"one of the best recruiting tools Amazon has is if people come interview on a nice day, and people are sitting outside having lunch from a food truck."
Have they been to Seattle during the months of November to June?
Or have they been any place else in Seattle? I just got back from enjoying a tasty burrito from a food truck, and I don't work anywhere near Amazon.
Regardless, I can't see this as a selling point to anyone but college grads. Anyone with experience will probably know that the novelty of eating off a food truck on a sunny day will pale in comparison to other considerations (starting with Amazon's reputation as a workplace).
I have (I live in Seattle, but don't work for Amazon) and the weather is pretty great roughly nine months out of the year. Late November to February are dreary but spring, summer, and most of fall make up for it. Sorry for leaking the secret, fellow Seattleites.
Depends on how you define great weather. It doesn't rain nearly as much as people assume (lived there 6 years), but most days have some light drizzle. For a tennis player, that is emotionally taxing (is it going to rain? should we make plans).
I moved to Seattle and it's not the rain that bothers me (it's really not as bad as people say, even during the winter months), it's the cold. .. or rather lack of hot.
It never gets above 26C here. There are plenty of other cities like this (London just had a record heatwave .. of 29C; seriously that's too hot for them. People were passing out in the toobs. Wellington, another coastal city, has people bitching when it gets up to 27C as too hot), but the difference is they do get warm .. for an extended period of time. From May through August (opposite in Wellington cause hemispheres), you know you can put your jacket away. You don't need it. At worst it's gonna be a little refrigerator like if you stay out too late.
In Seattle, it could be mid-June and you might need that jacket...at noon, and then the next day you'll be burning up.
While I miss the seasons a little bit (mainly thunderstorms and snow for a little bit), Seattle is WAY better than the midwest. I'll gladly take mild weather over hot humid summers and winters so cold all you see during the winter outside are bundles of clothing walking around.
I was in Seattle a number of years ago for a training session, in January. It rained off and on, but overall I thought the weather was beautiful. Except the one day that it snowed, but the rest of the week was in the 70's.
Edit: to the response below, this was back in 98 or 99, something like that. I've looked up the historical weather, and it must have been that it felt like 70's to me, coming from Chicago (so it was probably more like 50's). I just remember not needing a jacket for most of the time I was there, and it "feeling good" when the sun came out.
70 is a bit of an exaggeration, but 60 is not unusual. And if you're coming from most other places in the Northern US, it feels like 70 since you're coming from snow and ice.
16 year resident here, and I'm trying to think of a week where it snowed and hit 70 within a seven day period. I'm not saying GP is lying, not at all, but perhaps might have selectively remembered their time in Seattle in January. Perhaps the sun peeked out and it just seemed like it was 70 in contrast. :-)
Maybe they're thinking of Denver? Doesn't sound like the PNW I know. Although occasionally you do get some nice days in February. Not 70F nice, though.
I hesitate to pick on a post that was probably just a typo or remembering slightly wrong, but I was wondering so I looked it up: the record high for Seattle in January is 67F recorded in 1931. And the record low is zero...Fahrenheit. Yoiks, I'd have to consider moving again if it hit zero. :-)
We lived in Bellevue for about 18 months and the weather was beautiful. Almost everyone we met said the whole "it always rains" thing is just something they tell people so they'll stay away.
No, March '13 to Aug '14. But yes, many people called it a mild winter. While we had previously spent 5 years in Dallas, and 4 in Boston. My wife is originally from Idaho, and I from Michigan, anything less than multiple feet of snow, is "mild" :)
I moved from a pretty dry state to the Potomac valley, and noticed that if I happened to mention Seattle people would say, But it rains there all the time. The ground that we were standing on might be soft from recent storms, mushrooms might be sprouting around our feet, but Hey it rains in Seattle.
>I have (I live in Seattle, but don't work for Amazon) and the weather is pretty great roughly nine months out of the year.
I have to disagree: it depends on how you define "great". If you think Seattle in the winter is bad, try spending a winter in North Dakota or Minnesota. Or even the northeast, such as upstate NY.
I lived in Seattle for almost 12 years, and I only found 2-3 months a year to be what I'd call "great" weather (or even good). My life and mood have improved dramatically since I moved to a place with more sun and fewer clouds. Obviously this is largely a matter of personal preference, but I couldn't disagree more that 9 months of the year in Seattle are great....
People live in Alaska, Seattle is not the worst, someone moving from Alaska might like Seattle.
People live in Detroit, Job is scarce. Moving to Seattle to get a job especially if it pays well might be the best move instead of being unemployed.
People live in East Louis and South Chicago, Moving to Seattle to escape the violence because you want to raise your kids in a better place is not bad.
I'm not from Seattle, but I just want to say there are many valid reasons to move to Seattle. I say this because every time Seattle comes up, this discussion of the weather comes up, I don't see that when folks talk about London tho.
