Dan + networking = MASSIVE FAILURE

So, I’ve started trying to do this “networking” thing.

Let’s not lie, since I’m going to do enough it of pretending to be interested in you boring people. The first sentence wasn’t a lie, by the way, I actually have started trying talking to people who I don’t know. Amazing, I know.

I’m terrible with meeting new people. I try to go to the Thunderbird Pub every week for a few minutes just to see if anything interesting happens – drunk people can be extremely entertaining – but usually it’s just me, standing there wild-eyed and confused, like a turkey who just wandered into Butterball’s executive board meeting the day before Thanksgiving. “Why am I here?” I ask someone. “What is going on?” I clutch at some random passerby. “You’re not going to eat me, are you?!” I scream at everyone who hasn’t ignored me already. Sometimes I rock back and fort in the corner and make crying noises, too, which is the only thing preventing me from running out, yelping in abject terror.

It’s not that I haven’t tried, really. Once, I tried to be the loud and annoying American on a flight from the US to Taiwan, and despite drawing on all my cultural knowledge of how loud and annoying those damn Americans can be, I failed miserably at holding a conversation for more than 30 seconds. And it was pretty awkward anyway; you know how you try to get the person to talk about themselves sometimes by kind-of asking or hinting that you think they are something (nationality, job, age, etcetera)? Well I got all four of those wrong. Yeah, massive failure.

At least it doesn’t seem to be limited to just me. Asians in general seem to suck at this networking stuff. Actually, that’s wrong; Kale, Hindu god of destruction, pointed out that they’re really good at it when everyone around them has black hair – when I was in Taiwan sometimes I felt like I wasn’t actually spending money but getting a lot of favors, and perhaps because of that I shouldn’t return for a few years – but apparently once we get to the US we all think that we can get places with just merit and ability, and that those count for something in a world where, even if you’re in the 99th percentile and despite what your wonderful mother thinks, retard, you still have 10 million competitors (only real statistics at my blog) that can kick your ass from here to Timbuktu in everything from abacus bowling to zebra riding. Hey! Don’t ask, just accept.

Whether or not it’s a language barrier, or a cultural barrier, this becomes a problem since I want to work in Asia, which means networking with Asians that seem to be completely oblivious to my intent of trying to know them and by extension who they know. For example:

Me: “So you lived in Singapore, huh?” (By the way, I’m trying to get a foot in East Asia’s door, preferably through Singapore, because of INSEAD. SHAMELESS PLUG LOL!, but it is my blog, after all.)
Random networking attempt victim: “Yes! Also in the Philippines, and Pakistan, and the UAE.”
Me: “Wow. (When I meet people that have been to that many countries, I actually am impressed. But regardless:) So… what was Singapore like, huh?”
Victim: “This is my first time in the US, though.”
Me: (Now I’m kinda wondering about his avoidance. Life if he had childhood trauma there or something.) “I’m actually trying to get out the US! And hopefully pursue my career in East Asia.” (See? I’m not totally incompetent. I left it it open for them to ask if they even remotely have a smudge of interest, or at the very least want to fake it.)
Him: “(Goes off on a totally random tangent. Such as:) So did you come here right after graduation?” (Definitely bad childhood experience.)

(By the way, I’m really bloody tired of hearing that, and I’m getting close to decking the next person who asks either that or “Do you speak Mandarin?” in a retarded context. No, I don’t speak Mandarin, I’m just bleedin’ psychic because I just continued the conversation fluently from the random aside you said! We ABCs are all cultureless bastard children of China’s long and ancient and rich and fabulous history of being trodden upon by foreign empires and itself.)

Back to me sucking at networking, as this is my blog, after all. Actually, I’ve been a lot more successful than I thought I would be, and I’ve already made third circle contact – that, okay, hasn’t actually replied yet but I’m close!!! – and it’s a really good contact. (When I say “third circle,” I mean where “first” is people you know, and “second” is people they know, etcetera.) That wasn’t even through Thunderbird’s alumni network, which the CMC talks reverently about as if it were some sort of primeval force that helped create the universe. “Pray to the alumni network and they will help you find a job, auhmmm… but true power comes from within.”

