With any major news event, there’s one question that trumps all others: how will this affect my sex life?
Amazon is splitting its new headquarters between Northern Virginia and New York City, adding 25,000 jobs (and potentially new people to the romance market) in each location. But a bunch of new high-income jobs doesn’t necessarily translate into luck in love. In The New York Post article “Why The Amazon Bros Will Ruin The NYC Dating Scene,” Seattle denizens shared their woe-filled tales of romancing Amazon employees.
“There are two types of Amazon tech bros,” Isabelle, a 27-year-old resident of Seattle — where Amazon has its corporate headquarters — tells The Post. First, she says, there’s the awkward one: “super passive, super reserved.” Then, she says, there’s the jerk: “the guy who thinks he’s God’s gift to engineering — super conceited.”
…
“The general perspective is that [Amazon employees] are relationship unsavvy,” says [matchmaker Monique] Le, who works for the dating service Seattle Love Broker. They’re seen as “geeky” and “socially inept,” and, on top of that, pretty job-obsessed, “working at least 10 to 12 hours a day,” she says.
The NY Post largely blames Amazon for Seattle’s ranking as the worst city in the world to find love, according to a survey of more than 92,000 singles over five years. (New York, notably, also made the top 10 list, while D.C. did not.)
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard that the arrival of Amazon will impact the D.C. social scene. Before Amazon announced its decision, Seattle author and journalist Tricia Romano told Washingtonian that the tech giant made her home more lame: “Not to say that all tech workers are super-square, but they’re a certain kind of person. They’re a little more analytical. They’re not necessarily outgoing. They’re introverts. They’re on their phones. You go on dates with them and it’s like talking to a wall. There’s no engagement. When you introduce 35,000 programmers into a city, it just changes the feel. It changes the feel of when you go out.”
But the major thrust of the New York Post’s argument—that rude workaholics are coming to town—seems to ignore the inconvenient fact that there are already a bunch of rude workaholics living in both of the places Amazon is headed, not to mention a fair share of deeply awkward folks.
A report from Wallet Hub released earlier this year found that D.C. was the fourth hardest-working city in the U.S., with New York City right behind it. As for the question of condescending daters in the District, look no further than that guy who scheduled six dates in one night or D.C.’s reputation as a place where people just can’t resist asking “What do you do?”
Apparently, the tech bro situation has gotten so dire in Seattle that at least one non-Amazon-affiliated programmer told The New York Post he doesn’t “list my job on any of my [online dating] profiles, or wear company-branded clothes in public.” Sounds like they might have something to chat about with Trump administration staffers, who are the subject of monthly profiles about how difficult they find dating in liberal D.C.
Rachel Kurzius