Buy EMC

Stocks has been pummeled and market has gone down by almost 500 pts in 2 days. And that hasn't happened for the first time.

Oil Price is going nuts, foreclosures are increasing, economic situation is not looking good. So what do you do ? Be afraid , be very afraid? But that doesn't mean stop breathing.

Similarly in investing if you are investing money in stocks and you are in for a long term then what you really need to focus on is not the issues mentioned above but the long term view. In long term view you focus on fundamentals. You focus on how the companies are really doing ? What is the valuation what is the P/E ratio.

Based on all these factors EMC looks like a really good buy right now. It has been marked as Strong Buy by S&P and i think so too.

Good time to buy EMC.

In the mean time a good video about Oil situation.

I am sick of being a techie, I want to move into Project Management

How do I it ?

I have been asked this question many times since I am a Project Manager and all. So thought it would be good if I document this.

First of all read some material what Project Management is about. Consider reading bible of Project Management (as its called), PMBOK - Project Management Book of Knowledge.

What this will do is it will get your familiar with what you are getting into. If you sleep while you are reading it, its probably one indication that this is not for you (only one indication) there's more.

Also it makes you aware what is the scope of this Role.

Secondly talk to friends, colleagues, bosses who are in similar roles. Only because every organization is different, has different needs, different methodologies.

Based on your reading technical material on Project Management and live experiences feedback make a judgment call is this is something you would be interested in.

If the answer is yes then you need to think of avenues you can explore to get into.

Some of the avenues are:
Look your company site if they are hiring PM's. This is a good option because your company knows you and would look at you favorably. I have seen this work quite easily in many companies.

Secondly try to get into Project Management areas e.g. volunteers to do the status reporting, or volunteer to provide estimates for the team, or volunteer to track dependencies or action items etc. Start looking at Project Plans and understanding them. Start understanding risks and give your deliverables based on that. This approach gives you 2 benefits:

a) It allows you to venture into Project Management while not compromising your duties.

b) It lets other know that you understand what Project Management is about and your are capable of it.

Thirdly after you have had this experience say 6 months to 1 year and you feel you are ready to take on the world, start looking for jobs.

One question which keeps up coming all the time is "Do I need PMP?" My answer is no but it wont be easy without it. A PMP might help you getting filtered or getting you the call you want to come desperately. One of my friends who is an HR had told me the total impact for the whole process is about 5%. (reference: www.pmi.org)

So if you are ready to spend that kind of money and effort cool.

One last tip: Search for Resume's of other Project Manager's and see if you have similar skills. This helps.

Feel free to send me your comments.

Cheers !!

Safe and a decent risk free investment

Before Fed Chairman started cutting interest rate out of stocks, mutual funds and ETF's one of the most promising and safe bets was to invest in a CD.

Better than a fixed CD was a risk free CD. A risk free CD is just like a savings account where you can withdraw amount (limited) from your CD account. Isnt that convinient ?

What could be better than that ? A savings account which has rate comparable to a CD and you can withdraw money whenver you want. At that time the interest rate offered was 5.00%+ Considering my stock and fund investments it was a decent investment to make.

Now that US economy is facing all these challenges and Fed has cut interest rates so many times, all bank deposit interest rate had to go down. Interest on my account went from 5+ to 3%. I was happy to find out that this interest rate has been revised to 3.5% Isnt that nice ?

How do you compare available interest rates? www.bankrate.com gives this option. What account I was using for online savings. HSBC Direct gives that option. Finally something with little risk and sure enough decent returns.

Hope this was informative.