Standard Protocol for Breakup

• Thou shall not dump someone on their birthday
• Thou shall not dump someone on Valentine’s Day
• Thou shall not dump someone on New Years Eve / Day

Disclaimer: This post is just meant to be general musing / comedy.  Any resemblance to events in your life is purely coincidental. I cannot guarantee that going down the path of the exception will make your life any better, but theoretically it seems like it might.

 1. “I’m just saying!”

First of all I didn’t quite see you doing anything else while you were uttering those magnificent words from that orifice in your face. So, clearly, you were just saying. Secondly,  just because you use that phrase doesn’t take away from the fact that you are trying to cover your behind by using a neutralizing statement. So we both know at this point that you aren’t saying it

 2. First of all…second of all.. third of all.

You just read me using it in the paragraph. When I hear a sentence beginning with this phrase, I really look forward to a long conversation just to see how many you can do. When does it start becoming uncomfortable? “Fourth of all? Twelve-th of all?” I just don’t know

There are just way to many quirks to pen down for this post but in all due fairness it’s quirks like these that make the conversation with you worthwhile.

Update: BigCommerce got back to us around Sunday noon PST and resolved it for us! Thank you guys

I helped someone out recently that did a fair amount of shopping around before deciding to give BigCommerce a shot. We liked what they had to offer – the admin interface was slick, product creation was better than the rest, variants were handled pretty neatly, checkout was smooth, shipping rules were great, all with the standard 99.9% uptime that everyone seems to be claiming these days. And with a fair amount of 3rd part integrations, it really seemed like we made a decent choice. But even with the top most plan all hell broke loose.

On a Friday morn, our store just stopped working. I cross checked and its not like we made any changes to the settings or anywhere else for that matter its just that the darn server stopped working. 36 hours, a dozen frantic “please help us” phone calls, and many tickets (escalated to what was assured as the highest priority level) later, there is still no resolution or communication back from the team thats supposed to be looking into it to say “Hey guys we know its critical. We’re looking into it. This is what we think the problem is” or whatever. BigCommerce has a decent offering – a hosted variant (a better one at that) of Interspire’s self-hosted solution. The 5 plans Bronze through Diamond sound exactly how they are supposed to “fancy, but come crunch time who gives a shit!”. If you are a small business owner then make no mistake this may be the choice you were looking for. It’s probably just you doing everything and if you’re lucky you might have a few folks to help out and at the end of the day. YOU are the “IT Team”. It’s completely understandable – everyone goes through that phase before they become big and I wish you nothing but success in your rise to the top. For you, a hosted solution like BigCommerce makes perfect sense. Platform as a Service / Software as a Service is absolutely a Godsend. If you are, however, looking for support over the weekend (I’ve read elsewhere that holidays too are bad days) for when your store goes down (god forbid) due to some issue you have no control over coz they don’t give you server access to begin with, then you better be looking to keep things in-house. Also the 99.9% uptime claim is total bogus as you can see in the table below. Let me the context up for you – now let’s say you’ve been down for 2 days and your store has been up for barely a couple of weeks so far (Scenario 1). Chances are, you started your store a 2-4 weeks prior to that to test things and what not (Scenario 2 and Scenario 3)

	Scenario 1	Scenario 2	Scenario 3
Days Up	12	30	45
Days Down	2	2	2
Downtime %	16.67%	6.67%	4.44%

As you can see we are far off from the 99.9% uptime claim that comes with whatever plan you choose. And with that perhaps I should call Legal.

The thing about BigCommerce is the same thing for any Saas, Paas offering that you may be considering. The Cloud is a good thing to talk about and have until it breaks and its your livelihood on the line. I use many other cloud offerings as I write this post but none of them are what they call “mission critical”. Which is why if you are considering moving your critical stuff to the cloud, don’t learn it the hard way

Don’t trust the cloud. Because the only people that give a shit about your business is YOU!

Someone: “That sounds like you are <insert prejudice here>”

Person: (Surprise, Anger, Raised Eyebrows) “Me? <Insert prejudice here>? <****>  I am so not. <X%> of all my friends are <insert prejudice criteria>”

Now let’s begin! What the devil is with this statistic? Do you track this prejudice statistic every time you make a friend? That in its very essence makes you prejudiced! Some of you will jump and say “No I just took a ball park figure”. This isn’t an estimation game. You don’t get brownie points for having a high number. Besides we both know that the number you just threw is not the exact representation of the people with that prejudice that you interact with. So please stop. You aren’t fooling anyone.

