coutries won't always leverage those to their own citizens' advantage.
Also, what's with all the swearing?
Come to California! We got both!
The cost of living in The Dalles, Oregon is MUCH lowre than the cost of living in Silicon Valley or Silicon Forrest.
"Then, you, Mr. Troll claim that illegal aliens have no impact on the housing market because they all just sleep in the fields or the streets."
I didn't claim they had NO impact on real estate in California. I, as 1 single homeowner, have an impact on real estate in California. I had issues with the original poster's claim
"The latter (legal/illegal aliens) is the cause of the high prices of apartments and residential homes."
Not part of the cause, THE cause. That's a load, particularly for illegals. Their impact is only going to be felt on the lowest end of the shittiest apartments. Are you bummed about the high prices of shithole apartments in east san jose?
Weirdest use of "FUD" I've seen in a while, but then again I don't read this site often.
Don't get out to California much, eh? ;)
There hasn't been a tiny, noisy 1BR condo for sale in Silicon Valley for less than about $350k for at least 5 years. Even then it's slim pickins.
Sigh.
Me, I'd take rural oregon any day if I could just move my job up there. Real purty.
Seriously, someone has to make a movie called "Debbie does Dalles".
The gorge is a nice area, but it's warmer down south, and I really like Ashland. It feels vaguely European in that it's small with a nice, well looked after (and, dare I say "vibrant") downtown. It's also got all the outdoor stuff - cycling, skiing, rafting and so on. Wonder what the high tech scene is like there. It's one of the areas I'd consider if I moved back to the states, although the "problem" right now would be my fiancee`, who is in biotech, which seems to go a lot more by clusters than IT does. Bay Area, San Diego, Boston... And I don't want to go back to the bay...
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
Well Oregon, though some don't know it, is extremely well engineered for anything networking related. We have a lot of fiber laid down, designed for redundant links to the 'major' cities throughout the state, so for Google, there is a lot of bandwidth they can tap into, without having to worry about digging holes.
I'll take Oregon over Mumbai, India. At least they're staying domestic.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Was Chimney Rock already rented out? What about Snake River? Stupid Oregon Trail :)
Oooh they got the internet on computers now.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Most of the Google people are from California after all ;)
...
120 on a open highway isn't that far off.
-S
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
In Slashdot's eyes Google can do no wrong,
and in Fuckedgoogle's eyes Google is going down the well-worn path of dot.com excess and hubris.
Somewhere in the middle is the truth. But fuckedgoogle is a hell of a lot funnier. :)
Granted, they are just as one-sided about Google as Slashdot is, except in the OTHER direction. Funny shiat.
The Dalles, Oregon, is not really all that attractive of a place to live. It has more than its share of meth tweekers, gun freaks, and broke-ass rednecks. It can be a miserable little place. There is nothing near it except Portland. The nearest Fry's Electronics is 90 miles away to the West.
It is right on the geographic change line between the green and wet Pacific Northwest zone and the vast American 'empty quarter' that extends about 800 miles to the East, and to the South, and to the North.
The drive to Portland is quite beautiful through the Columbia River Gorge. And there are two exquisite mountains nearby; Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams.
Still, Google might have difficulty getting people to stay in The Dalles, OR.
school wise it's probably one of the biggest tech centers in Louisiana. Not great compared to some northern states, but they were one of the few to compete in that final robotics thing for the defense department.
there are other little spurts of growth that take care of us southern geeks as well, you just have to hunt harder =)
Portland and southern Oregon are not/ were not friendly places for non whites. Portland at one time
had a particularly bad reputation. May still have,
( I am a whitey).
As for The Dalles I don't know.
They're going to find The Dalles to be very pretty. When I lived in Portland, doing engineering work for an ISP, I took several weekend trips to Eastern Oregon, driving through this area. I remember wishing they had some sort of substantial industry there that I knew something about, so I could move there and watch the salmon go up the river, hike around in the hills, etc.
:)
You can still see wagon trails faintly on some of the hills nearby, out there, remnants of "the" Oregon Trail. Seems very appropriate that Google is physically returning to the frontier. I expect them to be much better stewards of the land than the industries of the last century, too.
*sigh* I wonder if it's too late to try to apply
The low lending rates for mortguages are causing the majority of price inflation for property. How many homeowners do you know of that refinanced or traded up over the last few years?
