Volpe Transportation Center Development | Kendall Sq | Cambridge

shawn said:
Don't group me and mine with those tools.
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So I guess we'll have to group you with the "grumpy old folk who look down on an entire younger generation based on inaccurate stereotypes" then.
 
chmeeee said:
So I guess we'll have to group you with the "grumpy old folk who look down on an entire younger generation based on inaccurate stereotypes" then.
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Please do.

I am in charge of Digital in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and HK for one of the world's top media agencies. This role includes a heavy load of talent scouting, new grad hiring and development, talent retention, and team structuring. I deal on a daily basis with around 300 Millennials across these markets - and to be clear, a good portion of this talent pool is out-market (i.e. Americans, Brits, Canadians, and Aussies brought in).

Their need for instant gratification and constant positive reinforcement hurts their career growth. It took me a decade to work up the ladder and hit pay dirt, but I had the patience and sense of propriety required to realize this goal. Maybe 1 in 10 of the new grads we hire understand that you're not entitled to a 6 figure salary and a Manager role 12 months out of college. Or that soft skills, like being capable of holding a client-focused, deferential conversation on the phone, are still critical. Job-hopping every 1 or 2 years is a guaranteed way of never building up the type of personal equity in a single organization generally needed to get paid well. But their impatience always gets the better of them, and it's endlessly frustrating to see. High potential talent gets wasted due to pigheadedness.

Yes, I am overgeneralizing and being somewhat hyperbolic. But only somewhat.
 
There are SO many issues with the above (e.g., starting off a post criticizing others for being self-important by talking about how much of a big shot you think you are) but I'll just say this:

Even if everything you think you've observed about the entire generation of people born after you is true and accurate, remember that you work in Tokyo for a media agency. The type of person whose career goal is to work in Japan/Korea/Taiwan/HK for a media agency is in no way representative of the population at large, and especially not the American population. This is a tiny, super eccentric, idiosyncratic group of people. And this is a huge generalization on my part (which we're apparently okay with here), but I'd believe that there is definitely a "type" of person who moves to Asia from US/Canada/UK/Aus in order to pursue a career in digital media. And I believe that what you're describing may be this "type", not their age cohort...

But anyway... fattony was right in his original post about Millennials in Kendall. The demographic that Kendall targets for its workforce is 100% the demographic that shuns car commutes in favor of walking/biking/taking public transit.
 
shawn said:
Please do.

I am in charge of Digital in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and HK for one of the world's top media agencies. This role includes a heavy load of talent scouting, new grad hiring and development, talent retention, and team structuring. I deal on a daily basis with around 300 Millennials across these markets - and to be clear, a good portion of this talent pool is out-market (i.e. Americans, Brits, Canadians, and Aussies brought in).

Their need for instant gratification and constant positive reinforcement hurts their career growth. It took me a decade to work up the ladder and hit pay dirt, but I had the patience and sense of propriety required to realize this goal. Maybe 1 in 10 of the new grads we hire understand that you're not entitled to a 6 figure salary and a Manager role 12 months out of college. Or that soft skills, like being capable of holding a client-focused, deferential conversation on the phone, are still critical. Job-hopping every 1 or 2 years is a guaranteed way of never building up the type of personal equity in a single organization generally needed to get paid well. But their impatience always gets the better of them, and it's endlessly frustrating to see. High potential talent gets wasted due to pigheadedness.

Yes, I am overgeneralizing and being somewhat hyperbolic. But only somewhat.
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True story: all of the millennials at my job make bank, probably significantly more than some schmuck in Digital Media (lol), and are extremely hard working and motivated. Therefore based on my personal anecdote, all millennials are extremely hard working and well paid.

See how easy it is to extrapolate on personal anecdotes? And how worthless of a statement it is?
 
shawn said:
Thank you. I'm a 1981 kid myself, which I've seen in numerous sources cited as the start of smallish cohort, XY of whatever you want to call it. My childhood was purely analog, rotary phones and all, but by the time I graduated high school in 2000 we were all cell phoned-up and AIMing each other nonstop.