> discussion of the weather comes up, I don't see that when folks talk about London tho.
Really‽ I'm from London, and pretty much everyone I meet makes some comment on the weather there.
I've had people insist to me that London is rainy and foggy for months on end. I think this comes from the usual depiction in cinema, which is pretty much opposite to the weather in TV series set in the countryside surrounding London. The reality is closer to the sunny weather, fog is very rare.
Sunny weather? That's what you get in places like Barcelona, not London definitely.
There's a ceiling made of what seems to be solid clouds 10 months a year, including light rain as the default weather status throughout. This June has been atrocious (we just had the heating on for a while this evening) and last year we didn't have summer bar a week at the end of June.
But yeah, fog is very rare. It's just clouds, always. Grey grey grey and wet wet wet. OTOH you don't have to constantly suffer 30°C with 80% humidity for +4 months a year, which is nice if you're not on holiday.
> "one of the best recruiting tools Amazon has is if people come interview on a nice day, and people are sitting outside having lunch from a food truck."
Because no one else has that ever? That seems pretty normal, pretty silly to consider a perk and personally pretty useless.
Having worked at Amazon.com, we used to joke that we could get anyone to move to Seattle if they interviewed in August. The summers are pretty amazing in Seattle, but the weather sucks the other 9 months of the year.
July 5 is the first day of summer. Every year on the 4th you'd be biting your nails wondering if it was gonna stop raining so you could set off fireworks when it got dark at 10pm.
Totally off topic, but does anyone know who organizes the weekly sailboat groups in lake union? I see them from my apartment about once a week and they all tie their boats together when it starts to get dark and have what looks like a mild party. It looks like so much fun.
I'd rather have free lunch brought in than have to go outside (rain or shine) and buy my lunch. I'd be more interested by a first rate company cafeteria with good (cheap or free) food.
I don't know what the food trucks are like in Seattle, but in SF they are as expensive (or more so) than regular restaurants. So if I'm going to go out for food, I'd rather go someplace where I can sit down and eat.
I'd rather pay for my food because then there isn't the expectation that I stay at work to "enjoy" it. But I'm with you on food trucks. I just don't see the appeal (no, I don't need half of my lunch sliding down my arm as I stand up to eat it) but, damn, they are popular in urban Seattle.
I dunno, lunch was pretty well enforced at amazon. Go out and get food, come back and eat somewhere (conference room, kitchen area, outside, wherever). Took a full out each day.
Way worse where I am now, 25 minute lunch break. ugh.
Weather is like many things a very personal matter. Some like it dry, some like it cold, others like it wet. Unfortunately, there seems to be this overwhelming agreement that warm (even humid) is good and anything else is bad. I haven't been to a place yet where saying "good weather" doesn't mean warm and sunny. There is no good or bad weather, if we're honest. No rain equals less water reserves, warm winter in some places equals more bugs in the summer, and so on. The world climate isn't binary and very, very complex. So, wishing for warm and sunny 365 days in every corner of the world is a little foolish and unrealistic, besides not being comfortable to everybody.
It's closer to like November to March/April. It was in the 80s for a few days in April here this year.
Also, the only places around the country where it isn't dreary, damp, and grey from late fall through spring is California or the South. Compared to the Northeast or the midwest, Seattle's winters are incredibly mild.
A lot of the "intermountain West" gets cold but sunny winters. It doesn't rain that much here in Bend - we get a lot of sun, actually. Cold and dry beats just above freezing and drizzly gray rain any day, in my book.
Totally agree. Here in Spokane we get four seasons including sunny, hot, dry summers and cold sun-on-snow winters. It's striking how much it's like my native New England, right down to the Maple trees, but minus the humidity and mosquitoes. I lived in Seattle for years and the winter temps in the 30s and 40sF combined with damp and gray just wore me down. In my opinion winter ran from October-June. One of the more comical things I discovered upon moving to Seattle was the concept of a "sun break" -- a usually brief interlude where the sun found a weak spot in the clouds, shined through, and everybody ran outside to see it.
Rather than sun breaks, I've always referred to them as "sucker holes." A whole bunch of suckers are going to get caught out in the next downpour that's surely only a few minutes away.
Having grown up in Indiana, I approve this message. I'll take cloudy and drizzle over -25F and snow. I think Seattle winters are great. All the snow I can handle just 45 minutes down the road, and when I'm sick of snow I just get in my car and drive back home.
I do miss Charlotte, NC, though (though recently passed laws make me pine less for NC than I used to). My first winter there, I remember asking a coworker, "does the sun EVER stop shining here?"
Regardless, I can't see this as a selling point to anyone but college grads. Anyone with experience will probably know that the novelty of eating off a food truck on a sunny day will pale in comparison to other considerations (starting with Amazon's reputation as a workplace).