Ike Syed, MBA '09

Global economic crisis and full-time job search

What we know about the global financial crisis is that we don't know very much.
- Paul A. Samuelson, MIT Professor emeritus and 1970 Nobel laureate

When I started this blog in August 2007, little did I (or anyone else) realize how much the global economic situation would change in the following twenty months. Even as Sloanies attended coffee chats and company presentations with investment banking companies and raised concerns about the volume of Credit Default Swaps (CDS) dropping like a rock from its peak of $62 trillion, we were reassured that it is a short-term liquidity crisis which will correct itself in a matter of months... More Kool-Aid, anyone?

Trying hard not to be distracted by the doomsday predictions, I continued to explore my interests in venture capital and private equity. In February 2008, I was one of the organizers of the 2008 Venture Capital Investment Competition, where students got a chance to act as venture capitalists, and judge real entrepreneurs currently seeking funding. The MIT team (made up of MIT Sloan MBA class of 2008) won the regional semi-final competition and then went on to win the national final competition in North Carolina, second year in a row. It was a great achievement for both the team and MIT Sloan. My summer internship in 2008 at the private equity division of Fidelity Investments went great, and I took the time before and after the internship to tour Boston, check out local historical landmarks and catch up with family and friends. I also took sailing lessons at the MIT Sailing Pavilion, the birthplace of American Intercollegiate Sailing.

Before starting the fall semester, I also helped out with the white-water rafting trip in August to the Kennebec River in Maine for the incoming MIT Sloan MBA 2010 class.

Since I had gone to the hiking trip at the Mt Moosilauke in 2007, I wanted to take this opportunity to experience the other trip. It felt great to connect with incoming students and their significant others, dispense advice about surviving the core and give back to the Sloan community. Of course, the rush experienced battling the Class IV rapids was unforgettable!

Before I knew it, it was the first week of September and school had started again. It reminded us of the core all over again, as I and fellow students juggled academics and full-time recruiting. With the worst job market for MBAs in a generation, students worked closely with each other, professors and the CDO office to find full-time employment opportunities, and went out of their way to help each other. One Sloanie made his acceptance of full-time job offer from his summer employment conditional on the employer interviewing another Sloanie for an additional position. Some MBA students started thinking seriously about starting their own companies, while others looked at non-traditional careers. On the other hand, the entire business school community started asking themselves fundamental questions about what went wrong in imparting an MBA education, given how many of the top business leaders had MBAs. I hope they will come up with something more concrete than mandating graduating MBAs to take a "Hippocratic Oath".

Essentially, we moved from a world where banks were run by businessmen, to a world where businesses were run by financiers. Let's hope that the pendulum will now swing back.
- Ryan Avent, Portfolio.com

Professor Thurow/Summer Internship

Rule Ten: The biggest unknown for the individual in a knowledge-based economy is how to have a career in a system where there are no careers.
Building Wealth: The new rules for individuals, companies, and nations in a knowledge-based economy, Lester Thurow, HarperCollins Publishers, 1999

One of the best things about MIT Sloan is the teaching faculty. Among the many outstanding courses that I took this semester, #15.967 "Issues in Economic Policy", taught by Professor Lester Thurow clearly stood out. I had read his book, Building Wealth in 2001 and it had made a deep impact on me. The Rules in the book had prompted me to consider doing a full-time MBA, as I grappled with the notion of how to build a successful career in the midst of a dot-com meltdown and an economic recession.

Prof Thurow has been teaching management and economics at MIT for more than 30 years. He was the dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1987 until 1993. A prolific writer, Prof Thurow is the author of several books. Three of them were Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe and America, The Future of Capitalism — and Building Wealth. They all became New York Times best sellers. I wasn't even aware that he was still teaching until I looked at the list of Spring courses back in December. In hindsight, perhaps the course should have been packaged with a label: "WARNING: Not for the faint of heart".

There were no pre-requisites for the course and readings were an eclectic collection of articles from Harvard Business School cases, Economist and the New York Times. In the first class, Prof Thurow talked about the stroke he had suffered a few years ago and apologized in advance for his weak health. However, his energy and drive in the half-semester course was undeniable. Whether it was global climate change or economic growth in China and India, Prof Thurow tackled each issue with hard facts and precise analytical thinking. Every once in a while, there would be an uproar in the class, as a group of students would vehemently disagree with his hypothesis, but at the end of ninety minutes, many had been swayed by the strength of his argument and intellectual ferocity.

