business – Page 2 – Karthik Shashidhar

business, finance, fundaes, investment banking, personal, science, work anomaly, business side, c code, c coding, cog, computer science graduates, execution models, groupthink, investment bank, investment banks, large portion, mathematical puzzles, maths, mavericks, mba degree, naya, paise, salesperson, science phds, technical background

The Quants

March 15, 2012

Since investment bank bashing seems to be in fashion nowadays, let me add my two naya paise to the fire. I exited a large investment bank in September 2011, after having worked for a little over two years there. I used to work as a quant, spending most of my time building pricing and execution…

business, fundaes, personal, work b school, business problem, consulting firm, consulting firms, definitive solution, job, management consulting, paragraphs, six years, thinker, worst case

On mental math and consulting careers

January 2, 2012

Sometime last week, the wife wanted to know more about management consulting, and I was trying to explain to her the kind of work that consulting firms do. I told her that the two most important skills to have in order to be a successful consultant are structured thinking and people skills, and in order…

business, personal, work arbitrage, attitude, bac, existence, experiences, full time, hedge fund, high quality, india, labour cost, large portion, masters, morning person, offshoring, productivity, searching for a job, second job, skilled work, time jobs, waste of time

Offshored

December 12, 2011

Two of the four full-time jobs that I’ve done have been “offshored”. They’ve both involved working for the Bangalore office of American firms, with both jobs having been described as being “front end” and “high quality”, while in both cases it became clear in the course of time that it was anything but front end,…

business, work core aspects, core work, corporate culture, good times, job, organizational culture, paying attention, risk, salary, troughs

Corporate Culture

August 23, 2011

In good times, when you like the core aspects of your job, you don’t really care about your “organizational culture”. You don’t care so much about how they treat you, about how they make you feel. All you care about is that you are enjoying your time there, that you think there’s some value that…

arbit, business, relationships, work algorithm, attrition, college students, courtship, going concern, handful, interns, married man, misfit, misfits, odd job, point of view, probability, recruitment strategy, risk aversion, romantic relationships, six years, taking a risk, typical day, uncertainty

Jobs and courtship

August 9, 2011

Jobs, unlike romantic relationships, don’t come with a courtship period. You basically go for a bunch of interviews and at the end of it both parties (you and the employer) have to decide whether it is going to be a good fit. Neither party has complete information – you don’t know what a typical day…

business, personal, work cvs, desire, digression, famous scientists, health, important decisions, lunch, one of these days, ordinary people, people who make a difference, retirement, salary, software engineers, software services, steve jobs, sustainable returns, term life, term money, work experience

Working for money

August 6, 2011

One of these days during lunch at office, we had a fairly heated discussion about why people work. One guy and I were of the opinion that the primary reason people work is for money, and everything else is secondary. The third guy, who among the three of us perhaps works the hardest, argued that…

business, computer science, personal, work data science, dumbfuck, graphs, hypotheses, insights, instinct, job, jobs, management jargon, mind programming, scientist, software engineering

Data Science and Software Engineering

August 2, 2011

I’m a data scientist. I’m good with numbers, and handling large and medium sized data sets (that doesn’t mean I’m bad at handling small data sets, of course). The work-related thing that gives me most kicks is to take a bunch of data and through a process of simple analysis, extract information out of it.…

business, contract bridge, economics, education, IIT, randomness, science, sport, work

In search of uncertainty

July 12, 2011

Back when I was in school, I was a math stud. At least people around me thought so. I knew I wanted to pursue a career in science, and that in part led me to taking science in class XI, and subsequently writing JEE which led to the path I ultimately took. Around the same…

arbit, business, general, work better chance, commitments, completeness, conclusions, consulting firms, consulting partners, downside, long time, new partners, partnership, sake

More on consulting partners

July 12, 2011

I’d written in an earlier post that consulting firms remain young nd dynamic by periodically promoting new people to partnership, and they in their quest to develop new markets and establish themselves, take on risks which can prove useful to underlings who now have a better chance to make a mark and establish themselves. However,…

arbit, business, work downward spiral, leading management consulting, leading management consulting firms, management consulting firms, money option, new business, new partner, partnership level, partnerships, payoffs, peers, pool, poor quality, promotions, relationships, reputation, stagnation, steady state

On Running a Consulting Firm

July 5, 2011

So most of the consulting firms are run as partnerships (as you might have already figured out). There was an experiment in the late 90s where a then leading firm was bought over by an IT company, and that saw stagnation for the next few years until the consultants did a “management buy out” in…

business, personal, work assumption, colleagues, consulting firm, downside risk, end of the rainbow, incentives, lion, little chance, matter of time, money option, partnership, pot of gold, relationships, sole job, steady state, steady stream, studs, suits, tap

Partners and Associates

July 2, 2011

Last week I’d written this post about managing studs, and while discussing that with some colleagues the other day, I realized that I could reformulate it without touching upon the studs and fighters theory. So let us consider a consulting firm. There is a partner, whose sole job is to solicit business for the firm,…

arbit, business, studs and fighters, work apology, blog, bonus, consulting firm, forthcoming book, important point, job, perspective, probability, stud, studs, target

