[General] Katrina

I have been shocked like everyone else not only by the extent of the devastation but also by the total ineptitude of the authorities in responding to this crisis. However some of the comments made by the foreign media, especially quotes from people of developing countries make me cringe. I sense a gloating which is totally and unconditionally unjustified. Yes, we (people of developing countries) have been at the receiving end of western condescension and moralizing for way too long. But that in itself should have made us wiser about not reacting to this tragedy this way. One should never kick someone when they are down. There will be a time for fault finding - and there is a lot of it to find really - but this is not it. Let the basic necessities of the affected people be taken care of. And then we can revisit this.

There was an article in Slate which mentions how media anchors are losing patience with prevaricating politicians and taking them to task on air. I was witness to one such confrontation on NPR between Robert Siegel and DHS secretary Michael Critchoff. Needless to say I am happy to see the media recovering from its 9/11 induced self-castration. This might look like a contradiction of the time-out policy I proposed above. But this media attitude has actually helped rather than hinder the rescue and rehabilitation efforts. So full credits to them.

[MBA] The curse of Indian IT

There is a discussion going on in a Businessweek forum (free registration required) about how Indian male IT applicants get shafted during the MBA app process. I have felt the frustration that many people on that board feel. After all that's one part of my application I can do absolutely nothing about now! I think part of this frustration has got to do with the difference in the way admissions work in India and in the US. In India you give some exams, do well in them and you are in. Be it engineering, medicine, law, administrative service or even business. However in the US, adcoms (supposedly) look at the entire package. So when some of us with impeccable exam taking credentials get rejected, we are lost. What the hell happened? How did 'that' person get in and I didn't. There is no way he/she has more knowledge than me. There is no way he/she has better analytical skills than me. There is no way he/she can work harder than me. So what the hell happened? And so we are back to the IT curse.

A friend of mine who is part of a BSchool's adcomm once confronted his director with this question. Why is it so difficult for Indian male IT applicants to get in? 'All of you look so same', was the reply. He was not referring to physical looks ofcourse. Infact he wasn't referring exclusively to our choice of profession either. He knew that in India engineering is not an option but a necessity for many. No, he was probably referring to life outside work as well. Aren't we monotonously homogeneous there too? Just imagine this. You and 5 of your friends from high school are meeting after a gap of 10 years. You are hanging out at your favorite joint sharing stories about what all you did during those 10 years. How varied do you think your experiences would be? Now imagine the same scenario with a group of Americans. You get the point.

This ofcourse doesn't mean that we seek homogeneity because of some genetic flaw within us. That's just how an Indian middle class person is brought up. Always seek safety first - that's what we are told. There is nothing safer than following the crowd. And that's what we do ever so diligently and successfully. That's what is slowly converting us into an IT and Biotech power. And that's what !@#$s us up when we try to get into elite BSchools.

[MBA] School selection criteria

Ok lets get down to the apping business now. So how should I shortlist the 5-6 schools I'll be applying to? Here are some criteria (in no particular order) and my thought process on them.

1. Brand name - I have been on both sides of the 'brand' fence. My undergrad college has a great brand and my grad college an average one. What I have seen is that when the job market is good the advantage of a strong 'brand' is not all that much. Also once you are in a job, the brand doesn't help/hamper you all that much either (your performance does). However in weak job markets the 'brand' can be the difference between whether you get an interview call or an automated '... your resume is in our database ...' email. And lets face it, we go groping for our schools' brands only in tight situations. So brand is goddamn important.
In addition to that I have a non-trivial chance of working outside US (in Asia most probably) after I graduate. So international brand strength is especially important to me.

Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, MIT (Int), Haas (Int)

2. Culture - Whenever I think of school culture or fit, a voice at the back of my head says, "Fit is for wussies who don't know how to adapt. You have gone through 4 years of IIT hell. You can put up with anything."
Well, the very fact that I didn't enjoy my undergrad too much makes me take this factor seriously. Or maybe I am a wussie. But in either case, I would prefer a school with a collaborative atmosphere where there is competition but not of the cut-throat, backstabbing variety. Such a school probably doesn't exist but I'd like one which tries to approach this ideal.

