Internet never forgets... :)

I got an interesting email from a premier career-development website today. It went on to say why social media is a double-edged knife... while it lets you express, share and discover there is also the inherent danger of letting out way too much!

For instance, if you are using Facebook or Twitter to update the world everytime you are irritated at your boss, chances are high that the next time you are out in the job market, potential employers treat this as an attitude problem and not contact you at all! The email infact provided relevant statistics based on a survey it conducted amongst several recruiters in the North American market. I am not sure how much this applies to the Indian scenario but the trend will soon catch up... mostly in the IT space to start with.

Come to think of it, in the last 3 months, whenever I had to interview a candidate, I have always checked his/her LinkedIn and Twitter profiles (if any) before even starting the interview.. and asked questions based on whatever I saw on their profiles. It was surprising how unconscious I was about the way I personally use social media and this email I got today was like a wake-up call...

So, here's to anyone who reads this post... be careful on what you put on your social status... if you do not want to talk about something standing in the middle of your office's lunch room... you probably should not be putting it on FB or orkut. Internet has ears & eyes all over the place in the form of umpteen businesses that are making life easier and easier for others to search your content on the web. The Web 2.0 elephant can remember very well and it's memory is so powerfully indexed that your boss can fire you for bitching about the company on FB so quickly, that by the time your friends see it, you would probably be jobless!!

I need a pensieve..

Feels like my brain is getting clogged with too many things... it would be great to borrow Dumbledore's pensieve for a week. Some questions that have been haunting me...

1. Why do I cry at the drop of a hat these days?

2. Why can't I stop making a fool of myself - my temper is just simmering below the surface these days!

3. Why do I miss my friends?

4. What can I do to forget the past?

5. How to accept people for what they are?

6. How to let go of what people did to me?

7. What is it that I want to do with my life?

8. Why don't I feel excited about stepping out of bed and going to work?

9. Why have I become so lazy?

10. Why can't I stop watching "Friends"?

I wish someone lent me their ears for 2 hours and stopped judging me....

Daddy cool

Apparently Jun 21st is Fathers' Day it seems.. the first piece of information that I came across this morning. It sucks already not being able to celebrate parents' silver jubilee anniversary now the world is celebrating Fathers' Day on my late dad's birthday. Brilliant.. just what I wanted... one more reason to sulk!

I know I shouldn't feel bad cuz of other people's happiness but hey.. that's just what I feel. I want to have my dad back.. when I see someone getting dropped by their father, when my friend talks about going on a trip with her dad, when my cousins celebrate their parents' wedding day... it is so so so grossly unfair :(

I wish I had known him better, I wish I could complain to him when things get too hard, I wish he was there at my graduation wearing my top hat, I wish I cried a bit more when he passed away, I wish I told him what a great dad he would have been... it probably would make me feel better today!

I hate the Hallmarks and Archies of the world for inventing these "days"...! You suck, guys!

Chennai-88

Came home after a long time.. it feels like everything has changed in a very short period of time. I am finding it hard to cope with the very people with whom I have spent 20 years of my life. Is it part of the growing up process?

When I used to visit home on weekends, I felt more close to my family. But in the last one yr I hardly came here... traveling and vacations were luxuries that I couldn't afford given the ISB schedule. I donno whether the year that I spent almost alone has changed me or my absence changed them. I wish it is just a passing cloud and things will be the same soon...

Whatever said and done, nothing like being at home sweet home :)

IE8 RC1 released

..and it is super-fast compared to IE7!! Here is finally a product from Microsoft that might actually give Google Chrome a run for its money. I switched to Chrome 3 days after it was released and have not touched IE ever since except when I had to login to some Java enabled sites that simply won't work on Chrome. And I was of the opinion that IE lost me forever. But looks like v8 might actually succeed in winning my respect back. (A bit of history here - I was virtually married to IE all my life and had never used any other browser till Chrome came along.)

IE8 has bundled some cool features like Web slicing, suggested sites, InPrivate browsing (like Incognito mode in Chrome) but the true difference is in the speed. As someone who has used IE long enough to crib, I must say that it doesn't feel like IE at all, if you know what I mean:)!
However, I am really not sure about the timing... what is microsoft gonna do to reclaim its lost share in the browser market? More marketing? More bundling with the operating system? Or does M$ even care that it lost a few hundred thousand users to other browsers? Probably not. That said, I can't decide whether I will switch back to IE8 after becoming so accustomed to Chrome's speed, omnibox and quick find. For one, there is a strong association of IE with "slow" in my mind - just like many others who have moved away from IE.

