Amazon has announced it plans to pause a large part of its construction project.
👉 Background: In 2017, Amazon announced it was looking for a brand new HQ2. It promised to add 50,000 new jobs and invest over $5 billion USD in construction to a new city, outside its hometown Seattle.
👉 What happened: The winner was... Virginia. But now, Amazon has announced it plans to pause a large part of the construction project.
👉 What else: In a post-pandemic world, where many Amazonians work from home and another 28,000 have been laid off, Amazon isn't sure it still requires the same real estate it once imagined.
💡 Amazon’s HQ2, and its approach to office real estate, is representative of where the tech industry was and where the tech industry is now. And just how different they are.
💡 During the peak of lockdowns, almost all workers were forced to work from home. But now, with lockdowns just a relic of the past, tech workers are still spending at least part of the time working from home.
💡 With the combination of less-aggressive expansion plans and employees still working from home, companies have been able to reduce real estate costs
Sign up for Flux and join 100,000 members of the Flux family