Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
October 3, 2007 at 5:08 PM in reply to: Housing prices in free fall along Mount Soledad Road in La Jolla #86871October 1, 2007 at 8:49 PM in reply to: Dow at intraday high 14,000+ on expectation of “loosening of credit crunch.” #86667
tech_junkie
ParticipantA picture is worth a thousand words.
[img_assist|nid=4997|title=sds|desc=sds|link=node|align=left|width=466|height=262]
Can you say, short squeeze?
Actually, my question is where are all the short/inverse fund players these days. Seems like they went dead silent recently? Sorry, not gloating, just trying to point out the fallacy i think most people have. They thing they can outguess the markets (both pro bulls and bears).
ParticipantOh, one other thing as someone mentioned how close people put their bigscreens. The recommended min. distance is 1.5 screen size for HDTV. So that's 7.5 feet for a 60 incher. Again that's for a 16:9 TV broadcasting in HD. I have to laugh at how many people buy these big TV's and don't bother getting HD boxes for them. Regular TV actually looks worse on them. I went to a Super Bowl party 2 years ago and didn't have the heart to tell the guy his picture looked awful.
Wrong. The recommended for a 60" plasma would be 15 feet. It's roughly a factor of 3, not 1.5. If you actually tried to watch a movie for 2 hours 7.5 feet away, would realize the terrible image quality and probably end up with a migrain.
http://www.dtvcity.com/plasmatv/plasmascreensize.html
As FLU said, most homes these days aren't designed for 60" plasmas.
ParticipantOh, one other thing as someone mentioned how close people put their bigscreens. The recommended min. distance is 1.5 screen size for HDTV. So that's 7.5 feet for a 60 incher. Again that's for a 16:9 TV broadcasting in HD. I have to laugh at how many people buy these big TV's and don't bother getting HD boxes for them. Regular TV actually looks worse on them. I went to a Super Bowl party 2 years ago and didn't have the heart to tell the guy his picture looked awful.
Wrong. The recommended for a 60" plasma would be 15 feet. It's roughly a factor of 3, not 1.5. If you actually tried to watch a movie for 2 hours 7.5 feet away, would realize the terrible image quality and probably end up with a migrain.
http://www.dtvcity.com/plasmatv/plasmascreensize.html
As FLU said, most homes these days aren't designed for 60" plasmas.
ParticipantThats exactly the way I see it Kev. I can tell you that I am seeing some anecdotal evidence of a slow down in my business which is not directly related to RE. My customers who are basically distributors are belly aching right now. I am talking with my peers in California and we are seeing a definite softening. Those numbers are alarming and they should be alarming to each sector of housing. Basically the plankton of the housing food chain is disappearing. Regarding home prices falling I keep on remembering my statistical analysis class I took in college. Prices are always a lagging indicator. You will more than likely see the steepest price drops as actual RE investment bottoms and improves. Thats what happened last time.
That's an interesting point too. See, my concern is that despite how we all want home prices to come down to make then more affordable. A huge downturn isn't just going to impact the housing industry. Small Biz/Mid biz is going to get hit. Average people are going to get hit. So, unless folks are sitting on a wand of cash in assets that aren't depreciating as fast as the dollar and don't need to worry about working, most folks that can't afford homes in good times also won't be able to afford homes in downturns too.
ParticipantThats exactly the way I see it Kev. I can tell you that I am seeing some anecdotal evidence of a slow down in my business which is not directly related to RE. My customers who are basically distributors are belly aching right now. I am talking with my peers in California and we are seeing a definite softening. Those numbers are alarming and they should be alarming to each sector of housing. Basically the plankton of the housing food chain is disappearing. Regarding home prices falling I keep on remembering my statistical analysis class I took in college. Prices are always a lagging indicator. You will more than likely see the steepest price drops as actual RE investment bottoms and improves. Thats what happened last time.
