New Yorkers have strong opinions. Typically, people here aren’t blasé on how they like their coffee, their bagels, or their pizza. They aren’t neutral on their sports teams, on which subway line runs the least reliably, or whether this winter feels longer than every one preceding.

So, when Amazon announced its plans to post up HQ2 in Long Island City—and then, abruptly, decided not to—both were met with strong opinions.

To quickly recap, here’s what happened...

In September of 2017, Amazon announced plans to build a second headquarters outside of Seattle. HQ2, as it was called, would create 25,000 to 50,000 jobs—depending on which source you referenced—and more than $27 billion in local tax revenues.

Many cities attempted to woo Amazon, and New York was no different. On the “Hey, Consider Us” spectrum, New York City illuminated its more iconic buildings in orange to signal the city’s ambitions and then offered more than $1 billion in refundable tax credits as incentive for Amazon to choose Long Island City—an up-and-coming neighborhood on the western coast of Queens. (Yes, Queens has a west coast.)

Here’s a detailed timeline, prepared by Curbed New York, but let’s fast forward to November of 2018. Amazon chooses Long Island City: Hooray! Or, Who Cares?

Apparently, everyone. Homeowners in Long Island City immediately called their real estate brokers to put their apartments on the market. The pending arrival of Amazon caused a pricing surge. Restaurateurs, bracing for 50,000 more diners, called their suppliers, extended their leases, and made plans for new outposts. Even though more than half of New Yorkers supported the move, many did not.

Opponents included state and local officials advocating on behalf of local residents, namely those in lower-income brackets, that could be displaced and further marginalized by the prospect of increased rents and an influx of yuppies. (See San Francisco 2012-today.) Also, with Amazon’s firm anti-union stance, anyone affiliated with a union, backed by a union, or generally in support of unions, took to the streets in protest.

This includes Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Michael Gianaris, both of whom were against the project.

So, on Valentine’s Day, Amazon decided to break up with New York. This, unsurprisingly, led to some strong reactions, including this OpEd by Mayor Bill de Blasio and this one by Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand: "The fact that Jeff Bezos wanted our taxpayers to pay for his helicopter landing pad just shows how disingenuous he was from the beginning."

There are plenty of lessons to be learned, both by New York and other cities in this type of situation. There are also valid points to be made and heard by proponents and opponents of the Amazon HQ2 project.

We, as a small enterprise software company based in New York that employs a talented 40-person team, that doesn’t outsource or offshore, have our own strong opinions. When Amazon announced its descent into New York, we wondered, “How many of the [50,000] jobs will be engineering related? Will there be a material impact on New York’s software engineering ecosystem, and will it improve it?” Competition is already stiff for top engineering talent, and a behemoth like Amazon can offer plenty that lesser known challengers—like RubyApps—simply can’t. (And Amazon isn’t the only one entering the fray.)

Now that Amazon has pulled out, we’re left wondering what could’ve been. While we might have been competing for talent, there also could’ve been opportunities to work together to train and develop aspiring software engineers in the New York Area. Perhaps we would’ve been ideally positioned to have Amazon implementing RubyApps, as our client, to facilitate internal collaboration at HQ2.

We also wonder what local and state government officials have learned from this debacle—namely, from our perspective, what their plans are to further develop and ready New York for its technological future. We are concerned, not only as a small business trying to keep making it here, that our city’s infrastructure isn’t equipped for today—let alone tomorrow. Will we try to dangle overtures and incentives to another Big Tech representative, or will we focus on building from the existing base of local talent and businesses to forge a better New York?

Who knows? But, we care.

Go Yankees. Go Joe’s Pizza. Go New York Go.