GeekMBA360

Off the grid

GeekMBA360 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:22:21 +0000

I haven’t made any post for a few days because I was completely “off the grid”. We spent a few days in a small resort near Port Townsend in the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. No Internet connections, no emails, no computer access, and no web surfing.

We swam, played tennis, and spend some quiet time sitting there, reading, and doing nothing.

I felt relaxed, peaceful, and re-charged. I think for any knowledge worker who spends a lot of time in front of computer and on the internet, he/she should take an internet holiday once every six months (or even more frequently).

In the age of Twitter, Facebook and Instant Messenger, a lot of folks are struggling to find quality quiet time for themselves without interruption.

Turn off your computer, get off the internet, go out for a walk, chat with someone in person, put away your iPhone/Blackberry/Smart Phone, start an “media diet” for a few days – you’ll find peace, new perspectives, and sanity.

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Autotrader.com lays off 220 today

GeekMBA360 — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:26:39 +0000

Autotrader.com in Atlanta, GA lays off 220 today – reported by a fellow reader from his iPhone. Thanks!

If you’re a fellow autotrader.com employee who is visiting this site for the first time, below are some helpful articles:

Seven things you should do immediately after layoff

Are you laid off? — A 5-day Personal Boot camp

An inspiring story of starting a business during financial crisis and finding a way to beat layoffs

Cover letter for laid off worker

A book I always turn to when I look for a job

Eight Tips for job hunting in a difficult economic environment

What is the most effective way to network?

How a house cleaner finds new opportunity to beat recession

Ten things you should do before layoff

Five alternative careers for MBAs

GeekMBA360 — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:23:43 +0000

This post is inspired by a tweet I came across a few days ago — @batess I’d like to see a blog post about alternative career choices for MBA graduates.

When I was attending business school, one thing I enjoyed the least was the herd-like mentality –- there was tremendous amount of peer pressure to follow the crowed to pursue one of the traditional MBA career paths such as investment banking, management consulting, brand management, or high tech. So, I have developed a very healthy respect for MBAs who have taken the road less travelled by pursuing an “alternative” career path.

I supposed it’s hard to define “alternative”. For the sake for this article, when I say “alternative career choices”, I mean the career choices that are not typical for an MBA graduate.

Below is my list of five alternative career choices some MBAs have taken.

Sports Analytics

If you’ve read Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, you know how important a role data analytics could play in drafting professional athletes and running a pro sports team. In this year’s NBA playoff, Houston Rocket was the only team who took the eventual champion L.A. Lakers to a game 7. But, do you know that the Houston Rocket is run by a general Manager who has never played professional basketball, who has an undergraduate degree in computer science, and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Business? His name is Daryl Morey, who puts his faith in numbers. Now he just needs to get them to add up to another title. MIT Sloan even offers a Sports Analytics Conference.

Improve public education

Take on full-time managerial role in a school district or charter management organization. The prestigious Broad Residency is a “two-year leadership development program that places participants into full-time high-level managerial positions in school districts and charter management organizations (CMOs), where they can have an immediate impact on the education of America’s students.” 89% of Broad Residency alumni continue to work in public education, and 72% of alumni work in district or CMOs.

Become a franchisee

According to this New York Times article, an increasing number of business school graduates and corporate executives are going into low-tech franchises like Dukin’s Donuts and gas station. I happened to know one of the MBAs mentioned in the article – running a franchise could be very lucrative and providing an alternative income stream to supplement (or even replace) the not-so-stable corporate gig.

Start your own non-profit organization to change the world

John Wood, a Kellogg MBA and an overworked Microsoft executive, founded Room to Read, which strives to provide children access to education, one child at a time, one school at a time, and one village at a time. John Wood also wrote a great book, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, talking about his experience of starting and running Room to Read. It was a very inspirational read.

