bostonbubble.com

[admin]

[GenXer]

I think that if you open, they will come. Many people would sign up after the board is open, since THIS board gets limited exposure, while linkedin one will get a huge exposure. Why don't you give it a try and then we'll see? Maybe it will get guys like John P and Boston ITer signed up for linkedin as well. Right now we are pretty disjoint/disconnected, and as a result, there is a tiny but consistent contingent posting here, while we could be reaching a MUCH larger audience by posting on linkedin for all the world to see. Wouldn't that be more fun?

[Guest]

I think people enjoy the anonymity of this message board.

[GenXer]

Nobody is forcing anybody to go and join linkedin. It is simply a more diverse medium. There will be a lot more interesting people who can offer opinions and/or analysis and who can contribute.

We already know what the regulars thinks here, so often there isn't much discussion because of that.

[john p]

Regarding Linkedin:

What is funny is that Linkedin is what prompted me to post after several months.

I'm old enough to remember when people used to get jobs it was either through a contact or through the newspaper. They actually had this section in the Globe called "Help Wanted" and it was broken into something like professional and general.

Anyway, what eventually happened was this thing called the Internet came in and all of a sudden there was a ton of migration from job to job and people were making a lot more money because with the internet you could be made aware of more opportunities.

Today, with Linkedin, just this past several months, I am hearing of alot of people getting interviews. The market is bubbling just a bit, whether it rises or not I'm not sure, but I am hearing of people getting interviews for sure.

The "Superstar" term I was throwing around came from this article that someone on this website turned me on to.

http://real.wharton.upenn.edu/~sinai/papers/superstar_cities_06-16-06-final.pdf

What this report was kind of saying was that the rules of thumb finances for certain cities were different than others. Basically, because Boston was one of the top tier cities, their price to income ratio would naturally be higher then say Albany.

My goal isn't to agitate, it is to get people to ask themselves hard questions.

With this whole "Superstar" Theory, even if the financial "norm" is don't spend more than 3 times your salary on a home, don't worry about it because you are a "superstar" and you will "grow" into your mortgage faster and you'll go further than the shit-bum from Albany, so go ahead and spend 5 to 7 times your household income because you're super.

This article was saying that there were different rules for different people and if you were a superstar you could take on much more risk. My fear is that while this might be true for some, others would get confused and think this was a Massachusetts or California NORM. If you're not on an executive track it might make more sense to stick with the 3 times your household income deal...

My other feeling is that EVEN IF you're a superstar or have the real potential for being one in the future WHY OVERPAY????

I'm just saying, the market will show signs of life. A young guy might get an oppportunity making $100k and think he is a superstar, when in reality he might be replacing an older guy who used to make $180k. The younger guy might see the world through rose colored glasses because he got an opportunity when in reality it is a sinking ship and eventually things will catch up if it is.

Today, I am dealing with two professionals, one who acts very stuck up and is incredibly incompetent; this guy I'm told bought a real shit shack for over $750k in Newton which is falling apart. This guy is completely obnoxious because he has to compensate for his lack of ability and hands on experience. He has to live with constant stress because he believed that he was a superstar and he's finding out that he is not and now he has this big nut to carry and he has to find those who is stupid enough to buy his b.s. What he really needs is help, but he is fearful of engaging with people who are knowldegeable because he feels he might get found out, so he really can't even learn. He acts like a jerk and if he didn't I'd feel bad for him. Basically people who get in over their heads sometimes act like jerks and if you choose to live in some of these "Me Too" towns you will find lots of delusional want to be superstars.

This other guy has to fix all his mistakes and he has a house which he built which is gorgeous and is in a beautiful quiet suburb which he gets to with a Zone 4 Commuter Rail pass. The guy who lives in the quiet suburb gets to work in Boston FASTER than the guy from Newton, his house is 3 times the size and is brand new. This guy is down to earth, easy to deal with, totally competent and has..... drumroll...... COMMON SENSE!!!! Did this guy have the ability to buy in Newton? Yes, did he choose to overpay, No. When you're not pretentious and you're easy to work with and you feel comfortable saying you don't know when you don't know, you can end up being more successful.

Just because you have the ability to waste your money doesn't mean you should. That is what is called being "New Rich". You can actually make a lot of money selling garbage to the new rich, and people do.

What is stunning about people who overpay in Newton and Wellesley is this polar view of their self worth. On the one hand, they pay $750k for a shit shack because they think they are rock stars and can carry a $750k mortgage, but on the other hand they must think they are worthless because they settle on a shit shack.

I don't buy the "Newton has better schools" argument because you could send your kids to private school more cheaply.