After the course ended, I and Mykola Lysetskiy (MBA '09) took Prof Thurow out for lunch at his favorite restaurant, Legal Seafoods at Kendall Square. We chatted about every topic under the sun, ranging from the present federal trade deficit to how to properly bring up kids. Given that one of Prof Thurow's sons graduated from Harvard Business School and the other graduated from MIT Sloan, I figured it would be a good idea to get his input on the latter topic. I also told him about my two job offers and took his opinion on which one I should accept.

Lunch with Prof Thurow

The other half-semester Economics course that I took was #15.012 "Applied Macro and International Economics", which was taught jointly by Professor(s) Rigobon and Suri. It was an excellent course as well, which has led me to believe that the Department of Economics at MIT must have the best teachers among the top business schools. The passion, energy and drive of each professor is incredible. I would highly recommend both of these courses to incoming Sloanies from the class of 2010. Unfortunately, Prof Thurow will not teach after Spring 2009, since he will be moving to Hong Kong for a few years to join a economic think-tank.

These courses and others will come in very handy during my summer internship. I have accepted an offer from Fidelity Investments to work as an associate in their private equity division in Boston. Given the global credit crunch at the moment, I am happy to get this amazing offer and I am looking forward to getting some great hands-on operating experience with Fidelity's portfolio companies. By identifying "large disequilibriums", I hope to add value to one of the largest financial services company in the world.

Rule One: No one has ever become very rich by saving their money. The rich see opportunities to work and invest in situations where large disequilibriums exist. Carefully saving one's money and investing in normal equilibrium situations can make one comfortable in one's old age but never really wealthy.
Building Wealth: The new rules for individuals, companies, and nations in a knowledge-based economy, Lester Thurow, HarperCollins Publishers, 1999

SIP Week and Spring Break

Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.

- Benjamin Franklin

Sloan Innovation Period (SIP) gives MBA students an intense week of study set apart from the rest of the 13-week semester. Classes offer experiential lessons in leadership and expose students to groundbreaking faculty research. I took a number of great SIP courses last week but one stood out in particular. During "Front-Line Leadership", ex-chief executive officer of Southwest Airlines, James Parker talked about "distributed leadership," the importance of having front-line leaders up and down the organizational chain. As the CEO of Southwest Airlines during the tragic incident of September 11, 2001, Mr Parker mentioned how Southwest kept all its employees on its payroll, and even went ahead with a $179.8 million profit-sharing payment to employees, while other airlines announced they were cutting their workforces at least 20 percent.

In his recent book, Right Thing: How Dedicated Employees Create Loyal Customers and Large Profits (Wharton School Publishing, 2007), Mr Parker talked about the need for ethical leadership and the importance of great customer service. Listening to his observations on business leadership, my mind turned to another issue. In December 2001, the federal government created a no-fly list, a secret list of people who are not permitted to board a commercial aircraft for travel in the United States. By April 2007, the list contained 700,000 records. In addition to violating the First and Fourth Amendments and the Privacy Act of 1974, the list raised civil liberties and due process concerns, due in part to the potential for ethnic, religious, economic, political, or racial profiling and discrimination.

During the Q&A session, I asked Mr Parker about why we hadn't seen the much-needed ethical leadership from the airlines industry, particularly in its refusal to challenge the government's unconstitutional over-reaches in maintaining the no-fly list. This is in sharp contrast to the telecommunications industry (where I had worked before coming to MIT Sloan), which was also ordered by the government to cooperate in a warrantless wiretapping program of US citizens. At least one large telecommunications company raised considerable objection: Qwest rejected the federal government's wiretapping requests on the grounds that it wasn't clearly legal.

In fact, business in America has always been quick to act when government was slow or ineffective. Consider the issue of companies offering equal benefits to the same-sex partners of their employees at a time when the federal Defense of Marriage Act prohibits the U.S. government from recognizing same-sex couples. Some say that the corporations are responding to basic pocketbook needs and real marketplace challenges, such as competition and the need to attract and retain top workers. Regardless, creating welcoming and inclusive work environments, where gay couples are treated exactly like married heterosexual couples, makes good business sense, as does caring for customers who are being unfairly treated by the government.

Coming back to my question, Mr Parker apologized for the lack of action by the airlines industry and mentioned that they had to follow FAA and TSA orders. When I mentioned the possibility of "frequent-flyers", most of who are loyal customers, bypassing the no-fly list as a way to maintain superior customer service, he said it was a great idea, and agreed that the government actions were clearly unnecessary. The absurdity becomes even more obvious when one realizes that prominent senators and congressmen, in addition to five-year olds have been flagged by the no-fly list as a security concern. Given that Mr Parker is a lawyer by training (JD from University of Texas as well as former assistant attorney general of Texas), I am glad that I was able to get his opinion on this important matter.

