Apple thought to be seeking vast expanses of office space in Seattle

pdurkee

Not to be picky, but the three buildings mentioned are all in Bellevue. 

steinm88299

pdurkee said:

Not to be picky, but the three buildings mentioned are all in Bellevue. 

Still a traffic disaster as well. 

jfc1138

Seattle isn't at the southern, high risk end of the Cascadia. 

http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2012/jul/13-year-cascadia-study-complete-–-and-earthquake-risk-looms-large

The site doesn't like the url (neither did tinyurl) but a copy paste if it finds the university description. Or: 
the original paper. 
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/pp1661f/

edited August 2016

doofusdan

Stantheman has part of it: there's a ton of people Apple would like to hire who currently live in the Seattle area, who are unwilling to move to California. Apple says "what would it take to hire you" and the answer is "don't make me move south." Repeat often enough, and voila. (Similarly, losing employees who take jobs in Seattle because cost of living / quality of life benefits.)

welshdog

doofusdan said:

Stantheman has part of it: there's a ton of people Apple would like to hire who currently live in the Seattle area, who are unwilling to move to California. Apple says "what would it take to hire you" and the answer is "don't make me move south." Repeat often enough, and voila. (Similarly, losing employees who take jobs in Seattle because cost of living / quality of life benefits.)

Sounds reasonable and consider that there is a ton of diverse tech talent in the Seattle area.  Really good talent even at MS who are probably sick of working there.

hmm

steinm88299 said:

Seattle has enough growth issues already. As someone who lives here and will leave as soon as my kid graduates high school, it is getting impossible to live here. No housing supply, no infrastructure, no mass transit, and some of the worst traffic in the country. Amazon is building like there is no tomorrow, startups flock here in droves so hipsters can drink coffee, and Microsoft continues to hire on a regular basis.

It seems like a really neat city. Both Silicon Valley and San Francisco have a significantly higher cost of living and state level income tax. Obviously it's still congested due to high growth, but I'm not sure it's as bad as California.

djames4242

hmm said:

Obviously it's still congested due to high growth, but I'm not sure it's as bad as California. 

The difference is that California (generally) does not have the same geographical constraints that we have here in Seattle. Because of all the water, there aren't enough freeways. To get between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, for example, you have two freeways, and two highways as options. To get through the Seattle region, you basically have a single freeway. SR99 doesn't really count because it has traffic lights every five blocks.

We also have crappy public transportation. The bus service is mostly awful, and our rail network is extremely limited, with no parking (except at a couple of the heavy-rail train stations and at one light rail station) and mostly inconveniently located stops.