I'll need to visit schools to figure out their cultures. So the list below is based on general impressions and is liable to change.
Kellogg, Tuck, Duke, UCLA and ?

3. Academic focus - Do people learn anything academically in MBA? I don't know but I sure hope so. To the extent that they do, I would like the school to have a strong focus on entrepreneurship, finance and marketing departments which are good enough to give a newcomer a solid grounding (as opposed to expertise) in those subjects. The school ecosystem should also provide ample opportunities for international studies/projects.

I have to do more research before I can name schools here. So far from what I have seen I am impressed by
entrepreneurship - UCLA, MIT, Chicago, Ross (for CK Prahalad)

4. Employment stats for internationals in 2001-2002 - this is going back to my favorite nightmare - me an international student without OPT graduating into a deep recession. In the local library I found a Wall Street Journal book which lists 2002 employment stats broken up into internationals and americans. I'll compile the results and post it here sometime.

5. Location - I would really like to have me and my wife stay in the same city during my MBA. For that she needs to have a chance of getting a job around the area where I go to school. Since she is a hardware engineer, the best places for that to happen are Bay area, Austin area and Boston area in that order.

Stanford, Haas, McCombs, Harvard, MIT
To stretch it a lil bit UCLA, Wharton, Tuck (and most other east coast schools)

Ok now I have the criteria. So do I have a shortlist yet? If only it had been that simple.

[MBA] At last I see the light (or something on those lines)

When I chose my blog username I meant it to be a small private joke. I had no idea it would become a public one so soon.

Ever since I decided to apply for the Weekend program at Chicago GSB, I have been having second thoughts - not about the MBA but about the part-time aspect. I gave myself numerous reasons why part-time was the best option for me. I have a decent job, GSB is a great program, people have changed careers in that program and so on. However the incidents at my workplace (product cancellation followed by layoffs) last month served as a wakeup call. I realized that I had been going the part-time way not because I preferred it over fulltime but simply because I was scared about graduating without the cushion of a green card. However now that I have had a brush with it, for a non green card holder getting laid off in the middle of a part-time MBA program during a recession is as bad as graduating from a full-time MBA program into a recession. There it is out in the open now. I have been scarred for life by the 2001-2002 job market. I cannot take any decision without considering how I would fare in a market like that.

Anyway coming back to the original chain of thought, so what's the worst that can happen if I graduate without a Green Card. I will have to go back to India and serve as indentured labor to my creditors here. Worse things could happen to people. Hell, if I introspect hard enough I could probably come up with worse things that have happened to me!

Not to say that part-time won't absolutely work for me. I intend to get an MBA and change my career. So I will go the part-time route if I have to. But I can no longer convince myself that it's my best and 1st option. I am still living with the regret of not trying hard enough to get into a good school for my MS. In the coming few months I will make sure that I don't have similar regrets for a good fulltime MBA program.

So, watch out you hordes of MBA applicant bloggers another cliche is headed your way.

[MBA] MBA plans deferred

I have decided to defer my MBA plans by a year. Got to figure out my job situation before I start.

[General] Country bumpkin

I made a trip to Denver downtown recently for a business lunch with a couple of marketing guys from a local telecom. The non-profit I work for has tied up with them for a joint revenue generating campaign and I am in charge of the gig. Anyway this was my 1st meeting ever with marketing types - if you discount the HR people; aren't they marketing majors as well :) It was interesting to observe the way they apply pressure on you while being nice and non-confrontational. Wonder whether thats something that can be learnt or you got to be born with it.

However what stood out for me on this trip was the way I felt like a country bumpkin as I walked around downtown making my way to the restaurant. Now Denver isn't exactly the biggest city in the world nor was this the 1st time I visited its downtown. But a combination of this being my 1st business hours visit and my long stay at my tiny foothills town made all the people around me seem like aliens. It was almost as if it was 1999 again - no it was not raining millionares, that was the year I 1st came to the US.

For a moment I thought, maybe I should move to a more urban downtownish area. But then the thought of seeing this same scene every single day brought me back to earth. I'll take wide open spaces and the mountains anyday.

[Business] From good to great

I just finished a book - 'Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t' by Jim Collins. This book prepares a list of companies who showed mediocre results for a period of atleast 15 years and then suddenly started showing great results and sustained them for atleast 15 years. It then identifies and analyzes the common characteristics of these companies and tries to answer the question in its title.

