Later

Three months on, and where am I at?

We continue to consolidate changes where I work. That translates into multiple openings in my group and at the segment level. A couple of them I even have a shot at.

I've been networking as well. As people leave and come in, hopefully I get some new opportunities.

Meantime, the recent Market "correction" (really? seems a bit more) has been fascinating to watch in the wake of S&P's downgrade of the US credit rating. What's maddening is to watch the market's movements as a direct response to the downgrade, when in fact most of it is being driven by the Eurozone's inability to adequately restructure Greece and other distressed sovereign debts. Furthermore, the downgrade isn't based on Congress having increased the debt ceiling; far from it, the downgrade is based on the fact that an influential group of congressional leaders openly stated that default on our debts was an option they were willing to accede to rather than come to an agreement over spending.

When you tell people upfront that you're willing to not pay your debts, they will lower your credit rating. it's that simple.

Globalization

I was on the train early this morning with a friend from out of town. She was here for my convocation ceremony, and we got to talking about the frequent mention of globalization. There was a lot of talk about being a global school, preparing for global leaders in a global community fully globalized global global global. I was surprised when she expressed wariness.

I asked her what her concerns were, and as she described them, along with anecdotes about people she knows, it became clear that she equates globalization with offshoring - jobs leaving the country. She isn't ignorant, but she didn't mention new markets, growing a market, or expanding wealth through trade.

We talked some more, and exchanged ideas. I tend to focus on markets due to my degree, and in particular, the idea that overall job growth can be achieved through trade. She has her doubts. "What about factory workers, in their fifties, really, how retrainable are they?"

To that point, I said it was the role of education to prepare people to continue learning. It does know good to learn a trade and just work that trade for life. People have to know how to learn. Either their trades will change so much that they are unrecognizable, or they will switch trades.

For me, it was a glimpse of the fears so many people have. I've generally always supported globalization. I haven't understood fully why people fear it. Yes, it is disruptive, but it is for the greater good. I believe so, anyway.

Done

Well, Commencement and Convocation have come and gone. I don't have my degree in hand (or on the wall), but I am officially graduated. Julie McCoy, B.A, M.B.A.

While it's been a long road, in retrospect the time went quickly. Because I attended part time, I have had two parallel tracks: professional and academic. It is true that I've been able to bring real world examples into the classroom, and turn classroom lessons into tools for understanding my workplace.

That said, turning those tools into actions and accomplishments is a separate endeavor.

Regardless, I now have an MBA. This may sound like Kool-Aid talk, but I do feel like I have a much stronger grasp of business fundamentals, especially financial analysis and strategy. I have what I sought; a formalized framework in which to apply what I have already known about business.

So yay. Yay Me! I did it. Now I need to decide what I'll do next.

The End is Nigh

I wish I had more time to write here. In retrospect, I wish I'd had more time to more thoroughly document my MBA experience. Coming in to the final weeks, it does indeed seem like a blur, like I started just last fall, or maybe the year before.

It's been three academic years - just 2.5 calendar years. In the that time I've met and befriended completely new people, learned WAY more about finance than I ever imagined possible, hobbed with the nobs, revised my resume countless times and gone to any number of career fairs, interviews, and networking events, and soon . . .the real world.

It's challenging, making a career change. Have I done enough? Have I done the right things? Should I settle in to my field and simply apply towards management in that area? It's hard to say.

What' clear though is that school changed me for the better - and I had to change before that just to get in. I was an OK student before. I had to become much more organized before I could even imagine applying to Stern, and when I was accepted - it's been a log ride. Now, we're approaching the splash.

A Frank Conversation

I had a chat with a manager today, and in the conversation I asked him about the status of a project he's been managing. I was involved in the early stages and knew it was supposed to be done by now.

"They're looking for funding," he said. This was a surprise, since everything to date had been painted in very bright lines of "this is important and will happen".

So this prompted the question: are we working for cheapskates?

Not too long ago I had an interview with a firm that builds out solutions for health care and financial services providers. It was appealing to me because I am interested in both of those industries, and functionally it's similar to what I already do. When describing my transferable skills, I launched into familiar refrains: cutting costs, curtailing choices, and addressing very specific functionality.

Imagine my surprise when I was asked how I would pitch a solution that generates revenue.

