Just six months after announcing plans to hire 800 people in Austin to staff a new tech hub, Amazon is already back for more.
The e-commerce giant says it's now planning 600 more jobs as it expands its footprint by leasing new towers that are currently being built on the north end of the Domain development in North Austin.
With 1,400 workers in its tech hub, that will put Amazon in league with Facebook, which has about 1,200 local employees -- and is also expanding at the Domain and just opened an 11-floor office downtown with space for 1,500.
When you include Amazon's extended family, which includes Whole Foods, the company has about 8,000 Austin area employees, the ABJ reported.
The Amazon news is a continuation of Big Tech's rapid growth in Austin. Though the city is known for its startup scene and being fiercely local, big investments by Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple are transforming the city with each new growth spurt.
While hometown company Dell Technologies remains the largest player with around 13,000 local employees, West Coast companies are catching up.
IBM has around 6,000 people here. Apple has around 6,200, but will be adding as many as 5,000 more in coming years, and its new campus could accommodate around 15,000. Google has more than 1,100 local employees, and appears poised for a huge addition as it leases a 35-story tower downtown and a seven story building at the Saltillo development in East Austin. Oracle, meanwhile, was said to have about 2,500 employees here last year, but it has also been expanding. The company has said it may grow about 10,000 employees in Austin in coming years.
Big Tech is coming to Austin for a variety of reasons. Austin already has a powerful base of tech talent that includes high-level chipmaking, software engineering and design. That said, some of the biggest divisions of Apple's local presence, as well as Facebook's, is dedicated to managing finances.
For startups, the growth of Big Tech in Austin may mean more competition for the right talent -- and it will probably continue to push average salaries (not to mention housing costs) even higher. But Big Tech also often makes investments in local schools and universities to expand their tech-oriented programs, which could help replenish the talent pool.
