Virginia Darden has office and classroom space at 1100 Wildon Boulevard in Rosslyn, Virginia, not far from the eventual new location of Amazon’s new North America headquarters. UVA photo
In retrospect, the Darden School of Business’s decision last year to open a base in Rosslyn, in Washington, D.C. metro area, looks nothing if not prescient.
When Amazon announced this month that it had selected Arlington, Virginia, as one of two sites for its new North America headquarters, Darden Dean Scott Beardsley suddenly realized that his school’s Rosslyn site — classrooms, offices, and event space on the top two floors of a 31-story building with expansive views of the capital region, originally intended as the D.C.-area home of some of Darden’s MSBA and executive MBA programs — was a stone’s throw from where the tech and retail giant plans to land in Crystal City.
Did Darden have inside information when it moved to Rosslyn? No, Beardsley says, but they had hopes.
“I’m very excited but I’m not surprised,” he tells Poets&Quants. “I’ve thought from the very beginning that there was a strong likelihood that Northern Virginia would be competitive. It has among the highest concentration of Ph.D.s in the United States, and it also has a very high concentration — if not the highest concentration — of Internet traffic in the U.S., maybe in the world. There’s a lot of talent there. I didn’t have inside information in any way, but I think it’s a great decision by Amazon and we’re delighted.
“Our location in Rosslyn is practically next door to Crystal City. It’s right there. You have to walk a little bit, but it’s very close, and we are looking forward to working with them.”
MORE THAN JUST A TECH COMPANY
Virginia Darden Dean Scott Beardsley. UVA photo
Amazon made the announcement of its selection of New York City and Arlington, Virginia, as the locations for its new headquarters on November 13. The company says it will invest $5 billion and create more than 50,000 jobs across the two new headquarters locations, with more than 25,000 employees each in New York City and Arlington. The new locations will join Seattle as the company’s three headquarters in North America. At the same time, in a much less ballyhooed announcement, Amazon named Nashville as the new location of a planned Center of Excellence for the company’s operations business, which is responsible for customer fulfillment, transportation, supply chain, and other activities. That location is expected to create more than 5,000 job
A handful of ranked business schools are proximate to Amazon’s new Northern Virginia location, including the B-schools at George Mason University, the University of Maryland, American University, and George Washington University. But perhaps none is better positioned to take advantage of the potential windfall in jobs and incoming talent than Virginia Darden, thanks to its Rosslyn location and an already strong relationship with the company. Over the last three years, Amazon has taken on 43 interns and 35 full-time employees from Darden. Overall in that span, 22% of the school’s internship class and 16% of its MBA grads have gone into tech-related roles; in 2017, the last year for which Darden has published employment data (its 2018 report will be out in a few weeks), 14% of the graduating MBA class went into tech — not as high a percentage as, say, Stanford, situated in the heart of Silicon Valley, but higher than, say, Wharton. Those Darden tech grads last year made an average salary of $115,358.
But, Beardsley says, here’s the thing to remember about Amazon: It’s so massive, it’s not just a tech company anymore.
“Amazon in 2017 and 2018 was number one and number two in recruiting at Darden,” Beardsley says. “We have roughly 100 alumni who are working at Amazon, as far as I know. They are a very strong recruiter, along with some other technology companies, across different parts of their business. We have a great relationship with them in the MBA, and the executive MBA that we teach out of our D.C. area.
“Amazon said they are hiring 25,000 people — well, those are usually very talented people. I think this will be good for prospective students, for current students, and for alumni of Darden, but also other top universities. But we need to remember that Amazon is quite the diversified company. We can call them ‘tech,’ but they’re also a retail company, they’re also a tremendous transportation and logistics company. They offer jobs in a wide variety of roles — we call it a ‘tech’ company but it goes way beyond that.”
‘ALREADY A REALLY GREAT RECRUITING RELATIONSHIP’
Greg Fairchild. UVA photo
Greg Fairchild was named Virginia’s first director of Northern Virginia operations in May. Six months later comes Amazon’s news — and it has Fairchild as excited professionally as he’s ever been.
