OK but what do I do? “The best things in life are free. The second best things are very, very expensive.” ― Coco Chanel I think the best way to approach the MBA is to behave as if you don’t need one. How would you hit your career goals instead? What would your action plan be? Start doing those things right away . Why? This way you de-risk your career move. Any progress you towards career goals automatically makes you a better B-school candidate. And if things go really well, you might surpass your career goals making the MBA unnecessary.

Your alternative paths

• Connect - Seek out people you admire in conferences, on twitter, etc. Build relationships with them. Build your network the hard way by having good conversations with people and increasing your opportunity surface . This is how my wife landed her role at Google. She just chatted up a design manager there to know their process. When they had open role, they reached out to her! Unadvertised secret door.

• Take a risk - Take a paycut and join a startup/small firm in your desired new function/role. Small firms don’t get their pick of talent so they will take you without top notch skills but will give you top notch work and lots of ownership.

• Follow-ups to the previous step are (1) Catch a rocket ship: It might be difficult to break into Facebook today given the intense competition, instead you can try getting into a firm that on the rise and catch them early. Think Flipkart in the early 2010s, Swiggy in 2015, etc. (2) Be patient and play the long game: Most people want are unhappy about their life situation only in comparison, these are not genuine issues per se but those that emerge from keeping up with the Joneses . Say you’re interested in the e-commerce domain and dream of working at Amazon/Flipkart, you can go for lateral switches (Voonik > Snapdeal > Amazon/Flipkart) instead of ( > MBA > Amazon/Flipkart).

Macro-perspective

Everyday few days there’s claims the internet will kill all offline educational institutions. The internet is a civilisational technology akin to the printing press in what it is unleashing . Its effects will take a long time to play out and no one knows how they will pan out.  How long until the effects of open-knowledge and computers are full absorbed into society? Some people will pretend that such a future is already here . Don’t believe them — because they’re liars who offer certainty in a changing uncertain world.  It’s more sensible to model the future by focusing on what will not change: The desire to differentiate yourself . A lot of higher education is just that. When everyone can take Andrews NGs ML course, how do I show that I’m better? By building cool stuff on github, winning contests, cracking a prestigious job, creating a open source library, building a following online, having a large network, etc. Brand and network . The mechanisms will change, the needs remain the same.