That’s
the only way to characterize Amazon’s announcement of a software development
center for Pittsburgh. This is when it
gets good, as they say: Uber, Apple, Google and now Amazon. Reports from the leasing agent say it’s an
office of about a dozen people. Well no
need to guess – all one has to do is go to Amazon’s Web site [c’mon, you know
you have it bookmarked for your daily visits] and scroll down to the bottom of
the landing page [which you have never visited before since it’s not the part
where you buy stuff] and look for “Careers”.
Search on “Pittsburgh” and about a dozen job postings will come up.
An
exciting part of this news is that the company is taking a lot more space than
is needed for 12 people. My prediction
is that within 18 months it will be 120 people.
Stay tuned. And there are still
plenty of coastal high tech names that should be taking advantage of
Pittsburgh’s software talent pool and lower business costs. I’m still waiting to hear that Amazon’s neighbor
across Lake Washington, Microsoft, has finally figured out it makes more
business sense to hire all those CMU engineers into a development center in
Pittsburgh – independent of CMU’s on-campus facility – rather than move them to
Seattle.