Strike on your own

From laid-off banker to Wall Street tour guide: Andrew Luan is a MIT Sloan graduate. He was a former vice president at Deutsche Bank who traded CDOs. After getting laid off, he started Wall Street Experience LLC, which offers the Financial Crisis Tour.

Given the shortage of jobs, it’s conceivable that more and more MBAs will choose to strike on their own.

The not-alternative-any-more-career-choice: I intentionally left out working for the US Federal Government as an alternative career choice for MBA – more and more MBAs will be working for the US Government. It’s going “mainstream”.

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Your relationship with your parents have a lot to do with your career success

GeekMBA360 — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:06:18 +0000

I was not a happy child when I grew up. I was the only child in the family. I was super obedient. I had always done well in school. My parents would tell their friends that I never caused them any trouble.

But, deep inside, I wasn’t a very happy boy. I was keenly aware of it, but I was too afraid to question. I didn’t like how my parents were treating me:

My parents would always pick the clothes for me. I remembered once my mother picked this ugly grayish exercise outfit for me. When I showed up at my physical education class, all of my classmates were laughing at me. I knew when we bought the clothes at the store, it wouldn’t be popular among my peers. But, my mother always decided for me.
My mother would open mails addressed to me without my permission. I remembered I hated it when I was in high school.
When my parents made a sacrifice or did me a favor, they would always say to me: "we’ve done so much for you. When we got older, you must return the favor". There always seemed to be something attached to whatever they did to me. I was so disgusted about the guilt trips that I refused to ask for their help.
My mother would go to school to talk to my teachers without giving me any advance notice. When I got home, she would say that "I just talked to your teacher today. I’d like to have a serious conversation with you". Usually I’d be really confused, surprised and scared — It wasn’t like I did something wrong. I wasn’t sure why my mother went to talk to my teacher, and I wasn’t sure why "she wanted to have a serious conversation."
Until my teenage years, my family lived a comfortable middle-class life in another country. But, my dad had always had the ambition to immigrate to the United States to fulfill his American Dream. For the first few years in the United States, life was very tough. I would hear my Dad complaining to his friends: "we came here for our kid. If it’s for us, we would have stayed". I knew it wasn’t true because I had overheard conversations between my parents — my father really wanted to get to the United States. It’d be good for my education, but it wasn’t the primary reason for them to come to the States.

As you can see, I carried a lot of pressure, guilt, and stress while I was growing up.

I was also taught that my parents were right, always right — I wasn’t supposed to question what they did. I was constantly struggling with this internal conflict — my gut was telling me that something was not right, but I couldn’t question my parents. It was hard.

Going to college at Berkeley was a huge step for me since I finally got the chance to live by myself. It was incredibly liberating.

I only went home to see parents every few weeks. I hated to go home, and now I had a legitimate excuse — "I’m busy with school work".
I was fiercely independent. I’m proud to say that I worked all three summers during my college years, and I paid every single penny of my college expenses myself (tuition, housing, living expenses, etc.) I didn’t want to feel guilty again.
I lived on my own and kept everything away from my parents. My parents would not longer see my mails. In fact, they knew very little about me when I was in college — I didn’t like the scrutiny from them, so I kept everything away from them. They didn’t know who my friends were. They didn’t know what I did for extracurricular activities. They only knew I was doing well in school, and I was healthy and alive.
I also found an intellectual home at Berkeley. In addition to take Computer Science classes, I took many social science and humanity classes such as sociology, ethnic studies, architecture, etc. These "soft disciplines" really helped me to develop my own critical thinking skills. I learn to reflect, introspect, and think critically.

When I was graduating, I thought I was ready to dominate the world. I got three great job offers, but I didn’t know which offer I wanted to take.

All of them looked good. More importantly, I didn’t know what I wanted. I suddenly realized that throughout my life, I was not given the opportunity to make a lot of choices. My parents were very strict, and they would always make the decision for me.

It was a painful realization. I was flipping a coin in my room to decide which job offer I should take. In the end, fortunately, I made the right choice to pick a great employer.

