On Free-riding

Well hello there.

As you may have guessed, the last post was inspired by some challenging team dynamics. Ironically, this week two of my teams have stepped up and pulled their weight magnificently, so I am finally having a chance to breathe. It's nice when team karma comes back my way now and then.

I'm in the midst of a long post on the value of women in biz groups but it feels awfully serious and I'm not sure that I want to post it ... we shall see. I'm a woman of many half-written posts.

Just watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly while attempting to do my Comp Strat homework. Business school this term is feeling awfully business-ey. I was working on helping my folks get a website going for their business which felt so much more interesting than homework. I feel restless and lazy.

Half way through the quarter and I'm glad. Ready for summer.

On Teamwork

On a potentially more cheerful note, let's talk about teamwork which, along with "leadership", is the most over-used term in MBA land ever. I am proof that teamophobes can survive an MBA, at least at the GSB. Unfortunately, all the reasons that I hated working in teams (namely free-riding) in my past life, persist even when surrounded by alleged overachieving, organized types. Fortunately, the GSB allows you to pick your own teams and, in some courses, minimize it's role in homework completion. I especially like the professors which encourage us to discuss the case in groups but submit most write-ups individually (Marketing) or givefree-riders the boot (Managing the Workplace).

First, a definition. By teamwork, I don't mean general communication skills and friendliness - responding to emails promptly, taking the time to explain your ideas in person, etc. I mean sitting down in a room and not coming out until all participants agree on the final product, or collaborating on a project on which everyone must contribute equally and as peers.

Teams, when done well, are fantastic. You share ideas and brilliant insights, enhance your learning, make friends and share the burden of homework. Or, at least, you each have an equal opportunity to free-ride on the others' work. Teams, when done poorly, are a inescapable time-suck, creating enmity where once there was only amiability, and burdening you with regularly completing homeworks on behalf of perfectly competent classmates (who tend to be busy securing ibanking internships at Goldman ... ahem). I find that I have one group of each type each quarter. And despite my best attempts to ferret out the free-riders, the problem is inescapable ... and a great source of annoyance.

I try to be mindful about communicating expectations and delineating responsibilities and generally upholding my end of the bargain but my good teams this year were good simply because my fellow teammates helped make it work. So, unless you are capable of changing your classmates' core personalities, beyond picking the right group members in the first place (so important but so hard to to!), I don't think there's much a poor MBA student can do to salvage a wayward group. So while it seems MBA heresy to say so, as bad groups seem unavoidable, I prefer to avoid groups altogether. I am more a fan of the, let's share ideas and chat amongst ourselves but in the end you eat your own work scheme. Which, happily, seems doable in IM.

Baby + MBA = Ouch

As you may have gathered from recent posts, life feels hard these days. Honestly, I sort of hate all my classes. Not because they're bad (though one in particular is a let down) but because I have absolutely no interest in being in school at the moment. My enthusiasm for ye olde MBA has abated in a big way lately. A few too many study groups and painful business jargon incidents and missed exercise opportunities for my taste these days. The thing that keeps me going every day is the idea that some day (ever pending) life will get easier. And it doesn't. And once in awhile I wise up to the reality and feel very blah. Like now. I keep encouraging women to take on work and baby and baby and MBA and, honestly, it's absurdly difficult. It requires some serious masochism. Maybe I should have taken a year off or the upcoming summer off ... but too late now! :)

In the spirit of truthfulness ...

On the GSB Myths

I sort of like the GSB myths because they keep the "wrong types" (I'll leave that to your imagination;) of people from coming to the GSB. But I've been very surprised by the number of admitted students who I've spoken to lately who don't seem to understand that these stereotypes have fairly limited truth.

