#iit fascinates me just how like. successful | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dalanmendonca · 3 years

Text

Why I did my MBA?

My decision to pursue an MBA is amongst the most puzzling one's to many of my acquaintances. "You were already a product manager, why did you do an MBA?". Funnily enough, I also get asked the conjugate of this question, "How did you become a product manager without an MBA?". Sigh! Will people ever stop asking questions and think for themselves? Many can't, so here's a story.

Unlike most people after undergrad in india, I was not inclined to go for higher education of any sort. The rat race wants you to compete for IIT and then compete for IIM. Having studied engineering in a relatively elite/top-tier college, I was astounded by how shitty the education was. India's colleges suck at imparting knowledge and relatedly, 90% of people are there are just there because their parents told them to be there. Once bitten, twice shy; I didn't want spend time and money on this scam again. Though I was a decently good rat, my eyes were open and I was happy with taking my time and choosing something sensibly instead of rushing into the cliche. Plus, finishing your undergraduate degree is (mostly) mandatory, else you're significantly disadvantaged in socio-economic system; not true for an advanced degree. It's totally optional.

So, I decided to explore by working. And work was fun! I was fortunate enough to join amazing companies, meet people from different backgrounds, learn new things and grow. Today I might pass off as a human and sometimes even an extrovert, but this was not the case for the first 22 years of my life. I had always been a pure geeky shy awkward robot.

Lots of things happened and I enjoyed my career progress, that progress allowed me to ignore the question of whether I should study further. About 2-3 years into working, I was considering doing a Masters, and choosing between ML/AI (what I had mild experience in) and Human Computer Interaction (what I had been utterly fascinated by). I wrote the GRE and TOEFL but ended not putting in the final applications. Between getting a promotion at work and the uncertainty over studying abroad, I just stopped. No one in my family had even done a masters degree, lets alone done one abroad, it was scary and confusing path that I ultimately abandoned.

So, I just continued working and switched to becoming a PM, at Paytm no less. I felt cool about getting the manager title and being slightly ahead of my friends in career terms. But then a new question popped up, "Should I do my MBA?". I initially dismissed it. I had gotten my break. I was a "manager". I was not looking for further career transitions. I had a great alumni network and brand from going to top-tier university in undergrad. Doing an MBA would not make me CEO. I could just grow organically.

Having been fooled once by the system, I looked at MBA degree not an education system but a combo of brand + network. The brand gives your resume a bump, the network gives you access to talented/awesome folks who can bring you unique opportunities. Anyone who believes anything else is deluding themselves, or so I believed.

What changed my mind was my abysmal success at the getting a fancy job after working as a PM for 3 years. I knew I had done a good job in the startup I had worked in, we had grown immensely in terms of revenue and there were tangible product+strategy changes that I had contributed to. But I went on the market and to try to move to a big fancy firm, I saw many weird things. Despite the awesome work I had done, I hard got any calls from the fancy firms like Amazon or Google. When I looked up on LinkedIn, I saw that entire product teams at these companies were populated by MBA graduates. Why?! You can do this work without this degree (as I had!).

I got a chance to interview at some mid-tier firms like LinkedIn, Grab and Myntra; but I bombed all my interviews. In hindsight my mistakes are obvious. I thought I'll just show up and talk about experiences and that should be it. What's better than the story of someone who's 100Xed the volumes, right? That didn't work out.

Oh, did I mention that I was doing this job hunt at a time when I was severely burnt out after working like crazy in a startup and watching it teeter on the edge of death and failure as it ran out of funding?

Bathing in this cauldron of rejection, failure and frustration. I looked for a way out, a way to continue career progress. The MBA stamp from a place would ensure I at least got a foot in the door when applying. The network would increase the expected value of my net worth. Plus I wanted a break but a not a long one. I still had qualms about two year MBA programs which effectively take 2 years out of the prime of your life and also rob you of income. So I was focused on 1 year programs like ISB and INSEAD. INSEAD didn't happen, ISB did it. And that's how I ended up going to B-school.

Did it work out? Were the promises fulfiled this time or was it a scam again? Find out on the next episode!

#life #career #education #30daychallenge

0 notes

chicagoindiecritics · 4 years

Text

New from Robert Daniels on 812 Film Reviews: CIFF Reviews: The New Bauhaus, Frank Gehry: Building Justice, Forman v. Forman

Earlier this week, the 55th annual Chicago International Film Festival (2019) kicked-off. It’s my second year covering, and this time around I was lucky to find three intriguing documentaries about notable creatives. I’m a sucker for any film that follows a famous designer, artist, or writer to discover their approach. To these ends, I watched The New Bauhaus (László Moholy-Nagy), Frank Gehry: Building Justice, and Forman v. Forman (Miloš Forman).

“He constantly reinvented himself out of sheer necessity,” as described by one of the many luminous voices of what made László Moholy-Nagy special. The famed Chicago-based Hungarian artist and founder of the Institute of Design serves as the subject of Alysa Nahmias’ impressive documentary The New Bauhaus—playing at the Chicago International Film Festival.