On another topic, Spring Break was a great time to relax after the midterm exams and get ready for the second half of the semester. I also used the time to give some final-round interviews and I am happy to mention that I have received two great offers, especially considering the state of the economy and the financial sector. I am waiting for two more offers to come in before I make my decision. One thing is for sure: I would rather be in school right now than be part of the workforce...

Externship in London

Poison pills, fallen angels, chinese walls... While I had expected many surprises when embarking on my trip to London, learning a new language was not one of them. Neither was getting up at 4:30 AM every day after partying with other MIT students in London till early hours of the morning...

   

Chilling outside the Credit Suisse office

Investment Banking is a truly complex world, along with its own language and set of symbols. And like any other culture, the only real way to learn it is to truly immerse yourself in it -- which includes learning to survive on less than 4 hours of sleep a day. The time I spent at Credit Suisse was an amazing way to learn everything I needed to know about investment banking.

Great view from the cafeteria

I landed in London a few days before my externship was about to start and spent some time sightseeing. I don't think one can ever see all of London in its entirety. There are always new places to discover, interesting people to meet, great restaurants to try... During my externship, I spent the first few days in fixed income, and then split the rest of my time between M&A and leveraged finance.

A busy equities trader - I think he needs more monitors

While I cannot talk much about the positions that the Credit Suisse traders were taking or the M&A deals that were in progress (the confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements were not short, to say the least!), it was really enlightening to see the market-makers and the sales people in action. Whether it was sitting in on a research call with analysts from New York and Hong Kong or attending an early morning strategy meeting with the DCM and Syndicate teams, I am sure that I could never have received this type of education solely within the classroom.

One of the Credit Suisse buildings - The campus is HUGE!

As an interesting aside, I re-discovered a perk of being a MIT student: People think you are really smart. So, you can ask as many dumb questions as you want, without the fear of looking stupid! Since I am a career-changer, I asked even the most basic questions: "How do you work a Bloomberg terminal?", "Show me the financial models of a live M&A deal that you are working on.", "Can I sit in on the IPO pitch that the CEO of <insert_name_of_hot_startup_in europe> is doing in the afternoon?" OK, to be honest, the last request was refused. But it never hurts to ask :-) And that is the key to getting the most out of your externship. You will have to be very self-driven and motivated to achieve the maximum benefit from the opportunities that you are given.

The famous London tube - Finally, I know what "Mind the Gap" means

I am hoping to be back in London for the summer, since I think this will be a fantastic place to work. I mean where else would an Irish private equity firm come to you to finance their LBO deal for a mining company in Southern Australia? To effectively lead complex organizations in today's global economy, you need to understand the global mindset... And London is where it is at.

Reflections

Cypher: I know what you're thinking, 'cause right now I'm thinking the same thing. Actually, I've been thinking it ever since I got here: Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill?
The Matrix (1999)

I think there comes a time in every MBA student's life when he or she seriously thinks about whether or not they made the right decision is passing up <insert_name_of_business_school_here> to go to whichever business school they presently attend, or even if doing an MBA was the right decision. It usually happens when the perfect storm of company presentations, informational interviews and midterm exams all come together at the same time. My moment came when I walked out of my last midterm exam.

I came to MIT Sloan five months ago determined to do three things: 1. Meet as many people as possible and expand my personal network by getting involved in different clubs. 2. Practice and develop my leadership skills by getting elected to officer positions and 3. Transition to an investment banking career. While I was more successful at some goals than others, I also learned the most valuable skill that I will take away from business school -- Time Management. The term "drinking from the firehose" IS an understatement.

Between valuing options using Black-Scholes model in Finance and differentiating between marketable securities in Accounting, it is very easy to fall behind on the academics. The good news is that there is plenty of assistance available such as helpful tutors, kind second-years and a great core team. And not to mention an amazing Economics TA who is willing to spend Thanksgiving Eve with you going over the double-marginalization concept and how it reduces the benefits to the society as a whole...

Coming to MIT Sloan was the best decision I ever made, and as I relax over the holidays chatting with family and friends, I appreciate the education I have received about business fundamentals. More importantly, I have made some incredible friends during the countless dinners, movies, birthdays and of course, study sessions. Whether it was taking the 5:30 AM Acela express to Manhattan on numerous Fridays to meet bankers or preparing for the exams together, I truly got to know and appreciate my classmates for the cooperative and brilliant people that they are.

I am planning to take it much more easy next semester by only getting involved with two or three activities such as organizing the MIT Venture Capital Competition and securing corporate sponsorship for the Leadership Club in my role as a vice-president. I will also be focusing on the Global Leader Speaker Series for the club which will focus on executives and thought leaders within business and outside of the corporate culture sharing perspectives on leadership in today's highly diverse and networked world economy.