• It's all about finance: The GSB has 13 concentrations, only 2 of which are in finance, because many a GSB student has no interest in concentrating in finance, or even taking a finance course. You can get through your 2 years at the GSB without ever taking finance in fact. And the non-finance courses are excellent ... if you're into that sort of thing.
• Econ, Econ, Econ. It's all about Economics: Microeconomics is a required course (typical in MBA curriculums, no?) but courses for which micro is a prerequisite are not explicitly Econ focused. Students don't sit around graphing utility functions in strategy or HR courses. (Personally, I find it annoying that they won't let undergrad Econ majors test out of the Econ requirement since the class was just a waste of time and money for folks with a strong Econ background. (Sorry, it's true, micro is micro is micro.) I could have substituted a PhD level course, but if I wanted to do a PhD course in Econ ... I wouldn't be in bschool now, would I?)
• The students are (fill in the blank: unfriendly, arrogant, nerdy, etc): Look, if you're concerned about the social life or community or friendliness factor, come visit. (And if you've visited/been admitted already without figuring this out, you're on your own.) No one can tell you how a community will feel for you. For me, MIT and the GSB had the friendliest student bodies of anywhere I visited. But obviously, that's not true for everyone. And frankly, I'm partial to "nerds" myself. To me, the GSB is for adults, smart adults. The school is best for those not afraid to think or to disagree or to take control of their academic futures, but there's a lot of variation around that generalization. You can find folks who fit your worst GSB stereotype and folks who don't.
• Every cliche contains some truth and some exaggeration: No place is utopia, but some imperfections are more palatable than others. All in all, I feel that the students are down-to-earth and non-presumptuous, and pretty darn bright. I like that but there are other metrics that may be important to you that the GSB doesn't fulfill.
  

Any other myths that I'm overlooking?

The Joy of Saying No (or the Joy of Following)

I've hit the wall. I needed a longer spring break. I thought that once I made it through recruiting I would feel relaxed and have lots o' free time (ha) but instead I started the quarter exhausted and the challenging course load I've heaped upon myself is not helping. I'm revisiting my priorities and trying to pare down my responsibilities.

I wanted to be more involved in DSAC this quarter but it's too much. So my DSAC contribution will just have to be this blog. I have two leadership responsibilities - one fairly major and one moderate - and I really just want a break from everything. Instead of excitement at the stream of outings and events coming through my inbox, I just feel annoyance. Spent the weekend back on the west coast and returned with this feeling of dread, wishing that I wasn't in school right now and that I could just take the summer off, which is a shame. I want to enjoy this experience - not dread it. So I've resolved (again) to say "no" every chance I get.

This is probably wise for any MBAer but definitely for future MBA parents: take all the breaks and vacations that you can! Be very sparing what you sign up for! It seems obvious but I continue to forget that my responsibilities outside of school are far different from most of my classmates. While a late night co-chair dinner is fun for some, for me it just represents more time away from Y and Baby Y and less precious homework time. While student parents don't want to be excluded due to impressions of what they do and don't have time for, we really are different and there is definitely a limit to what one human being can do. And everything takes longer/is harder than it seemed at first glance. Most of us like to run things and have a say in our school experience but I have to learn the joy of following or risk running myself into the ground.

That was a pretty poorly written post but ... I'm really tired!! :) [more interesting, better written posts upcoming ...]

Most of the time I feel like I might explode

:)

I dream about dropping one of my classes and taking the summer off.

Baby Y's incoming teeth seem to be bothering him a lot this week. Poor little guy.

Y is watching There Will be Blood. Watched No Country for Old Men recently. Both excellent.

Women, Divorce, MBA ... ah, the juicy headlines (actually, you can "have it all")

I have been pondering whether to respond to Caitlin Weaver (who writes a most excellent blog)'s post on the WSJ article regarding the divorce rate among professional women but happily Tinydancer and commenters did the work for me.

You can "have it all" - it's called childcare, housecleaners, and take-out. (Alternatively, try a little diversity in your spouse.) Problems solved.

Look, whether you are married to an MBA type or a diaper-changing-soccer-practice-scheduling-cake-baking-TLC-providing-happytomovearoundthecountryforyou type, ambition can be dangerous for any marriage. Non-MBA types are likely to get sick of their MBA spouse's never ending work week - who wants to be on the receiving end of endless the honeyI'mstuckintheofficelateagain phone call? And MBA+MBA types will be be on the receiving and delivering end of this phone call resulting in no TLC for anyone. Ever. So how do you "have it all"? Buy time. Get some good childcare, a trusty housecleaner and order take out. You're making the big bucks - so spend it, save up and retire early. MBA men end marriages to MBA women because they don't have time to pack the kids' luches? I have a feeling that's not the problem. (Unless it's an east coast thing ...)

