Amazon’s decision to drop plans for a New York City headquarters was so abrupt that its own employees had been meeting with local leaders just hours earlier to move the commitment forward. Now that the deal is off, New York tech leaders are trying to figure out what it means for the city’s tech scene.

The decision to leave New York has been disappointing for local tech leaders like Julie Samuels, who runs Tech:NYC, a nonprofit that helps grow tech companies in the city. “This is terrible for New York. You’re talking about tens of thousands of jobs that were going to be in New York City that now aren’t,” Samuels says.

“Nobody checked in with frontline communities and whether they wanted these gigantic corporations.”

Tech:NYC currently has more than 700 companies in its coalition, including Etsy and General Assembly. General Assembly CEO Jake Schwartz today tweeted that Amazon’s departure was a “facepalm heard around the world,” and a “self-own by the entire NYC ecosystem.”

Tech leaders say that the way the deal fell apart sends a poor message to other companies that may want to invest in New York and could be damaging to the city’s prospects in the future given the community’s resistance. “The irony of this is that New York City had been laying the groundwork to have a big investment like Amazon to come by,” Schwartz says. “What should have been a winning moment has turned into a comedy of errors.”

Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, said she met with Amazon and the community advisory committee today before news broke at around 11:45AM ET. “We were talking about the details on [Amazon’s] commitment on workforce, and dealing with issues concerning their views on unions and immigration.”

Pursuit, a technical education nonprofit, had also been actively working with Amazon to build a technical job training program that would recruit local community members. “We just met with the chair of economic development and Amazon yesterday,” Pursuit co-founder Jukay Hsu said. “This was meant to be a long term process. We were just at the start, and I don’t know what happens now to be honest.”

Internally, Amazon employees were also operating as if the deal was going to go forward, despite rumors of the company backing out last week. A source tells The Verge that the recruiting team had been working to place employees in the upcoming New York campus until this week when people started getting stronger hints that the deal would fall through. Though Amazon says it is committed to still bring jobs to the city without the HQ2 office, the source said that some of those jobs are now likely to remain in Boston or Seattle.

“If companies want to come, they have to be willing to negotiate with community members.”

Local lawmakers and community members had fiercely opposed Amazon’s arrival since the deal was announced in November. Just one day after Amazon confirmed the two finalists for its HQ2 hunt, protestors gathered a block away from the proposed site with signs urging the company to “stay the helipad out” (a reference to the Amazon’s request to build a helicopter landing on-site). In the months that followed, grassroots activists launched campaigns on Twitter, encouraging people to cancel their Amazon Prime accounts and placing anti-Amazon signs at the company’s 4-Star store in NYC. They also marched and protested in the streets in the wintry rain and snow.

For these community leaders and activists, their efforts had clearly paid off. Lena Afridi, the director of economic development policy at the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, said the deal failed due to a lack of transparency and community involvement from the early stages.

“Nobody checked in with frontline communities and whether they wanted these gigantic corporations in their community,” Afridi says. “With Amazon leaving, there’s now a chance for us to have a real conversation about what good jobs, adequate job training, and protection for tenants and small businesses can look like, and there’s a chance for us to really change the status quo.”

Afridi believes Amazon’s departure won’t discourage other companies from building in New York. “The only reason there was so much pushback was because of the subsidies. There are tons of other tech companies, such as Google and Apple, that are expanding in New York,” she says.

Schwartz agrees that, in the future, interested companies should learn from Amazon’s approach and look for more local synergetic opportunities. “Treating cities as another vendor for every last penny that you can get is perhaps not a good look,” he says. ”A more collaborative community-oriented approach would generate more value.”

“People in New York have learned lessons from Seattle and Silicon Valley and they will not let that happen here,” Afridi adds. “If companies want to come, they have to be willing to negotiate with community members.”