I’ve found out that the easy part is the first and second circles, since you actually have control over this section. The third group is what seems to really count for me in Asia, since it’s sorta, you-know, far away, and you’re more at the mercy of someone’s caring nature and free time at that point. I suppose thus far people haven’t had much of one or the other. (Or both.) I knew I should have tried to grow up sexier. Or in Asia, where everyone apparently knows each other by sheer merit of their telepathic black hair.

In any case, I really hope I can find someone soon who can help me get the proverbial foot in the door, and not accidentally slam it on my foot in the process. Because that’s what it comes down to, right? Forget the niceties, forget the social foxtrot to not say something that will blow your chances. What we’re really asking is how the hell can you help me, and how can I make it seem like I’m totally-blowing-your-mind awesome and probably can help you in return… somehow. Someday. Over the rainbow. Perhaps it’s that last part that is the problem, since everyone knows that these silly fresh-out-of-undergrad babies have no real connections, abilities, or hell, opposable thumbs for that matter. Those damn onions, they’re just societal leeches. Have them level up some and then come back!

Well, I’ll show them. Before I get out of here, I’m going to have the most extensive network of anyone on campus. The alumni network will come to me for contacts! Well, maybe not, but I’ll definitely try to have a much wider spread of connections both inside and outside of Thunderbird. I intend on amazing at least a couple people, and it really annoys me that I didn’t start doing this sooner. Go-go gadget networking, gung-ho, rawr!

…

So, um, what was your name again?

(By the way, whoohoo disclaimer!, I don’t mean to dismiss Chinese culture up there. But, contrary to what some people seem to try convincing themselves, Chinese culture is not amazing because it was a giant impregnable Han dynasty reconnaissance for four millennium. However, it’s a testament to its strength in that it not only survived, but absorbed and remained massively dominant and relatively unchanged to this day regardless of the serious shit that totally went down through those years. Pretty sure no one else repeated that to the same extent. But it wasn’t pretty, oh no.)

Dan’s blog, where another Dan says why bubbles are great for the economy.

I’m trying to get into a habit of reading one book every weekend or so… so far, two weeks in a row, fooo~! (By the way, the other book was trash so I’m not gonna post about it.)

Today I finished Daniel Gross’s Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great For the Economy. Title’s pretty self-explanatory. I hope.

I actually got introduced to the term “bubble” after learning about Japan’s price asset bubble, when land prices got ridiculous (like, 100 times what they are today?) and the land under the imperial palace was supposedly worth more than California at one point. Apparently, although I knew of the Dot-Com bust, what it was didn’t register all through undergraduate studies? Anyway, the book gives an treatment of the unique nature of American bubbles.

While we usually associate bubble with bad, like, “Bad! Bad 15 years of economic recession in Japan! Down! I mean up! Please!” there’s a good argument for why they are good. Many of the bubbles in American history laid the foundations for what came right afterward. Using the Dot-Com bust as my best example, we saw a bunch of companies blow through enormous amounts of cash (billions and billions and billions). And ultimately fail because their business model was retarded and looked something like this:

1. Get a lot of investors.
2. ???
3. Profit!

However, in two years these companies also laid generations of infrastructure that they themselves barely used, but it all allowed the things that followed to be successful. From Google, whose public offering single-handedly made its founders billionaires and whose culture is the envy of everyone and their extended family, to Myspace, the collection of the worst websites in existence, to Youtube, on which everyone with a broadband connection spends far too much time on, the inundating presence of these new generation of internet powers would not be possible without the widespread broadband access and infrastructure that failed businesses built not even 10 years earlier. Gross makes an argument that this is an uniquely American trend for companies and investors to get sucked into an extravagant heyday of laying massive infrastructure, and then end up crashing and burning in spectacular ways. But the same trend causes new blood to spring up upon the same things with better models that never would have been possible without the initial heyday.

Think of it this way: do you think the average user of Myspace would want to wait 5 minutes waiting for whoever he/she is stalking’s page to load? I mean, who would have known something so ugly could take so long to load? Would you want to wait 20 minutes for Youtube videos to load on non-broadband connections? Or, for that matter, any page? Because that’s how long it would have taken without the efforts of these now-dead (or mostly now-dead) internet giants.

