Inside HBS

World’s End (…in Boston?)

rob — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:06:19 +0000

Just a quick update. After a rather rainy weekend it finally cleared up for a few minutes Sunday afternoon. We took off for a quick trip to World’s End Reservation about 45mins from HBS. It’s one of the many beautiful reservations in New England owned and managed by “The Trustees“, an interesting private organization that’s created a pseudo-park system in the area. It was a nice little walk — I’m sure it would be an absolutely marvelous place for a picnic during the summer.

See the windmill in the distance?

Boston is visible on clearer days

Spiny Chesnuts! (I think)

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Rainy Weekend Adventures

rob — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:26:59 +0000

After over a year of living in Boston, I have mixed feelings about the place. There are very few cities in the US with the sort of density that allows for a vibrant non-car culture: NYC, Boston, SF… maybe DC and Chicago… but that’s about it! Before coming to Boston, I remember being excited about the possibility of walking around a sophisticated urban environment. One where there were always a thousand activities going on around every corner…

I’ve become much more jaded over the last year. The reality of navigating Boston usually translates into lots of bitter-cold walking with even more expensive taxi rides, or sitting in gridlock before driving around in circles for 30 minutes searching for parking (followed by more bitter-cold walking). In the heart of winter, a quick drive down uncongested highway towards guaranteed parking at Panera always seems to edge out that Bohemian coffee shop – no matter how urban or eclectic it might be. If you have a ton of money, it’s possible you could get a loft right in the middle of one of the more comprehensive squares in Boston – but for the majority of us, you’re going to have to walk or drive to get anywhere interesting.

That said, this weekend we decided to break out of the mold and check out the event calendars at Harvard (College) and MIT. The MIT museum (for $4/pp) had a really amazing exhibit featuring “artistic machines”. Absolutely loved it – they were all complex, functional machines with constantly moving parts. They also had a hologram display (pretty interesting) and a “history of robotics” gallery. The robotics gallery had the potential to be very interesting, but instead of moving, interactive parts, it simply consists of a bunch of static history stuffed into glass cases with boring descriptive placards. It could use a bit of work…

Arthur Ganson at MIT

Robotics Exhibit at MIT

There was also a fascinating “history of MIT” room. We didn’t stop to browse through all of it, but it did mention that MIT and Harvard thought about merging back in the early 1900s. It ended up failing (thanks to faculty opposition and a court decision re: public land grants), but it’s still interesting to think about…

MIT merges with Harvard!?

After a rousing afternoon at MIT, we headed over to Harvard College’s Agassiz Theatre for a production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Sorcerer by the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players. (The Sorcerer was G&S’ first “true” operetta, written immediately prior to their most famous work, the HMS Pinafore). It was a fantastic venue – great small theatre, and the cast obviously put a lot of work into it. G&S is tough to perform – lots of fast singing, broad ranges, and complex lyrics. I enjoyed the performance a lot (given a general love of G&S and musicals), but I think my date was a bit put-off by the difficult-to-understand lyrics. Enunciation is key here, and I’m not sure there were any theatre majors in the mix (aside from the excellent performance from the actor playing the lead role of the title character)…

The Sorcerer (G&S) #1

The Sorcerer (G&S) #2

Still, it was really quite funny — fantastic parody. It combines an over-the-top love story with a paper-thin plot, exaggerated archetypes, and a finale where the entire cast sings about pastries. I enjoyed it, and I’ll definitely be back for their performance of the Pirates of Penzance in the Spring!

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Accepted a Job Offer

rob — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:59:45 +0000

Been a while since I’ve posted… It’s a bit shocking to think that we’re already 12 weeks through a 16 week semester (75%!). While we’ve definitely had a busy semester so far, it seems like the intensity comes in waves. If you were to plot my “mindshare” on a weekly basis so far, I think it would look something like this:

The takeaway here: I hope to have some more time to post over the next couple of weeks until exams and the holiday travels drag me away.

The most important bit of news to share is that I finally accepted a full-time job offer this past week! I’m headed back to the consulting firm I worked for during my summer internship. Given the amount of time and stress I devoted to the recruiting process this year, it’s ironic that I’m accepting an offer that was on the table back in early August. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been a tough decision. I had a fantastic experience over the summer, built a lot of strong relationships, and (I think) established a solid reputation within the office. I really hope I haven’t sacrificed all of that goodwill by exploring other options over the last few months.

