A double date with Amazon, Comcast at Loews

Yo, programmers: Amazon.com Inc. and Comcast Corp. are going toe-to-toe Wednesday, wooing folks like you in different rooms of the same Philadelphia hotel.

Amazon, the Seattle online retailer and on-demand streamer, is holding an "invite-only" recruiting event for software engineers at the Loews Hotel, beginning Wednesday and extending through Friday.

The online giant has e-mailed potential recruits here with kind words and a link to a video showing off the wonders of employment at its West Coast headquarters.

Not so fast, says Comcast.

The Philadelphia cable and Internet giant is building a billion-dollar high-rise in Center City for product innovators and developers and would like to energize the city's tech scene - not see the digitally adroit drift away to the West Coast.

Comcast has scheduled its own invitation-only free happy hour event on Wednesday evening for local techies in the bar of the same Loews, at 12th and Market Streets - billed as a "toast to tech in Philadelphia." Invitations were sent to local companies, such as Aramark, technology startups, and tech-related groups.

Comcast has been mostly mum about its happy hour networking event. But it was scheduled after the Amazon recruiting fair surfaced.

"We recruit regularly in Philadelphia and across the country," said Comcast spokesman John Demming. "We're always looking for opportunities to target technologists and recruit them to Comcast."

Amazon didn't respond to repeated calls. Technical.ly Philly, an online publication targeting the tech scene, first reported last week on the two events.

An e-mail sent to a potential Amazon recruit and obtained by The Inquirer described their plans: "We are hoping to interview as many people as possible, and we will hire all qualified applicants for positions here at Amazon." The Amazon technical rejecter added, "I hope to hear back from you and look forward to potentially meeting you soon!"

At a minimum, the dueling events show a strong labor market for some parts of the economy, with stock prices for Google, Facebook, and Amazon soaring and companies like Comcast seeking to upgrade their services.

"Everyone in tech today is in competition for talent," said Tristan Handy, the vice president of marketing at RJMetrics in Center City, a local data analytics company. "Amazon's and Comcast's recruiting teams are absolutely in competition with each other for the best engineering, data, product, and design talent in the world. That's what you're seeing here."

Handy didn't receive an invitation, and he doesn't know anyone who has.

Amazon could be turning to Philadelphia and possibly other cities with a less crowded tech scene, said Matthew Bidwell, an associate professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

"Because there aren't as many tech companies here, if you'd want to hire people, you'd probably go to a less crowded market like Philadelphia," he said.

Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb, an enterprise software design firm in Center City, says he lost a potential hire to Amazon in 2013.

"Generally, there's more tech people [here] than there are tech jobs," said Cera, who wasn't invited to either event. "There's still a significant amount of people leaving. We also have universities recruiting talent internationally. We got some of the smartest people in the world coming to Philadelphia."

Chris Reynolds, the CEO of OneTwoSee, a fan-engagement tech company of 15 employees, said "it's almost like an arms race out there from a talent acquisition and pay perspective."

West Coast tech companies often boast sprawling campuses with in-house chefs, fully stocked refrigerators and pool and Ping-Pong tables. "These campuses are nicer than resorts," Reynolds said.

Comcast has said that it would like its Philadelphia campus with two high-rise buildings to rival the coolest campuses of those West Coast companies.

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