Fairchild, the Isidore Horween research associate professor of business administration at the Darden School, notes that 14% of Darden’s 2017 graduating class took jobs in the mid-Atlantic region — basically, Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, D.C. He expects that number will rise in time, and Amazon will be the reason.
“Having them in our backyard will only enhance what was already a really great recruiting relationship,” Fairchild tells Poets&Quants, and what was already the beginnings of experiential learning and the beginnings of opportunities around some of the degree programs we off, like our master’s in business analytics. But it also bodes well for things we would do in cross-conjunction with other graduate schools at the university that would be interested in a company like Amazon. So I’m pretty bullish about the whole thing.”
FROM 288 TO 3 — AN ENDORSEMENT OF THE HIGHEST ORDER
Fairchild, Poets&Quants‘ MBA Professor of 2017, speaking from Darden’s Rosslyn offices, points out that he is only four Metro stops away from Amazon’s location-to-be in Crystal City. That’s about a 10-minute public transportation ride.
“Our ability to go interact with them, have them come in and teach classes, us to go over there and offer programs, is very highly viable,” Fairchild says. “And again, we already have deep relationships with them.”
But Amazon’s arrival is an endorsement of the region, as well.
“If you think about it, to have this juggernaut firm choose among 288 cities around the country and then to decide that we would be the place that they will go — what that says to other companies is that this is in fact a real desirable place for businesses that are in technology space, as well as anyone who serves them. So anybody that is an Amazon supplier in any way is now also a major opportunity for us. You add these up and my anticipation is that we’re going to do more with Amazon, we’re going to do more with Capital One, we’re going to do more with Northrop Grumman, Raytheon is in my building, cybersecurity firms, healthcare, you go down the list. Amazon’s presence and endorsement says Northern Virginia is now one of the tech clusters in the United States.”
Adds Beardsley: “Amazon, like other big companies, recruits from multiple geographries all over the U.S. — our students are going all over the country. No one has a crystal ball, but clearly there is going to be a push by them to recruit talent in New York and in the mid-Atlantic, and that’s our backyard, so I would expect that there will be a number of students looking very carefully and interested by these jobs. I would expect that our tech numbers might inch up, yes — and I expect we may see some alumni switching over and looking at jobs, as well, not just new grads or summer interns.”
Amazon’s Seattle HQ will remain one of three bases the company maintains in North America. Amazon photo
But only half of Amazon’s new HQ is going to Northern Virginia. The other half is headed to the Big Apple — specifically, Long Island City, currently a conurbation of a little over 20,000 people on the far western end of Long Island, just across the East River from Manhattan. There is, of course, no shortage of elite business schools in the immediate area — among them Cornell, which just last year opened its new Cornell Tech complex on New York City’s Roosevelt Island, smack dab between Manhattan and Amazon’s announced new site.
Only a little farther away, J.P. Eggers, vice dean of MBA and graduate programs and an associate professor of management and organizations at NYU Stern School of Business, says Amazon’s arrival in the big city means a host of opportunities for business schools as well as business in general, particularly the already-booming tech sector.
“There’s an enormous opportunity to continue the growth of the technology sector in New York City that has been booming so much the last five years,” Eggers tells P&Q, “to the extent that New York is seen as the only real competitor to Silicon Valley in the U.S. at this point in time in terms of scale, size, and growth rate. It’s a great place to be, given that that’s not really where we were at all 10 to 15 years ago.”
Eggers says the startup community in New York will be especially energized, “because of the different nature of the startup community in New York in general, which has been so much built around the relationships between small companies and larger existing companies as partners and cooperators — much more than the typical West Coast mentality of competition between the old-school industries and the large companies and the smaller ones. I would see Amazon as a fantastic partner for all of the great startups that are coming up in the New York City area. It’s another continued opportunity for the New York tech scene.
“Obviously in terms of direct benefits, the job creation is going to be very significant in this space,” Eggers continues, “and this will fuel migration from all over the country and all over the world to New York City, as one of the true hubs of the global tech industry. And that will be a fantastic thing for the city.”