It’s tricky to know how best to handle this. HBS’ policies are both a blessing and a curse. They require firms to keep their offers open until this weekend:

“Second year class of 2010 students may not be required to accept offers before 1/15/10, or 3 weeks after the offer is made, whichever date is later. Full-time offers to previous employees and/or summer interns must be held open until at least 11/16/09. It is permissible to offer incentives to students who accept a full-time position in advance of these dates. The base offer (including base salary, base signing bonus, performance bonuses and job function) must remain open until the decision date.”

I think it may have been even later (Dec or Jan) in years past, but the power balance has shifted solidly to the recruiter’s camp in this dire economic climate. The policy is great in that it gives us the chance to explore other options… BUT, only within the bounds of firms that recruit on-campus during recruiting week. The 50-60% of jobs that arrive after the 11/16 deadline are outside this process… and tend to include many of the more interesting possibilities (VC/PE, start-ups, etc…)

I hope I’ve made the right choice here. When I stop to think about it, it’s kind of amazing that I’ve signed a contract that doesn’t even have a start date until 1 year from today…! Part of me thinks that’s a bit insane. I can barely make firm travel commitments a few months in advance. For the firms that require you to do this (consulting + i-banks), it’s really quite a good deal. You’re able to remove candidates from the job market during what’s likely the most attractive period of their lives — all without paying a dime. Now, that’s a *good* contract!

Maybe I’m just feeling a bit fatalistic now that I’ve (basically) locked-in the end result of two years at HBS… and while it’s a great option, it doesn’t involve a risky turnaround, stock options, the c-suite, or private jets. (So much for everything I’ve learned here…!)

Or maybe it’s just typical melancholy from a rainy, rainy Saturday morning:

Rainy November #1

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Beautiful Morning in Boston

rob — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:54:02 +0000

I’m fortunate enough to have classes that don’t start until 11:40 on the X-schedule… The last few days have been absolutely gorgeous here. Light breeze, warm sun, temperate weather — this can really be a nice place to live when during those few months of the year in between a sweltering summer and a frigid winter!

Studying in the Morning

Life has been busy lately. Cases are long, and it’s definitely been harder to get in on the discussion. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately (particularly since I feel like I’m working harder than ever yet seeing fewer returns when I skimmed the cases last year!)

Two potential explanations:

EC professors are more directive, so there’s less room for discussion and debate. I keep on waiting to respond to classmates comments, but the professors this year seem to forcibly lead the classes with questions rather than simply moderating to maintain momentum. Maybe I need to just start answering instead of sitting on my hands waiting.
I intentionally chose classes where my knowledge and experience is lacking, but I don’t think that was a universal principle. My finance classes are full of people from hedge funds and investment banks… Not ex-corporate guys with consulting experience. I actually have to read the book to understand what people are saying, and even then — it’s tough to synthesize the nuances of many of the arguments.

Back to cases!

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First Week of EC Year

rob — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:57:27 +0000

One week ago today, I was settling into my plane seat for the start of a 12-hr trip return trip from an international vacation. I’ve only been in Boston seven days now, but it seems like a lifetime! Reflecting back over the week, it doesn’t seem like there was all that much to do… after all, classes didn’t start until Wednesday. Even so, I feel like this has been one of the most exhausting weeks of the year.

Here’s a preview of what’s been on my mind lately. I’ll probably hit each of these in more detailed posts over the next few weeks.

1) Moving. I hit a better slot in the HRES lottery this year (#5 instead of #11) and took the opportunity to “upgrade” to the on-campus apartments. For the next year, I’ll be living in One Western Ave… not a penthouse suite by any means, but a lot more spacious than my tiny dorm room. I’m excited about the chance to try something new, but it’s ridiculously expensive and time consuming to move into a new apartment, furnish it, and try to fit all of my old stuff (that was sitting in a storage unit) into this new, small space.

2) Classes. My class schedule for this semester is so-so. I sat in on “Real Property” (a real estate course) on Thursday and Friday… absolutely fascinating course that I really, really wanted to take. Unfortunately, the add/drop process didn’t work out for me, and I wasn’t able to make it in… pretty disappointed, particularly since I think I could’ve added it fairly easily if I had put more time into thinking through the schedule during sign-up last semester. The rest of my classes are all popular standbys… they’ll be interesting enough, but can’t say I’m thrilled about any of them.