Well, I am off to London next week for my Independent Activities Period (IAP) externship at the investment banking division of Credit Suisse. I visited them last month too during the London Banking Days and I am pretty excited to go back. The externship will give me a great opportunity to explore the investment banking industry, gain marketable job experience, and make professional connections by working with MIT alumni in London. It is one thing to read about the fast-paced investment banking career, and it is quite another thing to be living it... I will write some more after my trip!

Morpheus: Neo, sooner or later you're going to realize just as I did that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
The Matrix (1999)

My GPS got stolen!

Aaargh! My Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS unit got stolen! Ghazala parked the car on Wednesday night at the Hayward Parking Lot next to the Eastgate apartments where we live. On Thursday morning, when we went to the car, the GPS unit was gone. The thief even took the suction cup mount. And to think that I bought it only two weeks ago for $499.99 at Best Buy...

Here is the most ironic part. Last week, when I was getting coffee from the local cafe, I read a cover story in a local Boston magazine, Boston Now, on how GPS units are getting stolen from cars around the Boston area. The article even suggested some tips on how to protect your device, such as never leaving it in the car, registering at the manufacturer's website etc. So, off I go, and start telling other Sloanies on how they should protect their GPS devices. All the while, it never occurred to me to register my own device, let alone take it out of the car every time I leave.

I called the MIT Police around 10:00 PM on Thursday and they were pretty efficient in coming to the "crime scene", and writing up a police report. The officer was pretty sympathetic, even as I rambled on what a great "Welcome to Cambridge" present I got. He even wished me happy birthday while jotting down information from my driver's license. While coming back from the parking lot, I ran into some Sloanies, wherein I proceeded to ramble once again about my ordeal. Too much rambling on my part these days... May be it has something to do with the fact on how I have been getting less than 4 hours of sleep every night for the last two weeks. In fact, I don't think I have ever had so much fun and so little sleep in my life at the same time.

Coming back to the Sloanies, one of them suggested that I call up my Discover credit card company (which I had used to make the purchase), to see if they could compensate me for some of the loss, since I had used their plastic to make the purchase. Apparently American Express has some sort of a service like that... Anyway, I called Discover and they told me that they do not have any such service. Dejected, I sat down to register my device on the Garmin website...

Surprise Birthday Party/Oceans/Core Teams

My wife threw a surprise birthday party for me last week! She got the e-mail addresses from the hiking trip. More than 12 Sloanies showed up. I was so shocked!  :-)

I am amazed at how friendly people are at MIT Sloan. Orientation started last week, and we found out about our oceans and core teams. The class is divided into six oceans (Atlantic, Baltic, Caribbean, Indian, Mediterranean and Pacific), and each ocean is divided into ten teams (named after birds).

Each ocean will take the same core classes together in the first semester. My core team (T-T-T-T-Terns!) consists of a compliance officer from China (Yan), an operations research associate from Mexico (Joaquin), an industrial engineer from Detroit (Brian), a software engineer (myself), a government major who used to work at a Boston law firm (Lauren), and a MBA/KSG (Kennedy School of Government) student interested in alternative and renewable energy (Ryan). Talk about diversity!

Our pilot for the semester is Abhinav Khushraj, MBA '08, coincidently one of my co-bloggers on the MIT Sloan website. Each core team gets a pilot, a second year student who has "been there, done that". Having survived the core last year :-) Abhinav is sharing a wealth of experience with us on a range of issues such as time management, summer internships, balancing family/academic life... All in all, he is a great guy who also likes to have a lot of fun and has sort of an "infectious enthusiasm", i.e. it is hard not to get pumped up when one is around him... He was also our guide during the Warren Center Activity day during the Orientation weekend. More on that next week...

Pre-term Econ class

We had the funniest instructor for this class last week... Enrique Gonzalez worked at the McKinsey and Company in New York, and graciously agreed to teach the pre-term Econ class. He graduated from MIT Sloan in 2007 and last year, after T.A’ing the Core Econ class, he was voted the best T.A. among the 100+ T.A.s who helped to teach the courses at MIT Sloan.

At the beginning of the first few lectures, he touted the wonders of his ancestral city, Mallorca in Spain. He described it as the "coolest place ever" with the great beaches and bars. In addition to knowing the subject matter really well, he cracked hilarious jokes every once in a while, which made some of the more dry Econ topics such as price ceiling and production quota that much more interesting. Also, he gave out Lindt truffles in class to students who had the right answer to his questions.

