Article explaining lower wages, higher real estate in Austin

[hoffdano]

The author of that article is a "Certified Life Coach." By and large - I consider that an entirely suspect profession. I have met a few in recent history and they are largely bogus consultants who give people advice about their career and life.

Her article says property taxes are higher in Austin. I don't believe that is true for homes of equal value. Property tax rates in Katy for example are very high. In nearby Galveston rates are over 3%.

I won't argue that Houston may be a better city for many. It will have more jobs and a different mix of jobs. And it has big city amenities that Austin doesn't have.

I disagree Austin doesn't like outsiders. I think that is largely a myth. Austinites may complain about people from California, but if they become our neighbors we treat them well.

I think the wage picture is not as clear either. In software, wages for skilled professionals is comparable to Houston wages.

I am not a UT graduate. I am not a native Austinite. I am successful but not wealthy. How is that I am comfortable here. She says that couldn't happen.

[austinnerd]

Just got curious about the whole msfinancialsavvy.com site and decided to look into it a bit more, and really, as much as I disliked the article, I _really_ dislike the entire site. The above article was written by a "host editor" of the site. In their "Become a Host" section of the site, this is what they have to say:

[SIZE=2] Get Media Attention and Notiriety Now![/SIZE][SIZE=2][/SIZE][SIZE=2] You will gain notierity for your personal stance. Thousands of media personal pass
through our pages. They will read your information and you can gain notiriety. We
send content to the media on a regular basis by snail mail, this will increase your
chances of getting that desired atention. I promote the website with articles,
media contact on a regular basis, and a print newsletter. You can have your website
announced in the print newsletter, and a chance to include your articles in it, if you
are a registered member.

[/SIZE]


[SIZE=2]Do you spot all the typos and instances of bad grammar? Would you really want to take any advice from a website such as this?[/SIZE]


[SIZE=2]What's even sadder is that this is a site that purports to be a positive resource for women (and presumably women of different racial backgrounds based on their logo which has three heads in profile of varying skin tones). The "parent company" of the website also runs "blackfinancialsavvy" and "latinfinancialsavvy", neither of which have any content yet. There are some other pretty glaring examples of a lack of professionalism but I won't even go there.[/SIZE]


[SIZE=2]While I applaud their outwardly stated goal (to help and empower women by providing information geared specifically towards there interests), I must take issue with the implementation.
[/SIZE]

[austinnerd]

fyi the formatting in my post above got wonked out by the cut/paste I did from the website. I decided not to edit it so I wouldn't introduce any typos or other issues that were not present in the original material. My critique is not about their formatting anyway so please ignore it.

[jobert]

Originally Posted by hoffdano

The author of that article is a "Certified Life Coach."

I've always equated "Certified Life Coach" as "I make money off of other people's insecurities", and I bet it's a lucrative business right now.. Just like the people who claim they can eliminate your debt for a fee.

[centralaustinite]

Sounds like a content mill, they put up basically anything (clearly unedited!) and hope for hits and make $ from the ads

[Jennibc]

Originally Posted by austinnerd

Wow , I must say that in my opinion, that was not a very well written article. It's not necessarily the conclusion she comes to (Houston is better than Austin), but the absolute lack of any credible facts or information to support her claim. Instead we get personal anecdotes that are somehow extrapolated to an entire city.

As an example, she offers two personal anecdotes as to why Austin is bad for "outsiders". First her brother-in-law. He was passed over for a job which was instead given to a "local politicians sister". You know, there are various words for an event like this, and funny enough, no dictionary I could find had the word "Austin" specifically in relation to this. Plus notice how there is no hard data to support her claim, we are left to take her word that her BIL was "more qualified" and/or the "local politicians sister" less/un qualified. Next is her example of "the brother of a friend of hers" who attempted to start their own private law practice and eventually failed. Again, no evidence as to why it failed (actually no actual information at all), the "only" reason it could have failed is that he was "not from Austin". This is simply poor journalism combined with even poorer logic. Now she may be absolutely correct in her accusations, but she surely didn't provide enough evidence to support it, not even close.

Now lets look at the statement that actually framed the above example:

"Austinites don't like outsiders, and unless you are a member of a certain "group" - either wealthy, a graduate of UT, politically connected, or a native Austinite, you will run into a lot of closed doors. Don't move there if you are looking to build or advance in a career because there is only so far you can go."

Funny, I'm from out of state, and I know lots of others who are from out of state (I work in the tech industry). I happen to know several people who are now millionaires, I also know folks who are doing quite well though not at the millionaire level, and guess what, most of them are from out of state. My current manager is originally from out of state, his manager also. Two of the owners of the company I work for are outsiders. The person who started the previous company I worked for was from California, he eventually sold the company and is now enjoying his retirement. I'm not a millionaire but I'm not poor either, and I can not think of a single instance of me not being a native Texan prevented me from doing anything. I have a buddy who has been the CFO of several local companies, he is from Arizona. My point being, simple anecdotal evidence can not come close to supporting the quote from above. I could just as easily say "Come to Austin and you will be successful" based on my personal experiences.

Then there is the clumping of "the high tech sector" in with state and university jobs. While there may be an argument for wage as a percentage of cost of living not being as good here as in other cities (Silicon Valley being an often cited example), to imply that this disparity is so low to make the region unaffordable (and I'm including quality of life) for even those who are employed in that sector seems to me to be a incorrect conclusion.

Also this quote:

"Today, real-estate in Austin is overpriced"

Guess how much evidence she provides to defend her "overpriced" statement. None, zero, zip. She doesn't even bother to define what "overpriced" means. Overpriced compared to what? What price _should_ real estate be here based on her expert opinion?

That being said, some of her other statements do have a certain amount of truth/reasonableness to them. Being a nice university town, it does tend to have a relatively high concentration of "competitors" to have to deal with (for jobs, in business, for relationships, for seats at the theater, on the freeways, etc). I would also agree that from a " fine arts" standpoint, that Houston does seem to have more to offer, more so than Austin. It's a well published fact that the cost of living is indeed higher in Austin than any other major Texas metro area, no surprise there. But despite all those things, many find Austin to be an attractive place to live (notice I said many, not all, no one place is perfect for everybody and if you like Houston more, more power to you).

So from reading the little bio at the end of the article and the fact that the article wasn't some misc posting on a forum but looks to attempt to give advice, perhaps my standards are too high. But given that, I'd have to rate the article quite low for quality of content.

I am with you on this. The article read like a post on city-data. Scratch that, I've seen better documented posts on City-data.

[homeinatx]

Change the title of the thread. It is a blog not an article, and the author appears to me as fundamentally not credible. Houston is a great city and I love it, but anyone who says the MFAH is a world class art museum has no clue. Houston has world class art museums- those would be the Menil Collection and the singular magnificence that is the Rothko chapel. The MFAH is a regional museum at best which occasionally attracts excellent traveling exhibits. There is not a single significant painting in its permanent collection. Tiny Marfa is by far the most interesting visual art town in TX, even if it is mostly a mausoleum to the taste of Donald Judd. Fort Worth's Kimball is easily the best art museum in Texas. The MFAH would struggle to rank in the top 30 Art museums in the U.S. World-class?? Not so much. Madam Life Coach discovered she could make a little more cash in Houston. Good for her, but that is hardly grounds for any serious assessment.