Over the course of 95 minutes, viewers witness the varied ways Moholy-Nagy reinvented, adapted, and creatively pushed his craft(s). Nahmias exhibits the change by having Swiss curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist—artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London—read transcripts in Moholy-Nagy’s voice of an interview the Bauhaus artist once gave. The Hungarian creator’s daughter Hattula Moholy-Nagy also appears in the film to share stories and perspectives of her father’s working habits, his techniques, and his personal idiosyncrasies.

Nahmias throughout The New Bauhaus understands the art and the humanity of the subject are not separated, they inform each other. And while such revelations shouldn’t come as a surprise, with Moholy-Nagy the divide between both certainly appeared minimal. To him, art wasn’t a profession, rather a discipline and self-experimentation that enriched the individual more than the pocketbook. Viewers witness his lessons not just through his work in painting, graphic arts, photography, and film but through interviews with his students like Blanche Gildin, Sumner Fineberg, and Beatrice Takeuchi as well. All were forever changed through his instructions.

A through line, from his humble beginnings in a nothing small town in Hungary, now left abandoned, to his tenure at the Bauhaus school run by Walter Gropius, to his pioneering work founding the Institute of Design in 1939 (now IIT)—speaks to the ingenuity of Moholy-Nagy’s will to rise from a broken provincial family to his vaulted place in art history. Nevertheless, his name today is rarely tossed around as reverently as say Picasso or Monet. Instead, his story remains an unique and partly exposed gem of Chicago. And while his legacy extends to his students becoming exceptional teachers and creators in their own right, spreading the word and style of the New Bauhaus to newer generations in varying cities and countries, he mostly remains a ballyhooed figure known for his reach more than expansive work.

Nevertheless, by Nahmias so wonderfully linking the two together: the man and the work—viewers can only hope but aspire to the creed by which Moholy-Nagy lived his life. And if you’re like me, and am fascinated by watching how highly successful figures approach their craft, if their fervent belief in their life’s vision inspires you as it does me, then The New Bauhaus can only spur you to reinvent yourself with the same dexterity used by Moholy-Nagy himself.

Frank Gehry is the most famous and lauded architect of his generation. Known for creating concert halls and large public space. The very idea of designing the “perfect” jail hits at the antithesis of his previous projects. Nevertheless, in Ultan Guilfoyle’s Frank Gehry: Building Justice, with the help of Yale’s architecture students, Guilfoyle composes the inequities of the American justice system down to the brick.

Much of Building Justice discusses how space psychologically affects humans: how ethereal open areas free us, and why claustrophobic confinement stokes our worst demons. Prisons have often relied on space as a form of punishment, as a method for dehumanizing which runs counter to the goal of rehabilitation. To these ends, Gehry enlists the help of Susan Burton. Burton, a formerly incarcerated woman, now dedicates her life to activism and prison reform. She provides a steady grounding for the architecture students’ loftier ambitions.

The documentary’s most poignant scenes arrive through the students, Burton, and Gehry interviewing former inmates who share their disparaging experiences in jail. Equally as eye opening, the students and Gehry visit Norway to use their prisons as case studies of successful jail designs. To witness the gulfs separating the American prison system and Norway’s, which relies on teaching trades, focusing on the arts, and allowing open spaces for prisoners to congregate, is a sobering wake-up call. However, ultimately, the students and Gehry are designing prisons for the future, when the expansive population housed within prisons falls to lower levels. The whole expedition feels far fetched and idealized, more Utopian than practical. Or maybe we’ve been conditioned to believe that the human treatment of criminals should fall under the category of pipe dream. Either way, Frank Gehry: Building Justice should serve as a startling shock for America.

In 2018, the famed Czech film director Miloš Forman passed away. A leading vanguard of Czechoslovak New Wave, he directed classics of the movement like Peter Black (1964), Loves of a Blonde (1965), and The Fireman’s Ball (1967). Later on, he would conquer Hollywood and win Best Director for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984). In between and early on, he would experience tragedy and solitude that ultimately shaped his worldview. Jakub Hejna and Helena Trestíková’s tidy 77-minute documentary Forman v. Forman follows the director on his journey to creating his career defining works.

Forman came from the unlikeliest and sobering of backgrounds to venerated Hollywood creator, mostly born from solitude. Born in Czechoslovakia at the turn of World War II, he grew up an orphan after his parents were sent and died in concentration camps. He later made his own family, with his wife Věra Křesadlová and their twin sons, only to be exiled from his country away from them because of his subversive filmmaking. Those events formed two constants through Forman’s life: the pursuit of creative freedom and the search for a family.

Decorated with interviews from the director, he describes the thinking and stories behind his most famous films. In several instances, he details the censorship within Czechoslovakia at the height of communism: How he needed his scripts approved by the government and then would later film what he wanted independent of screenplay, like with The Fireman’s Ball. In another, we witness the surveillance cast and crew were submitted to while filming Amadeus in Forman’s home country. An independent maverick, that spirit holds the documentary together, though it travels in standard linear fashion. One of the great treats of Forman v. Forman is seeing the director talk to his younger twin sons: born from his third marriage with Martina Zbořilová, about why he’s just so-so on The Last Samurai (2003). Surely, another reason to be his fan.