But, MBA ladies, if you can't find a sane MBA men who understands the power of hired help, marry yourself a nice non-MBA. Worked for me. I don't get the idea that my perfect mate should be someone just like me, but with balls. Since when did a sane work week = not successful? Since when did a willingness to be a stay-at-home dad = not attractive? If you love your career (therefore don't mind working), why wouldn't you want to come home to a beautiful man and a home cooked meal (or any meal, for that matter) and a conversation about anything but the credit crunch? Have you lost your sense of reason?? Apparently, spouse diversity works for MBA men. Well it works for MBA women too. I know a gaggle of great men who happily ride along while their high-powered wife earned the big bucks. Why not? Not every man wants to be a CEO/hedge fund manager/etc. Plenty want to work a reasonable job, not worry about money, and just enjoy life. If you can't find these guys, you're not trying hard enough. Or maybe you're in the wrong part of the country...

Frankly, while it's great if two career-obsessives can work it out, I think it makes the more sense to diversify a marriage. Once upon a time that meant husband earns money, wife works at home. Happily we all have more options now. Enjoy.

What was I thinking??

Let's just say, it's going to be a very busy quarter. So much for a restful spring filled with regular exercise and home cooked meals. But at least the weather is lovely! (To gaze at through the window.)

Return of the Night Owl

I've had insomnia ever since I can remember, hours psent prostrate under the inky darkness waiting for sleep. When my first job after graduation came with a start time of 4:30 a.m. I slowly stopped sleeping at night. Not a pretty sight. Marriage (for some reason my husband's slumber encouraged my own) and years of too early mornings eventually turned me towards an early bedtime. But lately I find myself awake well past midnight. Now it's not angst or pre-interview jitters. With Baby Y sound asleep, in the dark stillness I think and read and study at my leisure. The moment of freedom feels nicer than sleep and I'm always reluctant to let it go.

Good night.

On Working

(Back to the old template.)

I asked a second year who interned at the fund I am going to be with this summer what the hours were like. While a 60 hour week is supposed to be a light load (in light of the alleged 70-100 hours worked by others), it fills me with dread. Baby Y will be sleeping when I leave and ready for bed when I come home. It sounds awful.

My talk about the doability of working motherhood is a bit of a farce given that being a student is quite a different matter from actual work. While I am insanely stressed and busy all the time, at least I can be busy and stressed at home mostly, rather than in an office far from Baby Y.

Well, better to experience it in a summer internship rather than a full-time job committment. If it's a disaster, I'll know that I have to do something less time intensive (what on earth that could be given my career ambitions, I don't know). I often feel that it wasn't right for me to have a child - if you want the truth. And yet I want more children. (Overpopulation be damned.) I don't want to settle for a career that bores me in return for fewer/more flexible working hours. But I want to see my son. I feel really anxious and worried about my summer to put it mildly. And I don't really know who to talk to about it - how to figure out what to do ... it will work itself out but right now I feel weary of thinking about this issue.

Analytical Finance vs. Finance Concentrations

This post is for those of you wondering why there's two finance concentrations. While you can view the requirements for each concentration online (Finance = 4 classes, Analytical Finance = 10 classes) that doesn't clarify why one would choose one over the other.

I don't believe that you need a concentration at all to graduate. While it's great to have a plan or theme of interest, I recommend that you read through the catalog, highlight everything that sounds useful/fun/intriguing and then just take what you can. Take what interests you and let the concentrations fall where they may. Trying to achieve a particular concentration for the sake of putting it on your resume doesn't make any sense to me. When you recruit for internships you will have taken only 3-4 classes so your concentration is still hypothetical at that point. While concentration may be most useful to career changers hoping to signal dedication to a particular career, the summer internship (which comes before you have a concentration) is arguably more important for full-time recruiting success. The bottom line is that I don't think concentration makes much of an impact career-wise other than the skills that you gain by focusing on certain topics. So just focus on the skills you want to gain.