Whereas European companies proceeded at a methodical and gradual pace in building their telegraph and railroad networks, US companies raced – literally – each other, trying to see who could build the most extensive and best railroads. Fiber optics were thrown into the ground at an rate at the end of the 90s with the same fervor.

But is this phenomenon uniquely American? Daniel Gross seems to think so. The same mindset Americans have that allows people to invest in terrible ideas at the height of bubbledom also contribute to the spring of ideas afterward. In the end, barely any of the above – telegraph, railroads, and fiber optics – were actually used by those who laid them. Generally, they went kaput from the costs, and were sold to other companies that consolidated the now low prices to build massive empires on top of them. (J.P. Morgan being one for the railroads, in case you didn’t know.) Even more importantly, the demand for this massive capacity created by these infrastructure efforts – bandwidth, if you will – eventually caught up to the capacity itself.

So, many of these ideas end up benefiting many of the people that weren’t even involved. (So if you were a sucker that plunged $70 into Cisco, Gross jokingly says you should feel okay about it because you were doing your part in the economy.) The use of telegraph and railroad wasn’t very integral to the way people ran businesses when they were placing them in place. Within a few decades, though, they were indispensable, just like how the internet is today. And it was cheap because there was so damn much of it! In the Dot-Com bust, we see this all happen at breakneck “internet speed” (I find this term ironic since running around the internet was slow as hell before broadband became widely accessible – in part because of the bust), with the companies involved blowing through their millions or billions in just a few years. But in the same amount of years, the overabundance of bandwidth and infrastructure that we were left with drove prices down for consumers, allowing everyone to access more robust content, and send it out at a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time.

Being who I am, I have to ask what will happen in China. We’re seeing stupendous growth in Asia, spearheaded by China and India, and backed by massive funding from foreign investment and the government itself. But if what Gross suggests is true, that the use of bubbles for economic betterment is due to a uniquely American mindset as a whole that does not exist in Chinese firms, then what happens when a China bubble bursts? (And if it is a bubble, it will burst.) Some people think “just” a 1% drop – probably less, really – in China’s 8% growth rate is enough to start the downward spiral.

Who will be caught in the rush? Or more importantly, who will be able to take advantage of the ashes to build a more risk-adverse, stable, and responsible China that continues to utilize the money already invested?

LOL, RAIN.

I woke up from afternoon nap (I think I sleep like 70% of the day on Saturdays normally) and heard thunder. Being as it has never rained while I’ve been here, I was like “whoa it’s raining!” Go outside and see this:

It’s freaking sunny. Look there’s a guy at the pool!

(I mean it’s cloudy, but still.)

Today’s accounting homework was very educational.

I learned that I suck at spreadsheets. (Goes back to fixing half his sum formulas…)

“What the heck! I don’t get it! It’s like I’m not adding some numbers up there or something! Waaaittt a sec… think I’m on to something here…”

Live! From the Deloitte presentation! Except the part where I’m writing this 3 hours afterward.

So.

There was a presentation by a recruiter from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu today, and he covered how to handle case interviews. Most of the stuff we covered was pretty commonly covered – ask questions, don’t jump to an answer, it’s okay to be quiet for a bit (this was new to me, think about how awkward it would feel), try to think aloud, be able to back up your answers because the why is generally more important, fire le missiles after a nap, etc. Good thing all this advice, along with everything else in your brain, goes PSHHEWWW light speed out the window once you’re actually being interviewed, and you become a candidate with the mental capacity of a coma victim. Durrr? *Wipes drool.*

Anyway, I jotted down one thing because I think I saw a lot of people falling into this trap actually during the presentation’s case: “Don’t get stuck.”

Wow Dan! No shit, Sherlock, right? But I thought it was worth writing because in a situation where there are 50 MBA’s (and 3 MS’s) in the same room all thinking about the case study, even in a relaxed environment, the only one I really noticed Mr. Kim – the recruiter presenting – whole-heartedly cheering on was this girl in the corner who emphasized trying to tie the case together from all the aspects you think can be considered important. (I don’t remember what she actually said, ha.)

