work – Page 4 – Karthik Shashidhar

business, infrastructure, work air fare, aisle seat, allocations, baggage limit, business travelers, business trips, civil aviation, dgca, directorate general, embarrassment, free food, indian business, indigo, jet airways, market share, reimbursements, rs 200, seat allocation, service carrier, unbundling

The Problem with Unbundled Air Fares

May 24, 2013

Normally I would welcome a move like the recent one by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) that allows airlines to decrease baggage limit and allows them to charge for seat allocation. While I’m a fan of checking in early and getting in a seat towards the front of the flight (I usually don’t…

karnataka elections, personal, politics, randomness, work absolute majority, assembly elections, bragging rights, ea, election coverage, eventuality, exit poll, exit polls, extreme position, favour, mint, nowhere to hide, obscure place, outright victory, piece 3, poll numbers, pollsters, self fulfilling prophecy, stake claim, swings

Time for bragging

May 8, 2013

So the Karnataka polls are done and dusted. The Congress will form the next government here and hopefully they won’t mess up. This post, however, is not about that. This is to stake claim on some personal bragging rights. 1. Back in March, after the results of the Urban Local Body polls came out, I…

football, sport, work

Comparing Goalies in the Premier League: Shot-stopping ability versus passing ability

February 27, 2013

How does one compare the goalies of the Premier League? Based on Opta data released by Manchester City last year, I have compared the goalkeepers of the 2011-12 season on two parameters – percentage of shots blocked and success in distribution. This shows the relative successes of the goalkeepers in defence and attack respectively. So…

business, fundaes, work

Levers and Pulleys

February 6, 2013

I’m writing this based on my insights as a management consultant. Apologies in advance if I end up on a global or gyaan-spouting trip One of the most common ways of ending up in corporate paralysis is to split up a particular target into constituent “levers” and hand over the management of each of these…

business, work algorithms, ceo, formatting, goat, insight, insights, keynote, last thursday, phone call, preparing presentations, pumping iron, slides, stakeholders, stat, visualizations, wednesday evening, yesterday afternoon

The Trouble with Management Consulting

January 11, 2013

While I was pumping iron (I know, I know!!) at the gym on Wednesday evening, I got a call from a client seeking to confirm our meeting yesterday afternoon. “Why don’t you put together a presentation with all the insights you’ve gathered so far?”, he suggested, adding that he was planning to call a few…

work

Job Descriptions

January 10, 2013

“The best part of my job”, declared the wife this morning, “is that everyone knows what Toyota makes”. This, she said, she realized after she had tried explaining to several people (mostly in vain) about my job (past and present). Here are some sample responses she told me about: “Oh, Golden Socks! Even my neighbour…

arbit, business, movies, work

CEO Presentations and Rocky Movies

January 4, 2013

As part of my consulting assignment, yesterday I had to make a presentation to the CEO of my client. The process of preparing the presentation reminded me of Rocky (or any other Martial Arts movie). In these movies, before the protagonist can challenge the antagonist, he has to go through a series of underlings. Only…

personal, work bike trip, corporate workshops, cricket matches, half my time, hard drive, hawk, hedge fund, incoming lead, interesting stuff, interwebs, lone wolf, networking purposes, predecessor, prospective client, senior managers, six months, statistical arbitrage, stock market data, sustainability, two thirds

Career Progression

July 23, 2012

I’m close to two thirds my way into my “Project Thirty”. Parts of it aren’t going so well. I’ve hardly traveled, for one, save a bike trip across Rajasthan. My to-be-read pile is as tall as it used to be, and my DVR hard drive is almost full with movies that I’ve wanted to watch,…

arbit, business, economics, fundaes, science, work accounting, area of specialization, artificial barriers, association of accountants, barriers to entry, becoming an accountant, charter, efficiency, experience requirements, full time, generalists, hammer, internship, livelihood, minimum wage, principle, profession, qualified accountant, transaction costs, turf

Generalists and specialists

June 28, 2012

So you have generalists and specialists. Generalists are fundamentally smart people who can do a variety of things. They take a look at a problem, take some time to understand the basics, and then go about solving it. They get bored easily, and move from problem to problem. Generally, they don’t dig deep but are…

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,…

personal, work clock, concrete ideas, doubts, exercise, freelancing, full time job, holidays, joblessness, last two months, mind space, mistake, part time, right time, side projects, spending my time, time and mind, word document

Thirty to twenty nine

December 7, 2011

I turned twenty nine today. Yesterday to be precise; I see the clock has just ticked past midnight. And I’m sensing that my “project thirty”, where I had decided to not take up a full time job until I turn thirty and do “all the things I ever wanted to do”, is already in trouble.…

arbit, personal, work accuracy, average person, competitive disadvantage, corporate career, devil, mental energy, nbsp, ninety five, routine task, routine tasks, silly mistakes, transformation

Detail

October 12, 2011

Detail is the devil. That’s my big problem in life. I’m fundamentally clumsy and prone to errors, and don’t have much of an eye for details. I tend to make a lot of silly mistakes. So whenever I’ve to do some task that requires precision, it requires me to put in way too much energy,…

personal, work association president, boss, different places, first person, good job, managing people, maths section, occasions, outsource, right time, school exhibition, terrific job

Managing self

October 7, 2011

When I look back at my early career (high school and early part of college), and wonder how I was so successful back then, I think it was primarily because back then I was pretty good at managing myself. Even at that early (!! ) age, I had a good idea of what I was…

arbit, personal, work academic projects, academic requirement, anniversary, annual vacation, bangalore, demise, free salary, high spirits, hindsight, job, lehman brothers, paycheque, sanity, twenty days, twenty four hours, vacations, weight loss

I’ve done it yet again

September 16, 2011

I quit my job earlier this week. I did so on Wednesday, the fourteenth. In hindsight, I should have waited another day and quit on the fifteenth, to coincide with the anniversary of the demise of Lehman Brothers. So for the fourth time in five years of career, I’ve quit a job without knowing where…

arbit, personal, work blunders, corporate career, god of war, hindu mythology, hunger, internal conflict, job, karthik, madness, pantheon, peer pressure, professional career, relatives, six months, stairs, trodden path, wee bit, whoredom

Internal Conflict

August 29, 2011

When a bunch of friends and I described ourselves as a pantheon a few years back, I was War. Part of the reason was that in Hindu Mythology Karthik is the God of War, but more importantly, I was War because I was always at war with myself. With three others being conveniently called Disease,…

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, personal, work becoming a professor, becoming an entrepreneur, clue, confusion, conversations, existence, hippie, jobs, phenomenon, rocket scientist, socks, spices, strand, uncomfortable questions, wall street, whore, whoredom

I don’t know what to name this bias

August 19, 2011

So yet again I’m at that point in my life when I’m pondering about my career, pulling up my socks and asking myself uncomfortable questions. I’m asking myself what it is I really want to do, what it is that I really enjoy, what is the best way I can monetize my skills and the…

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…