CHALLENGES FOR THE CITY, LOTS OF UPSIDE FOR THE B-SCHOOLS
J.P. Eggers. Stern photo
Eggers acknowledges widely aired concerns about housing prices and the expected strain on infrastructure. “These are all legitimate concerns,” he says, “that any growing and fast-paced city has been dealing with for a long time, and I hope the government is able to figure out potential solutions to help mitigate the problems that are certainly going to occur.” But, he adds, that is all part of the “process of forward-moving development for a city.”
“This is the kind of thing that New York City has done on an ongoing basis — whether it’s been different periods of time or there’s been enormously fast growth rates, the city has been able to find ways to manage the adjustment. In terms of access to talent, in terms of access to airports and transportation options, quality of living for your employees, you’d be hard-pressed to think of a better place to come than this. There are always problems that are going to occur anywhere where you see this kind of growth, but one of the nice things that is true both for New York and Washington, D.C. is the fact that the infrastructure drain will be a little offset by the fact that we are both places that are relatively heavily public transportation-run. Just imagine in cities where everyone drives, this kind of rapid growth could really cripple infrastructure. This is an opportunity to justify continued reinvestment in the infrastructure to help support the growth that Amazon is going to need in New York City.”
What, specifically, will Amazon-New York mean for Stern, where about 10% of MBAs go into tech, and other B-schools? Eggers is bullish. The school already has been the No. 1 employer for MBAs from Stern’s full-time MBA program for the last two years, and currently run many events through the school, including innovation competitions, skill development workshops, and consulting projects.
“Obviously we are excited about this opportunity and the fact that the door to more opportunities at Amazon — especially opportunities that would be local here in New York — is a real potential option for our MBA students,” he says. “This obviously builds on the fact that Amazon has been enormously helpful to the school and committed to this relationship for a number of years. We certainly hope to be able to continue that relationship.”
NO ‘CONSOLATION PRIZE’
There’s excitement in Nashville, too, where the good news of Amazon’s commitment of 5,000 jobs for an operations hub has gone somewhat under the radar. Which is fine with Eric Johnson, dean of the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. “Nashville was considered to be among the cities that had been ‘passed over’ for the new Amazon HQ, and then to have us end up with the Eastern Operations Hub or whatever they’re calling it is very cool,” Johnson tells P&Q. “It’s 5,000 jobs in our city, and that will make Amazon a top-10 employer — that’s nothing to sneeze at!”
In fact, it will be one of the biggest job-producing moves in Nashville history — and may be just about all the new jobs the city can handle at the moment, Johnson says. “Someone said we got the bait-and-switch because we didn’t get the 50,000 jobs, we just got the 5,000, but that’s kind of like the dog-catches-car story,” he says, laughing. “It would probably have destroyed Nashville as we know it to get the Amazon HQ!”
At Owen, 13% of the 2018 graduating class went into tech. Amazon is the biggest employer of 2018 MBAs, having hired seven, but more than a third of the graduating class stayed to work in Nashville. In the future, Johnson says, some may get to do both.
“We ‘re super excited,” he says, citing the same-day news of a 600-job Ernst & Young tech center moving to Music Row. “It was one of the greatest days ever, and both were great news for Vanderbilt Owen.
“Amazon has been our top employer for several years running, and this will just give fuel to that. The great thing is that this will grow the overall tech pie significantly for our city, because it gives people more confidence to have their careers here. If things don’t work out at HCA or whatever, I’ll go over to Amazon. It’s a good thing.”
Georgetown McDonough’s campus is less than five miles from Amazon’s new HQ in Northern Virginia. Georgetown photo
In Northern Virginia, Amazon plans to hire 400 people in 2019 and 1,180 in 2020 as it scales to 25,000 by 2030 and potentially 37,850 by 2034, according to the Washington Post. Eric Young, assistant dean of the MBA Career Center at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, says in the immediate term, McDonough will continue to partner with Amazon as they hire MBAs in Seattle and distribution centers around the world — but he adds that Georgetown MBAs “will be very excited for available positions in the D.C. area, as many of our students come to the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area to study, build careers, and start families.” Young notes that 37% of Georgetown MBAs accepted positions in the mid-Atlantic region in 2018.
