Four myths that b-school shattered for me
If the most valuable type of learning is learning you're wrong, this is the most valuable section of the $250k notebook:
Revenue synergies are like unicorns. If someone says he’s seen one, he’s probably never been fucked.
The triple bottom line: The number on the third bottom line is usually subtracted from the other two.
Health insurance can't make health care affordable. It isn't even supposed to. As a whole, health insurance has to cost people more money than it saves for them. If it didn’t, companies couldn’t afford to stay in business. (I have no excuse for why I didn't realize this until business school, except perhaps that I'd never really had reason to think about it. Auntie Bankerella expects some good flames about this one from you big swinging douchebags in the comments section.)
Condom use is not necessarily more prevalent among top MBA candidates than the national average. Use of hormonal birth control definitely is. (PSA: Don't be a dumbass; you still gotta wrap it up. Just because that girl/guy is super-nice and used to work in PE, you think this is the first time they've had unprotected sex in their lives? What do you think they were doing in Germany last month? And what are the chances that someone they slept with has slept with someone who banged Thai h****rs?)
Natural and normal are opposites. So we should probably stop conflating them. In support of this statement, I offer the three following bullets:
- In order to get ready for work, survive work, relax from work, and sleep, most people rely on at least one psychoactive substance. Going all-natural is abnormal.
- I once attended one of those warm, fuzzy, caring/sharing events for female MBAs. There were 15 women in the mid-late stage of their careers who had a family. I asked them to be honest and reveal how many of them had had IVF. The answer: 9 out of 15. (One additional person had adopted without doing IVF, but she was in a domestic partnership with another woman.) So for this population, natural reproduction is abnormal.
- And finally, my favorite example: for millenia, a normal human 26-year-old was married, had a family, and was mature and established after spending ten to fifteen years progressing in their career. On the other hand, let's look at what's normal for the average 26-year-old MBA at a top program. They are cutting class, drinking all night, working on their tans, working on their abs, going to Thailand or Germany on the weekends, still thinking about what career they want, still at least somewhat reliant on parents, and a long way from marriage and commitment. In this population, we can posit that normal adolescence lasts 15+ years.
Nothing wrong with aiming to land in this culture, as long as you remember that prolonging your adolescence naturally shortens the years you could be living your adulthood, and that many people find full adulthood richer and more rewarding than adolescence.
no time for the old in-out, love, i've just come to read the meter
Bankerella, do you have the clap or did you get pregnant in B School? Condoms are for sailors and state school undergrads...
I realized in b-school that plan B is the single biggest pollutant relative to its size.
Now, please post some of the myths about attending b-school. Some people here believe it will transform them from Super-dweeb to Superman while the opposite sex drops trou every time they learn they go to 'HBS' or whatever. You are the perfect person to give them a reality check.
Sometimes I feel bad for you that this is the stuff you learned at b-school
but... but... but... i read about revenue synergies in the CFA curriculum. surely they must be real.
:-(
I'm gonna stab you to death and play around with your blood, bankarella.
american psycho reference ftw. or not.
What's more upsetting than anything is that all these things are actually believed by most people.
And of course people in business school have no clue what they want to do... why else would they be there?
Edit: And I thought that one phrase was "cutting glass" which I was going to say actually applied to me, but it was "cutting class." Other than that, no concerns.
interesting picture you chose for the post
That's because I want you guys to think of that picture every time someone says the words "revenue synergies" from now until the day you retire.
Did you go to Wharton?
Several things came to mind while scanning your latest cranial bombardment:
1) What's the point of M/A, cross-marketing, and rebranding if revenue synergies don't exist? Serious question, I need the answer so I can eventually be fucked. 2) Who the fuck goes to Thailand or Germany for a weekend? This one's important, as your proximity to these places is a key indicator of your heritage. As I've stated in early posts, I believe there is a slim chance you are white, and an overwhelming chance you have two dads. 3) When referring to your female MBA fuzzy events, you mentioned IVFs. I think the acronym you are searching for is "IBD." I would agree that 9/15 women in IBD seems abnormal. As a banker, you should know better. Silly Bankerella!
Seriously? Are you a sophomore in college? "IVF" stands for in vitro fertilization.
Who is the Bankerella? Like WTF are these posts I keep seeing? Myths of Bschool are no condom usage and synergies don't exist? I mean c'mon.
I used to think endless posts about drug tests and arguing about what is a target were bad. I now know the true meaning of what bad can be.
lolz...to be fair, bish didn't say synergies dont exist, just not revenue synergies...synergies if any are more likely to be on the cost side
but... but... but... what about leveraging existing distribution channels to introduce an acquired product to new markets. surely this would work... i read it in a textbook!