This was a wake-up call. I started training myself to know what I want and make decisions.

When I ate out with friends, I made sure that I read the menu, figured out what I really wanted, and then ordered. In the past, I might have randomly picked one or order what others have ordered.
When I went shopping for clothes, I would always ask myself "what do I want", and then picked the one accordingly
At work, I would always make a recommendation. I didn’t give "maybe this, maybe that" answers.
etc.

I’m much better at making decisions today. I’m also much better at knowing what I want. It’s actually not that hard to figure it out because deep in my heart, I know what I want. It’s just that I wasn’t given the opportunity to do so in the past.

About ten years ago, when I was browsing books in the Border’s bookstore on University Ave in Palo Alto, CA, I saw a book called If You Had Controlling Parents: How to Make Peace with Your Past and Take Your Place in the World. I was so excited about the book that I stayed in the bookstore for a long time and finished reading the book!

I cried. I just felt that someone actually understood all of my problems in the past. It’s okay to feel that way I had felt. In fact, when I did the exercise in the book, I got a pretty high score, which meant I had "highly controlling parents".

Why am I telling you this very personal story? I thought long and hard before I wrote this blog post. I didn’t particular enjoy talking about my personal life in the public. But, I have come across so many people who have problems with their parents that I’m compelled to share this story with you.

What I learned is that your relationship with your parents will have a lot to do with your career success. You cannot run away from the problems with your parents. You somehow have to reach peace with yourself, and address the problems. Otherwise, the problems with your parents will come back you to haunt you some point during your career.

Over the years, I have talked to people who are in their 40s, 50s, or even 60s who still have problems with their parents although in some cases their parents have passed away. Although problems with parents might be caused by external circumstances, the are internal to each individual — i.e. they’re all in people’s minds. If you don’t take proactive steps to address the problems, they will still be there even after your parents are dead.

How sad is it to let your problems with your parents to ruin your life and career?! If you have problems with you parents, be proactive and take actions now.

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For at least one search term, Bing works much better than Google

GeekMBA360 — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:06:38 +0000

Although I’ve been critical of Microsoft in the past, I have to say that I’m somewhat impressed by Bing.

I’m a fan of the PBS “Great American Scenic Railroads ” series. I have been to the official web site (www.gsrj.com) before, but I forgot to bookmark it.

Last night, I searched “Great American Scenic Railroads” on Google. I couldn’t find the official site on the first 3 pages of the search results. In fact, I stopped browsing through the search result pages since most of the search results are online shops who sell the Great American Scenic Railroads DVDs.

For the first time in a long time, I gave up on Google. I went to Bing.com, entered the exact search keywords “Great American Scenic Railroads”.

The official web site was returned as #1 search result. That’s exactly what I was looking for.

Why is Google not showing the official site? Is it because of search engine optimization (SEO) done by all of the online sellers who’re gaming for the top spots on the search result pages?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt commented on Bing recently: “"It’s not the first entry for Microsoft. They do this about once a year.” I think Google needs to take Bing and Microsoft more seriously. Microsoft had a lot of problems over the past few years and failed many times. But, Microsoft is a very resilient company. It seems to be at its best when its back is against the wall. Remember the browser war between Netscape and Microsoft? Microsoft kept trying, and eventually got it right.

Don’t count Microsoft out yet in the search war.

Related posts:

Excellent resources:

IPO shouldn’t be the goal for a start-up

GeekMBA360 — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:06:37 +0000

A friend of mine started a company a few years ago. He quickly built up the company. Whenever I asked him how his company was doing, he always told me that their goal was to go public on the NASDAQ in a few years.

They had good revenue growth. They had impressive venture capital funding. But, I have been skeptical about their goal of going public. I’ve always felt that going public should be a by-product of a company’s success, but it shouldn’t be the goal for the company.

Let me tell you a story.