So ... the Analytical Finance concentration is for folks who are serious about finance and really enjoy it. You take 20 classes to graduate from the GSB so (if I'm following this correctly - all the sudden it seems like an awful lot of finance classes ...) 10 courses = half your coursework! (Wow. I think I just realized that. Ha. Someone correct me if I'm wrong ...) Allegedly this concentration is for the quanty types (aspiring traders, portfolio managers, etc.) but one could go into those careers with just a Finance concentration or no Finance classes at all (if one has prior work experience). So really, in my mind, Analytical Finance is for the students who discover that courses in decision making or managing or leading or strategizing get are best consumed in limited doses and need something else to get them through b-school. The depth of the finance curriculum at the GSB is fantastic. And although the non-finance courses are interesting and well-taught, it's the finance courses which I am still most interested in taking during my time here. And the Analytical Finance concentration caters to those who appreciate that depth.

But again, don't worry about it. Just take classes that excite you. (And if none of them excite you, then you're pursuing the wrong degree.)

Spring quarter update

I'm becoming an obsessive blogger! I've got many posts half-written but tonight I just wanted to mention that it looks like I'm dropping Competitive Strategy (42001) for Financial Markets and Institutions (35202), essentially an advanced corporate finance class. The annoying thing is that I have to take an evening section at Gleacher which does not work out well for my life. (I don't know how the evening students work and take classes! I hadn't worked all day and I was falling asleep.) I was warned by some fellow students that the professor I was going to take 42001 with isn't particularly good (unfortunately it happens here) and I'm in no mood for a mediocre course this quarter. I'm going to attend the class tomorrow morning just to be sure, but I'm excited about 35202. Bankruptcy and liquidity crises is always an interesting topic, but never more so than now.

So, with the exception of Commercializing Innovation, I'm all analytical finance this quarter which is a happy thing. Excel and Matlab make me a happy woman - it's a great relief. I enjoyed my detour last quarter but I can only handle so many cases - endlessly debating the subjective, my teammates' wordy write ups, combing through the text to find that illusive but critical data point - it was exhausting. I thought for a moment that maybe I should not spend too much time on the finance stuff at the GSB but, unless this quarter goes miserably, I think it's mostly finance for me here on out. We shall see.

[Note 3/7/08: Decided that the Comp Strat professor was just fine and that doing a night class wasn't worth the trouble. So kept my original schedule.]

On Grade Non-Disclosure

I don't know where other programs stand on this nowadays but as you probably know the GSB has grade non-disclosure (GND). I love GND and you should too.

What is Grade Non-Disclosure?
Recruiters are not allowed to ask you about grades nor are you allowed to voluntarily disclose your grades, either in conversation or on your resume, during your first year. In your second year you can mention whether or not you made the Dean's List (3.5 GPA in the quarter with at least a B in all classes, along with some other requirements) but that's it. Post-GSB I imagine anything goes but really, who bloody cares at that point. (Oh, I guess you could indicate if you graduated with Honors or High Honors.) Each year the class can vote to revoke GND (I believe) but luckily no one was foolish enough to take such action during my time here.

Why Do I Love Grade Non-Disclosure?

• Motivation: Contrary to uninformed opinion, GND does not turn students into a gaggle of slacking, beer swilling, buffoons. Sure we have a few of those, but all the grades in the world seem unlikely to cure the worst students. Unlike schools which force students to pay 50 grand to sit through one year of required 101 nonsense before allowing electives, the GSB gives students ownership over their experience which, I would argue, incentivizes students from the get go to give a damn about their work, minimizing the b.s.ness that plagues business education in general. Most of my classmates care a great deal about their work, not because of the grade but because they came here to get an education.
  
