Monday, February 27, 2012

Cheat sheet to survive the rigour of a Business School


Here is a cheat sheet which encapsulates few ways to survive the rigour of a business school and yet come out of the journey satisfied and rejuvenated.

  • Most important of all..don't worry too much about final placements...they just happen..you can't plan it out.If your peers sneer at you,show your middle finger,ignore and keep trying.
  • If you feel you are in the bottom 30-40 percentile of the batch..don't worry.You have higher chance of landing yourself with a envious job than the toppers.
  • Randomness is the truth of life.When a Professor gives you random grades..never question it.Nature has been designed that way.The job that you get,the first crush that you have,the girl that you marry and the way you'll die is highly likely to be a random phenomenon.
  • If you haven't landed up with a cool summer internship...there is reason to cheer.A small analysis of historical figure will prove that in general the guys to be placed last in summers are the ones who are the first to be placed in final placements.
  • If you don't have the skills to do DCP(Desperate class participation)..don't panic.People doing DCP rarely top.Go to the last bench and watch these monkeys performing and have fun!
  • Don't have too many attachments with worldly objects.Have a peaceful 10 hours of sleep everyday,go for 4-5 kms of jogging and do what you feel like.
  • No point running after girls if that's not your core competence.Stick to what you do best...be it sleeping..watching movies..reading..coding..researching etc.
  • There are numerous ways to earn pocket money while your still in college.Instead of killing all your time doing non-value activities,look out for part time work or other free-lancing opportunities in your cities.It's a cool way to have industry experience and make enough money to have a lavish lifestyle while still in college.Other way is to win competitions but then not all end up winning the big ones!
  • Always remember its about 16 years of education that matters,not just 2 year of MBA.What you are today is the culmination of the quality of school and engineering college you have attended.B-school is just a finishing school.
Disclaimer:Try at your own risk :)

NIT Hamirpur(H.P) campus

250 acres lush green campus of NIT Hamirpur(H.P) ...arguably the most beautiful of all engineering campuses in India.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

All is NOT well!!!

Term 6 of MBA is the most awaited term for any B-school guy.You get placed and the feeling of
having successfully survived the rigour of the B-school and landing up with a cool job gives you a
high...bole tho on cloud 9.Like any one else,I also had planned a lot many things to do in term 6 like sleeping 12-15 hrs a day,2-3 movies a day,atleast 2 trips a week etc.But from the day I am placed,nothing going right.I am extremely satisfied with the job that I have got but all my electronic gadgets seem to have suddenly revolted.



The first big gadget to have given me nightmare is the one with whom I spend most of day and night,to whom I am committed like no one else...that's my laptop.But my laptop ditched me with infidelity.Just when I needed it the most to watch all the sitcoms and movies,the sound stopped coming either from the inbuilt speaker or the headphones.My laptop didn't support windows 7.At first it really looked like a chronic driver issues but it was not.For the next one week all I was doing was to download the drivers and trying other various version of windows and ubuntu.(linux).I had in a way gobbled up all the threads of forums which discusses sound issues on compaq laptop with windows.Even linux proved equally unfaithful.It wasn't a sound processor issue as the drivers in device manager looked ok.Finally I upgraded my BIOS and went for some tricks like removing laptop battery discharging the laptop completely and then plugging in again and reinstalling the drivers.Now this step worked! Though my speakers didn't work but my headphones did!I was relieved! But again after a few days,the holder of LCD cracked and I had to patch it with a leuckoplast...a typical home made desi solution! Don't want to shell even a single penny on my laptop...till buy a new one!



The very next day my one of the prized possessions,my android device,Samsung galaxy fit GT-5670 gave in.It's just 6 months old and it's been infested with hell lot of problems.It faced a charger problem and I had it replaced from the service centre.Just a week after that again I faced a similar issue.Now this time the service centre guy gave me a shocker.He said the mother board needs to be replaced and it would cost around 75% of the cost of my Samsung galaxy fit.After talking to the manager,I finally was assured the replacement would be done free of cost.But its been close to 3 weeks,I haven't got my device back.The service centre people are grossly unprofessional and have no service metric in place to judge how efficient is their customer service.Till now I have been a very well behaved customer but I guess its time to change colors.

I had been pick pocketed twice in 2 year in Mumbai in which I lost 2 cell phones in 2 years,too much for poor software engineer.It needed a lot of guts to buy a smartphone in next 1 year but again it proved to be piece of junk! I had got it from from letsbuy.com at a discount of 10% but the experience till now has been horrible.The most satisfying experience so far has been that of Nokia 1208.

Really simple things in life are beautiful and faithful.Just like human beings,so in electronic gadgets all that are flashy and a piece of beauty eventually ditch you!


Saturday, February 25, 2012

IT industry ain't bad!!



It's a fad in B-school to look down up jobs offered in IT.In the first year,every one wants to join an i-bank or work for a fmcg major or work for the management consulting biggies!!

But then everything that you want is not what you get!

Lets face it! More than half of the engineering and management graduates would be jobless had there been no hiring in IT industry.It's more of a fad than a conscious decision to work in a given industry or a given profile.Most of the people don't have the leeway and privilege to work in their dream profiles and companies.

Seniors are like preachers and juniors are like disciples.They blindly take whatever is thrown at them from their friends,seniors or some distant relative working in some profile and industry
and making big money.

The truth in most campuses(other than the top 5) is:

  • Some big banks come but they hire you in some backend crap profile and market the job as an essential part of the company's existence. Candidates with CFA and FRM or even a major in finance are definitely overqualified for the job.It's really amazing how a person majoring in HR and a person majoring in finance with all the fancy certifications end up with the same profile :)But then as students we fail to appreciate the importance of a job if its not what we studied or lacks any quantitative stuff!But if you closely track the career path of people who have gone in such profile are also doing well because as a manager you really have to manage your people and your project,though in the initial few years getting along with the monotonous no brain type work is challenging.
  • Every time there is an alumni talk by a any alumni from sales/finance side,at the drop of the hat they try to project IT job as a "commodity" and "nothing special" type.But not all engineers doing MBA would like selling under wears,handwash,coldrinks etc.In fact majority of them don't.Again most of the people get lured because sales/marketing career offer faster growth and is seen as sure shot ticket to a future CEO post.But then most of these don't become CEO.

The truth is IT is a cool industry to work.Sit in a KT-you have diet coke,imported tissue paper,your favourite cream and butter biscuits.You get to dine in the best 5 star and 7 star hotels during the annual town hall meetings,you get free tickets to essel world and you have 2 days a week off to chill and watch your favourite movies. You get to travel exotic places and get to work in the best work environment.

It's again a myth that if you are in IT you can't break into the CXO type jobs as if you see many cases of IT firms which are headed by people who joined as a MT or a s/w engineer and went on to become a CEO.

It's important to do what you are good at than what you would like doing,just because other are doing the same.Being mediocre one has to fight to remain afloat.Excellence fetches money not a particular industry!!!

The footnote is IT ain't bad...it's just projected to be so!!