I cannot relate to the Millennial tail or rearguard whatsoever. These are my youngest cousins and the kids I hire at the Tokyo Career Forum. These are the kids who only understand communication via digital. Who have never known a world without Google being available to answer any question, anywhere, anytime. Who talk to each other via memes.

Don't group me and mine with those tools.
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“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” -Socrates

As you can see people have been complaining about younger generations for thousands of years. Its time to stop. There is nothing new or interesting to say. What you think are insights are just you complaining about people who are younger than you. You are stereotyping a billion people over a few personal anecdotes.
 
JumboBuc said:
There are SO many issues with the above (e.g., starting off a post criticizing others for being self-important by talking about how much of a big shot you think you are) but I'll just say this:

Even if everything you think you've observed about the entire generation of people born after you is true and accurate, remember that you work in Tokyo for a media agency. The type of person whose career goal is to work in Japan/Korea/Taiwan/HK for a media agency is in no way representative of the population at large, and especially not the American population. This is a tiny, super eccentric, idiosyncratic group of people. And this is a huge generalization on my part (which we're apparently okay with here), but I'd believe that there is definitely a "type" of person who moves to Asia from US/Canada/UK/Aus in order to pursue a career in digital media. And I believe that what you're describing may be this "type", not their age cohort...

But anyway... fattony was right in his original post about Millennials in Kendall. The demographic that Kendall targets for its workforce is 100% the demographic that shuns car commutes in favor of walking/biking/taking public transit.
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If he works for a media agency that's probably why he's acutely aware of the term (or any generational label) being useless, arguably derogatory, and/or not applicable to many, if not most, of the people branded with it. A twenty year span in the current information/digital age is simply too long a period to be a single generation. It's really several generations if you must pretend people can be placed into cultural tribes based on age alone.* Of course, even previous multi-decade generations are too long. Pretending the narrow burst of baby-boomers born in the 40s right after WWII share a significant common identity with those at the tail end of that generation in the early 60s is ludicrous. You're talking about people whose childhood was the 1950s vs the late 60s and 70s. It so overly simplistic a categorization that it's meaningless if trying to make a point.

*I certainly don't think you can, and at least not in a country as large and diverse as the United States. I would never apply my experiences growing up in New England to similar aged Americans in other regions of the country. And that's without even getting into distinctions along religious and ethnic lines. If you are going to try to do it, it has to be a narrow group and one that does feel some sort of common identity.
 
So, anyone else excited about the prospects of a 500' tower in Cambridge?
 
Nice, looks like I hit a nerve.

Gentleman, I did close my offending post with "I'm overgeneralizing and being hyperbolic." I am a rational person, I do not actually think that every person or even a majority of people born just a few years after me are anywhere near as bad as their reputation says. So I apologize for that. I made that post about 10 minutes after conducting a frustrating exit interview. Someone could not understand that one month's notice means one month, not two weeks. I was using ArchBoston and this timely discussion to vent.

Jumbo, a sense of self-importance is a critical bit of awareness, btw. Especially in an agency environment. No problems there in selling yourself and looking out for number one. It's when that sense gets mixed with impatience for quick advancement without putting in the time or proper dues that's the issue.

Sloth is right about the uselessness of generation definitions from a marketing perspective, particularly digital. There's some identity equity there for Branding purposes, but that's more of a Comms problem to tackle than something you can plan media around. Because of how trackable everyone's media consumption habits are now, it is generally more effective to plan media vs behavioral segments. And media consumption behavior is far less age dependent now than it's ever been.

