User Comments - pretzellogic

Posted on: No Tampons?!

Jenny and Ken did a lesson on Number 2, so I'm looking forward to Shanell and Jenny revisiting that topic with updated humor! ;-)

Posted on: No Tampons?!

Back in the 90s, there was a comedian who had a few jokes around buying his girlfriend tampons/napkins. The jokes centered on the fact that he had no problem with buying tampons, as it signified to the other cavemen that he had a real woman, instead of a copy of Playboy, to keep him company.

Posted on: The World Cup in Brazil

I care. I'm torn between being happy that the USA still has a chance, and disappointed they didn't come away with a win they probably deserved (didn't watch the game as I had errands to run (it's monday morning after all!!)).

Posted on: MBA

yeah, didn't know that McKinsey and the gang would accept another advanced degree besides an MBA. I just knew that those guys were recruiting pretty heavily at school. But I guess it's clear that I wasn't really interested in doing consulting after I graduated :-)

Posted on: MBA

"average class age is getting younger and younger. Once you are pass 25 or 26, it doesn't seem like it's worth the time and money."

- In my class, I think the average age ended up being 29, but the oldest person was I think 38 or so, and the youngest around 21. Yeah, you certainly didn't want to be 60 years old going to business school, but we had a fair number of 30+ year olds in our class. In the US, class average likely goes up and down as people change careers, or hideout from recessions and so on. So if career change or needed credential or needed skill or network connections post graduation aren't rationale to go, then yeah, maybe going to school (in the US at least) isn't worth US$30K per year and up, given the level of job you'll get once you graduate.

Mere "age" might have been an issue, but I noticed that for maybe more than 50% of us, we went to business school to change careers. Business school was a great way to get skills to do that (going from Navy pilot to buy-side equity analyst might be one example). There were also plenty of people that worked for the management consultants like McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, where the MBA was required for entry to proceed to the next level in the firm. We had consultants that wanted to get into Finance, marketers that wanted to get into Finance, engineers that wanted to become VCs or go into private equity, Finance people that wanted to go higher, tech people that wanted to go higher (meaning that the next entry level position into senior ranks required an MBA). Most of the top business schools wanted you to work for a few years before you showed up to business school, but we had one exception in our class.

Posted on: MBA

"I find some of this logic questionable. Namely that your degree(s) continue/s to matter at a high level in companies."

- I've looked over what I wrote again, and I'm not clear on what you're referring to in my post. I don't think I even implied that MBA's continue mattering at a high level. I know I said I've seen people advance with and without an MBA.

Posted on: MBA

I have an MBA. In general, the MBA is respected, the school especially so. But it really depends on what you want to be when you grow up and your background as to whether or not an MBA is worth the time or effort. In my experience in Beijing, I've seen foreigners get jobs with and without an MBA. And in IT, I've seen plenty of people succeed with a "mere" masters in engineering/IT/some other tech field. But they also tend to work for western companies doing business in China.

I tend also to take an industry-by-industry view.

- In IT, I've seen people with a mere bachelors' but having worked at Microsoft for 10 years (first in Redmond, then in Beijing) get senior management jobs with Chinese software companies. MBAs never hurt, but do they accelerate your career? Not sure that I'd say I've seen that. Depending on how hard and smart you work, in IT at least, I've seen people with only a bachelor's get to the CEOs chair (Mark Hurd is only one example of this). Then there are also the well known college dropouts.

- In Finance, I don't know if Chinese finance companies work the way Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs do, but if they do, then not only get an MBA, go to a top business school, or make a great reputation at your first job for hard work, market insight, key skills, and work your butt off to impress bankers, or don't bother going. I've also heard that if you want an MBA and go to a top business school, have near native speaker mandarin, because you're competing with "sea turtles" as well as ABCs, BBCs, CBAs, etc., that have fantastic Chinese.

Posted on: World Cup Football

USA!! USA!! USA!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted on: Football (Soccer)

USA!! USA!! USA!!!

Posted on: The World Cup in Brazil

USA!! USA!! USA!!!