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Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech

218 points by jackgavigan 11y ago

mercurialshark 11y ago
As many have noted, it's not necessarily 1:1 useful in the context of advanced skills training. However unsavory, many mid to large tech companies have a relatively high concentration of engineers who later received MBA's in very senior positions. So yes - the cliche that it's a way to climb the corporate ladder can still ring true for tech, if the tech company you want to work for is structured in the conventional way.
stvswn 11y ago
Why is it that every couple of weeks the tech world has to re-adjudicate the MBA argument? Is it just a fun debate? Why do so many people care about other people's degrees? I have an MBA, I normally go around saying it doesn't matter. Mostly it's because bragging about your MBA is douchey, and we know it. I don't feel like people I work with care either way.
marcus_holmes 11y ago
I'm in startup tech, I have an MBA, and I agree. The qualification itself is largely irrelevant. More to the point, most of what I was taught in my MBA course is irrelevant to a bootstrapping startup using Lean/Customer Development methods.
- cumeadius 11y ago
  ehh... MBAs are pretty useful when you raise ridiculous later stage round and need to justify a high burn rate so you hire a team of them.... The MBA could be useful but most MBA curriculums have not adjusted to the speed of firm development in the startup space. the degree needs a 21st century revamp.
  - marcus_holmes 11y ago
    It needs decoupling from academia, like a lot of university education. It's not a vocational qualification, yet industry treats it as if it is (Computer Science also suffers from this), so the universities do their best to make it as vocational as they can. It really needs to be separated out into "advanced management training", a "masters of business research" for the academics, and really a "business teaching qualification" as a third option. Trying to wedge all these objectives into one course is hurting everyone.
- supahfly_remix 11y ago
  There are MBA programs that claim to be entrepreneurial-focused. Do you think they could be worthwhile?
  - marcus_holmes 11y ago
    An MBA is an academic qualification, taught mostly by academics. Academics generally won't teach Lean because there hasn't been much academic discussion of it (yet). Mind you, I completed mine in 2013, so it's possible there's been some changes since. Entrepreneurial units in my MBA focussed on writing 40-page business plans for conventional bricks-and-mortar businesses with known business models. Which is fine, because that's what 90% of entrepreneurs do. Building a business without knowing the business model before you start is stupid risky according to this mindset (and they're right, it is, but that's half the fun).
n3on_net 11y ago
I wonder if she would still become COO of Facebook without Harvard MBA and all the oportunities resulted from it. MBA is probably really not necessary, but if you have the oportunity to do one on a top school, it may open some doors and expand your network. At least it has no negative effects (if you can efford it). Especially if you have technical background and want to move to management position. It simply diversifies your background and strengthens signaling.
- jackgavigan 11y ago
  > At least it has no negative effects... That's debatable. https://www.quora.com/Why-are-MBAs-looked-down-upon-in-Silicon-Valley https://www.quora.com/Why-are-MBAs-looked-down-upon-in-Silic...
- pwm 11y ago
  Yes, someone saying something is unnecessary in a given context, while they possess that thing, which may or may not have helped them getting where they are in that very context causes some cognitive dissonance. I actually agree with her, however, I wonder whether she'd be where she is how having had listened to her own advice.
- phillmv 11y ago
  Just make sure you went to an elite school, preferably Stanford or MIT.
- netheril96 11y ago
  > At least it has no negative effects It has opportunity costs though. Assuming that MBA is indeed useless, she would have achieved greater things in lesser time had she spent the time on something more meaningful than pursuing the MBA.
  - jevgeni 11y ago
    Well, on the other hand, there are a lot of people who haven't paid that opportunity cost, but they aren't the COO of Facebook...
secondbond 11y ago
To be honest, you don't need MBA in management too.
kabouseng 11y ago
>> "Sandberg suggested a career in tech might not even be necessary to catch Facebook’s attention. “We don't look for a specific background or skill-set when we make hiring decisions,” she wrote. “As my friend and Instagram COO Marne Levine says, we hire athletes and cross-train them.” So how does one interpret this? It sounds like she doesn't really have a good idea as to what makes a great employee, and falls back to magic catch phrases, altough this is probably an industry (actually multiple industries) wide problem currently (How to identify a great employee a-priori). So if she doesn't really know what makes for great employees, is her advice about MBA's really relevant then? IMHO yes MBA's have a bad rap, but just like everything the knowledge you gain from a MBA program can open your mind to thinking about problems in a whole different way. A lot of techies have no concept of how the business side of the industry works, and it would not be a bad thing to understand it. But you can also gain that awareness from a couple of good books on the subject, not just from attending a MBA. Just for completeness the other advantage of a MBA is the network, which is another discussion. (Of value for the person, not necessarily for the business, which is the point of the article)
- revelation 11y ago
  I interpret this as "Sandberg has no clue what cross-training is".
