consulting…

My days in consulting are numbered. I have 9 working days to go, including today. I can’t call it a very happy experience, else I wouldn’t have quit so quickly. However, I must say I’ve learnt a lot. Seen the insides of one of India’s largest organizations. Seen a bhai-bhai jhagda from the inside. Studied a number of other companies and businesses. Got to work with one of my firm’s most famous strategies – which is nothing but common sense with a grand title – “the my firm n-step integrated blahblah strategy”.

One thing that consulting has taught me which I’ll probably use forever. Actually I’m not sure if it was my short consulting stint that taught me this, or whether I always used to follow it but am cognizant of it only now. It is rather more likely that I learnt it as part of Design and Analysis of Algorithms way back in 2002. Or maybe even further back at the Math Olympiad Training Camp in 1999.

I am talking about the “art” of breaking down a problem into a number of sub-problems. When you look at the big picture and break it down into a series of small pictures and set myself internal timelines for each of the small pictures. And then do a deep dive into each of the small pictures one by one, and try to complete it without ever looking at the big picture. The trick lies in dividing the big picture into components so well that once you’ve completed the smaller ones, everything just fits in.

Long ago, when i first started programming, i used to generally split my task into a number of components. Do the components individually. And then spend aeons trying to put everything together. The trick, i think is to do the split in a better and more logical manner. Spend time right at the beginning to come up with a really good split. Saves a lot of time later.

The supply chain of an article

The CEO of a not-so-prominent company X decides that for the sake of branding his firm, he has to write a few articles in a newspaper. This is how the article gets written.

1. Mr CEO approaches the head of a not-so-prominent consulting firm Y and asks him to write the article for him. Now, X has been one of the long-standing and steady clients of Y and Y makes a large amount of its money from X. So the head of Y has to agree.

2. The head of Y approaches a manager and shoves the article down him. “This is urgent and our relationship is at stake”, he says, “so you better put off whatever else you’re doing and write this article”.

3. The manager looks around the office and catches a couple of unsuspecting analysts. “I need your support, for just 8-10 hours, for this very important thing”. The analyst says “but… i am… working on this thing now”. Manager says “i’ll speak to your manager, and he won’t crib. so you better do this thing for me”.

4. Left with no choice, the analyst abandons whatever he is doing, and works on this article. Massive amounts of googling and placement of the data in strategic graphs so as to make things look good. By the end of the day, all the data and insights are in place.

5. Manager takes a look at this work, and takes it to the head of Y. Now, a “writing firm” is quickly contacted and asked to write and edit this article. Of course, Y will pay this writing firm for this. All this has been done under extreme timelines. Relationships with clients is important right?

6. The article gets published in the paper. The sole author is the CEO of X. He gets the required footage, and the paper gets its share of ads.

Such is life.

update

long time since i did a random sundry update. so here i go.

i have quit my first job. 2 months into it. currently serving my “notice period”. no clue where i’m headed. talking to people. lots of them. lots of whom i hadn’t talked to for ages. have a little more clarity now on what i want to do than i did 2 weeks ago when i put in my papers.

i’ll be moving back to bangalore at the end of my notice period. hopefully i should have a few interviews set up by then. and then get a job i will like.

on saturday i saw the best and worst of mumbai. late in the evening, i walk on marine drive, southwards. there is a strong wind blowing into my face. it is refreshingly cool. a few droplets of rain accompany it. and i continue walking. into the wind. the drizzle soon turns into rain. drops become bigger and start hitting me from in front of me. it is raining almost parallel to the ground. the wind is so heavy my umbrella can’t open.

i turn around, open my umbrella and hold it behind my shoulders. still can’t save my ass though. the rain is way too parallel to the ground. fanaa.

earlier that day i stepped out of a restaurant into a waterlogged road in Bandra East. a couple of steps and soon i find my left leg giving way. thankfully my balance is on my right and i just fall on the road. my hands find something to grip and prevent my left leg from sinking further. i suspect that was a manhole. i live to tell the tale.

on a few occasions when i’ve asked friends to join orkut, they’ve brushed me off saying “i have N friends and i don’t think i want to keep in touch with anyone else”. orkut, as i see it, is primarily a tool to keep in touch with people you don’t usually keep in touch with. i’ve personally found it really useful in getting in touch with people you never thought you’ll get in touch with again. people whom you suddenly discover are wonderful, and start wondering why you didn’t talk so much to him/her while you were together in school. as i mentioned in the previous post, if you consider your friends to be stocks, orkut is a mutual fund. at one shot you can purchase “small shares” in a large number of people.