3) Comments. I was fortunate enough to receive “First Year Honors” this semester (top 10-15%)… and I’m actually on-track for a potential “Baker Scholar” designation (top 5%). While I’m excited about it (ego affirming – particularly since I’m one of the few without an Ivy League undergrad), I’m feeling a lot more pressure this semester. Last year seemed pretty easy – I spent 30min-1hr per case and felt like I could contribute without extensive study. This year… well, it’s been three days and I haven’t commented yet! The courses are more specialized, and I’m struggling to keep up… not even close to being in a position where I’m a step ahead to make the “1” comments.

4) People. In between moving in, reading cases, rearranging my class schedule, and spending time with the girlfriend – I’ve almost completely neglected this critical piece of returning to school. It’s really a shame… I want to reconnect with everyone beyond the simple 5 minute “how was your summer?” back-and-forth in the halls, but it has dropped off the bottom of my priority list lately. On top of that, the benefit (?) of switching classes every hour to sit with a new group of people is that it really emphasizes how HUGE this graduate program is. My weekly interactions have expanded from 89 other people to 445 people (89 x 5 classes)! There’s some overlap, but it’s still a huge shift. It helps me appreciate the first year more… the stable section experience makes HBS feel so much more comfortable and manageable.

5) Clubs. I’m co-President of a club this year and have ZERO desire to do anything with it. Not sure why I agreed to this… the return per hour invested is just so low on the list that I’m going to have to work hard to keep this top-of-mind (and avoid overloading the other President).

6) Job. One undercurrent is the whole job situation. I had a great summer and received a full-time offer, but I’m not 100% sure it’s the direction I want to head with my career. I have to decide how I’m going to handle this… the recruiting season for ECs is just around the corner, and my offer expires in a couple months. Is it worth going through the whole networking / application / interviewing hassle again? Such a time-sink… I’ve been tossing around the idea of trying something in finance, but is that even realistic? Or has my summer in consulting locked-me-in to that career path?

… and with that, the first week draws to a close.

Here’s a preview of what’s been on my mind lately. I’ll probably hit each of these in more detailed posts over the next few weeks.

Apartments. I hit a better slot in the HRES lottery this year (#5 instead of #11) and took the opportunity to “upgrade” to the on-campus apartments. For the next year, I’ll be living in One Western Ave… not a penthouse suite by any means, but a lot more spacious than my tiny dorm room. I’m excited about the chance to try something new, but it’s ridiculously expensive and time consuming to move into a new apartment, furnish it, and try to fit all of my old stuff (that was sitting in a storage unit) into this new, small space.
Classes. My class schedule for this semester is so-so. I sat in on “Real Property” (a real estate course) on Thursday and Friday… absolutely fascinating course that I really, really wanted to take. Unfortunately, the add/drop process didn’t work out for me, and I wasn’t able to make it in… pretty disappointed, particularly since I think I could’ve added it fairly easily if I had put more time into thinking through the schedule during sign-up last semester. The rest of my classes are all popular standbys… they’ll be interesting enough, but can’t say I’m thrilled about any of them.
Comments. I was fortunate enough to receive “First Year Honors” this semester (top 10-15%)… and I’m actually on-track for a potential “Baker Scholar” designation (top 5%). While I’m excited about it (ego affirming – particularly since I’m one of the few without an Ivy League undergrad), I’m feeling a lot more pressure this semester. Last year seemed pretty easy – I spent 30min-1hr per case and felt like I could contribute without extensive study. This year… well, it’s been three days and I haven’t commented yet! The courses are more specialized, and I’m struggling to keep up… not even close to being in a position where I’m a step ahead to make the “1” comments.
People. In between moving in, reading cases, rearranging my class schedule, and spending time with the girlfriend – I’ve almost completely neglected this critical piece of returning to school. It’s really a shame… I want to reconnect with everyone beyond the simple 5 minute “how was your summer?” back-and-forth in the halls, but it has dropped off the bottom of my priority list lately. On top of that, the benefit (?) of switching classes every hour to sit with a new group of people is that it really emphasizes how HUGE this graduate program is. My weekly interactions have expanded from 89 other people to 445 people (89 x 5 classes)! There’s some overlap, but it’s still a huge shift. It helps me appreciate the first year more… the stable section experience makes HBS feel so much more comfortable and manageable.
Clubs. I’m co-President of a club this year and have ZERO desire to do anything with it. Not sure why I agreed to this… the return per hour invested is just so low on the list that I’m going to have to work hard to keep this top-of-mind (and avoid overloading the other President).
Jobs. One undercurrent is the whole job situation. I had a great summer and received a full-time offer, but I’m not 100% sure it’s the direction I want to head with my career. I have to decide how I’m going to handle this… the recruiting season for ECs is just around the corner, and my offer expires in a couple months. Is it worth going through the whole networking / application / interviewing hassle again? Such a time-sink… I’ve been tossing around the idea of trying something in finance, but is that even realistic? Or has my summer in consulting locked-me-in to that career path?

