Hey all,
I want to let you all know that I have not forgotten about this blog. The reason I am not writing many blog posts is because most of my time that is not related to school has been spent on recruiting. I have a whole blog-post regarding recruiting which I'll publish once I figure out where I'll be heading post-LGO. Other than recruiting I have been spending time on classes.
The four classes I am taking are listed below:
15.792J: Global Operations Leadership Seminar: Required course for LGOs. This course meets once a week for 1.5 hours and features a speaker from industry. We've had some very great speakers and some not so great speakers. I think it would help if some of these speakers were coached in the fundamentals of 15.280 (our communications class at Sloan). I've seen some speakers use powerpoints and just read from them... I've also seen some awesome speakers with some amazing stories to tell about their time in industry.
15.818: Pricing: I am not technically taking this course as I am a Teaching Assistant (TA for short) for the course. This has been an eye-opening course in learning how products are priced. The Professor, Catherine Tucker, is great and I am having a great time learning and TA'ing the course. I highly recommend this to Sloanies/LGOs who have the opportunity to take it in the Fall.
15.769: Operations Strategy: Another required course for LGOs. I took this course in the Fall versus the Spring because Professor Don Rosenfeld and Professor Zeynop Ton are teaching it in the Fall. I think in the Spring the Professors will not be as good. This course is a great overview of many operational concerns for companies ranging from IT, workforce management, supply chain, and process improvements. We've had some excellent guest speakers from Toyota, Flextronics, and other companies.
15.013: Industrial Economics: This course came highly recommended from the previous LGO class. I am enjoying learning more about how economics impacts industrial companies. We recently covered how network effects impact how new standards are formed from CDs, DVDs, and video game systems. One principle that this course has taught me is that companies with high fixed costs, very low marginal costs (think internet providers), and competitors lead to vicious price competition. This is very helpful in understanding why companies like Boeing and Airbus struggle so much in regards to pricing their airplanes. They have to keep their production lines running and generally sell their airplanes near marginal costs.
ESD.341J: Engineering and Architecting Software Systems: This is my one engineering course for this semester. It covers various software topics like cloud computing, online security, and internet insurance. This course has been very helpful in evaluating various recruiting opportunities as I am investigating opportunities in the tech industry. The final project consists of a 10 minute video. My partner and I decided to make our video about the Electronic Sports industry. I did not realize HOW large and fast growing this industry is. If you have no idea what I am talking about, take a look at League of Legends and the number of people that play that game.
I did not think recruiting would take so much time, but the time it takes to apply, research (online and through phone calls with alumni at those companies), interview (on campus, phone, and on-site), and consider has been a lot more than I thought it would be.