I’m very impressed by the alumni group’s handeling of my (somewhat childish) fit I had yesterday. Screwups are bound to happen but they jumped on that problem and took care of it VERY quickly. Well done.
It is really really really bad to contact someone asking for money without bothering to ensure that you have the right name.
It makes your recipient feel unimportant… So I won’t be giving you money… For a long time.
It doesn’t take an MBA to see that chain of events.
(Sorry, they also caught me on a day when I’m in a bad mood, most other days I’d just laugh it off but not today)
Anyone remember this post where I mentioned a talk about how it’s going to be more expensive to produce in china than domestically? Well, it came true (although not for any of the same reasons so maybe my assertion that I don’t agree with the model was still correct):
Thanks to rising fuel prices and wage inflation in China, it’s actually more expensive to manufacture and ship electronics across the Pacific for the American market than it would be to produce them domestically, according to a report from The McKinsey Quarterly.
I don’t think that the BCG talk mentioned anything about rising fuel prices and wage inflation but was all about networks (social and technilogical) as well as channel saturation.
I got this e-mail from Rotman’s IT Help Desk:
Please be advised that some European websites are unreachable from the UofT network due to a dispute between internet providers Cogent and TeliaSonera.
Cogent is the internet provider for the University and one of the largest in North America. TeliaSonera is a major provider in Nordic and Baltic countries. Until this dispute is resolved the following geo-locations may not be accessible from either network. Traffic that has originated on either of these networks has been blocked regardless of other network paths (3rd parties) that may be available to each company. We will keep you up to-date as we receive new information.
For anyone who want’s more information (like me) you can check out this blog. Excerpt:
In the past, when Cogent got into a peering fight, it fought with other tier 1 providers who felt that Cogent shouldn’t belong to the exclusive club. Tier 1 providers have “settlement-free” peering between each other, meaning nobody pays anyone else for network access.
As you can imagine, this can save a lot of money.
Cogent is the company that other Tier 1 providers love to hate because it has the lowest prices, 100 Mbps for $1,000 per month (yes, that’s $10 per Mbps).
Now, GigaOM is reporting that Cogent is no longer linking with Swedish backbone provider Telia because Cogent wants payment from Telia for peering.
It seems important that these guys figure out some sort of agreement. This type of silly fighting just gives customers a reason to go pay a slightly higher price for their internet access. Eh UofT? *wink* *wink*
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” That quote is true in just about every case but is especially true, I’ve found, of the Rotman CCC. There are lots of numbers that get thrown at you about job success rates and ways in which people find jobs. Of course the numbers are true but people can come up with statistics to prove anything, forfty percent of all people know that. For example there are lots of indications that you’ll easily find the summer job you want through the CCC.
This is not true!
For example, somewhere in the area of 70% of summer students want an I-Banking or Consulting job. My impression is that about 15% of summer students actually get these jobs. Another example is that the school claims that 90%+ of students get summer jobs. This is true but there are two important caveat:
Now all this doom-and-gloom doesn’t make Rotman and the CCC look very hot. In reality they both do a great job in trying to get lots of recruiters in (mostly for I-Banking and Consulting with a few random marketing analyst type jobs). The problem is that the summer job market is very competetive. The recruiters go to lots of different schools to try and fill very few summer jobs.
My tip to you is to not rely on the CCC for a summer job. Try and set something up before you start the MBA. If you can’t do that then try and look for jobs outside of Rotman as early as possible. This is especially true if you don’t want an I-banking/consulting gig since there were very few interesting jobs offered outside of these two industries.
This problem is not Rotman specific. It exists at all schools.
P.S. Last week of classes and I’ve caught ANOTHER cold. Is that 3 or 4 since class started?