bostonbubble.com

[Boston ITer]

Folks, recently, there's been a lot of news on the Google expansion efforts in Kendall Sq. And that this is an sign of a nascent foundation for a regional recovery.

The idea, from my p.o.v, is that it's supposedly analogous to the massive Fidelity Investment's downtown build out, during the early 90s, which ushered in a high salary, IT & financial based recovery, even prior to the dot com bubble takeoff from '98 to '00. The notion being that Fidelity was a regional leader in hiring, in bulk, and thus, forced other companies to hire and increase salaries to compete for local talent.

I'm, however, skeptical of this prognosis, as I see that much of the prior Kendall Sq biotech/bioinformatics build out, '01-'05, did not lead to long term job growth in the biosciences, as a lot of that had already occurred from '92 to '02, but scattered about eastern MA. Now, it's mainly boutique shops hiring very specialized persons in Kendall.

Thus, I suspect that Google's presence will be good for those, graduating in computer science, math, and related depts at MIT, Harvard, Tufts, etc but won't be a big boon for those, who're already working in the Rte 128/495 beltways. Google's primary east coast office is in NYC where they're close to all the networks and advertising companies & thus, exert a type of hiring competition against other Silicon Alley based companies.