I couldn't have done this without your support.
I owe it to all of you and would like to say Thank You.
Without you, I would not have been named "TIME Magazine's Person of the Year 2006".
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Google Fiasco
The Google experience has left me completely confused. It would be an understatement to call it less than satisfying. I certainly wasn't expecting the interviewer to ask me to explain the detailed algorithm used for AdWords. If I knew it, I would have been in Google already.
He kept prodding me for the exact alogorithm, and what formula can be used for ranking ads in the AdWords product. Despite rattling off all the various ways to improve the ranking, I was still getting nowhere since he was looking for that magical formula. And so the "Aha" moment simply never came. Tough luck.
I guess I was also plain unlucky in the fact that I was being interviewed by a person who worked only on AdWords, and therefore, focussed only on it. All my preparation on the wide variety of Google products simply went waste since he didnt seem interested or aware of most other products that I tried to lead him to.
When he concluded with a "Google is looking for generalists who can work on a variety of things. Unlike some other firms that probably hire a specific Product Manager for Pricing Applications (referring to me), we look for people who can work on everything", all I could say was, "Thank You and Goodnight!".
Not the best first interview at ISB. For sure.
If this is a sign of things to come, I better start sounding out my old employer for a possible rehire.
He kept prodding me for the exact alogorithm, and what formula can be used for ranking ads in the AdWords product. Despite rattling off all the various ways to improve the ranking, I was still getting nowhere since he was looking for that magical formula. And so the "Aha" moment simply never came. Tough luck.
I guess I was also plain unlucky in the fact that I was being interviewed by a person who worked only on AdWords, and therefore, focussed only on it. All my preparation on the wide variety of Google products simply went waste since he didnt seem interested or aware of most other products that I tried to lead him to.
When he concluded with a "Google is looking for generalists who can work on a variety of things. Unlike some other firms that probably hire a specific Product Manager for Pricing Applications (referring to me), we look for people who can work on everything", all I could say was, "Thank You and Goodnight!".
Not the best first interview at ISB. For sure.
If this is a sign of things to come, I better start sounding out my old employer for a possible rehire.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Creativity Unleashed
This term I decided to humor myself a bit, and enrolled for a course called "Creativity, Innovation and Design", CID in short. From what I saw in the first class, it seems like a fun course, unlike most other courses in a B-school curriculum.
Our first assignment was to write a 55-word story. The word count restriction, at first, sounded ridiculous. But as I started thinking about it, I realized this had to be like a 3 panel comic strip. And Calvin and Hobbes was a classic example of how the most memorable stories are written in the fewest of words.
With some heavy inspiration from Calvin's Spaceman Spiff alter-ego, here's what I conjured:
The great escape
“We are taking you to Planet Kroz as proof that intelligent life exists on Earth,” the alien chief glorked in perfectly accented English, tentacles awkwardly clicking and scrolling through the online “Krozzian–English Translation Manual”. As he moved to close the Explorer window, his cuticular eyes fell on my Blackboard grades.
“Release him,” he screamed.
P.S. The Prof liked it, and even edited it for me. I simply couldn't resist taking a dig at the "universal" corelation between intelligence and grades. But frankly, I am not complaining at all.
Our first assignment was to write a 55-word story. The word count restriction, at first, sounded ridiculous. But as I started thinking about it, I realized this had to be like a 3 panel comic strip. And Calvin and Hobbes was a classic example of how the most memorable stories are written in the fewest of words.
With some heavy inspiration from Calvin's Spaceman Spiff alter-ego, here's what I conjured:
The great escape
“We are taking you to Planet Kroz as proof that intelligent life exists on Earth,” the alien chief glorked in perfectly accented English, tentacles awkwardly clicking and scrolling through the online “Krozzian–English Translation Manual”. As he moved to close the Explorer window, his cuticular eyes fell on my Blackboard grades.
“Release him,” he screamed.
P.S. The Prof liked it, and even edited it for me. I simply couldn't resist taking a dig at the "universal" corelation between intelligence and grades. But frankly, I am not complaining at all.
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