Amazon

[heironymouspasparagus]

As I recall, the vast majority of Dollar-Thrifty employees offered jobs with Hertz in Florida refused to go.  So if you get people here they tend to like it.  If you're into family lifestyle, etc.  Jet-setting senior executive climber-types, maybe not.   Garmin opened a place here because it couldn't get a handful of former Lowrance creative-types to move to Kansas City.  I think this place is competitively desirable --- you have to sell it as such.

Seems like I remember at least a few of them went to Olathe for a while first, then came back here.  I think Garmin thought it might be easier to recruit some more from Lowrance if they were here.  They have intermittently been one of those that runs ads for extended periods of time without action.


I have been looking for a fish locator for a little while and online shows a really nice selection of Garmin stuff.  Then when you go to the store, there is severely limited selection compared to Lowrance and even Hummingbird.  They seem to be struggling to get shelf space.

[Conan71]

swake made a valid point about how with our cost of living in Tulsa that there is an incentive of lower payroll costs which could be attractive on the workforce scale that Amazon is looking at. Wal-Mart has probably saved billions as well by having their HQ in NW Arkansas all these years.

I think our culture is simply so far removed from that of Seattle that we would seem like an oddity to Amazon management.  Either we need to support the sort of entrepreneurship which will eventually grow into a huge global concern and stay in Tulsa or pursue more 500-1000 job expansions and then start going after progressively larger ones from there.

[cannon_fodder]

Ignoring everything else, metro areas the size of Tulsa would make it exceedingly difficult to find 5k+ new employees, let alone 10 times that.  We are taking Amazon hiring 1 out of every 3 college graduates in from Bville to Tahlequah , to Okmulgee and all parts in between.  Or attract 10s of thousands of college graduates and as many as a hundred thousand
"multiplier" employees in short order.  One of the reasons Amazon is leaving Seattle is because the area isn't large enough to handle more rapid growth - with 4 times the Tulsa metro population and demographics more amenable to Amazon's needs.

If Amazon is serious about a large corporate HQ with rapid growth, the metro area realistically has to be much larger than 1 mil.  That isn't a knock on Tulsa, Salt Lake City, Richmond, Louisville, Memphis, OKC, Raleigh, etc.  It simply doesn't make sense to split apart from the city you were founded in to seek easier recruitment, only to end up in a location with an amplified problem.

[BKDotCom]

Ignoring everything else, metro areas the size of Tulsa would make it exceedingly difficult to find 5k+ new employees, let alone 10 times that.

You think Amazon's Seattle workforce was born and raised in Seattle?
I'm guessing the vast majority relocated from far and wide to work for Amazon.   How many Tulsans moved to Seattle to work at Amazon?

[heironymouspasparagus]

You think Amazon's Seattle workforce was born and raised in Seattle?
I'm guessing the vast majority relocated from far and wide to work for Amazon.   How many Tulsans moved to Seattle to work at Amazon?

I know about half a dozen who moved there before Amazon.  And their kids have stayed to work in the video game industry.  Some at Microsoft.  None at Amazon, yet.

[erfalf]

You think Amazon's Seattle workforce was born and raised in Seattle?
I'm guessing the vast majority relocated from far and wide to work for Amazon.   How many Tulsans moved to Seattle to work at Amazon?

Similar to Bartlesville. The vast majority of employees at the big oil company are not native Bartians. That being said, CoP bitches and moans all the time about how difficult it is to recruit here.

I think it really just comes down to where does upper management think it they want to live (see Continental Resources and ConocoPhillips for examples of this).

[heironymouspasparagus]

Similar to Bartlesville. The vast majority of employees at the big oil company are not native Bartians. That being said, CoP bitches and moans all the time about how difficult it is to recruit here.

I think it really just comes down to where does upper management think it they want to live (see Continental Resources and ConocoPhillips for examples of this).

The end of the sentence about difficulties recruiting is always left off.    Difficult to recruit here for half price wages.

[DTowner]

To get a sense of the "incentive" war we face with other states, note that Wisconsin just voted to give FoxConn a $2.85 BILLION incentive to locate its new plant there.  And that plant is supposed to create only 13,000 jobs.

[DTowner]

No city in America has 50,000+ qualified employees sitting around waiting for Amazon to move in and throw up a "Now Hiring" sign.  Where ever this new Amazon headquarters II ends up, it is going to distort the labor market, housing, transportation, etc.  It is simply too big not to do so.  Also keep in mind, not only will the bulk of those 50,000+ people be moving in from somewhere else, but that a lot of cities around the country are going to be losing people to the chosen city.  That may not matter to the really big cities, but what would the effect be on Tulsa if it lost 500 or 1000 of its brightest up and comers?