It clicked - I've been working for so long in an environment that is focused on lowering costs, headcount, doing rote repeatable work on the cheap, that I've forgotten what it means to present something of value. Saving money is always valuable of course, but how does one generate value? What does one do with those savings?

The conversation is echoed in the current political climate. There is much talk of cutting spending, lowering taxes, less, less, less, but not so much talk about what to build. Good idea or bad, what is the value in building a high-speed rail network, or funding education, or subsidizing childcare for the poor?

In an IT world, it's easy to reduce, reduce, reduce, to do less work. But what about more, more, more, increasing productivity, higher costs leading to disproportionately higher service levels?

Final Lap

Well, I'm in. My final semester at Stern is starting, graduation is just 4.5 credits away. I have a six week course and a twelve week course.

I figure after spring break in mid-March, I'll be mentally checked out.

The short course is Venture Capital Finance. The longer course is Implementing Strategy.

Meantime, I continue to look for jobs. Some nibbles. Also, planning to network. I'm really interested in Turnaround Management, which is a stretch with my background, but I always need a long-term goal.

State Bankruptcy

Two articles crossed my desk (well, my Kindle and my iPhone) recently, both on how to manage bankruptcy of US states.

States are not allowed to declare bankruptcy. One of the challenges in managing state-level financial distress is ensuring that the state is able to meet its contractual obligations while maintaining services. Unlike a corporation, a state cannot simply declare bankruptcy, and does not go bankrupt when it breaks a covenant.

NYT article on movement towards resolving distressed US states. Notably, prospect of removing primacy of pensions and senior bondholders in restructuring:

What they're getting it is two-fold: 1) in bankruptcy, the debtor basically turns over his finances to the court for restructuring. A sovereign state can't do that - without sacrificing sovereignty. 2) For a a state to meet its contractual obligations and covenants, it would have to cut back on services first. This isn't sustainable. So, how does a state renegotiate its obligations and covenants if it can't enter bankruptcy?

Peter Orszag briefly touches on state default in this FT piece - regards it as alternately unlikely yet devastating should it occur:

So, I call trial balloon. We have an NYT piece full of chatter about the nature of the problem and some of the ideas about how to resolve it, but no real commitment. We have a former administration official, a financier and economist, talking more bluntly about the nature of the problem. I think we're being prepped. I think in 2011 we're going to see some movement towards regulation and possibly legislation to allow state and municipal governments to renegotiate at least some of their debt obligations.

This is huge. How does a government clear up its debt? More importantly at the state and muni level, how does one government do this without casting a pall on all others? I agree with Orszag that comparisons to Europe are overblown - by the order of magnitude if nothing else - but if one city or state oes bankrupt, it's certainly going to affect borrowing costs for others for years.

The challenge here is to provide a mechanism for resolving government distress without damaging the ability of governments to afford the carrying costs of their operations. All these nutters going on about how we can't keep borrowing have no idea about what life would be like if governments could not borrow at all. Let's hope none of his get to experience that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/business/economy/21bankruptcy.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/10612eec-24cc-11e0-a919-00144feab49a.html#axzz1Bnex2eOZ

Apple, Inc

Apple

In the late 1990s, I bought some Apple stock. I only had about $100 to put in the market, and I thought it would be fun. Apple was cheap, under $20 per share. A couple of years later, I pulled my money out, since I didn't know what I was doing, and I hadn't mad or lost much. If I recall correctly, it was trading at about $14 per share. This was all prior to the return of Steve Jobs.

Apple is now projected by some analysts to rise to nearly thirty times that amount. In the past two years alone, Apple's share price has about tripled, and the company is now the second largest firm by valuation, just behind ExxonMobil. Being an MBA student with extensive experience with Apple, I'm long overdue for comment.

I've worked in IT my entire professional life, and much of my career has been focused on supporting Apple products. I've never considered myself a fangirl, but I am often labeled as such, because like any minority, I get defined by what makes me different. In the corporate IT world, my expertise in Apple products is second, right behind the fact that I'm female - and I'm not sure even that distinction will continue to rank first in the future.

Much of my expertise was acquired informally. Like many Apple specialists, I was more of a user of their products than a supporter for many years. I wrote and directed short films. I edited videos using analog and digital tools connected to Apple products. I designed web pages and print graphics using Apple computers. It wasn't until the last recession that I began to value the technical skills I had acquired, and focused on an IT career instead of a creative one.

