Apple Expands Seattle Presence With New Lease at Two Union Square

[MacRumors]

Apple has agreed to lease office space in the Two Union Square skyscraper in downtown Seattle, according to Bloomberg. The report claims that Apple will occupy the 44th floor and half of the 45th floor in the 56-story office building, which is a roughly 30,000-square-foot space that can house 120 to 200 employees based on standard corporate leasing ratios.

Seattle has become a hotbed recently for Silicon Valley companies because of its talent pool and lower cost of living compared with the San Francisco Bay Area, with Amazon, Facebook, Google and Alibaba Group among the tech giants with offices in the region. Apple opened its first engineering office in the city last year after acquiring Union Bay Networks.

Apple has hired more than 9,000 employees in the last year and now has a worldwide headcount of about 115,000, according to the report. The company's existing Seattle office focuses on core infrastructure services such as iCloud, suggesting the northwestern U.S. city could serve as a hub for its rumored high-speed content delivery network for faster cloud services.

Article Link: Apple Expands Seattle Presence With New Lease at Two Union Square

 

[Mr Fusion]

Hmm... Don't really know what to say about this one.

It's a nice building.

** Snarky dated remark about Microsoft to be inserted later. **

Well I think that covers just about everything.

 

[MusicEnthusiast]

More reasons to love the city where I was born and raised.

This is a great opportunity for Apple. Seattle has become a more powerful presence in the tech world.

 

[HangmanSwingset]

Lower cost of living in Seattle?
I reeeeeaaaallllyyyy don't want to know how bad it is in San Francisco...

 

[bdhokie]

I sure hope Apple's iCloud infrastructure is robust and redundant when that massive quake hits.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one

 

[Mactendo]

Apple hired 9000 employees in 2014 alone and they always say they lack engineers to work on OS X, iOS and apps.

 

[Nunyabinez]

Lower cost of living in Seattle?
I reeeeeaaaallllyyyy don't want to know how bad it is in San Francisco...

I'm not sure how cost of living applies to Apple. Do they mean that office space is cheaper to lease and employees don't need as high of salaries? Cost of living doesn't really apply to corporations even it they are legally people.

 

[HenryDJP]

Apple hired 9000 employees in 2014 alone and they always say they lack engineers to work on OS X, iOS and apps.

You do realize the majority of those 9000 employees most likely are not engineers right? And you do realize good Engineers don't come a dime a dozen right? Apple hires employees and managers for their stores. They hire people for their PR department. They hire customer service telesales on multi-levels. They hire secretaries at the corporate office. They hire managers in select departments of the company. I can go on.

 

[jdillings]

It's cheaper because the weather is crap

 

[duaneu]

It's cheaper because the weather is crap

You obviously haven't been here in the last three months.

 

[duaneu]

​

Seattle has become a hotbed recently for Silicon Valley companies because of its talent pool and lower cost of living compared with the San Francisco Bay Area, with Amazon, Facebook, Google and Alibaba Group among the tech giants with offices in the region. Apple opened its first engineering office in the city last year after acquiring Union Bay Networks.


Article Link: Apple Expands Seattle Presence With New Lease at Two Union Square

Amazon doesn't just have "offices in the region", Seattle is their headquarters.

 

[k1121j]

It's cheaper because the weather is crap

i don't know what people see in cali from what i hear its pretty scary place with all the fires, quakes, land slides, drought not sure i would pay more to live there

 

[MH01]

Apple hired 9000 employees in 2014 alone and they always say they lack engineers to work on OS X, iOS and apps.

that was for the marketing department

 

[jev425]

It's cheaper because the weather is crap

Yes it is. It's never nice here. Never move here. Tell your friends too

 

[pdaholic]

I'm not sure how cost of living applies to Apple. Do they mean that office space is cheaper to lease and employees don't need as high of salaries? Cost of living doesn't really apply to corporations even it they are legally people.

The article is likely referring to the cost of living of Apple's employees. It's hard to buy a house in the South Bay (at least Cupertino, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale) for under a million, and if you do it's likely got a lot of problems. It's not so much the cost of living here (groceries, gas, etc), but rather the cost of housing (or at least the land). That said, Apple doesn't seem to be looking to move out of the area anytime soon given the massive spaceship campus they are building--1.5 floors of a skyscraper in Seattle is nothing compared to that traffic-stopping circle being constructed.

 

[StevieD100]

I'm not sure how cost of living applies to Apple. Do they mean that office space is cheaper to lease and employees don't need as high of salaries? Cost of living doesn't really apply to corporations even it they are legally people.

What about somewhere like say, Duluth? or [insert just about anywhere in the lower 48 states outside of a major connurbation] I'd bet that the cost of housing and living would be a quite a bit lower than Seattle or San Francisco?
But would anyone want to go there?

 

[Cmd-Z]

i don't know what people see in cali from what i hear its pretty scary place with all the fires, quakes, land slides, drought not sure i would pay more to live there

You just keep thinking that, there's too many damn people around here anyway.

 

[duaneu]

Yes it is. It's never nice here. Never move here. Tell your friends too

If climate change means warm sunny spring and summer like we've had this year, I say, bring it on...

 

[WilliamG]

You obviously haven't been here in the last three months.

Yeah he REALLY hasn't been here the last 3 months. Good grief.... this ridiculous summer will never end. And to think I moved here because I LOVE overcast skies and the sound of rain on my skylight.

Yeah... so much for that...

 

[flur]

I'm not sure how cost of living applies to Apple. Do they mean that office space is cheaper to lease and employees don't need as high of salaries? Cost of living doesn't really apply to corporations even it they are legally people.

It means that they can get people to actually apply for and interview for jobs because those people can afford to live where the company is. My husband, who works in marketing, often gets calls about great-sounding jobs (including at least once from Apple) in Silicon Valley, but he turns them down every time because the obscene housing costs in Silicon Valley would be a huge hit to our standard of living. Since we already own in Seattle, we're more than happy to stay here and watch the value of our house keep climbing.

 

[flur]

Yeah he REALLY hasn't been here the last 3 months. Good grief.... this ridiculous summer will never end. And to think I moved here because I LOVE overcast skies and the sound of rain on my skylight.

Yeah... so much for that...

That'll be back in November. No worries.

 

[Mactendo]

that was for the marketing department

You do realize the majority of those 9000 employees most likely are not engineers right? And you do realize good Engineers don't come a dime a dozen right? Apple hires employees and managers for their stores. They hire people for their PR department. They hire customer service telesales on multi-levels. They hire secretaries at the corporate office. They hire managers in select departments of the company. I can go on.

You seems to not realize that a company which can hire 9000 employees in a single year surely can afford some dozens or even hundreds of engineers to work on their core products.

 

[MH01]

You seems to not realize that a company which can hire 9000 employees in a single year surely can afford some dozens or even hundreds of engineers to work on their core products.

I completely agree with you, I was just being a smart-arse there.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Apple hired 9000 employees in 2014 alone and they always say they lack engineers to work on OS X, iOS and apps.

Hm. When they interviewed me it was for an embedded bluetooth device position. Wasn't particularly interested in it - I would have been much more interested in working on OS X/iOS.

 

[Jakexb]

I bet Amazon's AWS means that there are a lot of great network/infrastructure engineers in Seattle maybe looking for a nicer employer.