[TulsaBeMore]

Didn't Amazon say it would be a relatively gradual buildup to 50,000.  It's not a 1-3 year process to get to 50,000. 

Also, look what State Farm is doing with it's 3 regional superhubs in Richardson, Atlanta and Phoenix.  They're consolidating a dozen regional offices including the one in Tulsa.  That place started at around 2,000 and whittled down over the years as they were transfered to DFW.  Tulsa could also draw on the DFW market for workers if need be and Kansas City and Oklahoma City.

Have you seen State Farm's massive operation in Bloomington, IL?  It's loaded with young workers.  How do they attract people to stay and live in Bloomington? 

Unrelated - what happened to MetLife?  They've abandoned the big regional office at 51st & 129th E. Ave.  Been vacant this entire year.  Somebody said they moved into Tulsa City Hall.  Anybody know details?  Tulsa Chamber still lists them at 51st & 129th.  I know they recently separated their businesses.  Are they still here with any significant number of employees?   

[cannon_fodder]

State Farm employs 15k in Bloomington, IL, a workforce they have been growing there since 1922, they started there and grew up there.   They have no plans to expand in Bloomington.  Instead, they are growing new hubs in major metro areas (10k in Dallas, Phoenix, and Atlanta). So that seems like a bad example.

Amazon started in Seattle.  They started by drawing from the metro, then the region, then recruiting nationally.  They have now hit a mark where it is difficult to draw on any significant local labor pool and their size is creating issues in their current home (50k+ Amazon employees is stressing out a metro of 4.5 million).  Recruiting nationally is more expensive, more difficult, and makes it a much slower process (and again, recruiting that many people to Seattle is proving difficult for the City to cope with).  Which is why they want to help alleviate the issue. One reason why energy firms move to Houston, why State Farm is opening hubs - there's a starter supply of labor with the skill sets they want and an area that can handle the growth.

Yes... in any area it will have to recruit to grow.  It is simply a matter of proportions.  I hate to be that pragmatic jerk,  but the metrics aren't good as we roll down their checklist.  I'm not saying I hope they don't come or that they shouldn't come to Tulsa, I'm offering a likely reason their analysis will look elsewhere unless they anticipate a much more organic (slow) growth pattern.  This isn't pointing something out to Amazon analysts they aren't considering (hey, this person on the internet in Tulsa said they aren't big enough. Scratch them off the list).

The entire Tulsa CSA, from Bvill to Okmulgee to Tahlequah is just over 1 mil people.  About half of those are in the work force (500k).  About a third have a degree above HS diploma (166k).  Nearly all are employed.  If Amazon wanted to hire 50k people in 5 years, with an employment multiplier certainly over 2 - there'd be at least 150k new jobs.  With a 50% labor force participation that's 300k new people in ~5 years.  A 30% growth rate is possible, and it sure would be interesting to me (that's 50% faster growth rate than Austin in the last 6 years).  But why would Amazon want to take on a challenge and an unknown like that, essentially multiplying the problems it's trying to escape?  Amazon reportedly has thousands of job openings in Seattle it cannot fill because they are growing faster than they can recruit people to Seattle.  It seems doubtful they would want to start off with a similar problem from day 1 in their new location.  

Again - go get 'em Bynum.  I can live anywhere I want and I choose Tulsa.  I'm not surprised that more people are choosing Tulsa all the time.  But it seems unlikely that an analysis by Amazon will decide we can match their needs if what they want is to setup tens of thousands of tech jobs in a few years.  Hopefully, the search reveals that several regional offices are the way to go - with one in a great community called Tulsa.  And hopefully we don't have to give them billions of dollars to make it happen...  

[TulsaBeMore]

State Farm employs 15k in Bloomington, IL, a workforce they have been growing there since 1922, they started there and grew up there.   They have no plans to expand in Bloomington.  Instead, they are growing new hubs in major metro areas (10k in Dallas, Phoenix, and Atlanta). So that seems like a bad example.

Amazon started in Seattle.  They started by drawing from the metro, then the region, then recruiting nationally.  They have now hit a mark where it is difficult to draw on any significant local labor pool and their size is creating issues in their current home (50k+ Amazon employees is stressing out a metro of 4.5 million).  Recruiting nationally is more expensive, more difficult, and makes it a much slower process (and again, recruiting that many people to Seattle is proving difficult for the City to cope with).  Which is why they want to help alleviate the issue. One reason why energy firms move to Houston, why State Farm is opening hubs - there's a starter supply of labor with the skill sets they want and an area that can handle the growth.

Yes... in any area it will have to recruit to grow.  It is simply a matter of proportions.  I hate to be that pragmatic jerk,  but the metrics aren't good as we roll down their checklist.  I'm not saying I hope they don't come or that they shouldn't come to Tulsa, I'm offering a likely reason their analysis will look elsewhere unless they anticipate a much more organic (slow) growth pattern.  This isn't pointing something out to Amazon analysts they aren't considering (hey, this person on the internet in Tulsa said they aren't big enough. Scratch them off the list).