… and with that, the first week draws to a close.

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Another Monday, Another Morning Flight

rob — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:10:09 +0000

City Skyline

The Pool I Wish I Were Swimming In

It’s 6-something and dawn is approaching. I’m waiting outside my apartment complex to catch a taxi to the airport for another week of living out of a hotel room. Ahhhh…. the consulting lifestyle.

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Last Day of RC Year!

rob — Sat, 16 May 2009 16:09:28 +0000

There’s an interesting paradox in blogging: the more you have to write, the less time you have to write it in. I’ve been out-of-town on personal trips 7 of the last 8 weekends, and that’s amidst a continual flow of cases, finals, and other HBS activities. There’s a TON to talk about!

A disclaimer: I’ve been sketching out what I need to post about here and there are 29 (!) posts sitting in the queue, waiting to be fleshed out and published. That’s a bit overwhelming, and I thought it might be somewhat confusing if I continued posting “as is” without any explanation for why final exams are happening in July.

So, (to reveal the true timeline)…

Yesterday was the last class day of the RC year! I have conflicting feelings about the whole thing:

Academically: We’ve studied and discussed hundreds of businesses over the last year, and it has been a fascinating journey. From start-up to multi-national, from retail to raw material, from citizen to criminal, from gov’t agency to NGO. When I stop to think about it, the sheer magnitude of businesses we’ve studied is astounding. Taken individually, 30-page cases seem short, but they add up quickly (one statistic from BGIE shows we read over 1000+ pages in that class alone).
…but, I’m not sure how much of that has translated into generalizable lessons. Where are the hidden business secrets that are reserved for those who devote time to deep study? Should we be modeling about all those esoteric complex financial instruments like they do at Chicago? Or is the learning possibly more surreptitious at HBS? I think you have to hope that the 500+ cases have built a deeply embedded database in your mind… ready to be drawn to the surface by pattern recognition when you encounter a similar situation in the future. Realistic?
Socially: I’ve been blown away by how close I feel to the 90 people in my section. I would never have expected to build the bonds we’ve built… part of it’s the way the case method works (like a big group discussion) and part of it’s from the social activities. I definitely feel like I could call any of these people up in the next 5-10 yrs and ask for a favor.
…however, I’m not sure if I’ve built the type of relationships that last 10 yrs+. Part of it’s due to choice – I’ve definitely spent more time “outside the HBS bubble” spending time with my significant other than most. Most of it just has to do with interests… the majority of people here seem to go out and drink every night. While I wish I could enjoy that more, it’s just not my scene. Still, even though that crowd get all “the press”, I think there’s a huge portion of my section (and HBS) that are more like me.
…the real tragedy is: every once in a while I’ll find someone who likes exploring the outdoors, enjoys museums, prefers dinner parties and politics, and might even humor a dorky game of Pictionary. My greatest regret from the year is that I didn’t seek these people out and spend more time with them.

All in all, though, it’s been a fantastic year and I definitely wouldn’t give it up for anything!

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David Einhorn: Fooling Some of the People…

rob — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:06:46 +0000

I finally had time over the weekend to read something outside of the 1000s of pages of cases that we’re assigned each week. Fooling Some of the People All of the Time by Greenlight Capital’s founder, David Einhorn, has been sitting in my (growing) pile of unread books collecting dust for a while now. I think I purchased it based on a recommendation by Paul Kedrosky months ago.

Anyway, it’s a great, easy read — I highly recommend it! The first half of the book provides an excellent summary of his hedge fund’s philosophy. (For those who don’t follow this industry — a hedge fund is different from typical mutual funds in that 1) it’s private and 2) has less rules. This gives the fund much more flexibility — chiefly, allowing it to “sell short”, that is, bet on a stock declining.)

Here’s a classic example: Let’s say that you think Pepsi’s stock price is a great deal. You weighed your aluminum can the other day and discovered that it’s 25% lighter! You think the material savings will be huge, and you don’t think anyone else has noticed the change yet. If you were a mutual fund, you’d buy 10 MM shares of Pepsi stock and hope that it would go up as Pepsi started to realize the cost savings. But… what happens if the economy goes into a recession and people stop spending money on soda? Or what if China decides that soda rots your teeth and decides to ban all imports? In both of these cases — you might be 100% correct about the new cans, but the stock would drop and you’d lose money.

