3 ms·

I don' think it's a bad gamble, it'll just take longer then expected to lease all of this. IMHO, I think the Boston "tech hub" has pivoted in the last 20 years

by lsllc 3y ago

I don' think it's a bad gamble, it'll just take longer then expected to lease all of this. IMHO, I think the Boston "tech hub" has pivoted in the last 20 years to biotech/life sciences. Kendall in particular seems to have more and more biotech, multiple new buildings around the Science Museum and Assembly Sq. Even Rt 128 "the computer commute" is ... well is far less techy these days (no more DEC, Prime). Who are the big s/w companies still based in Boston? EMC, Akamai? ...? My opinion is that the pivot is driven by non-competes [without a much needed CA style prohibition]. Long ago you needed expensive computer time or pricy tools to write software, but these days you don't need a VAX to write software or an expensive MSDN subscription provided by your employer. You can do it on your personal laptop at home with open source tools -- your employer's non-competes significantly stifle this sort of innovation. However, Biotech and life sciences needs expensive lab space, specialized plumbing and infrastructure and complex equipment -- you can't really cook up a new drug in your kitchen on the weekends as you might with some new software idea. So I think there's still a ton of super-smart people coming out of the universities in the Boston area, but the software folks are being drawn elsewhere (Silicon Valley), whilst the biotech ones stay because of the inertia here.

brunellus 3y ago
Agreed. Non-competes always seemed incongruous to the tech/startup zeitgeist of the last 10-15 years. But just by walking around in Boston, one can simply look at the architecture and infer it’s a parochial, old school little city. Power struggles abound, and corporations tend to dominate there. Increasingly I have come to believe that managers learned to represent their tech companies as “startups” in order to justify disorganization and less than stellar salaries.
- lsllc 3y ago
  Exactly, while the legislature let EMC "lobby away" the attempts to meaningfully reform non-competes, Gov. Healy wonders why the AI lead has slipped from the state and is now forming an AI "task force": https://whdh.com/news/gov-healey-assembles-artificial-intelligence-strategic-task-force/ https://whdh.com/news/gov-healey-assembles-artificial-intell... “Boston, in general, was one of the leading spots for AI,” said task force member Usama Fayyad, who is Executive Director of the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University. “For I would say a couple of decades, in the very beginnings of artificial intelligence.” “The governor was saying, ‘Hey, why have we let this lead slip away from our state and how do we bring it back in a big way?’ I think the state is going to identify areas of strength where we can have distinction,” he said.
  - anamax 3y ago
    Boston/Mass has let every tech "lead" for the last 60 years "slip away," so why would AI be any different? Boston has never actually had a lead, but it has had the opportunity to be competitive, especially when MIT was significantly better than Stanford, but every time things have played out the same way. And yes, there have been task forces and various govt programs and all that before. They all say and do the same things and get the same results, namely re-elected and annoyed when someone points out that they've moved on to ranting about other things, having done nothing to stop yet another tech from playing out elsewhere.

by lsllc 3y ago

brunellus 3y ago

Agreed. Non-competes always seemed incongruous to the tech/startup zeitgeist of the last 10-15 years. But just by walking around in Boston, one can simply look at the architecture and infer it’s a parochial, old school little city. Power struggles abound, and corporations tend to dominate there. Increasingly I have come to believe that managers learned to represent their tech companies as “startups” in order to justify disorganization and less than stellar salaries.

lsllc 3y ago
Exactly, while the legislature let EMC "lobby away" the attempts to meaningfully reform non-competes, Gov. Healy wonders why the AI lead has slipped from the state and is now forming an AI "task force": https://whdh.com/news/gov-healey-assembles-artificial-intelligence-strategic-task-force/ https://whdh.com/news/gov-healey-assembles-artificial-intell... “Boston, in general, was one of the leading spots for AI,” said task force member Usama Fayyad, who is Executive Director of the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University. “For I would say a couple of decades, in the very beginnings of artificial intelligence.” “The governor was saying, ‘Hey, why have we let this lead slip away from our state and how do we bring it back in a big way?’ I think the state is going to identify areas of strength where we can have distinction,” he said.
- anamax 3y ago
  Boston/Mass has let every tech "lead" for the last 60 years "slip away," so why would AI be any different? Boston has never actually had a lead, but it has had the opportunity to be competitive, especially when MIT was significantly better than Stanford, but every time things have played out the same way. And yes, there have been task forces and various govt programs and all that before. They all say and do the same things and get the same results, namely re-elected and annoyed when someone points out that they've moved on to ranting about other things, having done nothing to stop yet another tech from playing out elsewhere.