Amazon is a big contributor to the city going to hell. The area around Amazon is like a campus. People who work there are expected to live there.
It’s a miserable place to work too. The people there complain that nobody can focus on anything long enough to actually completely fix something. I’ve never seen or felt a work environment colder than that one.
Microsoft is much better under their new CEO, and they are measuring the right stuff now.
Seattle is a mix of tech weenies and the homeless. The leadership is EXTREME ME TOO, in that not even homosexual pedophiles are safe.
I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’m from SF area. Berkeley even. Much worse than Berkeley.
The whole south lake union area used to be pseudo-industrial with the exception of a camera shop, Jafco (which became Guitar center) and a few other retail places. But a couple of years ago I came back for a visit and was shocked at what Amazon had done to the area.
There is something I used to say about the city about twenty years ago, but it is many times more true today than it was then:
Seattle is a gold plated garbage can.
And you can now use Google street view to see it. They visit areas a lot and archive the photos. You can now go to a location and choose from a backlog of dates to see what it used to look like. The changes in South Lake Union are shocking. And it does “look” better than it did, but it is truly a cold place for humans.