A hedge fund, on the other hand, could buy Pepsi stock and “short” Coke stock. That is, they would make money if Coke stock falls. Why would they do that? Well, it might have nothing whatsoever to do with any expectations they have about Coke… but it would help “hedge” their risk against market and industry uncertanties. Consider what would happen in the scenario above if you were a hedge fund. Both stocks would fall 30% based on economic news, but then Pepsi would rise by 10% based on their new cans. For a hedge fund, the fall in Coke (by 30%) cancels out the fall in Pepsi (by 30%), which leaves them with the 10% gain from the new cans. A much better outcome than the mutual fund could obtain!

So, back to Einhorn… Einhorn’s approach has less to do with “classic” hedging above, but is more along the lines of acting as a financial detective of sorts. He (and his staff) spend time studying all sorts of firms looking for fraud and mismanagement. I think what’s so interesting about this is that there’s a huge profit motive to uncover firms that are lying to the market… This is a pretty amazing “self-correcting” market mechanism. When you ask the question: “Why don’t corporations blatantly deceive investors and fabricate their financial statements?”, there are two answers: 1) the SEC and government or 2) market incentives. This book makes a strong case for #2.

Anyway, that’s enough finance for one post. I guess I find it particularly interesting because I’ve always viewed finance in a somewhat demeaning light… after all, shouldn’t these people be making “real things” instead of just “shifting money around”? The type of role described here (as detective / judge / advocate) makes me feel like there might be more here than just traders bleeding out miniscule value gains from efficiency by trading stocks.

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Hiking in the Blue Hills

rob — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:19:31 +0000

We went hiking this weekend in the Blue Hills, the most popular of the Boston-area hiking spots. It actually may be the biggest of the three major state parks within the I-95 inner Boston loop. The other two are: Middlesex Fells and Lynn Woods. We had a chance to stop by Middlesex Fells last semester for some quick biking, but haven’t made it up to Lynn Woods yet. Here’s a quick visual for those of you not familiar with metro Boston:

The park was beautiful, but it definitely has that “extremely-crowded extremely-quickly” vibe to it. While this weekend was still a touch chilly, we ended up running into a bunch of hikers on the trail and met another 40+ people (+ kids and dogs) milling around the watchtower at the top of the mountain. I can only imagine how crowded it gets here in prime weather! That’s one of the recurring themes I’ve noticed with our local NE outdoors adventures… there are just so many people everywhere! (I guess it’s kind of like growing up with beaches on the Jersey shore — if you don’t know differently, you’d never imagine places — like SC and FL and TX — where white sandy beaches stretch lazily on for miles with few people marring the landscape…)

Anyway, here are a few photos from the top:

Tower at Top of Blue Hills

Metro Boston in the Distance

View from the Top

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IMAX at Jordan’s Furniture

rob — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:10:38 +0000

I read Watchmen some years ago after being profoundly surprised to see a “graphic novel” rated as one of the Top 100 Greatest Novels by Time Magazine. I thought it wasn’t bad, but as someone who never read superhero comics as a kid, I’m not sure I completely grasped all the parody. My girlfriend and I don’t tend to go out to the movies much (due to the expense), but with all the special effects, this one seemed like it would be worth seeing on the big screen. We took that to the next level and decided to hit the IMAX.

Now comes the bizarre part — the nearest IMAX to us is in a furniture store. Yeah, that’s right — Jordan’s Furniture, quite possibly the most diversified furniture store on the planet. I’d love to see a case study about these guys! Here’s what it looks like when you walk in:

A Furniture(?) Store

If you look closely, you can see that there’s actually a trapeze cage on the right! (It goes well with the Trapeze School that’s located in the building):

Trapeze School!

Which goes well with the Fuddruckers, the Candy Store, the massive IMAX theatre, and the arcade that are all scattered around in this uniquely psychedelic experience:

Creepy or Cool?

I’m not sure I entirely understand all of it, but we did have to walk through the entire “furniture” portion of the store to find the theatre. And on the way out, we sat on one of the clearance couches and talked about how much we liked it! I guess there’s a business model here somewhere…! (By the way — disappointed with the movie. It starts out relating some interesting back stories, then fizzles in a anticlimactic ending that fails to effectively wrap with the same depth it started. In retrospect, I think that’s how the novel worked, too — it’s just one of those books where the author didn’t know how to end things properly.)

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