:)
The housing market is going through a similar kind of inflated bubble that the stocks went through. The only thing we don't know is what the crash is going to look like. A small downhil slide for a number of years or a stomach churning drop in valuations over the spans of a few months?
have you ever actually been to portland for more than a few days and didn't go to just NE. cause if you haven't you have no busness modding me troll. After spending 17 years of my young life living in SW portland (well actually mt. park lake oswego, but i was less than 5 min out walking distance and went to portland public schools) i can tell you, it is not a friendly place for people of color. my freshman and sophmore years in high school i went to wilson, a school of 1,600 students and we had under 50 students that were people of color (really, i should say they didn't pass for white). oh and then there is that whole neo-nazi skinhead part; read the book A Hundred Little Hitlers and you'll see just how far the racism has gone. i moved to brooklyn this past june and live with some friends of mine (yes, i'm 17, yes its a very stable living situation, and yes my mom approves - she knew that i couldn't live in portland any more). and now, after moving over 3,000 mi. away i can finally begin to work on my internalized racism which was probably made worse because i grew up in portland. i have had one teacher in portland who was a person of color in the 5 schools that i went to (i went to two high schools, one middle school, and two elementry schoos). so next time you try to talk about how poc (people of color) friendly portland is try and check with someone who lived there and is a poc first, you may just hear a diffrence in oppinion.
and if i spelled anything wrong in here i really don't give a shit - you'll all live.
Google is opening offices in lots of places. Maybe we should have a slashdot story for each one!
This Oregon facility will only appeal to a niche market (and will only be 50-100 jobs they say).
Outdoors activities are great, but people will go to the Redmond office if they want that.
Young people like to live in, or near, major cities. It's exciting, there are more things to do. Since Google is mostly young people (median age under 30 I think), they won't have droves going to work in Oregon, even given the lower cost of living. Those types of things appeal to older employees with families.
That said, since in 10 years Google will have a lot more older employees with families, having this office may help later.
Registrant:
Google Inc. (DOM-335099)
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CA 94043 US
Domain Name: googleplex.com
Hmmm, could be.
I hope Google bought flood insurance ;)
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And if a flood, earthquake, chemical spill or tsunami doesn't kill off the computers, Moore's law will in about two years. *shudder*
I'm all for creating and enforcing reasonable immigration laws rather than the current don't as/don't tell open border situation, but someone's gotta pick the lettuce and I'm quite sure that nobody posting here is doing it.
My brother-in-law (ex) who lives in SoCal mowed grass for a living for a local gov't agency. He got laid off 6 months ago, and has been unsuccessful getting another mowing job, despite the large demand for landscaping there. So there you go, a white person looking for a job "noone else wants to do". Bull-fucking-shit.
Want to know why "noone wants to do it"? They don't want to get paid below minimum wage with no benefits and say "Thank you sir, may I have some more work...", that's why...
Those "jobs noone else wants to do", such as landscaping, are often run by some well-off person (usually white) who then hires a bunch of sub-minimum wage illegals for more profit for him (her).
The irony of this is when liberals mandate minimum wage and a ton of other labor laws, they ensure illegal alien labor will be used instead. THAT's why "no one else wants to do it..."
It's pretty genious from a policy standpoint actually. Wouldn't you love to not have to pay state business income taxes?
windsurfing, hiking, mountain biking, skiing
Uhhh.. You forgot skateboarding. Oregon has the best public skateparks in the world. Hands-down.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
This it the remote isolate lab where they will begin working on the T-virus and regenerating human life. Of course this will create man eating zombies and we'll be forced to defend ourselves. I'm stock piling water/guns and wolf brand chili right now. I'll be ready!
The same thing happened in DC. All the government contractors and tech companies moved into the farmland along what is now the Dulles corridor, resulting in the worst sprawl in America. All the disadvantages of city life with none of the advantages. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I hope Portland is able to control this.
...so Oregonians are transparent? I'm kind of pinkish myself.
Are brown, black, and yellow such horrible words?
I think Arnie has helped quell some of the concern businesses had with previous governor Davis, and I do personally believe the State is getting back on track from some rather fiscally irresponsible years, but California does have wildly inflated property prices, high labor costs relative to other states, and an ever-growing illegal alien problem (which helps mitigate the expensive labor for manual labor jobs, but brings with it a high social services cost that must be borne by the citizens of the state).
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
I'd take 60k any day, that's four times what I earn now. And it would mean sitting down at a computer all day rather than doing any actual work. Also London isn't a 'cool' city. It's a horrible city full of southerners and flat beer.
Party line:
Now I need to go work on my early season tan with a nice hike through the neighborhood park.
He's saying that the last tsunami happened around the year 1700, not that it happened 1700 years ago.