During the dot com bubble, two years out of college, I joined a "high profile" start-up. It received hundreds of millions of venture capital funding. Its board members consisted of several prominent venture capitalists. Its founder was a serial entrepreneur who sold his previous company for several hundred million dollars in the early days of dot com era.

The founder personally signed off on each new hire. When he was talking to me, he told me that he felt he was like John Elway, the legendary pro-football hall-of-fame quarterback of the Denver Broncos. John Elway was a great player for many years, but he never won any championship. He kept playing until his late 30’s. Eventually he won two super bowls. Similarly, for the founder, although he had made a lot of money by selling his previous start-up, he still needed the "ring"– for him, that meant to take a company IPO.

My hiring manager, a graduate of Harvard and Stanford Business School, told me that "it’s a different era now. Going public is all about telling a story. The rules have changed."

So, for the next two years, this company focused on having an IPO. It ended up selling itself at an incredibly cheap price after burning through almost $100 million in venture funding — for every share an employee has, he/she got $0.0001. For example, a senior-manager had 10,000 shares, and he got $1 back. This is a true story.

To make a start-up successful, management needs to focus on providing a product/service that address customer needs. It needs to focus on sales and profit. It needs focus on building the right company culture. If a start-up gets product, sales, profit and company culture right, a successful exit such as buy-out or IPO would be the icing on the cake.

IPO is a financing event that allows company to raise capital for expansion and operating purposes. It’s a byproduct of the company’s growth and success.

Going back to my friend’s company, they’re still doing all right, but they haven’t had their IPO. Competitive situation has changed. They had to go back to the drawing board, and change their product line-up. There is still a long way to go for having an IPO.

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Excellent resources:

Is London Business School (LBS) Admission Office full of themselves?

GeekMBA360 — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:46:33 +0000

One reader of this blog recently emailed me for advice. He had applied several top business schools. Recently, he received the official "ding letter" from London Business School. He was very disappointed since he put in a lot of time and effort into it.

But, what made him feel even worse was the tone and content of the ding letter — not only they informed him that LBS won’t offer him a space on the MBA program, they also told him not to apply again.

The reader wasn’t sure if he understood the message correctly, so he emailed the LBS admission office again, asking them to clarify if they didn’t want him to apply again. And he got a confirmation.

This is someone who has spent a lot of time, money and effort on his application. LBS said that they had informed a small group of applicants to reapply next year — a lot of things could change in a year. What made LBS to decide that they knew which candidate should apply next year? Why not give everyone a chance?

A lot of factors could go into an application. An applicant might simply did a very poor job to market himself/herself. He/she could do much better in the following year.

The application process is difficult. Every candidate puts in a lot of effort. They deserve better treatment from admission offices.

Applicants deserve more humility and respect from LBS admission office. For me, the sheer arrogance and tasteless ding letter from LBS admission is simply embarrassing.

Below are the initial ding letter from LBS, and a subsequent email from LBS. Names have been removed to protect confidentiality. Also, I’ve bolded certain sentences.

Initial Ding Letter from London Business School (LBS):

From:
To:
Sent: Thursday, June 4, 2009
Subject: London Business School Decision

Dear
Thank you for submitting your application for a place on the London Business School Full-time MBA Programme commencing in August 2009 (MBA2011).

Members of the MBA Admissions Committee have now carefully considered your application. It is with regret that we have been asked by the Committee to inform you that they are not able to offer you a place on the MBA Programme this year. The applicant pool has again been of an extremely high calibre, and consequently competition has been very rigorous.

The MBA Admissions Committee has asked me to advise you that their current decision is final and confidential. Regrettably, no appeals can be considered, and we are unable to provide individual feedback. We have included some general feedback for you below.

Admissions for the London Business School MBA are very competitive this year and we have to make some really tough decisions. We are very sorry to disappoint you and wish you every success in the future. There are however other options detailed below you may like to consider.

