Supply and demand
Amazon HQ expansion means tough fight for talent
When tech giants like Amazon expand, other companies don’t just worry about losing business. They also fret about hanging on to their employees.
Some of the industries that have defined New York City and the Washington, D.C., area will face increased competition for talent when Amazon sets up shop in their territory, with plans to hire 50,000 new workers amid the tightest job market in decades.
The expansion comes at time of fierce demand for computer programmers, mobile app developers, data scientists and cybersecurity experts. Salaries keep rising as companies from banks to retailers seek new technology professionals to expand their online presence and automate operations. Particularly in demand are software developers, with many switching jobs each year. Even some banks have eased up on their dress codes to project a hipper image.
“It’s a very competitive market in New York,” said William Lynch, president of the New York-based fitness tech company Peloton. “It really requires you to be smart about how you are reaching the new hiring pipeline.”
Tech employment in the U.S. has grown by an average of 200,000 new jobs each year since 2010, a trend that is expected to continue for at least the next decade, according to an industry report from Computing Technology Industry Association, or COMPTIA, which analyzes data from the Labor Department and other sources. The figure includes all people employed by tech companies, as well as tech professionals in other industries.
In New York, big banks are among the biggest employers of computer technology professionals. J.P. Morgan Chase employs 50,000 people in technology and hired its first artificial intelligence research chief in May. Goldman Sachs has said one-quarter of its employees work in engineering-related roles. Amazon’s traditional retail rivals are striving to expand their online business and develop new technologies to improve operational efficiency.
But young professionals are flocking to tech companies, lured by the idea of changing the way people do everything from buying homes to exercising.
“In the past, the traditional career path has been to go into financial services, investment banking and consulting. What we see now is a surge of interest
in tech companies,” said Dan Wang, a professor of Business and Sociology at Columbia University.
Amazon will begin recruiting in a few months for its two new headquarters in New York’s Long Island City and the Washington suburb of Arlington, seeking talent to support an empire that has expanded to include cloud computing services, advertising and, video streaming and TV production. The company expects to hire about 25,000 people over several years for each location. The average salary will be about $150,000 a year.
Amazon’s move is only the most dramatic example of technology companies expanding their presence in the East Coast. Instagram opened a new office in New York over the summer and plans to hire hundreds of
engineers. Google is reportedly looking to add 12,000 more employees in New York City.
Amazon, now 24 years old, will have to contend with New York’s thriving startup scene, where companies flush with venture capital offer young people big roles and the chance to upend new industries.
That’s the kind of pitch prospective employees hear from Peloton, which announced plans Monday to move into bigger headquarters in midtown Manhattan in 2020. The fitness tech company, which received $550 million in new investment in August, will be hiring thousands of people across locations in the next years, especially in technology, marketing and sales, said Lynch, the company president. It currently has nearly 100 positions open in New York City.