THE NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESSTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2020 Y B7

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TECHNOLOGY

talent, and we believe that the cre-
ative energy of cities like New
York will continue to attract di-
verse professionals from around
the world,” said Ardine Williams,
Amazon’s vice president of work
force development.
Even with Big Tech’s expan-
sion, the city continues to face a
fundamental challenge: Most of-
fices have been deserted since
March, devastating the local econ-
omy and the ecosystem of transit,
stores, restaurants and other
business that depend on workers.
Only about 12 percent of workers
have returned to Manhattan of-
fices managed by CBRE, a com-
mercial real estate firm that man-
ages 20 million square feet of of-
fice space in the city.
Many people do not want to go
back to offices until there is a vac-
cine. Even after that, there are
mounting questions about
whether the pandemic has funda-
mentally tarnished the allure of
the office towers of Midtown and
Lower Manhattan.
What’s more, a recent uptick in
new cases in parts of Brooklyn
and Queens has raised fears that a
second wave looms and that re-
strictions on daily life could be re-
imposed.
Collectively, Amazon, Google,
Facebook and Apple have hired
more than 2,600 employees in the
city so far this year, bringing their
total employment to over 22,000
people. Facebook alone has added
1,100 workers to bring its current
work force up to 4,000.
Apple, Amazon and Facebook
have gobbled up more than 1.6
million square feet of office space
since the start of the year, most of
which was leased or bought dur-
ing the pandemic. Before the pan-
demic, Google added about 1.7 mil-
lion square feet of office space as
part of a corporate campus rising
along the Hudson River in Man-
hattan.
The companies now have
enough new office space to hire
another 15,000 employees. When
those workers will arrive at the
new offices remains uncertain; all
four companies have allowed
their employees to work remotely

and some, including Facebook,

foresee a future in which up to half

its employees work from home.

Executives at the companies

said their investments even dur-

ing one of the city’s darkest peri-

ods reflect their belief that the fea-

tures that set New York apart —

its diversity, culture, regional

transportation network and nu-

merous colleges and universities

— will keep luring people after the

pandemic.

To a large extent, the companies

are also wagering that current

and future employees will be ea-

ger to return to shared work-

places that promote spontaneity

and collaboration.

“The big takeaway here is that

New York will always be a tech

hub,” said William Floyd, director

of external affairs for Google’s

New York offices, which has about

9,000 workers, more than half of

whom are engineers.

Google is on target to employ

14,000 people in the city in the

coming years, fulfilling a 2018

pledge to double its New York City

work force. The company has

pieced together a sizable corpo-

rate campus in and around the

Chelsea neighborhood in Manhat-

tan, including several properties

that are under construction.

The tech sector first settled in

New York more than two decades

ago, a tiny player in the shadows

of the city’s traditional power-

house industries like finance, me-

dia, real estate and health care.

Google opened its first outpost

outside California, a sales office in

Manhattan with a lone employee,

in 2000.

But in recent years, New York

has blossomed into a bona fide

tech hub, an East Coast rival to Sil-

icon Valley that has become a sec-

ond home to tech behemoths but

has also given rise to thousands of

start-ups.

The larger companies have es-

tablished a tech corridor on Man-

hattan’s West Side, stretching

from West 34th Street in Midtown

south to the World Trade Center

area in Lower Manhattan.

The focus of the tech companies

in New York has shifted from mar-

keting and sales departments to

teams that mirror those in Silicon

Valley. They have recruited engi-

neers and developers from local

and regional universities and

filled some roles with West Coast

employees who want to decamp to

New York City.

For every Big Tech company in

the city, there are numerous

smaller but still sizable firms, in-

cluding Salesforce, LinkedIn, Spo-

tify and ZocDoc. Microsoft, an-

other tech giant, has a modest

presence in offices near Times

Square.

Before the pandemic, the city’s

tech sector employed 150,100 peo-

ple, and had added a total of 15,700

jobs in 2018 and 2019, according to

the New York State comptroller’s

office. Most of the new jobs were

in fields like software, data pro-

cessing and internet publishing.

The pace of hiring is expected to

keep climbing.

In August, when Facebook

grabbed all the office space at the

James A. Farley Building near

Pennsylvania Station, it cemented

Manhattan’s West Side as its East

Coast campus.

The company said it leased

730,000 square feet at the old post

office in part because of its cav-

ernous layout — a rarity among

New York City buildings — which

mimics the large open areas at its

headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

When a renovation is completed

next year, the building will be

filled with engineers.

“The floor plan will allow for

multiple teams to be housed on

those floors,” said Jamila Reeves,

a company spokeswoman, “and

we don’t necessarily have to break

folks up.”

Around the corner from the Far-

ley Building, Apple signed a lease

for 220,000 square feet at 11 Penn

Plaza, a 1923 Art Deco tower near

Madison Square Garden.

Before the deal, Apple, which

has said very little about its plans

in the city, had not expanded be-

yond an office building on Fifth

Avenue in the Flatiron neighbor-

hood that it moved into in 2011.

Smaller tech companies have

also kept adding to their payrolls

right through the outbreak.

MongoDB, a cloud database

platform whose headquarters are

in Midtown Manhattan, has hired

97 employees since the beginning

of the pandemic, bringing its total

work force in the city to 551.

The company, whose products

are used by Verizon, eBay and

Adobe among other companies,

has more than 2,100 employees

worldwide and is creating a hy-

brid work model to have employ-

ees work remotely some days and

in the office on others.

“While there are questions

about what the future of work

post-Covid will look like, we plan

to maintain office spaces in New

York,” said Dev Ittycheria, the

company’s chief executive. “We

believe that being physically

present with colleagues in an of-

fice can offer important opportu-

nities for in-person interaction,

collaboration, and connection that

are important for the success of

our company.”

One of the company’s newest

hires, Farah Wahab, started in Au-

gust as a product marketing man-

ager after working for five years

at tech companies in San Fran-

cisco.

Though San Francisco has a far

larger tech scene, she said the city

felt more insular compared with

New York.

“I love S.F. but it can feel a bit

like a tech-centric bubble isolated

from the real world,’’ Ms. Wahab,

32, said. “Being around different

industries and types of people, as

well as greater access to the mar-

ket, was important to me both per-

sonally and professionally.”

Kia D. Floyd, Facebook’s head

of public policy for the east and

Midwest regions, pointed out that

the company set up shop in New

York shortly before the 2008 great

recession, another challenging

period of uncertainty in the city.

“People fled the city then and

didn’t think it would come back,”

Ms. Floyd said. “But the city has

grit and resilience and diversity,

and it was always going to be in-

spirational for businesses like

ours.”

FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE

Office space for Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, in Manhattan. Facebook has acquired enough space to triple its current local work force of 4,000.

GABBY JONES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Never Mind the Exodus,

Big Tech Is Moving In