- jackgavigan 11y ago
  > ..the other advantage of a MBA is the network... This may be true for a small number of top-ranked business schools (and even then it's debatable) but not for the vast majority of educational institutions offering MBA degrees.
- edanm 11y ago
  "So how does one interpret this? It sounds like she doesn't really have a good idea as to what makes a great employee, and falls back to magic catch phrases [...]" How is that your interpretation? She's making a perfectly valid, and fairly common, point: as long as you're smart and talented, your specific background isn't so relevant because we can teach you the specific technologies you need. I think most developers will agree to this to some extent.
gtpasqual 11y ago
Most people with a top-tier MBA would never wanna work in tech. Sure, it may seem interesting to be an executive in Facebook, but that is not nearly as lucrative (and interesting) as working in trades or billion dollars deals in finance.
- UK-AL 11y ago
  I believe tech has been competing pretty well against Management consulting and investment banking for top mba grads.
harryf 11y ago
Once could make the argument that having an MBA is actually a hinderance in tech...
- edanm 11y ago
  Do you have something substantive to add to the discussion, instead of simply offering a baseless semi-insult? You might even be right, but just writing it without any supporting evidence isn't adding much to this discussion.
  - emirozer 11y ago
    I think its pretty clear, the time invested in a mba degree is quite enough to really improve or learn new technical skills.
    - forgetsusername 11y ago
      >"I think its pretty clear, the time invested in a mba degree is quite enough to really improve or learn new technical skills." By "technical skills", do you mean programming? Because plenty of financial based technical skills are taught in MBA programs. Of course, HN loves to blame MBAs for everything that goes wrong in tech companies; meanwhile, how many founders can't read financial statements, have no idea how to market, can't budget, can't do HR and get suckered in by VCs? Plenty. I think there's a direct correlation between people who think MBAs are "useless" and those who don't understand that running a business is much more involved and harder than it seems. MBAs aren't required in tech in much the same way Computer Science degrees aren't required. But they're certainly valuable.
- samsolomon 11y ago
  I don't know that more education is necessarily a bad thing. For a startup it's the opportunity cost of someone who has spent several years in an MBA program that makes that candidate unattractive.
  - djhn 11y ago
asfandyaar 11y ago
I guess an MBA is more for networking and opening doors, and not necessarily for important job skills.
swingbridge 11y ago
Honestly the MBA has always mostly been an advanced degree for people who didn't get an advanced degree in a real subject. Lets people tick the 'grad school' box. The real world value has always been quite questionable and yes I'd agree here that in tech it's mostly useless, if not actually even a disadvantage. For what's it's worth nearly all the excellent executives I've met over the years didn't have an MBA and nearly all the worst ones did...
- jevgeni 11y ago
  Well, I have had the opposite experience, but then again I'm not in tech. Thing is, the useless MBA image comes from the indiscriminate and formalistic practices of HR recruiters, who would equate an "MBA" with "value". So the incentives have changed from "I want to bring my company forward" to "I want a cushy job with little actual work". And it is true, that traditional business education has now suffered from this. What I ask myself, if CS will be immune to this. Judging that Fizz Buzz is still a thing, I'd say no.
  - x1024 11y ago
    So you're saying that "No true MBA graduate is useless".
    - jevgeni 11y ago
      Why are people on HN so obsessed with trying to find argument fallacies in comments? No, I am not saying that. The words "true MBA" have the same amount of content to them as "a true kitchen sink": zero. I say that people buy education for different reasons. Some get an MBA because they want to flash their CVs, have a cushy job, and avoid the strains of being original. Others get an MBA because they need the skills, the language, the professional network, and the confidence, that such degrees (at least from good universities) bring for a specific goal they want to accomplish, be that within an already established business or not. Saying that those kind of mind sets (or only one of those mind sets) is strictly particular to a group of people, which made a certain academic choice is wrong. In my professional experience, for example, I've met a lot more engineers who were absolutely useless from a business perspective, than I've met useless MBAs. Of course, this is because I've met way more engineers than MBAs.