That's an interesting point too. See, my concern is that despite how we all want home prices to come down to make then more affordable. A huge downturn isn't just going to impact the housing industry. Small Biz/Mid biz is going to get hit. Average people are going to get hit. So, unless folks are sitting on a wand of cash in assets that aren't depreciating as fast as the dollar and don't need to worry about working, most folks that can't afford homes in good times also won't be able to afford homes in downturns too.
ParticipantI know where your local government put some of the money they collect. They spend over a BILLION dollars outsourcing their IT department to outsourcers who promptly import HB1 workers to dork around with expensive off-the-shelf software full of glitches. These outsources, as usual, always overpromise and under-deliver. Your tax dollars at work – same as it ever was. I love the topic of outsourcing….
Ohhh please.. Stop complaining about losing "our" jobs overseas to some H1-b holders. If you're skills are top notch their's absolutely no reason why you should be having a problem finding good work at great pay. If you're job is being outsourced, chances are you need to either (1) update your skills (2) switch into another profession or (3) switch to another company that's more in touch with the reality that only a small percentage of outsourcing actually really works in the long run. The reason why my company is hiring some h1-b's is because WE CAN'T FIND QUALIFIED people. For example, computer "programmers" that know just a language are dime a dozen. I've reviewed/interviewed a bunch of candidates that all say they "know C++, Java,C, perl etc", but then when I ask them to design a simple college grad question like a simply message queuing system, they can't do it. …But but but… They're MSFT certified, Java Certified, C++ certified….Right?…….That must mean something..Sorry, I have to say that when I see a resume that has the little Java/Msft certification logo on it, it immediately turns me off. Why? Because to be certified Java "programmer", you only need to have pass their test with 60% rate. You could guess on half the test and only know the remaining 10percent to be "certified". Besides, most companies these days don't need people that are language experts…Crap code generation tools can do a better job than hackers. And we're not exactly just porting code from one language to another. Even if we were, we WOULD outsource that to some place in india/china because it's pretty mechanical and would be dirt cheap… OR we would hire a college intern that could do that. We have basically opened development centers overseas because frankly those folks skills are top notch. And in terms of cost, hiring people in Banglore isn't exactly cheap anymore either, even in terms of U.S. dollars. Paying someone good in India is closer to $50-75/hour but is much more resonable than paying someone like $100/hr here who can't even write a simple hello world program.
Participant>Until the poor get out their guns and say, “we ain’t gonna >take it any more!”
>
>Joshthat’s why rich people hire private security guards and armed forces and drive Mercedes/BMW guard editions
Participanti don’t know about the rationality about things. But considering in the last two month I’ve my returns have been equal to my base salary, I don’t care how irrationale things are. (Though today was a day to take some profit. Hope I’m not wrong and the thing keeps going up). I never thought financial markets behaved rationally to begin with.
Home prices falling 20-30%??..Pffff… At this point…I don’t care. I’m not going to dwell on any ands, if’s, buts. if it happens, great…I’m not going to dwell on this at this point when there’s money to be made elsewhere. I’m sure though that when the stock prices have become so inflated and so irrationale, we’ll see predictions on a big crash there coming out too.
It’s sort of interesting if you look at your retail reports.
Compare your low end retailers like walmart with higher end retailers like saks. It sort of tells you the state of the economy.Walmart -3.5%
Target -6%
JC Penney Co. -4.7 %Nordstrom Inc. +3.1%
Saks +11.7%
Costco (neither high end or low end…Although trying to appeal to upper end these days)…7%Conclusion….The rich keep getting richer, the poor keep getting poorer.
ParticipantFor a new masters in ee; qualcomm pays ~75k. I have a friend who is working for intel in austin, he gets paid ~63k as a new ms in ee
That would be consistent with what I'm seeing to. We've been hiring a lot of new folks too. The thing is that top talent is hard to come by. Sad part is also these kids that are fresh from school are in a lot of ways better than a lot of old farts with bad habits.
