I was born in Rochester, graduated from Pittsford-Mendon High School in 1988, and moved away to study computer science. My first job was in Boston, but in 1994 I hired into Microsoft and lived and worked in Seattle from 1994-2002.
In 2002, I left Microsoft to work on GPU computing technologies at NVIDIA. But NVIDIA had a strong remoting policy, our family wasn’t enjoying the Bay Area as much as we’d hoped, and all our family was back in Rochester. So in 2003, we moved to Brighton and I worked remotely for NVIDIA until 2010, when I hired into Amazon.
From 2011-2017, I lived and worked at Amazon…in Seattle. But at the beginning of 2017, I took a new job and our family moved back to Brighton. (We had never sold our house.) I really enjoyed my time at Amazon, worked with great people, shipped some awesome products, and left on good terms; but the new opportunity, and the prospect of returning to the Rochester area, were too compelling to pass up.
If you’re keeping track, that means I have spent about 15 years living and working in Seattle, 6 of those years for Amazon; and almost a decade living and working in Rochester. My position at Amazon was fairly senior for an individual contributor (there are about 200 Principal Engineers out of 320,000 Amazon employees worldwide) and I had the opportunity to interact with and learn from senior Amazonians, learn Amazon’s unique business practices, internalize the Leadership Principles and see them in action.
So please take my word when I say that for Amazon HQ2, Rochester shouldn’t be considered a long shot. Rochester has what it takes: Great universities, diverse and economical housing stock, outstanding public schools, cultural amenities that are outsized for its population, a concrete history of having hosted a 50,000+-employee corporate headquarters.
But there are subtler synergies in play. Amazon prides itself on unconventional thinking – in the words of founder Jeff Bezos, Amazon is “peculiar.” Seattle and Rochester each pride themselves in their peculiarities. While Seattle has the Space Needle, Rochester has the Wings of Progress. Even before Starbucks was founded, Seattle was known for its coffee; Rochester has the Garbage Plate. I firmly believe that in this contest, Rochester’s quirkiness is not a liability – it is a strength.
In closing this post, I will say that arguably the most important Leadership Principle is “Think Big.” From Amazon’s Web site: “Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.”
The western New York leaders who are finalizing the Amazon HQ2 proposal need to Think Big. Reimagine Rochester’s skyline. Account for technology shifts, like continued urbanization and trends toward electrified, shared automobile fleets. Swing for the fences! “Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
So, I hear you. And I don’t disagree that Rochester *should* be in contention. I’m just concerned that, in the end, it won’t be.
There’s a lot of coastal prejudice against “fly over country” (speaking as someone who has lived almost my entire life there). It’s hard for people to see anything other than the largest of cities as having enough amenities. Rochester does; the question is, will the decision makers in this process even consider Rochester long enough to determine that?
Finally, and interestingly, the Canadian cities seem to think that Amazon worded it’s RFP in such a way (“North America”) that indicates they would prefer their second HQ up North. I have to admit that that makes a fair amount of sense– especially (as they point out) given the current political instability in the USA.