noir-york 11y ago
> She said her MBA helped her get a basic sense of business, which might be instrumental “for some people and in some situations,” but dismissed the notion that the training would offer a leg up at Facebook. My background is economics (and political philosophy) - and I work in tech - first as a programmer, the product manager, and now as founder: knowing economics has been useful in my roles as PM and founder. Everyone should know some basic economics - micro-econ concepts such as marginal utility, producer/consumer surplus - as its useful for business. And everyone should know basic macro stuff (interest rates/GDP/etc) because in a democracy it pays to have informed citizens. An MBA, however, is overkill.
xacaxulu 11y ago
In a tech consultancy, especially if you are in the payments space or do any work with financial institutions can be very helpful. Closely defined, yes it doesn't seem helpful in tech alone but we work in/for businesses and our software solutions are often used by business. Understanding overarching business drivers is very helpful.
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c0achmcguirk 11y ago
I'm a developer at a financial services company. I was content to be a developer and let the "business" folks define our stories and I'd just code them. I never understood the application I was building on a deep level--it was always superficial. A friend convinced me to take a few MBA classes at a local university. The first class was accounting. It opened my eyes to understanding what our product and business owners were saying on my projects at work. Now I could understand the "why" behind the screens I was building! I asked questions that made them re-think their screen mockups. Since then I've graduated and taken classes in Finance, Leadership, Economics, and my favorite: Strategy. I use more knowledge from my MBA in my coding career than the stuff I learned in my undergrad in Computer Engineering. In my experience, an MBA doesn't make me a better "coder." But it has given me confidence and competence in my interactions with customers and the leadership team. I'm very glad I took the time and effort to pursue my MBA.
- zeeshanm 11y ago
  That all sounds good. But why not just grab a book and read. I recently read "Crossing the Chasm," and it was completely eye opening as I was able to reflect on mistakes I made in terms of early market development when I "started out." To each his own, I guess. Perhaps I just don't like to glorify schools of any sort.
  - matwood 11y ago
    Grabbing a book and reading also works. The thing that a school gives is a standard curriculum so that a student doesn't miss concepts they may simply not know about. I did things a bit opposite of who you are responding to though. In undergrad when I did my CS degree, I also did business classes on the side (economics is simply interesting to me). I ended up only a few classes away from an undergrad business degree when I graduated. Later I went back and got my MSc in CS. The business knowledge I gained from those few classes early on has helped more than anything else in my career.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  The real value creation happens on the cross roads between different fields. You now have two of these at your disposal. Don't stop, add another one!
xivzgrev 11y ago
Then why do several prominent tech companies have MBA preferred in their business job postings? I noticed maybe 9 months ago during a job search. I also have a friend who is MBA and works at FB. They have a whole formal program set up for them. So while it may not be advantangeous per Se I think companies do use it as a proxy for character traits or pattern of achievement. Because of that it is an advantage. Even if not if they have a formal Recruiting program then IT is an advantage.
- code4tee 11y ago
  Because, honestly, HR at most of these "tech companies" is rather clueless. Also as an investor if I see a tech companies looking to pack the halls with MBAs that tells me a lot about its soon to be bloated future. If someone is really skilled outside the MBA and it was more of a tack-on then they'll probably be fine. ...but in my experience the person relying on their MBA is the type of clueless executive that demands all the metrics for their division be totally reworked into some crazy ridiculous Excel spreadsheet because that's the only thing they know how to use and they think this means that they are doing analytics. These are the types that slowly destroy companies these days.
  - stvswn 11y ago
    So you stopped investing in Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple? Each has formally hired MBAs for years. Google just promoted one to CEO. I assume you're calling the top of each of these companies? How have they managed the MBA death spiral for the past five years -- is their demise just a matter of time?
- atom-morgan 11y ago
  It's a matter of walking the talk. Every tech company says, "We don't care about years of experience with a specific language. We want someone who can learn quickly no matter what they do". Then you interview and they ask you specifics on whatever programming languages they're using internally.
samfisher83 11y ago
Would she be where she is without her Harvard MBA? Its not all about the education. Its about the doors it opens and the connections you make.