The entire Tulsa CSA, from Bvill to Okmulgee to Tahlequah is just over 1 mil people.  About half of those are in the work force (500k).  About a third have a degree above HS diploma (166k).  Nearly all are employed.  If Amazon wanted to hire 50k people in 5 years, with an employment multiplier certainly over 2 - there'd be at least 150k new jobs.  With a 50% labor force participation that's 300k new people in ~5 years.  A 30% growth rate is possible, and it sure would be interesting to me (that's 50% faster growth rate than Austin in the last 6 years).  But why would Amazon want to take on a challenge and an unknown like that, essentially multiplying the problems it's trying to escape?  Amazon reportedly has thousands of job openings in Seattle it cannot fill because they are growing faster than they can recruit people to Seattle.  It seems doubtful they would want to start off with a similar problem from day 1 in their new location.  

Again - go get 'em Bynum.  I can live anywhere I want and I choose Tulsa.  I'm not surprised that more people are choosing Tulsa all the time.  But it seems unlikely that an analysis by Amazon will decide we can match their needs if what they want is to setup tens of thousands of tech jobs in a few years.  Hopefully, the search reveals that several regional offices are the way to go - with one in a great community called Tulsa.  And hopefully we don't have to give them billions of dollars to make it happen...  

According to news reports, State Farm is expanding its workforce in Bloomington as part of closing its regional offices and opening the hubs  http://www.pantagraph.com/business/state-farm-closing-facilities-some-jobs-expected-to-move-to/article_d5653995-3432-5805-9fc8-1a10de032e7d.html

I don't disagree with much else you say.  Why did all these companies remain in the cities where they started?  In Tulsa, we seem to get a promising company and then the owners cash out - it moves.  What keeps State Farm in Bloomington.  What keeps Walmart in Bentonville?  What keeps Quicken Loans or anything in Detroit (I like Detroit, but...)?   

[MostSeriousness]

Unrelated - what happened to MetLife?  They've abandoned the big regional office at 51st & 129th E. Ave.  Been vacant this entire year.  Somebody said they moved into Tulsa City Hall.  Anybody know details?  Tulsa Chamber still lists them at 51st & 129th.  I know they recently separated their businesses.  Are they still here with any significant number of employees?   

Don't know about their whole operations, but I have a friend who just recently started with MetLife and does work in the City Hall building. So they have at least part of a floor if not a whole one?

[Conan71]

All I know is I'm pretty sure our mayor out here in Cimarron, NM has NOT sent a proposal to Amazon. 

[cannon_fodder]

According to news reports, State Farm is expanding its workforce in Bloomington as part of closing its regional offices and opening the hubs  http://www.pantagraph.com/business/state-farm-closing-facilities-some-jobs-expected-to-move-to/article_d5653995-3432-5805-9fc8-1a10de032e7d.html

I don't disagree with much else you say.  Why did all these companies remain in the cities where they started?  In Tulsa, we seem to get a promising company and then the owners cash out - it moves.  What keeps State Farm in Bloomington.  What keeps Walmart in Bentonville?  What keeps Quicken Loans or anything in Detroit (I like Detroit, but...)?   

I read an article that said they do not intend to grow the workforce in Bloomington. 
http://www.pantagraph.com/news/tipsord-bloomington-workforce-to-remain-largest-for-state-farm/article_6dd743a8-4b15-56c2-bed7-65ec72616076.html

Ironically, your article states that State Farm may add some jobs in Bloomington (most will be going to their new hubs), including jobs when they shut down their Tulsa, Oklahoma facility.   
http://www.pantagraph.com/business/state-farm-closing-facilities-some-jobs-expected-to-move-to/article_d5653995-3432-5805-9fc8-1a10de032e7d.html

But I think I agree with your major premise:  companies seem much more likely to have loyalty to a place if they were founded there:  Bank of Oklahoma.  Williams. OneOK.   If their infrastructure doesn't readily transfer:  refineries, hospitals, some production facilities.  Or if their people really want to stay put.

Most of the places that are booming are not booming because they have the lowest taxes, least regulation, cheap labor, or a low cost of living.  Most of the places that are booming are booming because talented people  want to be there.  Its all about quality of life and energy.  Tulsa has made great strides in spite of a large amount of internal push back, but we need to really keep it up.  We need to get away from the "we are blessed that XYZ big box store wants to come" or "this employer will only come and offer marginal jobs if we bribe them" mentality and demand excellence.   No one wins in a race to the bottom.

I think our current administration understands this, I know plenty of people on here do...