Anyway I know this isn't SSP and people here have a much lower tolerance for thread creep, so I'll bow out with my tail between my legs and ask, "In the Volpe PDF I saw it specifically stated that zoning would allow for a 500 foot residential tower, but only residential. Commercial would be capped to something like 250 feet. Any reason why this is so? What about a mix-use tower with a commercial base and residential upper floors?"
 
shawn said:
Anyway I know this isn't SSP and people here have a much lower tolerance for thread creep, so I'll bow out with my tail between my legs and ask, "In the Volpe PDF I saw it specifically stated that zoning would allow for a 500 foot residential tower, but only residential. Commercial would be capped to something like 250 feet. Any reason why this is so? What about a mix-use tower with a commercial base and residential upper floors?"
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Cambridge zoning regularly uses one height limitation as of right and additional height allowed with some restriction, usually requiring residential use. I wouldn't be surprised if the guideline would allow a mixed-use building up to 250, with anything over 250 required to be residential. However, given the size of the site with multiple buildings being developed together, I doubt we'll see mixed-use beyond ground floor or podium retail. The added complexity of mixed-use is unnecessary when the single developer can simply divide uses up into separate buildings.
 
Given all this new, proposed, green space I had hoped that they would extend Ames Street east to Binney/Fifth Streets. This would breakup the, mega, super block that the current proposal(s) indicate when you combine it with the BP properties. It feels like a suburban office park with residential.
 
Kinopio said:
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” -Socrates

As you can see people have been complaining about younger generations for thousands of years. Its time to stop. There is nothing new or interesting to say. What you think are insights are just you complaining about people who are younger than you. You are stereotyping a billion people over a few personal anecdotes.
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Let's not get carried away here... you provide a single example of this happening in the past. Whether or not old people have complained about the younger generations, finding a single quote (a good one, yes) hardly proves any point about a pattern. It's worth adding that within 70 years of Socrates' death, Athens ceased to exist as an independent power at all. Perhaps a more relevant parallel is the possibility that old people complain about younger ones more often when civilization is moribund.
 
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Gameguy326 said:
Traffic is a serious problem, but the answer isn't not to develop, it's to improve public transportation options and increase investment. We need the Indigo Line DMU plan now more than ever.
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Yes, that is absolutely part of the answer. Boston isn't New York.

Edit: And the public has every right to demand new developments pay for the additional infrastructure needed to make them work or limit their density. If anything it seems the opposite has happened where some new developments get unwarranted tax subsidies from existing taxpayers.
 
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FK4 said:
Let's not get carried away here... you provide a single example of this happening in the past. Whether or not old people have complained about the younger generations, finding a single quote (a good one, yes) hardly proves any point about a pattern. It's worth adding that within 70 years of Socrates' death, Athens ceased to exist as an independent power at all. Perhaps a more relevant parallel is the possibility that old people complain about younger ones more often when civilization is moribund.
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And young people always complain about old people, but the old people just don't give a damn anymore or are too deaf to listen.
 
Washington DC is not Kendall.

The prototype for Volpe was the government's scheme to get a new FBI Headquarters by having a developer build it in exchange for taking title to the existing FBI Headquarters on Pennsylvania Ave (a monument to brutalism, with deteriorating concrete to boot).

Today, after a decade of effort, the government is going to cancel the whole approach. Which puts everything back to square one, with the FBI stuck in a building it no longer wants and on a site where it would rather not be.
 
stellarfun said:
Washington DC is not Kendall.

The prototype for Volpe was the government's scheme to get a new FBI Headquarters by having a developer build it in exchange for taking title to the existing FBI Headquarters on Pennsylvania Ave (a monument to brutalism, with deteriorating concrete to boot).

Today, after a decade of effort, the government is going to cancel the whole approach. Which puts everything back to square one, with the FBI stuck in a building it no longer wants and on a site where it would rather not be.
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Could please provide some context or a link to something? Am I missing something?
 
type001 said:
Could please provide some context or a link to something? Am I missing something?
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December 2016, outlines the swap
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-by-a-trump-associate/?utm_term=.13be62dd28c0

March 2017, decision delayed
https://www.bizjournals.com/washing...-headquarters-search-put-on-hold-pending.html

July 2017, project cancelled
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...bccc2e7bfbf_story.html?utm_term=.45d22593237b

As someone a bit familiar with Washington's ways, I opined that GSA would close on Kendall before Obama left office. Otherwise, a President Trump likely would defer a decision, and order a review of the whole deal.
 
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