Studying management - someone, anyone, please, HELP!

[aneeshm]

Right now, I'm doing my second year in engineering in computer science.

This may sound absurd, but the least technical subject is causing me the greatest stress as the examinations approach.

In technical subjects, I'm perfectly at home, because I know that if I get it right, that's it, end of story.

But this ridiculous requirement of "Financial and Industrial Management" is driving me insane. The six units are equivalent to six separate subjects in themselves. It's as if a sadist decided to see how many different parts of an average MBA undergrad first year syllabus could be crammed into six units, and then added in a few twists and turns, just for fun.

Here's the syllabus:

1) Introduction to Management (Historic overview)
2) Economic and Legal (A crash course in basic economics and copyright, patent, trademark, and contract law as it is in India)
3) Business Organisation
4) Human Resources Management
5) Financial Management
6) Financial Analysis

Now you can't even find a book that covers all this, because the stuff covered is so completely disparate.

I have no clue how detailed the questions are going to be, and what level of analysis is expected of us.

The first unit is complete fluff - I get the whole thing off the Wiki.

For the second unit, I've gone through through Sowell's "Basic Economics" and "Applied Economics". For the legal part, I've forced myself to read "Intellectual Property Law", which, though quite readable by the standards of legal literature, is still not a very easy read.

For units five and six, I'm currently reading (and enjoying - it's really good) "Financial Management: Theory and Practice", by Brigham and Ehrhardt, along with a book on analysis by Ambrish Gupta.

It's units three and four that really stump me. I can't find anything even as a guideline. If anyone here could tell me anything which will give me an idea of what these two subjects are about, and which explains their fundamentals in a lucid way, it would save my life.







And this is also a more general rant - why the hell does an engineering course require me to study all this stuff anyway? What grave sin have engineers (and everyone else in the rigorous subjects) committed that they have to be made into "complete" human beings by being forced to sit through this stuff, whereas nobody ever calls a completely worthless "queer/women's/-studies" (or equivalent) humanities/arts student "incomplete" because he couldn't grasp the basics of Newtonian mechanics or the fundamentals of differential calculus even to save his life? I'm far more "complete" than that worthless wastrel, but I still have to sit through this farce. I'd like to see him go through the graphics course from our first year.

[snoopy369]

An engineer who is knowledgeable in business management will:
a) better understand his/her boss and/or employer in how and why decisions are made
b) perhaps end up better off because of being able to place himself in position to succeed
c) when he/she becomes a manager won't totally screw everything up, hate it, quit and get a different job, as many do.

Learning management is crucial for EVERY profession. Unless you plan to be the low man on the totem pole your whole life, you WILL get into management, and management is a learned skill often very hard for technical people to learn. Taking a class in it now (or several!!) is a very good idea

[aneeshm]

@ Snoopy

Thanks.

It's not as I don't understand it's value, it's just that I find it irksome the way it's done.

First of all, I was into all of this before, so it's not as if this course has made a great deal of difference. The HR and BO part was new, though.

The problem is the sheer diversity of it. It's like trying to cram in the entire first semester of an MBA course into a single engineering course. It's nearly impossible managing the whole thing together. You cannot expect the average student to go through one or two reference tomes for each unit. I'm going through them because I understand that I'll be needing this stuff later, but it's still a bit much.



But please, forgive the rant for a minute.

I'd really appreciate some help, as in some recommendations for self-study books in Business Organisation or Human Resource Management.

[Cort Haus]

Re: Studying management - someone, anyone, please, HELP!

Originally posted by aneeshm
What grave sin have engineers (and everyone else in the rigorous subjects) committed that they have to be made into "complete" human beings by being forced to sit through this stuff, whereas nobody ever calls a completely worthless "queer/women's/-studies" (or equivalent) humanities/arts student "incomplete" because he couldn't grasp the basics of Newtonian mechanics or the fundamentals of differential calculus even to save his life? I'm far more "complete" than that worthless wastrel, but I still have to sit through this farce. I'd like to see him go through the graphics course from our first year.

Why don't you tell us what you really think?

Does the course tuition not include an explaination of these modules? Seems a bit odd for a course not to have any lectures or reading lists.

[Kontiki]

I would imagine most of the course material for studies such as this in India could be discovered in a book on rampant corruption.