- silverlake 11y ago
  More important was her connection to Larry Summers, the Secretary of Treasury. She was given a role that far exceeded her experience, which gave her an advantage over the other 2000 Harvard MBA grads in her class.
jheriko 11y ago
I think this depends on the kind of person you are, as well as the field you are in. If you can learn things for yourself effectively then there are a whole range of degree level courses which are completely unnecessary. In fact, not wasting your time with them, can be an advantage of its own... Although even then... its always good to have others with experience teaching you. Regardless of the subject matter. There is no 'rocket science' in business and there is plenty of material available to learn from.
davnicwil 11y ago
Aside from the value of the degree itself, can anyone attest to the usefulness of any particular knowledge gained from doing an MBA, particularly around running small companies and startups? If so, any recommendations for resources, books etc? This whole issue (usefulness of MBA in tech management) sounds very similar to the usefulness of CS degree in development issue. We can talk all day about the effect the CS degree has on getting jobs in the first place, but putting that entirely aside, as a developer with a CS degree, I can certainly point to some very useful things for the job that I learned in the course of doing the degree, and I could tell somebody without a CS degree what those were and where to read about them. Ignoring the entire issue of whether or not the 'piece of paper' would help them in their career, this knowledge certainly would. If anyone (MBA or not) has any such advice, I'd be very grateful to hear it!
- analog31 11y ago
  Carrying the analogy further, the value of getting a CS degree is relative to how you learn. If you're good at learning a lot of stuff in a classroom (as I was in my college majors, math and physics), then getting a degree makes sense. If you're good at learning stuff at home (as I was with computer programming), then getting a degree might be less useful. A person could adopt the strategy of using college for learning the stuff that's hard for them to learn at home. Regarding business, same thing. Some folks can pick it up by reading books, the newspaper, and just soaking it up at work. Others might benefit from learning it in a classroom.
  - davnicwil 11y ago
    I agree. Veering slightly off on a tangent but another major (and oft-forgotten and undervalued, I think) advantage of the degree path is that a good course will lead you down the best and possibly most efficient paths of discovery for the important things, and also give you a bit of a kick in directions you maybe wouldn't naturally go on your own, but which turn out to be very valuable after some uphill struggling. These are things you can figure out, and discipline yourself into, but on your own time and with a fair probability you won't do a great job, when self-learning. With a degree much of that work is outsourced to specialists who have a lot more context and ability to iterate on experience, and that gives you a much smoother path to just focusing on your main job - learning. So, a good compromise, and the reason I ask this question, is to get recommendations on what to learn, then decide myself how I will do it and on what schedule, etc.
thedogeye 11y ago
Taking two years out of your life to study business full-time will improve your business judgement. That this is controversial always surprised me.
- curun1r 11y ago
  I haven't found this to be universal. If anything, I think it can warp your thinking in a way that can be beneficial in certain circumstances, but is really scary in others. By way of example: I have a parent who teaches at a top-5 business school. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Japan on a trip where my parent acted as a faculty chaperone and was able to attend some of the meetings with Japanese business leaders. One of the trips was to a 400+ year-old sake brewer. After the tour of the brewery, there was a Q & A period with the president of the company. The business school students asked him question after question about expansion, new product lines, finding new markets, advertising campaigns...everything they could think about to achieve growth. His answer was always basically the same and to the effect of, "I'm happy with the current situation. I make a profit making the best sake in the world, just as my ancestors have made it for the past 400 years. I provide a comfortable life for my family and the families of the people who work for me. Why would I want to change?" It was a profound experience for me to watch him try to explain what should be a completely reasonable position to a group of people that have had the ideal of growth beyond all else drilled into their head so thoroughly that they simply couldn't understand contentment with the status quo. On the ride home, the whole group was complaining about why they'd even wasted their time talking to someone so ignorant. Comments ranged from, "He'll be out of business in 10 years" to "At least we got to drink sake." I worry that putting MBAs in charge of businesses puts a skewed view on risk and desired outcomes. Each and every one of their suggestions could have backfired immensely and most would have required taking on considerable debt. It's this way of thinking that gives people the unicorn-or-bust mentality and look down on those who try to build "lifestyle businesses" (I hate that term). The world would be a much better place with fewer unicorns and more lifestyle businesses. The hockey stick isn't necessary to be successful, at yet it seems to be all that MBAs understand.