• Grades Mean Nothing: Unlike my undergraduate experience in which I knew exactly where I stood in the class, grades at the GSB are a baffling guessing game. Professors are forbidden from exceeding a 3.3 average GPA for each class. While professors could award Cs and Bs a plenty, no matter how brilliant that particular group of students, there is a cap on the number of A's awarded. So you can not simply add up your scores on the assignments and tests and determine your score in a class because if there are "too many" As, some of them have to go. You are being judged against 120+ of your peers (typical class has 2 sections of ~60 students) and most of you are going to get Bs no matter how hard you work. If students' career fortunes could be made or broken by this baffling black box system - it could get nasty. GND avoids wasting valuable time sniping over our grades, especially for highly subjective classes ... such as Marketing ... ;)
  
• All Students are Not Created Equally: while this is true to some extent in undergrad, in an MBA program you have accountants taking classes with doctors taking classes with military folk taking classes with poker champions. GND incentivizes students to take the courses appropriate for their background and eliminates the repercussions of stretching yourself by taking an especially advanced course (as you should). What's the point of coming to school to just do what you are already good at? But if up against someone with years of experience in a subject which is new to you, how is it fair to compare your B with her A? Once again, grades are meaningless. In addition, each student's recruiting cycle will vary tremendously by industry. Students with a prolonged, interview intensive recruiting cycle are likely to have more trouble keeping up their studies during this time. No point in kicking those poor souls while they're down.

The case for GND would vary by program characteristics, but I think it's the perfect match for the GSB and I'm really really happy the school does it this way.

Why Investment Management?

Aside from two unsolicited interrogations by a couple overbearing fellow students (what is with the unprompted peer mock interviews?), I never had to give my 'why investment management' spiel during recruiting. Frankly, I think it's a stupid question anyway* and seems to be directed more often at career changers.

I had been curious about the stock market since I was a youngin but didn't realize it was a viable career until mid-way through college. And I just plugged along in the industry ever since. Bad days, I feel like it's a meaningless, boring and luck laden way to make a living. Good days (and days when I learn about what other people do) I know I couldn't do anything else.

• I don't like to make things, I like to think things.
• Not Excel? Not interested.
• Brains beats brawn, charm, fashion, politicking, persuasion, pedigree (in my perfect world).
• I hate golf.
• I'm happy to disagree.
• I want to know how the world works.
• Bullet points preferred.
• Buy. Sell. All else is irrelevant.
• No meetings, team building or consensus decision making please.
• I prefer my coworkers frank and concise and don't mind a little swearing in the process.

For those of you deciding which direction to go, not sure that this really helps all that much. Everyone has her own reasons (hence why 'why IM' is a pointless interview question). But that's concise take on it.

*What's important is that the interviewee is an intelligent, competent, likeable human being - who cares what her motivations/reasons are? Presumably if someone is smart enough to make it through a top MBA program, he is smart enough to figure out what he wants to do with his life.

If you want an MBA - Don't Wait!

I was reflecting today that one of my regrets regarding the MBA (now that the spectre of joblessness has passed) is that I didn't apply sooner. Now in reality, given my career progression, my husband's job status, and my desire to have a baby before starting my degree, I really couldn't have started any sooner. But - to those of you who are ready for your degree - don't delay applying!

• Options are Valuable: For years, I refused to apply because I was certain that no reputable program would admit me. I was unwilling to take on the cost of applying given that I was sure how it would turn out in the end. To those of you with similar sentiments - at least give the admissions committee the chance to write you off, don't beat them to the punch. You never know how it will turn out. Yes, the sudden increase in applications make it a more challenging game, but if you feel the MBA is right for you, better to start trying sooner than later. Options are valuable when you can get them.
• Diminishing Returns on Work Experience: I don't feel I benefited much from the last few years I worked - they did not leave me all that better prepared to succeed during the program or beyond. So unless you expect to get a lot more out of your job in the next year or two - it's probably time for the degree.
• Tuition is Just Increasing: a minor point, but these 3%-5% annual increases start to add up ...
• Be Ready to Reapply: Very excellent candidates are dinged each year. Starting early and really doing your research as to where you are the best fit is invaluable. Each year that you delay your application, increases the cost of reapplication.

I wished that someone had encouraged me to think seriously about the MBA sooner ... so now I'm that someone for you. Apply now already!

(upcoming: MBA myths dismissed...no, the MBA is not just for the pedigreed Ivy League ibankers ... it's for you too ... no offense to pedigreed Ivy League bankers ;)