Google plans on establishing a brand new campus in New York City. Dubbed “Google Hudson Square,” it will occupy 1.7 million square feet and cost as much as $1 billion. The search-engine giant already employs 7,000 people in the city. It owns Manhattan’s massive Chelsea Market (a space that once hosted a Google Glass Studio, in addition to hundreds of offices) and plans on leasing some of nearby Pier 57. The new Google Hudson Square will open in 2020. In a corporate blog post, Google emphasized how much it gives back to New York City. “We’ll continue to deepen our commitments in STEM education, workforce development and access to technology,” wrote Ruth Porat, SVP and CFO of Google and Alphabet. “This coming spring, Grow with Google—our initiative to create economic opportunities for all Americans—will come to New York City with a temporary digital skills learning center on the ground floor of our office on 8th Avenue in Chelsea.” Read a certain way, that breakdown of all the great things Google supposedly does for the city can be taken as a backhand swipe at Amazon, which recently announced it would open a massive new facility in Long Island City, Queens, directly across the East River from Manhattan. In exchange for planting its buildings there, Amazon received massive tax breaks and other concessions from the city and state, which sparked aggressive protests from a community that wants funding for schools, infrastructure, and all that other good stuff. For tech pros in New York City, this investment by tech’s biggest names is a good thing. New York-based techies already draw some of the largest salaries in the nation; if Google and Amazon start competing hard for local talent, those payouts and perks will only increase. Look at how much pros who specialize in artificial intelligence (A.I.), machine learning, and cloud-related technologies can pull down: The below chart is how New York matches up to other states, salary-wise. It’s worth noting that Amazon is creating another facility of equal size to the Long Island City one in Crystal City, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. The nation’s capital and Virginia both place rather high on this list. In other words, if you’re a tech pro in New York City, chances are good you can land a gig that pays enough to keep up with the exorbitant cost of living—provided you have the skills that tech giants and startups want. Machine learning and artificial intelligence (A.I.) are obviously big deals, but there’s always a need for sysadmins, mobile app developers, and other tech pros who keep businesses flowing all day.