  - icebraining 11y ago
rayiner 11y ago
I'm always skeptical about stuff like this. Sandberg's springboard into her career was two-fold: working at McKinsey after HBS, and working under Larry Summers, who was her thesis advisor at Harvard UG. She went to Google as a VP after her stint in government. There is a huge "getting your foot in the door" advantage to that credential. I can totally believe she didn't use much of what she learned at HBS in what she did at Google. But would she ever have gotten that VP job at Google without that sterling resume?
- pvnick 11y ago
  Good point. Pedigree is and always has been a huge advantage. A disproportionate number of execs' backgrounds I've looked into have Yale/Harvard/Stanford/etc somewhere. I wonder if that will ever change. Having worked with many folks who attended those universities, most do not strike me as being intrinsically more capable than their counterparts who attended other universities, although a few have a high degree of self-assuredness (which, granted, is quite valuable as a career trait).
- achow 11y ago
  It's about pedigree. An MBA from an unknown school will not open the doors, however great the education was.
- gohrt 11y ago
  By far the most important thing she learned at HBS was the phone numbers of her classmates.
- puranjay 11y ago
  I think it's wise to rephrase her statement: "An MBA is not useful in the tech field if you already have a degree from a top university" For the rest, if you want a foot in the door at Facebook and don't have Harvard or Stanford on your resume, a MBA from Booth or MIT Sloan will definitely help
oldmanjay 11y ago
I think of Sheryl Sandberg as an ad exec who happened to get into tech at the right time. I'm not really aware of any technical bona fides, just the usual executive ability to extract money from technical processes for personal gain. Am I missing something?
onesixtythree 11y ago
I have to disagree with this claim. Leverage matters immensely. The truth about "merit" is that no one knows how to assess it, so people judge based on external leverage and status, and having an MBA from a top-5 school gives a person a huge advantage. If you're a walk-on for a $250,000-per-year sinecure, then they're going to give you a real tech job, and not some lowly code-the-stories position.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  >>and having an MBA from a top-5 school gives a person a huge advantage. Certainly. There's a saying that having an MBA from Harvard will guarantee you at least an interview anywhere in the world. The problem is that the vast majority of MBAs did not get their degree from Harvard, or even the other top 4 schools. They got their MBAs from regional universities or no-name business departments.
  - onesixtythree 11y ago
    Yep. There's a reason why people in technology complain about the "Damaso Effect". Even though those Harvard MBAs get mocked by "real programmers", they get the last laugh because they decide what most of those programmers work on. All of that said, the networking opportunities drop off rapidly, even from Harvard to Stanford or Stanford to Wharton, much less out of the top 5. The education is the same, and the academic quality of the students is probably better at non-top schools, but you're not meeting people who are so loaded and connected that they'll hand out sinecures and venture funding (which are two forms of the same thing, but that's another discussion) to their drinking buddies.
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DannoHung 11y ago
Corporations are legal constructs that require specific domain knowledge to correctly administer and develop. MBAs are ostensibly targeted at that (in the same way Computer Science degrees are ostensibly targeted at teaching you domain knowledge to think and reason about the specific mathematics that underlie computers and software). What you get out of them and their utility probably is very contextual in the same way any degree is. My suspicion is that for many roles and at many times in a technology business, the utility is low, but that for some roles at some times, it is quite high. Ultimately, the thing that's might be funky is that if you hire someone for their expertise in domains pertinent to MBAs, you are putting them very close to having control of the legal construct of your business. Like a sysadmin, you need to place a lot of trust in them to ensure they are doing their job correctly if you don't have the domain knowledge to provide careful oversight.
ryandrake 11y ago
> Sandberg suggested a career in tech might not even be necessary to catch Facebook’s attention. “We don't look for a specific background or skill-set when we make hiring decisions,” she wrote. “As my friend and Instagram COO Marne Levine says, we hire athletes and cross-train them.” From a randomly selected job posting on Facebook's web site: Requirements B.S. or M.S. Computer Science or related field Experience building high-performance, large-scale server applications and reliable software Expert knowledge developing and debugging in C++ End-to-end experience in online ad serving and background in online advertising/auction theory strongly preferred Knowledge of Perl, PHP, or Python a plus Knowledge of Hadoop/MapReduce a plus
- genericresponse 11y ago
  Her words are carefully chosen. They don't look at it when they make hiring decisions. They do look at background and skill set when selecting candidates. (i.e. If you can lateral into the interview process it's cool that you don't meet the job description. If you come in off the street looking to interview, you better check all the boxes if you want our time.)
