Amazon In 'Advanced Talks' To Open Headquarters In Washington DC Area (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Amazon is in "advanced talks" to open its second headquarters in the Washington DC metropolitan area, the Washington Post, a paper owned by Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos, reported on Saturday. Amazon, which is headquartered in Seattle, is seriously considering an area known as Crystal City, a large residential and office complex in Arlington, Virginia, just south of Washington, the Post reported, citing unidentified sources. The Washington metropolitan area has long been considered a top contender. As well as owning the Post, Bezos has a home in the area. When the company announced a list of 20 top contenders in January, it included Washington and Montgomery county, Maryland, which is just north of the city. Crystal City is served by a mass transit system and major highways, both qualifications Amazon has said are required.

Comments

And less on H1Bs mid america bumpkin engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon has been cattle calling most of the US dragging IT people in to Seattle to become engineers at 100-120k. Nevermind that most of them were making way more than that when adjusted for cost of living. Now they can do it to their bumpkins again and ship them to DC for 150-180k in a town than you need about 250k to live equivalent to 80-100k in 'normal' US cities.

I never understood how or why they want people who suck at math and economics... It has backfired somewhat with turning Seattle somehow even more socialist and politically stupid to the point Amazon needs options. At least DC can't get worse with socialism... right?

Re:Less money spent wooing lobbyists

[rtb61]

The US development model was really odd compared to the rest of the world. In the rest of the west, way back in the fifties and sixties they gentrified and moved into the cities and inner burbs and moved the poor into satellites town with express public transport to the city. Why you better off idiots choose to do the big commutes, I have no fucking idea. In the rest of the west, they made the poor do the big commute and the land was way cheaper out there and the problem would be out there, instead in the silliest fashion, you stuck yourselves out there and wasted you life in the big commute and loss of walk ability to access products, services and entertainment from home. Yeah, you are undoing yet another typical American mistake. You city and inner burbs should be of high social and economic value and the commute should be from satellite towns where the problems are contained but you should not ignore them and allow the problems to get out of hand. America is playing catchup but inflated value outer burbs the satellite towns with the mac mansions, ouch, now way overdeveloped (value of structures far exceeds real value of land). As you gentrify the city and inner burbs, so you will, hmm, slum the outer burbs and create express public transport routes, get them in to work and them get them out, express only at appropriate business travel times. Those are the logical developments not the most socially concious ones, they will be better off out there, lower population densities create fewer problems.