Its just quite sad that our brains are wired to process this tactic in the way its not supposed to. So stop being suckered into people who use it.

P.S:- Someone once said “34% of all statistics are made up on the spot!” 

Before most of you start throwing out the “You’re just lazy!” accusations, think about it. All forms of media have slowly been progressing towards being instantaneous. Take your news for example. Earlier you would consume it through the morning newspaper or wait for the radio and/or TV. Now? Well you have a ton of ways to get your news when you want it. And hence the demise of the newspaper. Another example? Music. You needed to go to a concert or live gig, then came the radio/TV, then your walkman, MP3, iPods and now there is streaming. And then there is video which seems to be staving off this progress but only by a thread.

Video Streaming is instantaneous.You just get it on demand for the source of your choice. No more waiting for the show to come on, or download or whatever is appropriate to your method. You just find it and voila its there for you to consume. No having to figure out what to get rid off in order  to save the downloaded file/TIVO. Its just convenient. Its there when you need it. The problem it hasn’t taken off is threefold. The first problem is that of Internet penetration and bandwidth. Many places still don’t have the required bandwidth for a seamless experience that’ll give the users enough confidence to switch. But that could change in 2-3 years. The second reason is licensing outside the US. There are tons of people who would love legal access to the content but are denied due to licensing and regulatory practices. Third is pricing. Is streaming going to work through universally flat pricing (not everyone has the same earning power as those in the developed countries) or do they set the price based on geography (that’s unfair to those living in developed countries). Whatever the solution is, its right over the horizon and when it comes through streaming will change the face of media much more than we currently anticipate.

Why Hult

During the course of my study in Hult and my time away from work I have had a ton of people ask me why I picked Hult out of all the possible institutions better and worse out there. Here are the reasons why

1. Reputation – I have always wanted to get a higher degree from an institution that was quite well known. By the time I graduated Hult was ranked #27 best business school in the world! (http://www.hult.edu/about-hult/rankings)
2. 1 Year Program – Being out of the workforce, for me, was a big risk. Especially with the economy being the way it was, the longer you were out of the workforce, the worse off your chances were. So I wanted to pick a course that allowed me to get the education I wanted in the least amount of time possible.
3. Costs – Balancing out reputation and time, then came the issue of costs. With a 1 yr program you almost half your expenditure from reduced tuition fees and living expenses.
4. International Exposure – With the work environment becoming progressively global by the day, its an added advantage to have any kind of international exposure. My class of 60 had students from over 30 countries and Hult website says the student body comprises of students from over 80 countries!
5. Global Rotation Program – During the 1 year program, a student is allowed to rotate to up to 3 global campuses (if planned right). This gives an unbelievable wealth of fun and exposure not easily attainable elsewhere

 Now don’t get me wrong here – the Hult Dubai campus is by no means inadequate. In terms of location, its really in no-man’s land but it’s not exactly Hult’s fault. In Dubai, academic institutions have been asked to move to Dubai’s International Academic City and well that place quite hasn’t developed as anyone had hoped it would. Location aside, Hult occupies one half of the 7th floor in Block 10 and while relatively small has everything you need – breakout rooms, 2 huge classrooms, staff rooms, offices, lockers, mailboxes, video -conferencing room and there is even room for a Foosball table. I have read people complaining about the lack of Hult’s own library and other facilities and those complains are completely unwarranted. There is a well stocked common library available for those who wish to avail those services. Hult also provides access to online library resources so the physical one is redundant. The reason why Dubai get a B+ then is solely because of relative comparison with San Francisco.

Hult Dubai had some of the best professors – hands down! I thoroughly enjoyed almost every class that was taught and the professors had a big part to play in every one of them. Of course as in every institution there are one or two of those you wish never taught but at the end of the day you can only evaluate the overall academic experience and that was, in my opinion, worth every savings I poured into this investment.

