New York City's bustling technology scene, knownas Silicon Alley, was not spared by Hurricane Sandy, which knocked out powerlines, devastated the public transit system and left portions of the cityflooded.
On Tuesday, companies from small startups to major playerssuch as Google and Facebook, scrambled to balance employee safety with attemptsto conduct business as usual. With laptops, smartphones and a dash of theingenuity tech companies powered through the adverse conditions— or at leasttried to.
Silicon Alley is a booming part of New York City's economy.It is both a location — many technology startups are housed in the lower partof Manhattan— and a state of mind, since many companies have now sproutedacross the East River in Brooklyn and elsewhere.
Companies tried not to let Sandy slow their pace. Like manyNew Yorkers, scads of technology workers toiled from home or hunkered down withcoworkers who still had electricity. That was certainly the case amongemployees of trendy e-commerce site Fab.com on Tuesday. Fab's headquarters islocated in the West Village, which was flooded and without power. At 6 a.m. onTuesday, the company's 225 or so New York-based employees received an emailtitled "team together." The message asked whether people withelectric power might open their homes to co-workers who were without power. Ina few hours, 114 people responded.
By noon, there were 12 people working out of CEO JasonGoldberg's two-bedroom apartment on 42nd Street. Other workers gathered inapartments in Manhattan's midtown Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, in Brooklyn andother parts of the city. Two people, who'd flown in from Germany and Indiabefore the storm hit in some unfortunate timing also joined Goldberg after theywere evacuated from their hotel rooms.
"No one wants to be sitting around doing nothing,"Goldberg said in a telephone interview from his apartment, where his dog barkedin the background as more employees arrived. "Everyone wants to keepthings going."
Some 20 Fab.com employees planned to host co-workers intheir homes overnight on Tuesday.
Google Inc. closed its sprawling New York City offices,located on 9th Avenue between 15th and 16th streets in Manhattan's Chelseaneighborhood. The company, which is headquartered in Mountain View, California,has about 2,000 employees in its New York office. Google said the safety of itsemployees is its focus. The office will be closed until further notice, thecompany said.
The online search leader bought the 15-story,2.9-million-square-foot building —which has more space than the Empire StateBuilding — in 2010. In addition to housing its own offices, Google leases outmuch of the space, hosting many data centers. Data centers house othercompanies' servers, which store the vast amounts of data found on websites.
Google did not say whether the building had power as ofTuesday afternoon.
One data center flooded in Sandy's wake knocked popular NewYork blogs, including Gawker.com, off the Internet. The gossip and media blog,and other Gawker Media sites, responded by creating alternate websites wherereaders could get the latest information, whether they wanted to read aboutSandy or the Octomom.
"Our New York City data center is still offline thanksto Hurricane Sandy. We are working as quickly as possible to restore the fullsite, but in the interim you can view updates athttp://updates.gawker.com," read a message on Gawker.com on Tuesdayafternoon.
Facebook's office on Madison Avenue was officially closed,with most of the 200 or so New York-based employees working from home. Thoughthe office had power, getting to work would have been a daunting task forcar-free city dwellers, and New York's subway system was still shut down.
For Quirky.com, whose users collaborate in designinghousehold products and accessories, Superstorm Sandy left a flooded basementand the loss of power. Though they work on the seventh floor, for now, thesite's 70 employees are working from home until power is restored, said JaimeYandolino in an email.
Brooklyn-based MakerBot, a 37/8D printing company, wasclosed on Tuesday, but workers logged in from home. CEO Bre Pettis said theoffice had power and Internet access. The office will be open Wednesday.
"We were prepared for the worst and luckily came outwith the best," Pettis said in a telephone interview from home, as hisbaby cried in the background.