I have noticed what I would call the "High Level Programmed Professional". These people are the kids who went to the BC's, Babsons, and even the Ivy's who were just really good at following directions. These are the people who wear their company gear and are the perfect corporate guys; the perfect temperment, the perfect amount of intellect an just enough motivation to do a good enough job and move into the next positions in the same corporate pace where they are neither knifing the guy in the back ahead of them or holding back the guy behind them. Fifteen to twenty years ago, these guys made a ton of money. People wanted a nice stable family guy would be a good high level corporate robot. Honestly, I think that these little high level professional robots do what they are told and if they are told to live in Newton or Wellesley, they will not consider anywhere else unless another professional robot tells them otherwise. They aren't adventurous or entrepreneurial and take a risk on an emerging town; they will go where they are programmed.

Today, those programmed professional robots will not make as much as they did in the past and they need to not fall into the delusion that they are rock stars.

I tell people that there are three types of workers: those that work hard to work on things that are meaningful to them or bring a lot of rewards, those that mail in the effort and enjoy the slower pace, and those that work really hard on things that don't bring in a lot of rewards and aren't meaningful.

If you live in an area which is booming, these great opportunites are abundant, but if a place prices themselves out of a global market, those great opportunies are fewer and further between. The people who will be hurt most by this are the kids who bought into the "superstar college" who paid $50k per year and went into deep debt, and then overpay for a house ina "superstar town" and end up with a super mortgage and a super amount of stress. The younger kids need to think about going to a cheaper college and moving to an area where you get more bang for the buck because these areas are growing and growing areas have more abundance of better opportunities. It will be these professional high level robots who don't reprogram themselves who will be hurt most.

[Boston ITer]

[GenXer]

john: agree. Good thing is, a many of us are now on linkedin too trying to connect to other good guys, some of whom prefer not to connect. So whose loss is it? I don't want to connect to the stuck up superstar, I want to connect to you. And Boston ITer, by the way, who's so far avoided linkedin as well.

Hey, admin, I think that we need to have a boston bubble meetup, and the only prerequisite is to sign up on linkedin. That should get everybody going pretty good. Nobody's forcing anybody to post info they don't want to post. But I think that being social does not just mean posting in a small forum, especially since we are all very much local.

Globalization is exactly why we need to connect. Networks make individuals stronger. And I don't mean being in a crowd. Being an individual connected with other individuals is better than just sitting by yourself in front of a computer. Right now, lots of business is being done via linkedin (not literally, but through the connections made through inkedin). Sometimes you do business first, and connect later. You never know who can be useful to you someday.

[john p]

I don't have a problem meeting up or doing linkedin with anyone on this blog. I think Linkedin is a fantastic way for good people to connect for sure. If you can send a private message to Admin, he can give you my contact if he doesn't mind; I am on Linkedin. Not too many contacts. I enjoy Facebook and I got on a dual sport motorcycle blog which is fun. The guys from Australia are hilarious and when you see guys from North Carolina talking with guys from England to California it is great; many of the regional lingo is starting to cross borders. It is funny when all these different cultures talk about what it is like when their wives break their balls about stuff they don't understand and you find that it is an international thing. Very funny.

My comments regarding Linkedin were more based on the contacts recruiters were making and how that might affect people's self worth. Basically, looking for a job used to be controlled by the job seeker and when they made a conscious choice to turn the search on and off. Today, you just put your resume on Linkedin and recruiters contact you.

With this two things happen; more people feel on better footing when they negotiate for a new job, meaning typically when you choose to look you are either out of a job or checked out mentally on your current one. Sometimes people look to see what is out there, but for the most part people are a bit more desperate when they are looking. Sometimes when you talk to people about a new job prospect they talk more about the problems with their current job instead of looking forward. My comments were really about trying to keep things in perspective.

On a personal note, two close friends this month told me that they were getting divorced after 15 plus years of marriage. One couple had major financial trouble all along, lost their house, struggled and have separated. The other couple, the guy made tons of money during the stock market bubble, wife stayed at home, he's now having the best year of his career, he exercises, obsessed with his body and is in the best shape of his life at age 41 and he just got into this Rock Star mode and he just checked out of his marriage. His kids asked to do a "group hug" with Mom and Dad and the parents refused; bad situation. Sad situation.

Anyway, I don't want to be a celebrity or a superstar; they tend to end up having messed up lives. What was it Daedalus who flew too close to the sun? Years ago, I felt goofy talking about Country Music to my "sophisticated" friends, but the wife and I put in on the background when we make breakfast on weekends and sure, some of it is goofy, but these people tend to celebrate the little things and savor a very simple life and they seem to have their priorities in order. My buddy will be out there chasing little hoodsies when his kids are going to need therapy.