The Staff at Hult Dubai – everyone from the Assistant Dean to the security guard were really friendly and were always there if you ever needed any help. Complaints, if any, were handled with the greatest level of professionalism and personal ones were treated with utmost discretion and at the end of the day you cannot ask for anything more.

During the time I was in the Dubai Campus, student services was in a constant change of flux and people were coming in and out. But that isn’t the reason why Dubai Student Services gets this grading. Lack of communication with the students was the biggest drawback during the year. However, when they did organize student events, they were amazing!

Currently, this is by far the biggest weakness of Hult. Student Services in Dubai was really ineffective and pointless. They did offer countless resume review sessions and a few good speaker series but while those are good student need to see career fairs and companies coming in to visit you and maybe at some point even hire a person or two and that makes things credible. Running resume sessions and mock interviews are essential but more focus should be given to other areas. Having said this, if you are one of those students who think Career Services should land you a job then the joke is on you! The role of Career Services in any institution is to get you in a position where you can then put your foot in the door. Everything else is/should/will be up to you.

Hult’s San Francisco campus opened in 2010 and just completed 1 year of operation but the standards here are nothing short of world class. The campus is located in the area of Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39 and other touristy places and there is always something to do in a 5 min walk radius. The campus was in the process of expansion while I was there (they already had 2 floors but were getting a 3rd). The campus is ridiculously good looking and there are tons of classrooms, breakout rooms, huge relaxation/study areas – the works!

 While in San Francisco I only took elective courses, but the professors that taught them were awesome. They knew what they were talking about and brought a wealth of real world experiences as well. And talking to the students who did their core curriculum in San Francisco for the year, the professors were really good.

Granted I was there only for 3 months doing my electives, the staff there was nothing but brilliant! Everyone was friendly and always helped out whenever I had a question or an issue. One can ask of nothing more.

Student Services in San Francisco deserve a standing ovation and applause. They were always so helpful and friendly. There was always a constant stream of communication coming from them. There was some event or the other that they were either organizing or that they wanted students to know about. The couple of events that I went to were unbelievably fun. They just seemed to know how to constantly keep doing things and keep the buzz surrounding Student Services and making sure that the students were always doing fun things when they could. Kudos to you!

Sadly, still one of the weakest links in the Hult armor. I must admit that you shouldn’t read into this one particular grading that much because I personally didn’t make use of their services. But from what I know and heard while better than Dubai it wasn’t all that breathtaking. Career Services in all campuses seem to be not helping Hult as much as their other departments and hopefully this will change in the coming years.

1. I watched “The Social Network” – a movie that I had procrastinated long enough to watch and also thanks to the persistence of someone who decided it was a shame that I hadn’t watched it yet and rented it out for me (Thank you!)
2. During my aimless loitering of the Internets, I noticed that a friend of mine had TYPED the status message “Unavailable”

1. Try not to sound so disinterested

Now trash talk call centers in India all you want, with their fake American names and neutral accents but whatever it is, there is nothing worse than talking to a call center personnel (no this person was clearly not from an Indian call center.. trust me I would know) who sounds like they are doing a big favor by calling you. This lady who called me sounded like she was annoyed that I picked her call up in the first place and proceeds to ask me a series of questions. Not a good start if you want to get genuine feedback from your consumer base.

2. Dis-incentivizing never works

When you tell someone “…ideas for products and services will be the sole property of Bank of America with no reward financial or otherwise given to you” (i paraphrase of course) you have effectively killed off any remaning reason why this someone should want to help you. Most people will settle for a “thank you” or some minor incentives but when you flat out come guns blazing the automatic response is to shut down and ask you to go do something else (like go fly a kite or something). If you want to crowd source ideas for your business try to give a small incentive. And if you don’t want to, just dont tell them “all your bases are belong to us and also by the way no rewards whatsoever!”

In any case, if I could only recall the name of the company they said were doing the survey, it would be awesome to send them a note and tell them not to cut costs by skimping on proper training and hiring practices.

• 2 of the so called followers had the same profile picture but totally different names and followed me within a span of minutes
• Now that would just be a coincidence until I started taking a closer look at the tweets in their feed. Every single one of them were quotes
• I then looked at some of the other new followers and they were all just quotes too

Quotes are the new spam

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