The way I understand it, according to the author the most important element in making a company great is to get the right people on board and the wrong people off it. Doesn't matter whether you are in services or manufacturing. Doesn't even matter if you don't know what the hell you are going to do. People - especially the ones at the top - are what make the difference. Now there is nothing earth shattering about this observation. Haven't we heard the 'people are our greatest asset' speech a million times. However what impressed me was the way every other finding of the author was tied back to this concept.

'The good-to-great company had X while the comparison company lacked it. So why was it that way? Because of the people.'
You could substitute X with any of the author's findings and the above statements would still be true. For example, one of the key differences between the good-to-great companies and their not-so-great comparisons was that the good-to-great companies identified their goal clearly and in very simple terms and then worked towards it with unwavering determination. Now that sounds very heroic but the key question is what if the goal were wrong? Wouldn't this lack of flexibility and single minded pursuit make things even worse? Well, the answer is if you have the right people the goal will not be wrong. Because the right people will not let their ego or inability to confront hard facts come in the way of decision making.

Another observation which I found especially interesting was the one about values. According to the author every great company needs to have a well defined value system which should permeate all aspects of its business. What is interesting is that this value system need not be good or socially acceptable. Your value system could be to get everyone on the planet addicted to tobacco. But as long as you fanatically stick to your 'values' you can greatly increase your chances of delivering superior results.

I liked this book. It was easy to read (well, to listen actually), it is backed by a lot of research and most important of all it made an attempt to explain the rationale behind the results instead of just presenting them. I would recommend this to anyone who has even a passing interest in business or is just intellectually curious. If you do not have time to read entire books you can read the summary at the end or better still you could try getting that fat butt of yours off the tv couch :)

[General] A sinking ship

I have never been on a ship, let alone one that is sinking. But after the last 4 years I have a pretty good idea what it would feel like.

Joining a telecom firm in 2001 was not a smart idea to start with but then I had no real option. Ever since then not a year has passed without layoffs or restructuring as it's called around here. The most insiduous effect of the sinking ship syndrome is not the constant threat of lay offs, it is the absolute lack of change. This lack of any real turnover - of people going out and new people and ideas coming in - results in a stale, masturbatory culture where self congratulation rules, superstitions become laws and the universe outside this fiefdom is deemed inferior.

Then why did I stick around for 4 years? Fear of the unknown, good old fashioned sloth and that indomitable bastard - hope. Once you have decided to do something (or not do something as in this case) it's always easy to find a rationale - just ask Bush. And so did I, kidding myself that things would work out just fine if I just hung on tight. Now that I have decided to emerge from this cocoon and move on, it is very disconcerting to have a mirror thrust in my face. While I was spending the last 4 years congratulating myself for not getting laid off, the world has moved on. I am in that strange zone - no longer an entry level engineer not yet a senior level architect.

Hell, I just paraphrased Britney Spears - this better be rock bottom !

[General] Spot the intrepid angler

I took this photo during our Yellowstone trip over the July 4th weekend. A beer (or coke) to anyone who can spot this guy.

[India] Why so touchy?

Recently a blogger (attagirl) published a post where she wrote a humorous piece on south indian accents. She immediately became a target of outraged comments which accused her of being prejudiced. Infact one poster pledged not to marry north indian girls. (No really!!) Why are we Indians so incapable of laughing at ourselves? No, I am not asking this question simply on the basis of this incident. Infact this was a minor incident. Anyone who has even half an eye on the news must have noticed how little it takes to get people out on the streets protesting some imaginary slight. Every group in India seems to have its sacred cows. Shivaji for Shiv Sainiks, Bose for Bengalis, Quran for Shahabuddin types, the list just goes on. Are we so insecure that every harmless comment, gesture, joke is seen as a frontal assault on our identity and values?

What I find intriguing is that while I was growing up in a town in eastern India in the 80's and 90's, nothing was offlimits when it came to jokes. We could and did make fun of any language, any religion, any god and no one took any offence. So is it that we lose our sense of humour as we grow up? Or has India changed since the time I grew up there? Or do people still make fun of everything in private but are eager to outraged when the jokes are made at a public forum?