ISB, IIM Rant
Take this work a pinch of salt, not to be triggered. I work in a company with a good number of folks working in product, growth/ strategy. Many of which are from tier 1 Indian business schools or some even from abroad. Paid hefty, I just don't see them being that smart. Putting way too much time into presenting something instead of getting work done. Jugaad method of calculating target metrics, ever changing requirements (low on clarity) is just the norm. I was someone who looked upto these colleges and wanted to be in one after having a good 5 yoe. Now I'm not sure. Hoping to be proved wrong, so there's no need to fire your guns at me :)
Getting into these colleges doesn’t mean intelligence bro. It means that they did well in the entrance exam, thats it. Not everyone from these colleges are worthy of hefty pay that they get. The sooner we realise and normalise this, the better job opportunities tier 2/3 folks would get.
I'm not from any top college but it takes a lot of intelligence and smartness to crack these exams, score a top percentile and then get selected in a tier 1 college.
Standard normal distribution curve!
The above curve is valid in most of the spheres of life. Think about it, you will see it. Be it any cohort or manufacturing products. It’s just your luck you get to see/meet people from one side of the curve.
I don’t think after a period of time college matters. What matters is what you bring to the table. I have seen non-tier non MBA grads having better pay than tier I grads with better roles and responsibilities, although this stands true for startups. In MNCs though, I haven’t seen this.
Don’t worry, if you are worth it, you will get whatever you deserve, might take time but you shall achieve it.
All what Tier I grads get(both master and bachelors), are better opportunities and one foot step ahead in the beginning of their career. After a decade, only your rich experience will matter.
Axiomatic
Stealth
5 months ago
Dude, very simply put, Bschool degrees are revenue streams for most of the other prestigious universities out there (think Harvard, Standford, Oxford and the likes). Any Bschool degree teaches you in a framework format what literally any merchant/dhandha karne wala you know has learnt by running their shop. The complexities in running a successful business are about managing multiple moving parts together.
What I’m saying is, don’t try to find some exceptional gifted ability in a business degree graduate. You’ll find a lot of stupid people who passed through the motions seamlessly, provided they made it past the first and literally only barrier - CAT/GMAT.
Exceptional people will be any field, everywhere, but for the most part, its a clear cut transactional relationship. You pay hefty fees for access to the alum network, the brand and the validation an IIM/ISB degree carries. This same thing is also true for Harvard/Stanford MBAs as well. They aren’t some magical crazy innovators, most of the them are just about your typical iim abc graduate type fellas.
That being said, success in corporate is multidimensional. A lot of tech/non-MBA folks in my experience get hung up on this weird notion of “smartness/intelligence”. Its as if there is a tangible way to comprehend your human experience into a score based on certain tangible outcomes/behaviours/traits and people like OP mentioned would fall into a “low score” and therefore don’t deserve their success.
Corporate success is as much about bootlicking, networking, presenting, personal branding, as it is about being tangibly smart.
So the people who may not appear smart to you could be winning in the other aspects of the game.
Somehow this comment comforts me. I'm in tech and I'm so hung up on being 'smary enough ' to crack any logic and any code. Everytime a new project comes my way I doubt whether I'm intelligent enough to crack it or smart enough to crack the interviews and land the next better paying job.
The harsh reality of corporate - it takes politics, eloquence, charisma, and network to progress to senior management.
MBAs learn that during 2 years of MBA and in their jobs post MBA.
That’s why some of MBAs quit corporate, because it’s not for everyone and another set rises quickly to the top.
For a tech or non MBA, it’s harder to blend in this group.
I felt it, when my manager, my skip manager and CBO were from ISB, they use to talk about campus clubs, hostel, alum groups during smoke breaks, they played cricket on weekends, while us less mortals just smiled and tried to fit in. Result, their promotions in every cycle, despite we doing the lifting of data analysis, deck work.
Also these MBAs get jobs to easily, despite not knowing much, just call a friend at XYZ, get referred, give interview and boom…
D0nkey05
Stealth
5 months ago
Lovely username fellow F1 fan 🥰
Sentipanda
Stealth
5 months ago
Interesting take.
Would it be ok if folks from other brands had those same drawbacks at lower price ?
SebastianFettel
Stealth
5 months ago
Higher pay + Tier 1 College = Higher Expectations, is what I'm trying to say
A tier 1 MBA grad here and even I could not agree much.
Being a guy who is very hands on and wants to focus more on doing than telling, I face conflict at work more often than not.
In fact, at times I have been told not to present my ability to do things quickly and efficiently, rather than outsourcing it to agencies or ops, as it might set an expectation for the entire team.
Fck corporate. Startups were much better.
Few things I can add:
1. Not all people are smart, some are consistent hard-worker that helped them crack those colleges.
2. Some companies also make the smart people dull because they are asked to do the redundant tasks. Especially the MNCs where people are reluctant to change and only want to do the work in a certain way.
3. Your definition of smartness can be a lot different than how others define smartness.
4. Smartness is not the only parameter to grow. A lot of politics, bootlicking, presenting and branding goes into that.
Discover More
Curated from across
