My Story

My decision to pursue an MBA may be slightly off the normal distribution. I have been a techie all my life. I pursued my Bachelor's in Computer Science and Engineering owing to my passion to learn more about the high-technology world, especially the computing industry. As in India, I decided to follow the role of a "software-developer" with an international firm, developing medical-imaging products. They are one of the 2 biggest players in that segment. I worked as an IT-consultant/developer to develop 2 major products for them. A year into my work, I was hired as a consultant to develop a new product in Germany. The year in Germany allowed me to glimpse and taste the bigger picture.

I had a few realizations:
1. I loved technology from a wholesome perspective - i.e. not just the specific development of software products, but also visualizing and developing new products, analyzing the market, estimate the time lines, target the time-to-market and all the related efforts.
2. I had a strong analytics - I had always been good at Math. But more than crunching numbers, I was good at understanding the crux of the situation, the gist of a problem and tackle it!! It could be a 1000 line C++ code, or a multi page Physics derivation, or the balance sheet of a company, I would be able to analyze it!
3. I had good people-skills: I could interact with a variety of people and be comfortable with them and make them comfy as well. More importantly, I genuinely enjoyed conversing with people!
4. I had already been marked as a star within my company having the potential and capability to lead teams and interact with global customers. This was one of the major reasons that I was chosen as a representative for the assignment in Germany, despite being the youngest member of the team, both in age and experience.

Now, this got me thinking if I am eventually going to end up in management, I want it to be done right and with the right backing. This got me started thinking of a graduate degree. I was still presented with 2 options - I could specialize in the domain that I was working - medical imaging / broader bio-medical engineering - which would be an MS degree or go gung-ho into management by pursuing an MBA.

Deciding between the two was one of the longest time I have had to brood in my life over various options. What it finally boiled down to was if I wanted to continue to contribute as a technical-consultant or as a management-consultant.

Another realization that I had during the course of my work was that I loved variety in my challenges/life/work. Sticking to one thing tends to be too monotonous for me. So, what I was looking forward to was also a variety of challenges, and the world of medical imaging was a tad too slow-paced for my liking. Mind you, I love the work that I did/do, it's just that this is the age where in I have the energy to expend into challenging and dynamic situations :P!

So, all these put together really pushed me towards an MBA.