Apple to Expand Seattle Presence With 2,000 New Hires Over Next 5 Years

[Dozer_Zaibatsu]

Plumbers make good money, but probably not that good of money.

As someone who started out as an electrician, skilled trades can make you lots of money. Not so much in just working hourly, but if you own a business, become a contractor, yes. You're very easily in the bracket of your highly-paid executives.

It's not an easy life. You have to run a business with employees to get to that level, and all the headaches and hustle it requires.

The frustrating part is when you're trying to work a trade, just as a "job" because maybe you have other interests in life other than dedicating your life to running your own business, it still becomes difficult enough maintaining your own tools, usually a truck, other expenses, that it often crosses your mind that it would be easier stocking shelves or working in a warehouse somewhere. This squeeze is especially true in big cities, and why there is this perception that illegal immigrants are "only ones" who will do infrastructure work.
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If I was Apple, i would come back to Detroit, they use to have a office there back in the early 90's. And with automobile automation would be a good place. Plus having all your technology along the west coast. Subject to earthquakes, tsunami's. forest fires and disasters. Spreading your tech across the whole united states might be a good idea.

I grew up in Michigan. Plenty of sand. I would love the idea of factories built there which turned raw sand into silicon.

Steve Jobs himself complained. He said the education system wasn't training people with the skills needed to do basic manufacturing. He said that was the number one problem he had trying to locate manufacturing in the USA. He talked about griping about this directly to Obama.

The problem with Detroit is that while it once had a manufacturing base, those jobs left and those skills left.

 

[W.O.P.R.]

yet only a handful of people "invented" the iPhone. At this point, Apple could hire 100 million new employees and not much would change.
The human race has already been tapped out.

That's it. We're done here. Everything that can be invented has been invented. We're closing up the patent office. It's been a pleasure. Last one out, please get the lights. - Charles Holland Duell (or not)

 

[ajfahey]

Not being flippant, but if 70% of your workforce requires post-secondary education, who's going to serve you food, ring up your groceries, or fix your plumbing?

Who can afford to?

It’s called the free market. It always provides what is needed because what it doesn’t supply is not, definitionally, really needed.

 

[ajfahey]

Any time a big company creates more jobs in the USA, it's great for the economy and the community it's in. Two thousand jobs may not be a lot, but that's two thousand families that will benefit from this announcement.

I'm pretty sure someone will find something negative to say about this because, well, it's ingrained in a lot of people to complain about everything.

2000 primary jobs will domino into 10,000-20,000 more new jobs to provide infrastructure and services. Seattle is already too crowded for new jobs to be a net benefit. Apple and Washington would have been better served to lay down these new roots in north King County or south Snohomish county where they could have poached Amazon and Microsoft programmers at an appreciably lower price and they could have avoided Seattle’s certain continuing descent into progressive policy chaos.

 

[guzhogi]

Steve Jobs himself complained. He said the education system wasn't training people with the skills needed to do basic manufacturing. He said that was the number one problem he had trying to locate manufacturing in the USA. He talked about griping about this directly to Obama.

The problem with Detroit is that while it once had a manufacturing base, those jobs left and those skills left.

I find that lack of education in manufacturing might be an issue, but I find the deeper issue is cultural. People look down upon manufacturing and similar fields.

 

[mtngoatjoe]

The affordable housing crisis is not a problem caused by tech companies (or any other company). The problem is that people in the high-price areas flat out refuse higher densely housing.

Supply and demand, folks. If you refuse to build more supply, then demand will push up prices. Pretty. Fricking. Simple.

 

[JoeG4]

If this pertains to Apple’s Seattle expansion, I was told by some folks in the field that there is a over supply of programers in the Seattle area.

Weird. Amazon and Blue Origin keep asking me if I'd like to move there and work for them hehe.

As someone who started out as an electrician, skilled trades can make you lots of money.

In SoCal plumbing is an incredibly lucrative business. So many janky old tract houses with crappy plumbing. XD

 

[AppleMad98004]

Not being flippant, but if 70% of your workforce requires post-secondary education, who's going to serve you food, ring up your groceries, or fix your plumbing?

Who can afford to?

True there are these problems but clustering very educated people is a smart move. Smart people want to socialize with smart people and this is where new ideas and startups come from. Not sure many barista's, cooks, are invited to social events or dinner parties by those in tech.