But if Microsoft is to meet the competition that is popping from unprecedented avenues, it cannot go on ignoring lost customers. The world is moving online and if MS is losing its share in the very browser market that enables the world move online, it is a serious issue to be considered. IE may not be a money maker but it completes the vision of "seamless experiences that combine...software with..internet across a world of devices" (More info here). With Firefox, Safari and Chrome at 22%, 8% and 1% shares respectively (Source: NetApps), MS must work harder to retain its two-thirds of the pie. If it doesn't, it is probably digging the first feet of its own grave.

20 days to go...

It's a hot summer evening and am in one of those unusually stock-still state of mind. Just realized that starting today, I have exactly 20 more days left at ISB. Boy.. that was one quick year that just zapped by! It feels like yesterday when I was standing in the endless queue for getting my educational loan approved and scurrying around the main building of my would-be alma mater doing the different things that were required to be done before I could officially get started at the school.

Now, here I am in the last term and all mails of graduation, vacating and packers n movers have started flowing in. At some level I feel extremely nostalgic - not just bcuz I am leaving ISB but I am gonna leave the city which has been my home for the past 4+ yrs. It wouldn't be a far cry if I said that life at Hyderabad has made me the person I am. This is the place where I started afresh n learnt to deal with things on my own, where I lived away from my lovely family, where I made great friends, where I laughed, cried and learnt some hard lessons. 

These four years have taught me the alphabets of being an individual and am sure I will remember those wherever I go from here. I do not know my destination but I know where I am starting - this journey forward will definitely be worth my while or so I hope! 

Mokkai Mania

It is been a long time since I watched the afternoon movies on Sun TV.. for one the ISB cable network sucks big time and it requires me to search for the channels almost everytime I wanna watch TV. Anyways.. yest afternoon I was totally vetti (meaning had nothing better to do than to program my TV channels) so I decided to watch any movie on Sun no matter how crappy it was. And it turned out that I got lucky.. I was able to get the signal of K TV (which telecasts movies whole day). And voila.. there was "Neerum Neruppum" going on. So for a while I settled for watching Tamil Nadu's 2 former CMs dance and fight and do a lotta circus in the name of love.

Even then I wasnt very satisfied - first reason being there were way too many ads (My God.. talk about MARKETING) and second I still hadnt figured out which frequency Sun was being telecasted on. So I decided to give JJ and MGR a break and started tuning again. And this time guess what?? It was Chinna Kounder (CK) on Sun TV!!! 

For those who dont understand what I am talking, I suggest u stop reading now. Cuz the remaining blog is gonna be about how mokkai movies can be really entertaining. So, if you didnt understand what mokkai is, better stop it now buddy.. it's really hard to explain everything you see! Alrightie.. so eventually I settled for CK and I must say I really was impressed with the movie. I had watched it many times before but for the first time I really appreciated lotta scenes. Captain can be such a dear - there werent many "left foot down and right foot on the chest" kinda fight nor were there really villainous terrorists whom Captain captures in a 15-minute guerilla attack.

The plot is a very typical hero-worship in a village setting where everyone starts with praising how great CK is and goes on to blame him for everything that goes wrong in the village and finally falls at his feet asking for apology. The interesting thing was that the heroine had a really good role to play too. She was not just the songs-only girl friend but stayed in everything from comedy track to the crucial turning point of the movie. And the whole movie was such a sweet love story. Highlights were the songs that have been playing on a continuous loop on my VLC since yesterday.

There were 2 main comedy scenes that I wanted to bring out here:

1) The one where Manorama and Suganya fight verbally and then laugh about it after Suganya marries CK. The reactions of Koundamani and Senthil as they get stuck in between the 2 bickering ladies was just hilarious. ("Dey.. rendu elumbu kootukku nadoola maatikittom da!!!")

2) This one was not really a comedy scene but I rolled on the floor (technically, the sofa) laughing. CK gets mad at the villain for ruining his life and walks to his house with a foot-long knife to kill him. Just as he enters the villain's house he realizes that his niece's engagement function is on. The villain is his brother-in-law incidentally. So all the vetti mokkaiyans who have gathered there start praising CK for being there uninvited. "CK... CK thaan. Koopidamaye vanthurukkaru paaru", "enna thaan-naalum CK-oda akka ponnachey" etc etc. So CK drops the knife and blesses the girl and returns crying. It was a typical.. "Ippidi yeththi vittu vittey.. odamba puncture aakaranunga" comedy!

Anyways.. so finally.. I wanna conclude by saying that not all afternoon movies are mokkai and some mokkais can also be very enlightening if not entertaining. Have good fun over the weekend! (Switched to "Kannu pada poguthaiyya" on VLC now ;))

Loyalty - A Myth?