Yours sincerely,
MBA Marketing & Admissions Team
London Business School

Should I reapply?
This is a decision for you, but you should know that we do specifically invite those candidates we actively wish to reapply. You should also note that competition for places is tough each year.

You may like to consider applying for one of the other world-class programmes offered by London Business School , such as those available through our Executive Education portfolio. In particular, our Emerging Leaders Programme may be of interest to you. This intensive three week programme is designed for high potential individuals in, or about to take on, their first management role, and who are looking to fast-track their career progression. For information on applying for this or one of our other Executive Education programmes, contact Tim Pearson in our Client Services Team on +44 (0)20 7000 7391 or email elp@london.edu

How do I reapply?
If you do intend to reapply, you must complete a new application and send it to us with the correct application fee. We can only hold original transcripts and references from your first application for one year. To improve your chances of admission the new application must highlight aspects of personal and professional growth or list improvements made in areas of academic weakness. Unfortunately we are unable to predict your chances of admission if you make a new application, as the applicant pool changes from year to year. Please remember that competition for places is intense and we have to make some difficult choices.

Applicant emailed LBS admission asking for clarification

From: Applicant
To:
Subject: Re: London Business School Decision

Since there is no invitation for me to reapply, does it mean I am not considered a competitive candidate?

LBS Reply after Applicant asked for clarification

Dear

I am sorry that you received disappointing news in relation to your MBA2011 application to London Business School .

I’m afraid that we cannot give any personalised feedback on applications and, in fairness to all candidates, will not make any exception to this rule. I think you can appreciate that the large number of applications we receive does not allow us to give individualised comments on admissions decisions. It is also the Admissions Committee’s policy not to discuss their decisions any further as they are final and without appeal.

You are of course welcome to re-apply next year but please bear in mind that we do ask a small number of candidates to re-apply when sending out our admission decisions if we deem their application to be promising. As the selection is very competitive, we recommend that you only re-apply to the School if you have been invited to do so and if there has been a major change to your application or you can demonstrate a significant progress in your career.

Best of luck with all your future endeavours,

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Would Microsoft have been better off if DOJ broke Microsoft into pieces

GeekMBA360 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:20:24 +0000

I continued to receive feedback from laid-off Microsoft employees after I published Microsoft Laid-off Employees spoke up! — Layoff Satisfaction Survey Results – Microsoft and Microsoft second round layoff satisfaction survey results.

Here is a few thoughtful comments that caught my attention:

"Microsoft should have let the DOJ break the company in pieces years ago. It would have revitalized senior managers. At this point it will take a radical change in replacing senior managers with leaders; then doing a thoughtful cull of middle management."
"MS has become too politically and partial to people who are good / honest / integrity / loyal etc. It needs to look within and have a major overhauling of people and Management.
“This is not MS I saw during Bill Gates time which had honesty, Integrity, respect & trust of one another. It was a class apart and there was a feeling of pride which does not exist today.”

Would Microsoft have been better off if Department of Justice broke it into pieces? I can see several advantages:

I feel that Microsoft could have done a better job, and get to a more dominant position if they could be more focused in the enterprise business. Enterprise software business is a cash cow. Microsoft had acquired Great Plain for the middle-tier enterprise software market. But, I think they could do better against big players in the enterprise software space such as Oracle, SAP, etc. Let’s say Microsoft spin off enterprise software related business units into a separate company, it could potentially be more focused and more aggressive in attacking the enterprise software market.
There would be less subsidies for under-performing, money-losing business units such as MSN.
There would be multiple CEOs. Who knows – someone might do a better job than Steve has done.

What do you think? Would Microsoft have been better off if DOJ broke Microsoft into pieces?

Excellent resources:

Please watch this video if you want to hear an honest and insightful assessment of where our economy is headed

GeekMBA360 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:11:31 +0000

A decade ago while I was a college senior, I read Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street . It made me realize that I didn’t want to work in investment banking while many of my classmates were fighting for banking jobs. His next book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, was another gem.

