Amazon was having a difficult time luring technical talent to Seattle, and its divisions often found themselves competing for the same engineers. So in late 2003, Jeff Holden, Udi Manber, and several colleagues travelled to Palo Alto to interview potential hires. The trip was so fruitful and the Seattle labor market had grown so challenging that the company decided to open its first North American office outside Seattle. Bezos and Dalzell came to call these satellite locations remote development centers. The idea was to place the offices in regions with rich pools of technical talent and set
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