ParticipantJust like the post above. I love going around to look at model homes. Its just fun. Will I pay $800k for a home? Actually let me rephrase. Can I afford $800k on a new home? NOPE! and I make $155k a year and currently renting.
Not trying to rain on your parade, but… $155k isn't exactly what I would consider "f u" money these days. Especially if you factor in taxes takes probably 30-40% if your on W-2s. Considering new tech grads are seeing $70-80k while when I started it was closer to $40k. Inflation plus high taxes on W-2's will kill you. But even so, you should be able to afford "a place" (possibly not a $800k), depending on your age and savings/investment. I guess the reason thing is it comes down to choice.
I've been working for 11 years and as an old fart, I'm really not counting on my salary going up much further:. I've moved in and out of management positions, and got back to the basics of what I enjoy doing which is just doing tech stuff… I'm netting about $120k base with a roughly 20% bonus each year, which probably is on the low side of things, but I've stopped arguing over 1-2% raise increases if it meant that I wouldn't have to kill myself working 60hrs. Fortunately, being and old fart with a wife that also work and both conservative in our spending habits have helped tremendously. I only wish I had not participated in the dot com bust stock market. That really set back my retirement by about 10 years. Oh well, you live and learn. Maybe I can ask Congress for a bailout. Oh wait, the real problem was that I was stupid for participating in a "irrational exuerbance". The good news is that I have Lifetime Captial Losses Carryover 🙂
ParticipantI don't know if your buddy should be bragging about his deal here.. he saved a whole 10% off peak prices just a year and a half into the (probably largest RE) crash in a place you call 4closure ranch. Surely this trend is just starting.
He's wasn't bragging about the deal. He "needs" a home for his family, doesn't want to rent for $2500/month, and isn't cash strapped with a mortgage. He merely asked me for my opinion (of which I told him the hemmorage is just starting). He was more surprised about these screwed sellers would let things get out of hand like this. Like I said, he's probably going to back out of the deal because (1) he wants a home soon (2) doesn't want to wait for the bank approval process for a short sale (they are telling him it will be weeks) (3) doesn't think 4sranch is a good area in hindsight. I think he has his eyes on Carmel Valley now.
ParticipantFor a short sale, I don’t know. It’s new to me. But I’ll find out.
April 27, 2007 at 7:37 AM in reply to: That crack some folks In Carmel Valley are smoking must be really good… #51262ParticipantIt doesn’t matter how nice this school is. The airoso unit is overpriced by about $60-70k even by current market conditions.
I would be surprised if this unit is sold eventually in the low $500k.The Crest at Del Mar unit is a great community. But it’s too inflated, epsecially with all the new apartment converts (Heights, Carmel Pointe), and opening of things like Pell Place (what a rip off)….. I wouldn’t be surprised to the Crest at Del Mar unit go for about $540k, lower if the location borders El Camino Real.
April 26, 2007 at 10:38 PM in reply to: Tech is BACK!….Housing downfall might be limited in San Diego afterall. #51255ParticipantAny other engineers care to chime in about stock options? Is your company still granting them? Has the volume of options being granted changed? Have your co-worker's attitude about the company's compensation plan changed? (my co-workers are feeling pretty well f'd over these days – management is receiving stock and options as bonuses and the line-level troops are lucky to get a 3% raise each year) The original poster of this thread is saying that options being granted to engineers are a significant source of income here in San Diego – I don't see that and I'm curious if anyone else does
My company, a small office of a larger company based in the Valley still does. Actually it does both. stock option grants + stock units. You had to negotiate them as part of your offer. Too many engineers are still way too timid and worried about being outsourced for companies to proactively give you stuff. Companies aren't telling you,that some places there's a shortage of qualified people (though if you don't make the cut, it doesn't matter what you try to negotiate). The dot-bomb converted a lot of would-be geeks into MBA grads, so there's some shortage of qualified people here and there.
-
AuthorPosts