I used to talk about "Grace" which to me was this womb of goodness that would surround someone and help them heal or find clarity or peace and help them during turbulent or sad times. When I feel like arguing with someone I try to catch my breath and allow grace to be present. Being Catholic, we refer to this as the Holy Spirit. Anyway, Catholics believe that God is the third partner in your marriage and you ask God to be present in your marriage. Even at work, trying to be a builder and searching through grace to try to find the best most constructive way to say something instead of trying to make people feel small. It's like learning how to grow while helping those around you grow as well versus being competitive.

Anyway, parents are supposed to be that graceful womb around their children and help them learn and grow in a loving environment. My friend's urge to be a rock star and chase ass has just pretty much skull fucked his kids. My wife and I just had our third miscarriage so it is hard for us to understand why someone would ever do anything to hurt their kids.

I grew up in a rich town and people were way too caught up on gossip and their appearance and I saw a lot of kids with emotional problems coming from broken families. I always wondered why these "sophisticated" people always had to make fun of the people who chose to live simple lives and made fun of Country Music and people from the "sticks" or why people who went to Church were stupid for believing that Faith could coexist with Reason. The way this happens is that if people believe in this spiritual realm of grace and it begins to fill them, then they actually conduct this energy and this energy becomes real and they govern themselves in a way where they create grace in situations, they are easy to work with, they are supportive and caring and are accepting of others beliefs because when they recognize others trying to do the right thing and be an embodiment of grace, no matter what faith or background they have, they recognize it as a kindred spirit. Our society is lost because we look to celebrities and CEO's and politicians for answers that regular folk who struggle with grace actually have.

As an architect I contemplate deeply about the important values of a project, the values that will make it successful. For some, it is durability, flow, safety, etc. Other abstract poetic and artistic thoughts enter as well and then when you go and practice the craft what manifests itself in reality is like an embodiment of those spiritual massless thoughts. When a sculptor uses material they are sculpting not only the matter but the negative space or empty space kind of like solids and voids, we design the shape of the voids as well as the solids. The house is the shell, the family fills it. Marcus Aurelius used to talk about how the quality of your thoughts would shape your life. If you value a chickie boom boom's ass or wealth over your kids happiness, your life will be messed up. Often times, when people go to Church they are trying to reconnect with the values and a community that supports each other as well as keeping them centered around the thoughts that will help them and their families. Why do people make fun of this? Why do they think these people are small minded?

Right before our last miscarriage, I got asked to be a leader on this mega project in the UAE. I was going to have to live in Abu Dhabi. I was totally psyched and put the needs of it before the birth of our first child. My wife, who is a VP, while pregnant flew 6,500 miles in one week putting proposals together and ended up with a blot clot and then had to take blood thinners. Even the week of the miscarriage, I actually went to work because I had a deadline; my mother in law flew up to be with my wife for her procedures, but I was so caught up at work I put the deadline ahead of my wife. Today, companies will eat you up and spit you the fuck out and forget you ever existed.

I'd rather some of you guys learn some of these things in better ways than I had to.

[balor123]

[balor123]

[Boston ITer]

I suspect that many folks here have their downpayments saved for a home in greater Boston.

If you're worried that eventually, inflation will eat away at it, here's a listing in Sanford Maine, roughly 2 hrs from Boston ...

http://realestate.yahoo.com/Maine/Sanford/21-bowdoin-st:2ca38087b98b87a6cbb62457817d967

That's $129K and thus, you can buy it w/o a mortgage. Why do I bring up these outlandish ideas? Here's why ... if there's no inflation, then at most, you have a place where you can retire some day and perhaps, you can pay for the upkeep/maint by renting it out for the summers. If there's inflation in 5-10 years, well, here's your long term hedge, if you're not a precious metals trader.

Then, you're a free renter and can job hop, from city to city, looking for better work each 3-5 year cycle. In the end, you just need to worry about monthly living expenses, as oppose to the specter of negative equity and/or the sting of carrying two mortgages when switching cities, the killjoy topic of any party.

[Renting in Mass]

I grew up in a town that borders Sanford! It's the pits. I believe it has the highest percentage of welfare recipients in the state. On the bright side they did recently get a new needle exchange clinic.

[Renting in Mass]

For those predicting the imminent demise of the Mass economy:

"the Massachusetts economy continues to enjoy a relatively faster recovery than the nation"

"In April, the state's unemployment rate of 7.8% was more than a full percentage point below the national rate of 9.0%."

"the Massachusetts economy continues to enjoy a relatively faster recovery than the nation due in part to its strengths in education, health care and high technology and its more highly educated population."

"the state economy grew at a more than 4.0% annualized rate in the first quarter and state tax revenues, especially from the income tax, have been consistently above projections in recent months."

[Boston ITer]

[balor123]