Yesterday we had a class on relationship between customer loyalty and profitability. Prof. VK took us through a series of marketing models built upon 8 indicators of whether a loyal customer today is going to be a profitable one in the next few years. It was interesting to see a lots of myths getting busted - a loyal customer is

- costly to serve

- price conscious in some sense

- not always profitable

The moral of the story was firms need to decide when to stop chasing a customer. And the evidence Prof. VK put forth were satisfying both quantitatively and analytically. The more I think about these indicators (which included frequency of buying, returns, focused buying etc), I feel that loyalty is not really a concept to worry about because there are no "loyal" customers in the world. There is only waves of propensity which firms could ride along and make money. When one dies, another one comes up. A smart marketer should only look for the right wave. On an average, the loss of customers gets compensated by new ones.

But one thought still lingers in my mind and it might even be recursive in some sense. Once we stop chasing a customer does that mean he is never going to be a loyal one in the future? I remember an example Prof. Bell used in class about Starbucks. There are 2 people who come n drink Starbucks coffee every day - one spends lot more than the other. But the costs of serving these 2 people are the same. The question Prof. Bell posed was 'should we let go of the second customer who pays less and costs more?'. Almost everyone in the class yelled yes except one student who said he would wait to see if the second customer pays more in the future and would not lose him just because he spends low today. And that indeed was the right answer in that situation. 

Coming back Prof. VK's conclusion, in an ideal world where you acquire customers just by way of innovating in products and services, losing a not-so-profitable customer is not a big deal. But we live in a world of marketers and it costs a fortune to acquire n retain customers. Shouldn't we also be asking the question of "when to start chasing a customer?". The window of opportunity is not between time zero and when a firm stops chasing. It is between the times when the chasing starts and stops. It would be interesting to look at data that captures both these frames. And it might even be true that customer loyalty is cyclical - there are only waves of loyal customers...

Possibilities..

It was a historic moment yesterday to see a part-Kenyan become the first citizen of the U.S of A - rightly called the land of possibilities. The race that lasted almost 2 years is probably diminutive compared to the centuries long struggle of the colored - still livid in many parts of the world (at this point I am reminded of the best poem of 2006). But whether this is more than an emotional win for these guys is a question that I couldn't find an answer for.  What does Obama mean to a boy in Tanzania who works for less than a dollar per day mining saphires that a capitalist can market as a luxury for several thousand dollars?

There were at least 10,000 people gathered at Capitol Hill to witness the swearing in ceremony - were they just seeking hope from a man who has broken several obstacles to reach where he is today? Did they elect him to perform miracle that will repair the stumbling economy? If they did, Senator Obama has made it very clear about what lies ahead. He made no false promises and said this is war what American is facing. 

May be he truly meant what he said for his jaws were clenched during invocation as if he was willing God helped his country and his people. Partly, that could be a reason why he stumbled with the oath itself - may be he just then realized what he signed up for! Jokes apart, it only remains to be seen what good this ray of hope could bring to the world. If the Senator puts fairness before war and humanity before Americans, he has my vote too!

A day in life...

Prof. Mudit Kapoor once said in class that a B-School is nothing but a glorified placement agency. And it truly is! Last weekend was probably the most exhausting weekend I ever had - it was the first day of on-campus placements and boy was I wrong when I thought it is gonna be ok. I had 4 interviews lined up on the same day (some guys had 7.. I cant imagine how they managed to attend all) and was totally psyched out the night before. Couldn't get a minute's sleep - my whole career was melting down in my dreams and I woke up at 5 a.m. - something that I could never do at ISB till that day... the weather is so pleasant in the mornings that all I could think of doing when alarm goes off is to snuggle even more comfortably inside the rug and sleep. I am drifting off from the main topic here... yes.. Day 1 of placements...

The madness started around 7:30 a.m. and I didnt know when I stepped outta home that I am gonna return after 12 hrs thoroughly famished, hungry and with swollen feet due to the damn heeled shoe that I bought for the interviews! There were excited chats and nervous laughs throughout the academic centres - people wishing each other good luck as they ran past for the next interviews, temporary eat-outs arranged by the cafeteria guys for us to grab a bite now n then, student volunteers who were doing everything from calling ppl to come for interviews to bringing out food/water for the exhausted souls.

I remember feeling nervous just before the first GD for a conglomerate because it was going to be the second interview of my life and the first one ever for a job. After that it was all a blur. I didnt remember what I said in any of the interviews - in fact at one point I felt so frustrated n tired that when the recruiter asked me "Who would you put as brand ambassador for our insurance product?", I answered "P.Chidambaram". I think he was so taken aback that he ended the interview within the next 30 seconds. Now I feel like laughing but it could have had disastrous results :D. Anyways.. all is well that ends well.. I managed to bag a good offer. Now all that remains to be seen is how am I gonna spend the next two and a half months at ISB.