In my undergraduate institution at the University Of Waterloo in Canada, the Math department had a weekly newsletter, MathNews, which contained a small section called "Prof Quotes". This section contained all the funny quotes by the profs during the course of the lectures that week. Enrique would have made the section every week.

Further, Enrique also twisted words sometimes to pronounce them in his native Spanish language. For example, while trying to say "height", he said "hei", "hee" and then "heit", before finally giving up. Some people in the class almost fell off their chairs laughing...

It reminded me of the movie "Mickey Blue Eyes", where Frank is trying to teach Michael to talk like a mobster:

Frank Vitale: Here, try this, "Hey, fuggeddabout it!"
Michael Felgate: Hey, forget about it!
Frank Vitale: No, like this, "Hey, fuggeddabout it!" Change you T's to D's.
Michael Felgate: Hey, fuggeddaboud id!
Frank Vitale: Id?
Michael Felgate: You said change Ts to Ds!
Frank Vitale: Not the last one! OK, forget that one, try this one, "Get the hell outta here." No Rs.
Michael Felgate: Get the hail outta hee.
Frank Vitale: Not hee! Heah!
Michael Felgate: Hee!
Frank Vitale: Here.
[Hands Michael a pistol]
Frank Vitale: Stick it in your pants, maybe you'll look the part.
Mickey Blue Eyes (1999)

I vote Enrique for the best Pre-Term Instructor for 2007.

Pre-term Week

Andy Dufresne: You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?
Red: No.
Andy Dufresne: They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Yeah, that is where I want to spend the rest of my life too. A warm place with no memory. In fact, that is exactly where I lived before I moved to Boston. San Jose, California... Heaven on earth, I always used to say. Then why, in God's name, would I leave a full-time job that I loved in a place that I loved and move to Boston? The MIT Sloan School of Management, that is why...

Haha, you naive engineer, you say... Wait till you witness the horrors of a New England winter. Too late. I already know about it. I lived in Boston from 2000 to 2003, working as a Member of Technical Staff at Lucent Technologies and completing my Master's in Computer Science at Boston University, where I specialized in cryptography and network security.

Before moving back to Boston, I was working as a software engineer at Cisco Systems in the Security Technology Group at San Jose, California where I designed and developed the next generation of intrusion prevention and detection devices. I also served as an executive co-chair at the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the growth and success of high-tech entrepreneurial ventures by connecting ideas, technology and people.

In California, I helped to organize the AlwaysOn event(s) in 2006 and 2007, a two-and-a-half-day executive gathering that highlights the significant economic, political and commercial trends affecting the global technology industries. In 2007, Senator and 2008 Presidential hopeful John McCain was one of the invited speakers, as were tons of other prominent VCs, CEOs and technophiles from around the world.

My wife, Ghazala and I drove from California to Boston in the first week of August... We are a little crazy. Here are some pictures from along the way. I am proudly wearing my new school t-shirt  :-)

Ghazala quickly found a job as a secondary school teacher in the Boston area. She will be teaching in the Dedham School district. In fact, most of the SOS (Significant Others of Sloan) also found jobs pretty fast once they came to the Boston area. That is the great thing about Boston. As one of the most vibrant, educated and cosmopolitan cities in America, spouses will find work quickly. That is awesome, since many people who come to Sloan are engaged/married, and living apart is not an easy option for people in committed relationships. And the extra $$ always helps...

As for me, I am in the middle of my pre-term week. Orientation is next week (all part of the school's soft launch strategy), followed by real start of classes. Last weekend, some Sloanies went on the hiking trip to Mt Moosilauke. The student-organized trip was a great way for people to get to meet and know one another early on, not to mention some unforgettable games of Taboo :-)  Here are some cool pictures from that trip.

Sitting in the pre-term DMD, Accounting, Economics and Finance review classes, I am already thinking about which clubs to join. I will definitely join the VCPE (Venture Capital and Private Equity) and the Finance club, as well as the South Asian Association, and perhaps the Canadian/Soccer/Net Impact and Salsa club. Also, I cannot help but think about all the people who helped to get me here. All the friends and supporters at Cisco, OPEN, VLAB, MCA and MESA who were extremely helpful and cheered me on throughout the entire application process. I am eternally grateful to all of them, as well as the Admissions Committee at MIT Sloan.

How are the next two years going to be? During the hiking trip, when all Sloanies introduced themselves to one another, I was blown away by their amazing credentials. Their accomplishments are truly humbling and I am proud to call them my peers. This will indeed be an amazing learning experience and I can hardly wait for it to begin. Stay tuned for further updates...

Red: I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. ... I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)