 

[nemaslov]

Anyone here ever driven around Seattle?

2000 more cars
Worse than southern Ca now

There won't be 2000 more cars from these folks because this is not the Suburbs where you need to drive. There are plenty new apartments and condos being built that are fairly easy transit times. In fact many might be able to walk to work as there are literally thousands of new units being built right in this area.

Yes Seattle traffic, like other cities, is terrible. But the bigger problem is with all the thousands of ride share drivers entering the city each day and haver no idea where they are going.
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2000 primary jobs will domino into 10,000-20,000 more new jobs to provide infrastructure and services. Seattle is already too crowded for new jobs to be a net benefit. Apple and Washington would have been better served to lay down these new roots in north King County or south Snohomish county where they could have poached Amazon and Microsoft programmers at an appreciably lower price and they could have avoided Seattle’s certain continuing descent into progressive policy chaos.

Sounds good on paper but lots of these younger workers don't want to work and live in a place that ***** down at 8PM. Many want a place with bars, clubs, restaurants and maybe an art and music scene.

Of course as they get older and have families some may want to move out of the city, but as a former San Francisco native (now living in Seattle), I've seen these tech companies basing themselves in cities because that's where most of the talent wants to be. That's why you see the Google and Apple busses picking up folks in SF and taking them dozen the peninsula.

 

[trusso]

It’s called the free market. It always provides what is needed because what it doesn’t supply is not, definitionally, really needed.

True there are these problems but clustering very educated people is a smart move. Smart people want to socialize with smart people and this is where new ideas and startups come from. Not sure many barista's, cooks, are invited to social events or dinner parties by those in tech.

Clever words and imagined truths doth not a valid argument make. When the rubber meets the road, you'll find out how things really work.

I'm an engineer by training myself, but I've come up the hard way. I know better than to denigrate those who serve me my food, haul 18-wheelers across country to stock my supermarket, and diligently construct my electronics half a world away. Just because they didn't catch the breaks the technical elite did doesn't mean they're any less intelligent or worthy of respect.

Moreover, there's a difference between education and wisdom. As Jimmy Stewart once said, "I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - and a little lookin' out for the other fella, too."

 

[msama]

It's interesting that most of these well paying tech jobs can actually be done remotely (from anywhere). I came across an interesting podcast with a freelance company owner talking about how he's hoping to encourage every state to create nice areas to attract this growing demographic. Super cities are actually a big problem and spreading out these incomes could help other cities. Of course, he's biased and it's easier said than done. I'd be down to move to a nice, cheap, beach front city lol

 

[RVanB]

I live here. Everything you noted is true. There’s no great public transportation, unless they’re talking about the one that will be completed in 2030-the light rail.
With that said, we only have several of main freeways. The traffic is horrible no matter where you live and I live 20 minutes from Seattle.
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Let’s not forget Amazon HQ2 will be setting up in Bellevue soon per Geekwire article.

I live in Seattle and the Transit is great if you live in a neighborhood in the city.
The bus system is not ideal but it works for thousands of people everyday.
Light Rail takes me after a short walk to the station to the airport, baseball and football stadiums University of Washington and to work downtown.

 

[jasnw]

I live north of the U of Washington and can get in and out of town fairly easily on bus and light rail. The light rail is expanding (as others have noted) but it should have been done 20 years ago and is taking for-freaking-ever to complete. As annoying as the traffic is, however, that's not the big problem - it's what to do with the increasing number of homeless people on the streets in and around town.

The city council has too many idealogical things going on to do anything but study the problem and make sure their non-profit friends get their share of the city's funding for homeless projects. This is the big problem that needs solving that won't be easily solved, and people coming in to work at a downtown Apple office space and live nearby will find themselves right in the middle of ground zero. One of my sons lives on the edge of the problem on Capital Hill and he can't wait to get away to somewhere a bit less crazy.

Seattle is still a great place to live, but it's rapidly fouling its nest.

 

[pweicks]

Bringing the jobs to America

 

[haganah]

We’d love to have Apple come to Cleveland. Cost of living is dirt cheap and there’s amazing real estate available.

I see a lot of articles, comments, posts that say something similar. The VCs have all been fixated on finding these cities that are affordable and tech can thrive in. Ultimately, if the universities aren't pumping out a strong number of engineers, the labs don't have research happening in them, and there isn't already an established tech heavyweight I think it will be a hard sell. Outside of CA and NY, you had cities like Seattle, Boulder, Austin and all 3 fit that criteria. Voters need to push at the very least to get the universities to up their game.

