As Amazon becomes widely seen as a bogeyman for all of the city’s ills, some blue-badged employees are puzzled; others share in the growing pains.
Amazon manager Levent Hamdemir, a recent transplant from Michigan, is not immune to the woes of Seattle’s skyrocketing real estate costs. The house he bought in Queen Anne, he says, is half the size of his Michigan house and three times more expensive.
That said, he’s not complaining. He sees it as the price of living in a big city — one, due in large part to Amazon, that is on its way to being “as cool or cooler than San Francisco.