suddenly got some work. these guys don’t believe in giving people “garden leave”. try to extract the most out of you as long as you are there.

more later.

my latest love story…

i think it’s finally time to spill the beans on this one. don’t ask me who the girl is, though. i’ve sworn secrecy. i begin

lost in thought yesterday, i kinda remembered why i got in touch with her in the first place. it was march 2005. a few days after the dire straits concert. the days when i used to crib that this friend of mine was troubling me with her cribbo SMSs and was expecting me to provide emotional support. and that was the term when we learnt investments, under the wonderful Prof. Vaidyanathan. and that was the time when we learnt portfolio theory.

now, there was some day when i was really bored and had no one to talk to. a little analysis revealed a glaring incompleteness in my portfolio – all my friends whom i regularly kept in touch with was in IIMB. so, with the ongoing end-terms and submissions there, everyone seemed busy and i didn’t have too many people outside of IIMB to generally talk and crib to.

my brilliant mind put two and two together and realized that “investing” in this woman would diversify my portfolio and help me handle stuff better. the investment started paying dividends immediately (in terms of tlaking to me). and i continued to invest more in that.

soon a time came (jan06) when i suddenly realized that i had overhedged and what was originally the hedge had now become my primary investment! and that it was an extremely volatile stock i had invested in (i had somehow ignored the volatility all these months, though i was fully aware of it). and now i had to invest more in friends at IIMB, who were originally my “investment” to hedge the overhedge! somehow at that point of time i didn’t have too much heart to sell the volatile hedge, since it had till then provided pretty good returns and not caused too much downfall. so i invested more in the hedge-of-the-hedge.

however, soon after we graduated that stock started showing its real volatility. like the BSE Sensex at that point of time (and now), it kept hitting new heights and depths each day. and caused much heartburn. and refused to declare dividends even. a couple of falls were incredibly hard then, and i decided enough was enough. i sold the stock, albeit at a much lower price than i had bought it at.

now, once again, i have an unhedged mostly-IIMB-only portfolio! and a mutual fund called orkut to partially hedge it.

noosperism

Have noticed this strange spoonerism while typing. I?ve noticed that some fingers of mine are much faster than others, leading to common mis-spelling. I often type ?dinfing? instead of ?finding? and I don?t even count the number of times I type ?teh? for ?the?. and “gatline” for “tagline”. interestingly a lot of such mistakes happen when my left index ginfer is involved!

Another common mistake I make while typing is using the wrong hand. On a number of occasions I type S (left ring finger) instead of L (right ring finger) and vice versa. Similarly I keep interchanging E and I!

got this mail today

Dear All,

Our request for restocking of food coupons has been processed. The new stock has come in through the Main Gate but not yet reached the Receipts desk. It will need to go through counting and inspection before it can be despatched onwards to the end users i.e. us! So, please bear with me for the next 20-25 mins by which time I will be certain of the transit progress of the coupons.

Shall send you an “update” as soon as I know of the availability.

With best regards,
M

Our client gives us food coupons which can be redeemed at their cafeteria so that we don’t go hungry. So this is the “processing” that the coupons go through before they reach us! God bless these large companies.

the joys of weekend

Executive Summary:
1. The quality of your weekend determines the quality of the following week
2. How much you enjoy your dinner depends upon how much you enjoy the company of the other people at your table


Now for some globe
For the first time since i started my job, i had a free weekend in Bombay. For a change there was no work, and managed to just laze around and consume coffee and read stuff and meet up with people.

Feels really good. I think the key to having a good week is having had a good weekend before that. Why don’t more non-European employers understand this? Really sad that my first such absolutely free weekend (where the only connection to work was my boss making a brief appearance in my dream yesterday) had to come after I had submitted my resignation!

Yesterday there was a MAMU (mumbai alumni meet up). 20 people turned up for the dinner at Sheesha. Was a strong get-together. Considering that most of us were seeing each other afte 4 months, there was really a lot to talk about and it was a lot of fun. Reminded me of term 1 actually, when everyone used to freely talk to everyone else, without any “gumbalization”. Sadly, fragmentation started happening in term 2.

Sheesha (in Bandra) is a strong place. we were seated on mattresses and quilts cross-legged (a la congress working committee) and thulped heartily. Hope we keep having such get-togethers. they’re good fun. Though i’m sure as time wears on frequency will wane, and finally this will get merged with Anusmaran.

people at work

an important thing people ask us to look out for while looking for a job is ‘people’. people who you are going to work with are definitely important to the quality of life at work, and an important thing to be kept in mind while looking for a job.

one thing, however, i was thinking of the other day – “good people” might not exactly imply “good people to work with”. people might be great to hang out with, nice to talk to, but not necessarily good people to work with. others would be people who you can team up with really well, whose styles of working might gel with yours, but you won’t be able to talk about cricket or politics, let alone philosophy, with them.

think when you say “people”, you actually need to look for “good people to work with”. life at the workplace is much more important than life outside (if the former is screwed up, the latter is also screwed) and you can always have friends outside of your workplace for the philosophy and cricket!

