Future of shopping

Another good HBR article explaining interesting new trends one can expect in Retail space in the future:
http://dharm0us.blogspot.com/2011/12/future-of-shopping.html

Measuring Life

Interesting article in HBR by Clay Christiansen:

http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1

Especially liked his ending, which made me reflect...success in work is not everything in life. So to think about it, like a investment portfolio, success in life probably means having success in:
1. work
2. great relations with your partner
3. raising great kids
4. making a difference in others lives (1 person is a good number to start with).
5. making parents feel proud of you (not just by work or academics necessarily)
6. getting the "light bulb" switch on in the brain once in a while after having learnt something new - maybe a different perspective, a different experience
etc. etc

Need to work more seriously on pts.2,3,4,5,6 from today. pt.1 has been clouding my life too much of late. Quite crazy how the monotony of work with the daily calls, emails, blackberrys, have made a robot out of me......crap !

Work Culture

I was reading this article in HBR today and found it interesting to learn about a company where employees negotiated with Senior Management, to ensure they didn't have to check and respond to calls or Blackberry messages after work hours.

Unfortunately, respect for an individual's time outside work is something that is yet to gain acceptance in our society. Especially among the IT clan, where onsite-offshore interaction is common, onsite counterparts regularly call folks at offshore outside office hours, which in itself stretches to late evening. Similarly, there is a tendency to stretch our work-day beyond the required hours, just to avoid the bosses glare.

As a fellow colleague mentioned to me, it is time we changed the workplace, to restore some respect to work/life balance.

Back to blogging - Post 2

So, to pick up from the previous post, I will write about what I do and some other things.

I now work in Pre-sales in a Tier-1 firm, where my works revolves around responding to RFPs (Request for proposals) which in itself involved highly technical activities such as effort estimation, designing technical architectures and the like. Apart from this, I also support the frontline sales teams in their sales efforts through building collateral, decks etc. etc.Many of my XL' classmates are in similar pre-sales positions in other Tier-1/2 firms.

I used to work in this same firm before my MBA in a Service Delivery Role, and have now moved to pre-sales. Personally, I dont find any differentiation that the MBA has done, except for a grade promotion, which I would have got anyways had I continued in my job. My own team consists mostly of people coming from delivery roles. There are some times when my MBA skills are helpful (e.g. building financial models, understanding the business domain aspects in the deal) but such situations are few.

Neverthless, any learning experience is valuable in its own right, and XL definitely gave me a good grounding in many fields.

But I feel the 1 Year MBA concept is still in early stages of being accepted in India, and very few of them have a clear plan of how best to utilize 1-Yr MBA grads and defining a unique career path for them in recognition of their skills. I have heard similar sentiments echoed by 1-Yr MBA grads, that there is not much clarity in their career path.

Maybe there is some merit in foreign MBAs after all, despite the high tuition fee and the risks one has to take.

Back to blogging

After close to a year of no activity in my blog, I am back to my site. The reasons for not blogging would be familiar to most readers - the tediousness and long hours at work that made me put off anything other than the much needed sleep, the monotony of work that makes writing uninteresting, etc. etc.

But these same reasons made me look back at the times when I was my creative self (so I claim) and reflected upon the day to day things from a different viewpoint, and how different I have become now after work took over. So, I resolved to return to my site and pick up from where I had left it.

So, after the series of miserable blog entries last May, when the immediate future looked bleak, I was lucky enough to get a job in mid-June in a small IT firm in Chennai. I moved into a pre-sales role there, spent a few months to pick up the nuances of this area of IT which was new to me, and subsequently moved on to a Tier 1 IT firm where I work now.

More updates on what I do at work, some cribs on the relevance of 1Yr MBA's in India etc...in my next post

Job search continues....

Its over 2 weeks since I graduated and my job search continues. I am still in campus and there is a concerted effort going on here for placements.

I would say the last 2 weeks have been a roller-coaster, one with steep ascents and prolonged downhills. Basically, there was a day when I had 3 phone interviews (none of which turned out positive), but most of the days I have nothing to do but see movies, play badminton and scan naukri.com meticulously.

There are some trends I observed during my job search. There is a lot of shifting of BDM roles to India, which used to be earlier done in US/UK. Companies are hiring people with some sales experience and having them do most of the sales process from India, by having them work during US timings.

BPOs have started hiring again. Most of the core sectors are hiring now, especially after the UPA Govt. came back to power.

But nothing great is happening in IT area. The big firms are still in freeze mode and the smaller one's are trying to survive the recession. These firms are looking at hiring only by end of the year, which right now appears an ice age away. We'll see.

Watch out for updates.

Done with GMP

This morning I was awarded my diploma by Fr.Director for successfully completing the GMP program. So, officially I am done with the program although I would be staying with some of my batch-mates to scout for jobs together. Pic above shows me receiving my degree. Hurray !

Irresponsible leadership in this country

The spate of cheap language used by the political leaders of our country amazes me, time and again.

"Dump Vajpayee, Advani in Arabian sea: Cong to BJP"
"discard Congress because it is an old party."

The kind of language these people use is hardly the type that represents a country that is trying to project itself as an upcoming economic power in the world.

It is understandable that this is what happens when 10th fail candidates take up the leadership, still !

Earth Hour

To anyone reading this post, a request to you to switch off your lights tonight March 28th (8:30PM to 9:30PM) to join people all around the world who are voting for
"Earth Hour 2009".

For more details, please visit www.earthhour.org

Could this provide the much needed stimulus ?

In perhaps the most actionable step till date, the US has come up with a plan to buy risky assets and clear the clogged US economy.

Details of the plan is available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/business/economy/24bailout.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Wall Street seemed to buy this plan, shown by the Dow's trading up by 300 points by Noon.

I think these are bold steps by the US government and should have an effect on kick starting economies across the world.