Managing stud work

June 20, 2011

I begin this post with an apology. About two years back I’d promised that I won’t write any more on Studs and Fighters on this blog, and I’ll save all that for my forthcoming book. Unfortunately, since then I’ve managed not more than one page of my book, and that too has been in the…

arbit, business, economics, work 3 trees, catching fish, chopping trees, chopping wood, colleagues, competitive advantage, fishing, international trade, intuitive answer, job, law of comparative advantage, logs, opportunity cost, productive activities, productivity, robinson crusoe

Comparative advantage and competitive advantage

June 20, 2011

So there are two reasons why you could be employed. Comparative advantage and competitive advantage. Let me explain. In international trade, there is a concept called “law of comparative advantage“. Let me explain with the classical (and simple) example. Robinson Crusoe is marooned on an island with Friday. Now, let us assume there are two…

arbit, business, fundaes, work assumption, assumptions, attention deficit, bets, big picture, corporate ladder, corporations, digits, financial crisis, hyperactivity, hypothesis, initial reading, micromanage, middle management, mortgage market, orthogonal, promotion procedures, shortcoming, top management, zillion

Big Management and Big Picture

June 18, 2011

One common shortcoming that top management in a lot of companies is accused of is that they give too much attention to details (i.e. sometimes they micromanage), and they are unable to see the big picture. For example, if you think about the financial crisis of 2007-08, people kept making stupid bets about the mortgage…

arbit, business, work assumptions, bureaucratic hassles, choices, class participation, fundamental difference, inertia, priors, scrutiny, switching costs, trivial change

Priors and posteriors

March 30, 2011

There is a fundamental difference between version 1.0 of any thing and any subsequent version. In the version 1.0, you usually don’t need to give any reasons for your choices. The focus in that case would be in getting the version ready, and you can get away with whatever assumptions you want to feel like.…

business, finance, investment banking, randomness, work accuracy, assumptions, behavour, best efforts, business week, comprehension, disrepute, economy, elegance, emanuel derman, fellow, finance, financial crisis, lookout, mathematics, model makers, paul wilmott, profession, quantitative models, quants

Addition to the Model Makers Oath

March 22, 2011

Paul Wilmott and Emanuel Derman, in an article in Business Week a couple of years back (at the height of the financial crisis) came up with a model-makers oath. It goes: • I will remember that I didn’t make the world and that it doesn’t satisfy my equations. • Though I will use models boldly…

business, education, work academia, academics, centimeter, delta, epsilon, getting tenure, impro, improvements, least count, money every time, phd, pole vault, pole vaulter sergei, predecessor, proxy, soviet government, stint, sum of money, world record, writing papers

Sergei Bubka and Academia

March 21, 2011

There is this famous story that says that the Soviet government promised pole vaulter Sergei Bubka some huge sum of money “every time he broke the world record”. Being rather smart, Bubka would break the world record each time by one centimeter (the least count for pole vault measurement), utilizing the fact that the nature…

arbit, business, work business casual dress, business days, casual dress policy, different companies, dress code, dress codes, founders, gurgaon, hedge fund, inspirational quotes, investment banks, lehman brothers, necktie, neckties, normalization, paraphrase, physical books, rise and fall, roger lowenstein, ubs

The Necktie Index

January 11, 2011

I’m currently reading Roger Lowenstein’s When Genius Failed – about the rise and fall of the hedge fund LTCM. So when LTCM was in trouble, the employees there came up with a measure called the “necktie index”. I’m not able to find a good link to it, and unfortunately physical books don’t offer an efficient…

business, finance, fundaes, investment banking, randomness business channel, clue, cnbc, finance, ilk, investor, money in the bank, pattern recognition, research analyst, statistics, stock price, stocks, suits, target price, televisions, tenure, tvs, volatility

The Trouble With Analyst Reports

October 4, 2010

The only time I watch CNBC is in the morning when I’m at the gym. For reasons not known to me, my floor in office lacks televisions (every other floor has them) and the last thing I want to do when I’m home is to watch TV, that too a business channel, hence the reservation…

business, entertainment, media bold step, decent movie, dth, evening movie, home television, kannada, lumiere, mgm, neighbour, once upon a time in the west, sports channels, subscription fee, subscription fees, sunday evening, surfeit, tata sky, tcm, telugu, upgradation, warner brothers

MGM Channel

September 6, 2010

Yesterday I upgraded my Tata Sky package to Annual Mega Pack (with the would-be-ladywife wanting all Kannada and Telugu channels, and all movie channles; and with me wanting all sports channels this was most economical). And got service to this channel called MGM which was earlier part of an add-on package I wasn’t sure I…

banking, business, economics, finance, fundaes, investment banking auction, capital markets, equity capital, india, investment banks, investors, ipo price, ipos, makemytrip, money, point of view, spectacular failure, stock, wall street, wall street journal

Successful IPOs

August 19, 2010

Check out this article in the Wall Street Journal. Read the headline. Does this sound right to you? MakeMyTrip Opens Up 57% Post-IPO; May Be Year’s Best Deal It doesn’t, to me. How in the world is the IPO successful if it has opened 57% higher in the first hour (it ended the first day…