Update
Now that i’m looking for a job, can someone give me guidelines as to how i can figure these things out in a single interview session? As to whether the people at the firm are great human beings. And whether they’ll make great co-workers.

learning from the gods

When I was a kid, my grandfather used to tell me stories from Hindu Myth and say “dEvarann nOD kalthko” (look at the gods and learn). Here is what I have chosen to learn.
The Ganesha Principle
Instance 1
Vyaasa was looking for a scribe to write the Mahabharata, and hearing about it’s length nobody wanted to do the task. Finally the sage approached Ganesha, who immediately agreed, but upon one condition. “I need a continuous supply of dictation”, he demanded, “else your book will remain incomplete forever”. Vyaasa put a counter-condition that Ganesha understand every word he writes, and thus the deal was stuck. Thankfully both parties lived up to their contracts, which is why the great indian epic exists today.

Instance 2
Ravana was taking the Atmalinga from Kailasa to Colombo when he saw the sun setting. Being deeply religious, he needed to do his Sandhyaavandane before which he needed to have his bath. Now, the property of the Atmalinga is that once it is kept on the ground, it stays fixed forever. Ravana thus had the problem of finding someone reliable to do the job for him. Once again, our hero surfaces at the right time disguised as a Brahmin boy, and by the time Ravana has had his bath, the Atmalinga is on the ground and fixed forever (this is supposed to have happened at Gokarna, Srirangam and some temple in Bihar).

The Hanuman Principle
Only one story here, and I’ll keep it short. Hanuman was asked to bring the Sanjeevini herb which grew on a particular mountain in the Himalayas in order to cure Lakshmana during the Battle of Colombo. The god he is, he decides that it is less effort to carry the whole mountain back than to search for the herb. So he carries the whole mountain to Sri Lanka.
Learnings
The chief learning from Ganesha has been aptly summarized by Magnus Magnusson (or whoever is the Mastermind guy) – “I’ve started so I’ll finish”. Any job I do, any task I have to do, I like to do it at a stretch. Initially I thought this was restricted to programming (I still have to write all my programs in a single session), but of late I have figured out that it extends to all work I do. I face an inordinately long startup time after every break in work, and the only solution I find is to do what Ganesha did – do each task start to finish in one sitting.

Then there have been a number of blogposts, programs, essays and projects which I, for some reason put on hold for a while. They have been on hold ever since. Also, when I figure out that something I have started helping out on might have some malicious intent, I immediately put it down and fix it to the ground – thus ensuring that the malicious intent is “grounded”.

As for Hanuman, I have figured out during the last two months (of this job) that it sometimes takes less effort to do more than what is actually asked for! Especially when I have been working with tools like SQL, when my boss asks me to provide data for say 2-3 groups, I find it easier to pull out the data for all groups of items! And do it. Yeah, the boss does have the task of finding the “herb”, but they now have many more herbs, which they would have asked me to fetch anyways.

Unfortunately, I figured out that these two principles didn’t work out too well at my first job. I hope to figure out what kind of job will actually allow me to successfully apply these only learnings of mine from the Gods soon enough!

the advantage of being a MBA

Following tuesday’s blasts, somebody opened a thread on one of the IIMB discussion boards where Alumni in Mumbai were requested to confirm their existence. Thankfully, there have been no casualties from our batch, and none from our immediate senior batch.

Block:
While on one hand i’m relieved, on the other hand i’m not at all surprised. For, the blasts took place on trains all of which left Mumbai’s commercial district before 6:30. Now, tell me which MBA gets out of office so early? All of us were in our offices when the attack happened, and thus all escaped unscathed!

Moral of the story: Do a MBA, you’ll not get bombed

Tackle:
It is only a one-off case that the bombs were on the train at the normal peak hour. However, there is no guarantee that terrorists might attack the commercial area in order to create a greater impact. What if there is a WTC-level attack on Nariman Point? Thousands of people will perish, and a large number of them will be MBAs.

If you are an MBA, there is a greater possibility of you working in places like WTC, Nariman Point, etc. than in other less pseud business places. So given that there is a huge possibility of a WTC level attack, it is better if one doesn’t do a MBA.