Work - Pravin Mahajan's Web Site

Work

The money part... get my professional credentials and achievements here.

Masters in Management (MBA) from S P Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai. Majored in Systems. Toiled from June 1996 to June 1998. Decent grade as well (oh well). Apart from the usual highfalutin of a business school (corporate balance sheets, brand positioning, organizational behavior, blah, blah) had the opportunity to set up the IT infrastructure for the institute. This project sucked in most of my waking hours (making me bunk classes too)... but the end result was truly worth it.

Bachelors in Engineering (BE Honors) from BITS, Pilani, the first network in India to be IPv6 enabled. Majored in Instrumentation. Done time from June 1990 to June 1994. Above average grade (talk about competition in this place; by Jove, I was pitted against giant intellectuals from all over the country). Cocooned in this faraway Rajasthan village, life truly orbited around classmates only. Being forced away from the temptations of a metropolis, BITSians have evolved a unique ethic of existence (with our own oasis of temptations!).

Affiliation : IEEE Computer Society; The Council of Communications Advisers of the Gerson Lehrman Group; Sage Research Panel

Have been fortunate enough to have been there, done that. Started my career in the networking arm of an aggressive Indian IT group. Was in a start-up mode there then, and thus kept burning the midnight oil for some elusive contracts and projects from some typical Indian customers. Next in line was a middling networking company with multinational clients. Got a flavor of the MNC way of doing things there, when I jumped to the MNC which is changing the way we work, live, play and learn.
Here are their names-

You’ve got to let me toot my own horn here.

Consulting clients, architecting intricate solutions
Selling, the most hard-core part of my work existence (no prizes for guessing the most hard-core part of my play existence)
Presenting in seminars, training partners... basically evangelizing
Dirtying hands at customer sites, and getting that d a m n product working

Hard skills: This world is producing way too many technologies, protocols, and products for today’s hyper-competitive age (the capitalistic wonders of Adam Smith). Sometimes I wonder if this is a natural process of evolution or a more sinister, artificially self-fulfilling state of being. Hey now before I sink into a Socratic mood, let me enumerate those very skills sustaining my bank balance –

Telecom technologies (Carrier protocols, Switching systems, Signaling mechanisms, Management frameworks)
Datacom technologies (Carrier protocols, Routing protocols, Signaling mechanisms, Security protocols, Management protocols)
Multimedia technologies (Voice, data, video)
Dabbled from the simple (a humble dial-up PC) to the complex (the macho optical backbone routers), and possibly most gear in-between (switches, multiplexers, remote access servers, voice gateways, firewalls, and more)

Development: Being challenged by a multitude of forces daily, here’s my attempt at keeping one up –

Reading, reading and more reading. I do subscribe to leading journals in the respective domains.
Forage the Internet like a man-possessed
Go hands-on where feasible
Seek the help of the Husband (How) and his 5 Wives (Why, Where, When, What, Who)
Mesh with - the best source of information - people and their opinions

If you are looking for my formal résumé, it is here.