Forman v. Forman, much like the director’s life, seems short, even in its thoughtful tribute. As if it’s missing another 5 minutes to discuss an incredible work like Man on the Moon (1999). Instead, it ends with The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), which fits with Forman’s search for creative freedom, but leaves the last two decades of his life untouched. The lack of footage serves as another reason to mourn that Forman didn’t live longer, and didn’t produce one more film with his unique brand of humor and empathy.

from 812filmReviews https://ift.tt/2JgSf6g via IFTTT

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2Wc442Q via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress #CIFCC #film critics #movies #film #Chicago

0 notes

karankurani · 7 years

Text

“The Privilege” of Long Shots

My life has largely been defined by long shots. Definition of a long shot -

“an attempt or guess that has only the slightest chance of succeeding or being accurate.”

A few big ones which have affected my life -

Looking at my fascination with computers, my parents got me a computer way back in 1996 in India. They spent majority of their annual income to get me that PC. That one thing has defined the entire trajectory of my professional career.

Went to Kota to study for IIT. Got into one of the better training classes. Hated it, went into depression because of the shitiness of that place and eventually quit.

Got into one of the better undergrad engineering schools by giving a semi serious shot to one of the entrance exams (AIEEE) which back then wasn’t considered relevant by most students in the state of Gujarat.

A big one (grad school) - applied to Cornell, Berkeley and Stanford among others, even though only 1 person from my school had ever been accepted in any of those universities. I had applied to 11 grad schools in total, the above 3 were long shots, 4 more were medium chance, 4 more were backup. I got rejected from every single one, apart from Cornell. And Cornell was the last one to get back with a response - those 2 months of rejections were excruciating. I had given up on going to grad school when I received the acceptance email.

Chose to work in a startup at below market rate in the valley rather than a big company after graduating from school. Most of my classmates had starting salaries of 15% - 30% more than I did - but I got stock options. ;)

Started startup #1 - worked on it for one and half years - went nowhere and eventually shut down.

The current (and the biggest so far) one - left my comfy job in the valley, moved back to India, started a health tech company.

This is just the professional/career long shots. There are also ones in my personal life like making friends with people who were deemed “spoilt” and “bad influence” at some point or another. Telling a girl that I like her - while feeling very scared about how she will react… and so on.

Professional long shots

I want to focus on the professional long shots since many people don’t have problems taking them in personal life. I have no idea why - maybe because one has monetary consequences and thus makes it “more painful” than the other kind. But I digress.

I observed that there are a lot of people who would do well if they took long shots. I asked them why they did not do so. The responses largely fell into one of two categories -

I am happy where I am with a stable job and don’t want to take any risk or stress of doing things which have a large chance of failure.

I want to do it but I can’t. Because of X.

Choice #1 is personal and I don’t think anyone has the right to question how somebody chooses to live their life.

Choice #2 is the more interesting one. The X in the statement is in a very broad range. Its an array of infinite reasons such as -

I cannot risk a stable income - sole breadwinner of the family.

My family doesn’t allow me to do it.

I don’t think it will work because everyone I know has tried, failed and went through tremendous hardships afterwards.

Too scared to make the leap.

I tried before and I failed - it takes too much effort to do it, my former partners/cofounders screwed me over, investors screwed me over.

… and so on.

Note that there will not be one overarching reason which encapsulates X, but a combination of several of disparate reasons that come together to prevent them from taking a long shot.

The Privilege of standing on shoulders of others

As I thought about it, I came to the realisation that my “ability “ to take long shots wasn’t an ability at all. Most of it is due to an amalgamation of my circumstances - which started right from my birth.

- My parents also valued education greatly and went to great lengths make sure I was never held back in that area. They encouraged me to read books and bought any book that I wanted, even at the cost of other things in their life.

I don’t have any dependents that I need to financially support.

I have savings from my previous job which gives a good personal runway to have an extended period of time with little/no income.

I am a Software Engineer, and I know I am good at it - this gives me great comfort since I know that I can always fallback to having a job which is in high demand and has high pay.

My extended family has always been supportive of me trying new risky things. I have several role models (both friends and family) in real life who run their own businesses successfully.

There are several more such reasons. Every single one adds a pillar of support for the platform on which I can attempt risky endeavours, and as I have progressed in my life the number of pillars have only increased.

These pillars give me “The Privilege” of taking long shots. I am standing on shoulders of people in my life who support me unconditionally.

A lot of people cannot or will not rightly choose to take long shots because they have very few or no support to take them in the first place.

You will always hear examples of people taking long shots who had no pillars at all and made it big. But just like startups, for every one loud success there are hundreds if not thousands of silent failures.

I salute those people, the ones who did not have “The Privilege” but went ahead with the long shot anyway. You have more heart and courage to face the shit that life throws at you than I ever will.

As for the rest, be glad to have the optionality that “The Privilege” provides. Its important to recognise it, acknowledge it - and help others get it. More people with The Privilege can only change the world in unimaginably wonderful ways.

#long shots #startups #startup #life #the privilege

0 notes