The Amazon move, Young says, is the latest development in a decade-long shift in the region. Long focused on the federal government and government contracting, the area “has expanded its business footprint over the past decade. It is a strong destination for careers in biotech, hospitality, financial services, and real estate, with a growing tech, startup, entrepreneurship, and venture capital businesses,” he says. In response, Georgetown has seen its MBAs increasingly move into the tech space.
“The number of full-time Georgetown MBA students who have joined tech companies has grown from 9% to 17.5% the past four years,” Young tells P&Q. “Amazon’s HQ2 in Northern Virginia should only accelerate that trend for Georgetown McDonough MBAs. Amazon hires MBAs into product management, program management, and operations positions and offers finance and retail MBA leadership development programs (LDPs), so Amazon offers opportunities across various functions which is attractive to MBA students.”
‘WORK HARD. HAVE FUN. MAKE HISTORY.’
Young, whose area of focus with the MBA Career Center is technology, media, entertainment, and sports Industries and entrepreneurship, says the popularity of technology companies and companies that are fast-paced, agile, and pivot quickly, fail fast, are data-driven, scale far and wide — in short, companies that act like entrepreneurial startups — is growing. “All companies are becoming tech companies and need to be mobile, if not global, to keep pace with tech companies that already are,” he says.
Young says Amazon’s decision to choose Northern Virginia was not a surprise. He’s discussed as much with many of the 75 or so Georgetown alumni who currently work for the company, including 50 Georgetown MBAs work at Amazon across the US, Asia and Europe.
“Every time I would speak with Georgetown alumni at Amazon the past year, we would wonder if the D.C. area would get HQ2,” he says. “I thought we had a good shot, with a well-educated population, three major airports, a large AWS presence, and Jeff Bezos’ new home and business interests here.”
The move is especially good news for MBAs from Georgetown, he says, since the school is less than five miles from the company’s chosen location.
“Amazon’s HQ2 across the Potomac River from Georgetown is great news for Georgetown MBAs — and all MBA programs, offering two U.S. East Coast headquarters in major metropolitan areas,” Young says. “Our Georgetown McDonough MBA Career Center has developed a very strong relationship with Amazon Talent Acquisition Team over the past five years, and we’ll look to deepen the relationship and support Amazon’s new recruiting efforts in the D.C. area going forward. We have already reached out to welcome them to our nation’s capital and we are eager to support their recruiting efforts.”
Young cites Amazon’s slogan — “Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History.” — as reflective of the ambition of Georgetown McDonough MBAs. “Amazon offers a variety of challenging roles for MBA graduates that involve cutting-edge technologies and work practices that are changing how business is done, which makes it an such an attractive career destination,” he says.
CURRICULUM CHANGES LIKELY TO ‘REINFORCE OUR ASSOCIATION WITH THIS COMPANY’
Arthur Dong. Georgetown photo
Arthur Dong, professor of strategy and economics, is an expert in competitive strategy and has written on the HQ2 search and its potential impact. He says Georgetown McDonough, as one of the most proximate schools to the new Amazon location in Crystal City, views the news “with a great deal of enthusiasm.”
“They are presently our No. 1 employer in the MBA program,” Dong notes. “They are very familiar with our program and they are very familiar with the product that we produce, and that being said, I think this bodes very well for the future of this school — because these types of decisions are not short-term decisions. Once Amazon decides on a location, that’s a multi-year or even multi-generational sort of commitment. That places us in a really sweet spot right now.”
Dong foresees that McDonough will likely adjust its curriculum to accommodate Amazon’s proximity to campus and “further reinforce our association with this company. We need to prepare our students for future roles at Amazon.” Moreover, he adds, McDonough — and other area B-school — may draw attention from MBA prospects interested in tech careers who might otherwise have looked elsewhere.
“A lot of people are going to draw that conclusion,” he says. “And certainly we’re going to help promote that conclusion in our admissions strategy.”
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