In the business world, I've interacted with Apple directly and indirectly in a number of ways. I've worked for Apple Authorized Service Providers. I've worked for schools. In my current position, I'm responsible for the corporate support relationship with Apple at a Fortune 500 company. I can tell you that at all levels, in all periods of Apple's history, they have been a bickle fitch to deal with.

For a company known for consumer-friendly products, Apple is remarkably difficult to deal with as a business. They don't share information, even with their own employees. They do not comment on issues until forced to. They will suddenly announce a product going end of life with no replacement, and certainly no interaction with their customers. While they've gotten better at being communicative and considerate of their customers as they've grown, they're still not very forthcoming.

For example, let's say you're an enterprise IT shop. Part of your role is to define how computers are configured, and define which hardware models are supported in your enterprise. There are dozens of systems that your standards must work with, so it behooves the company to have a team that tests new products for compatibility with those standards. Normally, a company such as Dell or HP will allow you to test new hardware before it is released for purchase. Not so with Apple. They won't even tell you when they'll be updating a given model, or how different it will be from the current model. You find out at the same time that your employees are running out to buy whatever was just released.

An example of how not to engage your stakeholders in ending a product comes from Apple's recent announcement that they were going to discontinue the Xserve, their server hardware product. I understand that it was not a big seller and did not fit into the company's strategy, but I also just spent a year upgrading twelve Xserves and implementing a service that only runs on the Server edition of Apple's operating system. Apple's suggested replacement hardware is a joke in the data center world - either huge towers or tiny portables, neither of which have enterprise-ready features that only the Xserve provided. The only good thins I cane say is that at least we had two months to purchase replacements.

A lot of Apple's success has been attributed to supply-chain management. Under COO Tim Cook, Apple has co-located with many of its overseas suppliers and keeps tight control on inventory. This in turn results in a better customer service experience - replacing defective products doesn't cost much more than creating new products. This is great for consumers, but it doesn't do enterprise or small business much good.

Large or small, business needs stability. Businesses need the platforms they rely on to work consistently, year on year, without significant changes. Apple changes their operating system significantly every two years, or sooner. In my current company, new versions of their web browser were incompatible with existing databases. We had to prevent people from buying new computers for nine months because the operating system that shipped with those machines was not compatible with software used by half of our Macintosh users. I don't expect Apple to cater to my needs, but I do expect a heads up, and a workaround until we get a proper solution sorted.

As a vendor, Apple tries to leverage third parties to support their products. They do not have their own consultants; instead, consulting contracts are fulfilled by authorized third parties. When it comes to resourcing repairs of Apple products, they direct you to either 1) the Apple store or 2) direct dispatch of a local AASP to come in with a box or two of parts.

Apple computers used to get thought of as toys. While that's still the perception among the older crowd, most of the engineers I work with these days appreciate Apple's OS X as an operating system. There's even a little jealousy of the hardware I have at my desk (a 27-inch iMac, a 21.5-inch iMac, two Mac Pros, and a drawer full of laptops). As frustrated as I get with some of the undocumented shortcomings of OS X, they will speak casually of the shortcomings of Windows.

Apple's biggest obstacle to dominating the enterprise isn't their product, it's their practice. to be fair, that's a legitimate choice - selling thousands of premium goods to consumers, rather than tens of thousands of commodity goods and services to business. It is clearly a strategy that works for their bottom line. I say all of this in part to counter the notion that Apple does not dominate because it is an inferior product - it isn't - but also to counter the idea that it is a great product that Big Bad Corporate IT hates.

Corporate IT loves Apple's products. We just wish they made it easier to support.

Hazy Shade of Winter

Halfway through Business Communication, already done with Professional Responsibility. I think I did pretty well in the latter; the grades aren't posted yet but I'm hoping for an A-class grade.

Business Communication is pretty good. A guy from my core group is there, plus one of my casing partners, and a guy who was in the same Professional Responsibility class. It's kinda neat to have prior relationships with people who are total strangers to each other. I thought at first that put me in some sort of arbitration role - as if I'm responsible for bringing them all together, and in some ways I am - but really, when you bring people together - adults, anyway - you can pretty much let them go and organize themselves.

While mentioning grades, I ought to metion (if I haven't already) that I finally go an A letter grade. Not an A- (got a couple of those already) but a full-on A. I got it in Bankruptcy, of all things, which only revives hope that I might one day find a career in distressed investing after all - so much so that I joined the Turnaround Management Association.