[aneeshm]

Re: Re: Studying management - someone, anyone, please, HELP!

Originally posted by Cort Haus

Does the course tuition not include an explaination of these modules? Seems a bit odd for a course not to have any lectures or reading lists.

It has lectures, of course, the syllabus has a detailed explanation of each module. The problem is simply that the material is really vast - the professor can only guide you, in such a case, she cannot really teach everything.

And I'm not comfortable with a subject unless I've understood it from the ground up, from the basics, the beginning, so I find myself really constrained and unsatisfied if I try to restrict myself to the prescribed syllabus, because to have a proper grasp of each topic, you need to know it in more detail, and you need some peripheral stuff which is not really included. I can't bear to do a half-assed job.

[Pekka]

I'm computer science guy as well, except I already did all that.

You can't find a good program that neglects this side of stuff. You have to have it, IMO it is necessary, unless you want to become some slave code monkey with no perception of what happens outside your algorithms.

It might seem stupid now but it will give you a lot, if you take it in and give it some time. Trust me, it's worth paying attention.

[Saras]

http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Day-MBA-Step-step-Mastering/dp/0688137881

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Pekka
I'm computer science guy as well, except I already did all that.

You can't find a good program that neglects this side of stuff. You have to have it, IMO it is necessary, unless you want to become some slave code monkey with no perception of what happens outside your algorithms.

It might seem stupid now but it will give you a lot, if you take it in and give it some time. Trust me, it's worth paying attention.

Pekka, I'm paying much more attention than is necessary, believe me. Most other students pay little to no attention, and basically simply "go through" this course, treating it as nothing more than fluff.

I'm the guy obsessively trying to understand everything in the course, from the ground up. I'm cramming an entire semesters' worth of MBA training into roughly seven to eight days, by dint of manic studying, even though, if I wanted to, I could get through the examination with only one or two days' worth of studying, because I know half the stuff already. I'm trying to actually understand instead of merely do.

I know the value of this, specially the last part.








But could someone in HR/BO (isn't Rah in the business?) recommend anything using which I can learn the basics of HR and BO?

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Saras
http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Day-MBA-St.../dp/0688137881

This is a reading assignment for new employees where I work. I didn't bother, of course, but others tell me it was helpful.

[Pekka]

aneeshm, no, you can't pay enough attention, certainly not more than enough. It would be quite impossible.

[Zkribbler]

I'm paying much more attention than is necessary, believe me. Most other students pay little to no attention, and basically simply "go through" this course, treating it as nothing more than fluff.

The Great Zkribbo predicts:

That some day in the future, aneeshm's co-students will be little more than fungible code monkeys, living on pizza and diet coke, while he will be the CPU of the company, a lord of all he surveys, because he can grasp the Big Picture.

[Pekka]

YEah. I think what tons of these new code monkeys don't realize is that unless they're actually very good and are able to score a good job in a good company early on, they won't be making any money. THe competition is bigger every year, there's just tons of code monkeys around. It guarantees crap.

Often time code monkeys are one-dimensional as well, that is, they cant' relate to anything else.

Of course I'm not talking about the truly talented ones or the oens already doing well. But the future is very dark for the average coder. That is, there is no future, they'll be happy if they can find a job, good money is already gone. Well depends what people consider to be good money.

[Kuciwalker]

What grave sin have engineers (and everyone else in the rigorous subjects) committed that they have to be made into "complete" human beings by being forced to sit through this stuff, whereas nobody ever calls a completely worthless "queer/women's/-studies" (or equivalent) humanities/arts student "incomplete" because he couldn't grasp the basics of Newtonian mechanics or the fundamentals of differential calculus even to save his life? I'm far more "complete" than that worthless wastrel, but I still have to sit through this farce. I'd like to see him go through the graphics course from our first year.

Engineers et. al. are actually competent enough to do both, those liberal arts people wouldn't be able to do our stuff at all. That's why.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by aneeshm
But could someone in HR/BO (isn't Rah in the business?) recommend anything using which I can learn the basics of HR and BO?

Rah is in programming/management, but undoubtedly could give some insight here.

His insight of today, which I will happily give you, is to go golfing in the warm weather when it starts to get cold.