To compare, people who gave still rather insightful comments in my opinion (or didn’t and totally repeated what someone else had just said with different words *growls*) just got a nod and a token of agreement – in these cases, the approach taken was always locked onto one perspective, like retention, or promotion, and such. I don’t think he totally heard most of them. Or really cared for that matter, since he’s probably heard them a billion times. So the fact that he was all like “YES! Totally correct!” when that girl spoke and looked a little impressed seemed really significant to me.

Although I doubt that everyone in the room really was only coming from one perspective – I mean when you’re called on, you’re not doing the whole damn case interview, you’re just saying an idea that is foremost in your brain at the moment – that’s what the don’t get stuck means. You might have a specialty in some area and can talk someone’s ear off about it, (good thing I don’t have to worry about this, huh,) but apparently it’s better to resist the temptation to focus too much on it and not bring and/or tie in other important facets of the case you could possibly cover in the time given.

I think what might be a way to avoid this, would be to try to step back and ask what questions can you answer without even exerting your coma-brain – because it’s already given in the background of the case study question itself. For example, “What does this company do?” – if we know that store X does x, y, and z in its operations because it says so, then why not treat all of them if you think they’re all important? (My totally un-experienced , un-founded, un-tested, on-ion un-opinion: the question thought to mention it, and the background info for these things isn’t very long.) Or, “What is the company wanting to improve?” – the company wants to improve x – which might be easily compartmentalized into y and z.

If we can judge from the recruiter’s reaction, it’d be best to be able to appreciate each facet of the case and still be able to answer “why?” than give a deep discertation of your specialty’s answer.

(Edit, because one of my sentences sounded like I was Miss Teen South Carolina.)

Lawls, management.

puyopuyooon@gmail.com (3:37:32 PM): “Every company needs to find out what kinds of awards will motivate its staff. Don’t look for an obvious answer. There is none.”
puyopuyooon@gmail.com (3:37:53 PM): “One company presents a stuffed koala bear (which costs only a few dollars) to emplyees who contribute significantly to quality improvement.”
puyopuyooon@gmail.com (3:38:17 PM): “They call it the “Koala T. Bear Award,” and it has become the most highly coveted award in the organization.”
(Shelley) (3:53:21 PM): lol

On a side note, look how late Shelley responded. =( Nu1 likez meh, /wrists.

One of these will (probably) be my future career path

So according to Careerleader.com I’m fitted to the following jobs most (in order from most to least):

1. Managers in Science/Engineering (very high)
2. Information Systems Management (line between high and very high)
3. Research and Development Management (tied with IS Management)
4. Advertising Account Management (middle of high, I have no idea)
5. Management Consulting (on the line between high and moderate)
6. Management of New Product Development (middle of moderate)

Note that I have no idea what these jobs do, but looking at the descriptions I’m at least slightly intrigued by some. And by the ones I got really low scores on I’m like “ew” to so something must be working. Awesome!

I’m actually partial to Management Consulting from the little I know of it (I enjoy telling people how to do things better, even if I don’t really know how myself, lawls!) but since there is very little information in general about these things in my head I don’t want to say “I’m choosing a career path in ____.” Yet.

Hopefully soon though.

HOW’S YOUR GRANDFATHER???

So today at Thunderbird we played a “game” that tried to mimic the problems of cross-culture communication and trade. My group (the Alphas) was a patriarchal society that liked loudly talking about other male members of the family (thus the title). The other society, Beta, was a mercantile, trade-based culture.

What was really weird was that despite having NO LANGUAGE (besides a very rudimentary one used for trade) the Beta society was easier to figure out and fit in with than the Alphas. We mostly had them figured out by a couple visits. Even though they could talk to us, the Beta people had a lot more trouble doing the same in Alpha society, because there were a lot of nuances that were not supposed to be explained. There was a general flow of conversation – say high really friendly-like, touch a lot, talk about male figures, THEN start playing trading game – that had to be followed, lots more norms and mores, and such.

Seems almost backward. Interesting? I think so…