November 6, 2018

Amazon Isn’t Looking for a Second Headquarters. Or a Third.

Amazon HQ in London, one of many headquarters buildings Amazon already has.Amazon

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Here’s the latest on Amazon’s Great Headquarters Search:

After conducting a yearlong search for a second home, Amazon has switched gears and is now finalizing plans to have a total of 50,000 employees in two locations, according to people familiar with the decision-making process.

The company is nearing a deal to move to the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, according to two of the people briefed on the discussions. Amazon is also close to a deal to move to the Crystal City area of Arlington, Va., a Washington suburb, one of the people said. Amazon already has more employees in those two areas than anywhere else outside of Seattle, its home base, and the Bay Area.

I wonder how many people understand that Amazon is just playing everyone here? They aren’t going to have two headquarters. They aren’t going to have three headquarters. And there are plenty of places where they can hire enough tech workers to fill out a 50,000-person office without having to split in two.

What they’re most likely to do, eventually, is simply have different parts of the business run from different places. Maybe retail will be run from Seattle, AWS will be run from Arlington, and Whole Foods will be run from Long Island City. Or something. There’s nothing unusual about this, and it doesn’t mean that Amazon has “three headquarters,” even if they make sure that all three campuses have a nice big corner office reserved for Jeff Bezos at all times.

So let’s cut the crap. Amazon is expanding, full stop. Eventually they’ll probably reorganize and start shuffling people around. That’s about it except for the vast amount of PR they’ve gotten from all this.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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