Fareed Zakari of the CNN GPS program interviewed Michael Lewis yesterday. Here is a few quotes of Michael Lewis on our economy:

“I think that we are in for another day of reckoning down the road. I just don’t know when it is.”

“I think that they haven’t even properly evaluated the institutions. They haven’t been honest about what these institutions have on their books. They’ve had phony stress tests.”

“So, we’re in a kind of, I think, right now, in a period where there’s a false sense that it’s over, that the crisis is passed. I don’t think the crisis is passed.”

PLEASE watch this interview.

Yahoo Mail is a great example of bad product management

GeekMBA360 — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:19:00 +0000

I sincerely hope that someone in Yahoo’s product management organization will see this post. Or, please forward this post to Carol Bartz.

By the way, I’m not alone on this – Henry Blodget had also written “Deal Carol Bartz: You Need to Fix Yahoo Mail.” I agree with most of Henry’s points. Additionally, I would like to tell you a few of my own pain points of using Yahoo Mail.

I have been using Yahoo Mail since 1995. If I’m not mistaken, I was one of the "early adopter" of Yahoo Mail. I remembered I read an article on the San Francisco Chronicle, talking about two graduate students from Stanford University created an online directory, and had recently got funding. I checked out their site, and immediately became a regular user of the site.

Over the years Yahoo! has a lot of up-and-downs. But, I have remained a loyal user of Yahoo email. Lately, I have to admit that I’m thinking about closing my Yahoo Mail account and moving everything to Gmail.

Let me tell you why.

I have my spam filter turned on, but the amount of spam emails fall into my Inbox has been increasing exponentially. I don’t know what kind of spam detection technology Yahoo uses, but it definitely doesn’t work.
Sometime I’ll receive 20+ spam emails on my Inbox from the same spammer. I would select these emails and mark them "spam". But, if the same spammer sends me an email in 2 hours, the spam email will still show up in my Inbox. Marking an email address as spam doesn’t prevent email from the same address showing up again in my Inbox.
The ironic thing is that in my "bulk email" folder that stores the spam emails, there are a good number of "false positives". I have to check my bulk email folder every few days to make sure I didn’t miss any valid emails. Furthermore, I cannot bulk-select multiple "false positive" emails and mark them as "no a spam". I have to open each "false positive" email, and then mark it "not a spam" individually.
When I mark a "false positive" email as "not a spam", the particular email will go to my Inbox. But, if I get another email from the same sender in a few hours, it’s more often than not that the email will end up in my spam folder again although I’ve marked it as "not a spam".
Auto email forwarding and POP email support are pretty standard email features. Yahoo! made both features as "premium features" with a fee around 2002. I could do both on Gmail for free. Making email forwarding and POP Support premium features made it harder for regular Yahoo! mail users to switch (i.e. there wasn’t an easy way for you to move all of your emails off Yahoo! without paying a fee). However, it’s becoming much easier and less risky for me to make a switch now — I’m on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Gmail, IM, etc. It’s virtually impossible for me to lose touch with someone. Even if I miss a few emails, the person could still get hold of me via other social media channels.

So, it was quite annoying when I got messages from Yahoo! asking me to switch from the "classic" Yahoo! mail to their new interface. I tried the new UI once — it had an user interface that is very similar to Microsoft Outlook. But, Outlook is a desktop application while Yahoo! Mail is a web application. Maybe it’s just me, the Outlook-like UI looked really cluttered to me. More importantly, it didn’t address any of my pain points!

Lately Yahoo! has been aggressively promoting the "All New Yahoo! Mail " — these are "nice to have features". Some of them are responses to competitive pressure. But, are these features "pain killer" or "vitamin"?

Spam emails and lack of email forwarding and POP download are causing users like myself a lot of inconveniences and a drop in productivity — a good product manager will focus on solving the real problem and address the pain points now.

Yahoo! Mail Product Management — It’s time for you to wake up, and go to work!

Related posts:

Excellent resources: