In 2004, Philip Delves Broughton, 31-year-old journalist happily married and blessed with a kid, decided to put an end to boredom of daily journalism. Pondering over the option of change in careers, he applied to business schools and, to his surprise, was accepted at none other than Harvard Business School.
Broughton tells what happened next in Ahead of the Curve, a handy book for anyone considering a similar path, or just curious as to how Harvard churns out M.B.A. grads. This book assumes the reader, like Broughton, knows precisely nil about the corporate world.
The book doesn't work especially well as a conventional narrative. Ahead of the Curve offers a good sense of Harvard Business School's day-to-day workings, everything from what the other students are like to the merits of each lecturer to impressions of business titans such as Warren Buffett and Stephen Schwarzman, who revolve through the doors offering pointers on how to get filthy rich.
Broughton candidly shares his delightfully clueless days at Harvard. His math skills are crude, and he can't operate Microsoft Excel. When the other students flock off to Wall Street for summer jobs, he can't get one and is forced to spend three hot months in a Harvard library writing a novel. In fact, from the outset, he is entirely ambivalent about entering Corporate America. He doesn't really want to work that hard, he admits. He wants to spend time with his family.
As his two years draw to a close, Broughton wrestles with his next move. His classmates are all taking new jobs at McKinsey and Bain and Yahoo, but despite myriad interviews, he has yet to field an offer. Part of the problem is what he wants, as he writes in a "Help Wanted Ad I Sought But Never Found" : "Absurdly profitable company seeks journalist with ten years' experience and a Harvard MBA for extremely highly paid, low-stress job in which he can wear nice suits and loaf around in air-conditioned splendor making the very occasional executive decision. Requirements: acute discomfort in the presence of spreadsheets, inability to play golf, poorly concealed loathing of corporate life, knowledge of ancient Greek."
Broughton eventually draws interest from Google, but after 14 (yes FOURTEEN!!!) separate interviews, including an eight-hour marathon in a tiny conference room, he backs out, unable to reconcile his ambitions with life in a Dilbert cubicle.
Just out of my curiosity, I Googled a lot to know about Philip's post B-School life but nothing much came up.
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