wedaugtwo

That's a very interesting stat. Bezos has 5 houses that reporters know about [1].

They are in Medina (WA), Beverly Hills (CA), Van Horn (TX), Manhattan (NY), and D.C.

Of these 5 known places, his Beverly Hills, Manhattan, and D.C. houses are close enough to the HQ2 finalists.

If we assume the rumors of Amazon wanting an East Cost presence, then we can narrow it down to NY and D.C.

1. http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-owns-five-massive-...

I read a very convincing article on how it will most likely be near D.C.

https://slate.com/business/2018/01/amazon-is-totally-putting...

Or could it be that with such high salaries, they can be extremely picky? Almost like a, "we only hire the best."

Good point about the seasonality issue. I do wonder if they will eventually make it the norm if they see there is no real productivity drop.

I've seen companies that share some (or most) of Basecamp's culture, but I've yet to see one that truly values "personal time" by having a 4-day work week during the summer.

And not that 10 hours for 4 days schedule, but actually 8 hours for 4 days.

When I was working in a different city and separated from my family and friends for months at a time, I always thought it would be cool to have this always-on video chat device that wouldn't really be used for direct chatting, but more like leaving the door open so if we're bored, we can just "bump" into each other.

It's strange, but you sometimes miss the "mundane" parts of life. Especially if you are on assignment for several months, there might not be much to say day after day, but just having some company is a nice feeling.

I can also see how it would be helpful for remote teams. If these devices were just on all the time and team members could peer into what others were doing or listen in on spontaneous jokes.

Of course I know there are ways to do this now with existing solutions, but it's more of a hassle to get it setup and also to automatically reconnect if there are network problems.