I mentioned placement volunteers somewhere - just wanted to add a note on them. These ppl were not attending interviews on Day-1 but they were so willing to assist those who did! In my mind, that meant some character... what it takes to sweat for others to bag great offers when your own future is still uncertain. My respect for the ISB community as a whole grew multiple folds because of this one day's experience - there are some real good leaders in the making at this place. Probably, this is what Drucker meant when he said "Management is about doing things right but leadership is about doing the right things"...

Some of the exchange students who came here mentioned that they do not have a placement process per se back at their schools. That made me appreciate what ISB's placement cell (aka CAS) is doing for us. Yea.. it could also mean brand building, strengthening the alumni network etc etc but it works well for us who are forced to compete in a market where thousands of better managers are unemployed. 

On the flipside, many students are yet to be placed but we still have time before graduation and sincerely hope that all of us have the best job in hand on the day of graduation. This wasn't the mood on the day of orientation - each one of us was picturing him/herself as the one who is gonna make it big.. really big... as it had been in the previous years. No one would have believed that future held such a disastrous chain of events in store that basically shook the roots of our confidence. Well.. life is a box of chocolates and you never know what u r gonna get :).  I guess it will definitely turn out well for everyone at the end..

5-Squared

There is a Friends episode (more about Friends later) where everyone turns thirty. Rachel breaks up with Tag on her birthday bcuz she thinks he is too young for her and that she needed someone to settle with. It was funny to see how women got crazy when they realize they are getting old. It isn't funny any more when I myself completed quarter of a century on this planet couple of months back.

Turning 25 wasn't a big deal.. I think it was the easiest thing I ever had to do. But being 25 is really tough.. for one I dont want to hear my mom say "u r 25 and u still can't cook for yourself??" It is a  part of the growing-up process - whenever u reach an age that is a multiple of 5, people around u think u have more responsibility. Hey.. give it a break.. 26 or 27 is bigger than 25 any day!

Personally, I feel proud that I managed to survive through several things all these years. By Darwin's standards, I am fit. This one year, I want to do a recap of my life and see what more I can do. I dont remember my 5th, 10th and 15th birthdays. On my 20th birthday, I was very happy - because Satish gifted me a watch that I always wanted and I wear it every day even now. I was so happy that I forgot to brood over my teenage getting over. I think I should do something this year to remember this remarkable milestone.

And I think I know what I am going to do.. I am gonna live my life. I am gonna do things that I always wanted to do - watching movies whole day ("Am I wasting my time?"), eating 10 ice creams at a single go ("No I'll start sneezing"), buying new shoes ("I have a good one already.. why blow money?"), owning a car ("Do I need one?"), learning keyboard ("Don't have time"), restarting dance classes ("Am very busy...") - things that I kept postponing thinking this is not the right time. I have come to realize that if this isnt the right time nothing else would be. 

So that's the deal - I am gonna behave my age.. and that means I will 'never be sorry that it is over.. but be happy that it happened'

First Blog..

Everyone has one.. so will I. That is a plausible reason but I didnt have one thus far cuz I am lazy to write. Probably that explains why my many childhood attempts to maintain a diary failed miserably (not to mention the fact that my sister always found a way to read my diaries which made me give up on my privacy). But I love to sit n think about things... never cared so much to log them somewhere so that I can review the things that I think about at a later point in time. 

I contemplated for long on what my first blog should be about and decided at the end that nothing is better than writing about myself :). So there you go.. an elevator pitch on myself. 

I am a computer engineer turned soon-to-be b-school grad. The MBA bug bit me sometime around my teenage when I did not even know what it stood for. All I cared about were the blazers and stilleto heels and meetings about god-knows-what in big airconditioned rooms. So, the journey started with me being a skinny 17-yr old battling to get into one of the oldest and most reputed engineering colleges. In hindsight, I don't remember planning to get into Anna University ever. It was a given according to me... I always pointed to the red building as my college everytime we crossed it on our way to Shakes and Creams. And so it became. Four years - lotta learning. For the first time in my life I saw people bettering me. There was one time in my third semester when I actually had tears that I will never be able to make it through the competition. But somehow I scrambled my way through and landed at Microsoft. About three years later I started to plan for the biggest milestone of my life and in April '09 I will have the MBA degree under my belt. 

So that is my short life history. I will tell more about the different things I have come across in these 25 yrs (Damn.. I am getting old) later on. For starters I just wanna say one thing.. "Life is beautiful..."