bostonbubble.com

[Guest]

The LSE is basically Univ of Chicago or MIT economics with a lot of math electives. The difference is that it's focused exclusively on areas where the halls of power reside. I believe they host half of London University's overall law offerings in addition to economics and finance. Big wigs like Soros, JFK, Rockefeller, a slew of parliament members, and PMs had attended for their masters after undergrad at a Oxbridge or Ivy. In general, that's a different identity from that of a world class science and engineering school which wouldn't attract any dignitaries. I can't imagine a Kennedy attending an MIT aerospace engineering class but instead, being across the street at Phi Beta Epsilon partying it up with the Wellesley visitors.

[john p]

I am very out of my range here, so please take what I say with a grain of salt. If you write code, you still deserve the love. You freaking brain.

I do see it interesting that although the curriculum is most likely very similar among most business schools people make blind projections about the graduates as if a Sloan guy will be the one who'll have the technical capacity. I'd like to see the resumes of the Sloan professors; I wonder how many of them engineers are.

I guess that's what people pay for acquiring a reputation that precedes you whether it is true or not.

I don't know if you've seen the recent Harvard Study of the state of Housing. It was prepared by the Graduate school of Design (architecture and landscape architecture) and the Kennedy School (politics). It seems that it has numbers that are a couple of years old (typical Harvard study, Monday morning quarterback never in time to help when the page is blank). Anyway, why didn't they ask any of the Business School guys to weigh in? What do politicians or designers know about financial fundamentals? The GSD has trouble turning out well rounded architects; I wonder if they would admit that they are out of their range. I guess the Harvard Brand gets stamped on a lot of things...

The prior "Harvard" tag on the export to India article in a prior post was just from a doctoral thesis design student. I wonder if the kid ever designed anything that has ever been built. FYI, to get a building permit, you need a Registered Professional to stamp permit drawings and although the professional needs to be licensed in the area having jurisdiction, and the work doesn't need to be done there, it certainly has to be done under the supervision of the registered architect that stamps the drawings. This may be loosely enforced, but when they are doing it in India, that really screams out loud how obnoxiously illegal it is. I am annoyed that the American Institute of Architects (whom I pay a lot of money to be a member) and the Harvard kid didn't comment on how unprofessional, and potentially dangerous this practice is. I guess we need to have a building catastrophe and then wait a couple of years to hear from Harvard. The trouble is that that catastrophe has already happened, The MGM Grand's fire which was a result of the poor details that didn't stop the flow of smoke which killed all the people. These little time consuming details like fire stopping, fire safing, fire dampers on mechanical ducts, fire separations, smoke exhaust systems, and all that junk we want to off shore is the stuff that caused the catastrophe. I learned that in my professional training. If these "designers" ever decided to get on the professional track, they would have known about the MGM Grand and would have piped in accordingly. This is as bad as a Harvard Lawyer not knowing the Miranda Case. Academics are a joke for the most part when it comes to professionalism, but the AIA not weighing in, that is just so bad.

[Guest]

This whole thread kinda sucks

And it's not anything against anyone here but the topic matter and how our society's become an MBA run banana republic with places like London Economics being viewed as some educational and elite haven for globalists and VIP traders but then science schools being trashed for not producing an older boys network of bankers and politicians instead of creative technology workers. And the sad thing is that that's the game and everyone knows it but is powerless to stop the train from running itself off the cliff.

[MIT Guest]

One point of hope to consider - when did all these MIT grads decide to focus on business or engineering? The numbers that were cited here were for recent grads, so if they made the decision 4 or 5 years ago, that was in the trough of the dotcom bust and probably skewed a lot of choices. If I had been entering school around that time I may have said "oh crap, all software development is heading to India and I had better find something else to do." In the last year or two, however, demand for software engineers at least has really surged and things don't look so dire (though it is still enough of a risk that I refuse to use my current salary when calculating how much I can afford when buying a house). I wouldn't be surprised if a few years from now the composition of the graduating class had more engineers.

[john p]

to the guest: If you're a man of action, this stuff will build your confidence to step forward.

I came from a rich town and I've seen some real boneheads get great opportunities in the financial sector. Connections... If you have a decent fundamental base, tear a few pages out of some of the other guy's playbook and you'll have it all. It will be painful to learn about something that is hard to swallow and flies in the face of the fundamental knowledge you have, but it is the reality we live in and the more clear you can observe reality the better off you are, hell, observing reality is scientific right?

[Guest]

[john p]

Just like they can acquire a techie, you can acquire a blueblood.

[Guest]

[john p]

That's easy take a page out of this guy's book.

http://bubba.org/nlcv/images/bathrobe.jpg

[john p]

dang it.

http://photos23.flickr.com/33545799_d64f5af2dd_m.jpg

Ohh, here it is baby,

http://www.geocities.com/cousin_eddie2000/

[Guest]

Ok, so the conclusion is that real estate in eastern Massachusetts will be in a permanent bear market, much like it is in Detroit today or Houston (after the mid-80s oil bust) because MITers will not be creating new industries but instead will be shuttling down to NYC to place calls and puts on stocks, bonds, commodities, and currencies for i-banks, HFs, and management consulting to private equity firms. Now that's a doomsday scenario and highly unlikely because MIT/Harvard will always be breeding new companies even though they might not hire in the numbers like they did in the past.

[john p]

YOU GOT IT!!

Great article in the Herald:

http://news.bostonherald.com/editorial/view.bg?articleid=1004670

This kind of talks about how people get so absorbed about something that doesn't affect the majority of people. It gets at assessing the scale of an issue, which is what I am deriving out of your note. This, I also think is right to a great degree. Think about how we react when we look at the Dow even though it is a very tiny segment of the market.

I think that it is one of those tidbits that "points to the fact that...” Look at it like the worst Major League Baseball Player most likely makes more than some of the best marathoners in the world. It points to two things: the fact that we don't value engineers like we do the financials, and second: there isn't much opportunity for engineers here. Now what if engineers were more likely to be able to solve many of the challenges ahead of us? Engineers are the ones with the machetes and they create the cutting edge. The financial sector does a fabulous job self promoting but the amount they are sucking out of us is parasitic. I think that they will be like the mosquito that sucks and sucks until it explodes.

Seriously and most importantly, I'd bet that at Raytheon, one or two top engineers provides the work for about at least 75 overhead people maybe more. Without those top engineers, hundreds and hundreds of support staff won't have jobs. Even in the Military, for every one person who see’s actual combat, how many support personal are out there? Take a guess.

[john p]

Here's a clue:

It's called the "Tooth to Tail Ratio".

[Guest]

[India Guest]