PGSEM 2013 Admissions - Open House on July 28, 2012

The 2nd open house for clarifying your queries related to PGSEM, admissions for 2013 batch and interaction with students, alumni & faculty will be held on July 28, 2012 at IIM Bangalore Auditorium. If you are interested in the program or planning to apply for the program next year or have queries, please make sure you attend the open house next Saturday. Register for the event here.

As we noted earlier and also clarified in Facebook and IIMB website, the major policy change with respect to admissions next year onwards is that ONLY CAT 2012 and GMAT (taken after Jan 1, 2010) will be considered and there is NO PGSEM Admission test.

This is a good opportunity to spend your Sunday in a green resort-like campus of IIMB :) Also the best opportunity to meet current students of PGSEM, alumni, Professors to clarify all your doubts about PGSEM and IIMB admission philosophy. The agenda for the day is provided below.

Timings	Agenda
10:00 A.M	Participants Assemble @ Auditorium
10:10 - 10:15	Welcome Address by Prof. S Ramesh Kumar, Chairperson, PGSEM
10:15 - 10:20	Address by Prof. Narendra M Agarwal, Chairperson, CSITM
10:20 - 10:25	Mr. Rakesh Godhwani, PGSEM Alumni
10:25 - 10:30	Mr. Rajesh Pandit, CSITM
10:30 – 10:35	Mr. Karthik Srinivasan, PGSEM Alumni
10:35 – 10:40	Ms. Bhavani Koti, PGSEM SAC
10:40 – 10:50	Coffee/Tea Break
10:50 - 12:00	Q & A  with a Panel consisting of : Ø  Prof. S Ramesh Kumar, Chairperson, PGSEM Ø  Prof. M Jayadev Ø  Mr. Akshat Kumar, PGSEM Alumni Ø  Mr. Kapil Gupta, PGSEM Alumni

The Split Personality Disorder of Engineer-MBAs

Friday Morning:

Operations Management Class:

 The course is taught by a professor who has written a text book on the subject and has consulted for many companies across industries in Banaglore. He talks about streamlining processes, predictability, quality etc. I don't just nod in agreement. I am totally convinced. Words like "process" not only sound reasonable but inevitable.

"Process is paramount. How else can you manage a company with many different products and thousands of employees?" he asks.

"Yes sir" I think as I listen to him.

"Documentation is important"

"Completely agree sir"

"Metrics are critical"

"We would have it no other way sir"

On other Fridays and Saturdays, other professors lecture us about objectives, numbers and hierarchies. It all seems to make sense and most often looks like the only way right way to do things.

It is not as much about agreement as it is about belief. And the concomitant imagination that as a manager I would do the same thing.

And then...

Monday Morning:

I return to office as an engineer. To the world of system engineering built on Unix and C code. A world built by long-haired hackers, programmers who never went to college, start-ups, all-night coding, the thrill of breaking programs by testing...

A world in which "process" is an anathema. Build something you truly care about. Code for fun. Break it for the adrenaline ride. Do it all over again till you get it right.

In this place, words like "hierarchy" and "metrics" have little meaning. In this place, a program doesn't just solve a problem. When written well, it is a elegant piece of craft and is as much about a programmer's passion as it is about his or her technical talent.

I love this world. I would rather live in this place than any place else.

Looks like my beliefs are tuned into one thing while I enjoy doing something else.

And so the story goes. Between management and engineering. Between t-shirts and suits. Between hackers and bureaucrats.

Are these 2 worlds truly dichotomous?

Can companies not innovate and yet be process-driven?

Can they not ensure quality without taking away the creative freedom of their engineers?

Can they grow to 3000 people and yet tolerate the mavericks?

The two of us continue to search for answers...!