:-(
I lol'd.
Adulthood is overrated.
Muscle and hustle, life's just a game girl. You know that..
Fwiw, I think Bankerella is one of the better things to happen to WSO from a traffic POV. I mean, how many legit websites linked to that article about how she prefers to fuck traders. I don't recall any of those websites discussing how everyone here predicted the post-IPO FB collapse, or any other "relevant" discussions we've had like that. I think she secretly knows damn well what she's doing. Haters gonna hate, slaters gonna slate.
Not to be a wet mop, but this can actually work. Promotional management teams just tend to overstate it in order to justify the excessive price they just paid to close the deal. One reason you don't see a lot of NET revenue synergies in practice is because of cannibalization of other products. Another is that generally the acquired company would be selling their products in every market available to them, so there has to actually be something unique about the distribution model that can drive incremental sales.
But you don't really learn that in business school.
Ok that makes sense. Two US based internet retailers merging won't really get a high valuation because they're both already selling their products online in the US. A company with very good refineries for sour crude oil , buying a company with shit refineries but access to fields of sour crude - might be more justifiable. The greater the cost saving/merging gain , the greater the "synergy"
That seems like common sense actually.
When I read your posts I envision a younger, colder Meryl Streep. This of course has absolutely nothing to do with business school, however I do believe that it is important for a writer to hear feedback from her readers about things other than content.
Myth #5: People give a shit what you have to say. Unfortunately you slept thru that class.
Getting off the finance geekery for a second , the bloody B school application process is so annoying. I consider myself a mildly self involved man - but even I've never written bloody 10 pages about myself in aggregate. I swear if I hear the word leadership one more time , I'm going to strangle someone.
I feel your pain.
One thing I remember figuring out during the process was that they really do want you to just lay it all out there and brag your heart out in those essays. Think of someone whose job it is to read hundreds of pages of bragging per day. You want your bragging to stand out. If you try to be nuanced or allusive, the readers won't get it. The thesis the whole thing rests on has got to be, "I am one of the greatest individuals alive today; here's what I've done that no one else has done."
The result may make you groan (mine certainly did), but remember that the folks who read this stuff are seriously squishy. These are academics and administrators. Think of someone who goes home at 5:30 PM and watches ample quantities of reality TV. Wring a few tears out of them and the deal is sealed.
It may make you feel kind of dirty, but just think of it as one more skill-based hurdle, like the GMAT.
After work I will spend 10-15 minutes writing a post that absolutely shreds business school and the value of an MBA to bits, making it sound more like a glorified day care for the self-absorbed and career-lethargic, and ultimately scaring a great number of youngins on this site though that will not be my actual intention. Like all things in life, it will be part truth, part satire, and all hysterical. Stay tuned kiddies.
And whoever said Black-Scholes was the best way to value a stock, I lol'd a little bit.
I anxiously await your critical post.
I post all over the various GMAT/MBA forums (GMATClub, College Confidential, BW, etc.) in order to dissuade smart people from applying to top schools. I do this to (hopefully) reduce the overall number of qualified applicants. Every bit helps, baby. Every bit helps.
We gotta cut the competition down if we ever want a shot at the best 2 years of our life dawg, keep at it.
That was a troll post, but after reading those two by Brady I might actually have to lmao
Bankerella, definitely interested to hear more about the transformational effects of b-school-not just professionally but also socially and emotionally. It seems like top b-schools can be more transformational than college since your felllow classmates are smarter, more accomplished, and more interesting.
lol brady is trollin you guys so hard, theres no way his posts are serious
sweet picture.. is that you?
holy fuck call me clueless but.. why so many in vitros.. just too busy? waited too long ? no actual husbands?
My guess is: waited too long.
All these chicks running around single in their late 20's, doing what the culture tells them to do, are looking at the outliers and the celebrities who reproduce at 40 and saying, "Oh, no problem, everyone waits until their early thirties to get married and their late thirties to have kids." The data that says that female fertility begins its decline at around age 27 is much more subtle and pretty easy to ignore. So people do.
Of course, your average chick who waits until 35 won't have problems. But say it takes a couple years, suddenly she's 37, statistical chances of successful reproduction declining several percent per month... bam, IVF starts to get pretty normal in the population.
i'm working my way through all these posts - gold. 1. can you answer, did you have kids? 2. how do young female bankers handle having kids in their late twenties/early thirties right out of school? 3. is it possible without screwing up your career track? 4. what is the average/recommended time for maternity leave?
That 9 out of 15 IVF statistic scares me. Seems like freezing your eggs during your mid twenties would be a really smart move for those that want to do an MBA during their late 20s and have a solid career.
Also interested in the questions @"investorina" asked.
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