But in April of 1971, the national aerospace industry started to crash, and the company was cut down to 39,000 workers. The “Boeing Bust” generated such pessimism and ire that two real estate agents trying to get a laugh out of the region—and their visiting clients—rented a billboard not far from Seattle International Airport with the now-infamous words: “Will the last person leaving SEATTLE turn out the lights?”

By October of that same year, though, things started to turn around, and Boeing was back up to 53,000 employees. Seattle became known as “Jet City,” a nickname adopted by everything from pizzerias to improv groups. As of 2001, Boeing had grown to become the region’s largest employer and private company. Then it did the seemingly unthinkable and announced that it was moving its corporate headquarters to Chicago. Some compared it to a middle-aged husband leaving his wife for a younger woman; a fresh start after decades of raising a family of employees, who stood side-by-side on the assembly lines, the picket lines and banked at the Boeing Employees Credit Union.

The decision set off a citywide identity crisis. Boeing left its giant commercial aircraft unit in the Seattle area, where it continued to build passenger jets like the Boeing 737, 747 and 767. But there would still be 500 fewer Boeing jobs—the big ones, the decision-makers—in the place where the company was born.

The state fought mightily to keep Boeing’s corporate offices here, just as it has done what it could for Microsoft, which was founded in 1976 by former Seattle schoolmates Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who settled the company across Lake Washington in suburban Redmond three years later. One of the most talked-about was Washington state’s decision in the 1990s to put in a new highway interchange in Redmond to accommodate the expansion of the Microsoft and Nintendo corporate campuses.

But the relationship with Microsoft has been a two-way street. Years—and billions in stock options—later, Seattle is studded with the spoils of Microsoft money:

The jewel in that crown is The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. One of the world’s largest private foundations, the Gates Foundation is doing the work that some countries have failed to do, with far-reaching medical and educational programs that are saving and transforming lives around the world. Vaccinations in Third World countries. Computers in low-income schools. In June 2013, the foundation had an endowment of $38.3 billion, and its impact rivals that of the World Health Organization.

The historic Paramount Theater was brought back to life by the money and moxie of former Microsoft marketing genius Ida Cole. The Experience Music Project and the neighboring Science Fiction Museum were both constructed from the childhood fancies of Microsoft founder Paul Allen, whose Vulcan Inc. is behind much of the South Lake Union development.

Starbucks, founded in 1971, grew from a small storefront in the Pike Place Market to 21,000 stores in 65 countries, selling coffee to the café-cultured French and the tea-drinking people of China. After massive growth that at times saw Starbucks stores across the street from each other, the company is a calm corporate presence, the green-and-white siren of its logo looking out from the top of the former Sears Roebuck & Co. building in the southern part of the city, not far from the seaports that powered Seattle long before it grew a taste for double-tall lattes. Its Starbucks Foundation, which started in literacy and has expanded to include youth leadership and social development programs, gave away $8.7 million in 2013.

Amazon, Seattle hopes, will get there. But a series of missteps has city residents leery. Earlier this year, when many publishers’ contracts with Amazon were up for renewal, the company pushed to change the terms of ebooks to give it 30 percent of the sales and cap the price of those books at $9.99. Hachette refused. In response, Amazon made the thousands of new books by Hachette authors ineligible for pre-sale, and extended the amount of time it took to ship Hachette books to buyers. Seattle, consistently listed in the top five best-read cities in the country, responded as if it was harboring a fugitive. Local author Sherman Alexie tweeted about Amazon’s “libertarian bullshit,” and independent bookstores rallied to promote Hachette books and even hand-delivered them to some customers. Troubling, also, to this city that just adopted the country’s highest minimum wage rate are Amazon labor practices and conditions—particularly in its distribution centers, where most of its hourly workers are concentrated—that many see as exploitative.

The company’s corporate giving, too, seems a bit flinty. The Amazon Smile program, launched last fall, allows customers to direct 0.5 percent of their total purchase to a charity of their choice. But some items—like the Amazon Kindle—are ineligible, and because Amazon handles the transaction, it receives the tax break from the donation to its own program.

And while the company has showered several local charities with gifts ranging from $1,000 to $10,000, and Bezos individually has donated $10 million for an innovation center at Seattle’s Museum of History & Industry, there’s the feeling that a man worth about $30 billion SHOULD break open his wallet as much as he breaks into his famous laugh.

The company town, in short, needs a little more from the company itself, lest that little smile on the side of the Amazon box starts to look like a smirk.