I talked to my manager just now, asked him for writing a recommendation. He raised the same question again, what is my goal. well, i thought my goal was to own a company or to become an executive in an internation corporation in asia. but how? getting an mba is not going to archieve this alone. what is important is that you see and understand how things really work. i'm not trying to invent something, but there are so many things here in US we took it for granted, that does not exist in other countries. say for OCO, it works pretty well in US, but when it goes to china, it doesn't work at all. DQM is not going to be useful, D&B doesn't exist, yahoo maps doesn't work..etc etc. I don't need to invent such thing called a grocery store, as long as i can realize there is a need of a grocery store in some place, open one, and I can be successful. For example, paypal, evite, they are so convenient in US, but such a thing doesn't really exist in china, well, as far as i know that is.
Here in oracle, all the design and requirements comes from top management, we are just the ones to implement this and implement that. Having here for 3 years, I still don't really see what is the need of our product, what is the value, who needs it, who buys it, or why it is successful or not successful. I want to see how things work in a higher level, if I'm just staying in oracle, say a few years later, what am i going to gain? vinoo said in a few years OCO might not even exist, things are changing so fast, we need to keep our eyes open for what can be improved, and opportunities will come. I just don't see the opportunties here in oracle, well, maybe that is because i'm not working hard enough or willing to take up an opportunity. Here in oracle, what i feel is the lack of movtivation or innovation from the developer level. as developers, i believe we are seeing a lot of problems management is not seeing. but they will never know, because in demos we just show them the things that work, not the things that doesn't work. this is probably the gap between management level and developers that needs to overcome.
i was looking at the requirement for MBA yesterday, most of them talk about leadership, and the essays are mostly about what is the long term and short term career goals, how an MBA is going to help u. i think i vaguely have an answer, but it is not quite complete yet. i need to talk to more ppl and see how things really work in the world, that is part of the reason for MBA. another reason could be because i know i'm lacking in presentation skills etc, i thought what i will learn in MBA would help. as vinoo said, a good product is not always going to be successful, sales and marketing and whole lot of other things is going to take a more important role. like os/2, it is a good software, but it just failed. that's why, for something to be successful, we need to have an understand of the bigger picture, what is what i hope an MBA will bring me.
i dont' really know my chance of getting into b school, but i think it isn't too bad. there are probably things that i should do now, esp. on the leadership part. i should probably look into oracle volunteers, and the other thing is the entreprenuer thing. i dont' know what it does, but it might be useful in the application. the application deadline is coming faster than i thought, i think i probably need to get started now.
hm..let me get the entreprenuership and oracle volunteer thing done now..at least take a look at what is is about.