 

[Gasu E.]

Maybe in America, in Europe, at least in the country I live in the effect of having a big percentage of educated and high salary populations it’s been that manual and service jobs are paid very well, well above the average of the other European countries even proportionally, and things worked out themselves.

You need a good transportation system for that to work. Otherwise you end up with housing that is a reasonable commute from tech job clusters becoming extremely expensive. Even if unskilled and semi-skilled workers get paid more than usual, they may be faced with 3-4 hour daily commuting times from an affordable suburb to these tech clusters.

 

[Moi Ici]

This is America in the 21st century, (and other highly developed 1st world nations). The kind of jobs that require less formal education (mining, manufacturing) have gone overseas where they are much much cheaper. They aren't coming back unless you can ban air travel and slow down sea based shipping. Affordable housing is absolutely an issue, but its not unique to Seattle by any means.

I don’t think you understood his point.

 

[tigress666]

Maybe in America, in Europe, at least in the country I live in the effect of having a big percentage of educated and high salary populations it’s been that manual and service jobs are paid very well, well above the average of the other European countries even proportionally, and things worked out themselves.

Hahahahahahaha. I wish. Here in America service jobs don’t even pay you enough to pay afford a one bedroom apartment. Those jobs are supposed to be for high school students is the defense of such low wages.

 

[ulyssesric]

I get the automation argument from others, but you're telling me that service jobs (bartending, cashiering, waitressing, plumbing, etc.) which - by their very nature - must be done in person... are being outsourced?

Perhaps you misunderstood my original comment. Otherwise, I'm genuinely confused.

The human resource from outsourcing is temporarily dispatched. For the enterprise who pay for the outsourcing service, these workers are not employees nor contractors. So the ones doing supporting tasks you described does not count in the remaining 40% of non-postgraduate employees.

"60% of employees are postgraduate" (or even higher) is really very common in a research branch of any technology enterprise, and it has nothing to do with discrimination. It's just the result of business model and occupational differentiation: it's much cheaper to pay for the outsourcing service than hiring more employee for the supporting tasks.

Those "automation" arguments you received are actually not a concern for Apple, but the outsourcing service providers. These companies can utilize automation to further reduce cost of man-force and management and reduce loss, so that they can profit.

Welcome to the world of capitalism.

 

[Moi Ici]

The human resource from outsourcing is temporarily dispatched. For the enterprise who pay for the outsourcing service, these workers are not employees nor contractors. So the ones doing supporting tasks you described does not count in the remaining 40% of non-postgraduate employees.

"60% of employees are postgraduate" (or even higher) is really very common in a research branch of any technology enterprise, and it has nothing to do with discrimination. It's just the result of business model and occupational differentiation: it's much cheaper to pay for the outsourcing service than hiring more employee for the supporting tasks.

Those "automation" arguments you received are actually not a concern for Apple, but the outsourcing service providers. These companies can utilize automation to further reduce cost of man-force and management and reduce loss, so that they can profit.

Welcome to the world of capitalism.

Yeah, you’re still not listening or understanding the original statement.

 

[trusso]

The human resource from outsourcing is temporarily dispatched. For the enterprise who pay for the outsourcing service, these workers are not employees nor contractors. So the ones doing supporting tasks you described does not count in the remaining 40% of non-postgraduate employees.

"60% of employees are postgraduate" (or even higher) is really very common in a research branch of any technology enterprise, and it has nothing to do with discrimination. It's just the result of business model and occupational differentiation: it's much cheaper to pay for the outsourcing service than hiring more employee for the supporting tasks.

Those "automation" arguments you received are actually not a concern for Apple, but the outsourcing service providers. These companies can utilize automation to further reduce cost of man-force and management and reduce loss, so that they can profit.

Welcome to the world of capitalism.

I trust you know what you're talking about, but it's evident you and I are not talking about the same thing. I'm not referring to one particular company, but the entire social structure of these big-tech cities which continues to push necessary service workers to the far sidelines.

Instead of trying to obfuscate the picture with corporate double-speak that doesn't even touch on what I'm talking about, let's just agree that we're talking about two different things here.

No need to be patronizing.