- eastbayjake 11y ago
  I believe Sandberg was referring to positions where someone might think an MBA is required, like product management. No one is asking whether an MBA might be useful for highly technical roles, like the above posting for someone doing the technical implementation of an online ad engine.
  - niels_olson 11y ago
    From what I've read of Sandberg, she is an executive looking at grooming executives. In her mind, "professional" is equivalent to a plumber: not her children. Her athlete analogy makes a special sort of sense in that context. I have seen a strong connection from the athletes and spec-ops people I went to school with now moving into executive positions. I'm not sure what the common denominator is, because I know a lot of athletes who are now in construction too. But if you're an athlete and can hang intellectually, there's a desirable mindset there. And I think that mindset is the striver: they see themselves every day as a little faster or a little slower, never the same. And they always want to be faster. In Plato's Republic, there's a chapter on training the guardians, and I think that reflects her ideas reasonably well, in so far as a lot of Western leadership practices derived from the Greeks and the Republic in particular.
eitally 11y ago
I've never worked with MBAs before, in all my tech career, which included stints as a programmer and then a long period as a manager/director where I was in a much more business-oriented role. I always had a preconception that "MBA" essentially meant "management consultant", those high-priced guys who were paid to support bad news the CEO didn't want to seem came from himself. Restructuring advisement is certainly a valid role business consultants fulfill, but it's definitely not the only one, or even one of the more common ones. I joined Google this summer and I have 2 ex-consultant MBAs in the team I'm managing, along with a third employee who is ex-BCG-but-no-MBA. They are awesome. They freaking rock at analysis, and are highly skilled at asking good & pointed questions to help nail down business opportunities & good/bad ideas. Two of them have technical BSes (EE & CS) and are fantastic PMs: well organized, analytical, strong communicators, outgoing, and perhaps most importantly, they know when they're weak in an area and how to recruit complimentary team members. This by no means should be considered advice that everyone needs an MBA, that all MBAs are equal, that all tech PMs need an MBA, or even that all Google MBAs are good at their jobs, but MINE ARE, and they'd be much less proficient if they hadn't spent that extra two years in business school (along with tech internships both years). Just like everything else, people need to set goals and work appropriately to achieve them. For some individuals this will suggest an MBA; for many others, not so much. Honestly, the biggest piece of business school advice I'd offer anyone is that if you can't get into or afford a top tier school, don't bother paying a school at all. Just try to DIY it the best you can. The gap between what students get out of the tier 1 programs and everything else (with a few notable exceptions) is immense. I'm not counting exec MBA programs at all. They're specifically targeted at people who are already execs and just look to amp up certain skills (M&A, international development, etc).
- matwood 11y ago
  IT people with MBAs are super valuable. Every company HAS to have a tech strategy beyond what JS lib to use next year on the website. This merging of technology and business is hard and requires people who can live comfortably in both lands. Typically it means starting as a technologist and moving towards the business side, although I have seen it come from the other direction also.
- 11y ago
therealchiko 11y ago
I think Sheryl might be missing the point that it depends with where you're coming from. Career paths differ and I think it's hyperbolic to reduce it to one "true" way and discredit some things from a privileged position. A lot of top execs do have the credentials often dismissed so I'm not personally sure they'd be there without that kind of education. The value of attending business school (assuming it's a top school) might be more related to "outside" factors such as more opportunities, tapping into good networks and of course, involvement in different disciplines with all the resources you need to grow your thinking and expertise. What I am concerned about is that some statements can easily be taken the wrong way by people who honestly would benefit from MBAs. Facebook not choosing or using an MBA as main criteria is fine, but Facebook is not the only company that matters and i'm sure having an MBA does also not discredit you in their eyes.
anjc 11y ago
It confuses me endlessly that MBAs should be so misunderstood by so many people, it being suggested that they are only good for networking, that people with MBAs are cold and evil, and so on. They're simply a course which teach you the fundamentals of several areas which are relevant to business. It'd be like saying that a degree in CS would be superfluous for somebody who wants to program. If you love programming, then you'll get value from every aspect of a CS degree. Likewise for an MBA and business. Also, truly they only teach the fundamentals. An MBA's exposure to marketing/accounting/management would be far more diluted than that of an 18 year old who pursues a degree in one of these specific areas, so I'm not sure why people seem to be so threatened by the MBA. It's also funny to read in the article that Thiel has said MBAs are useless, because his books are a joke when compared to the most basic business courses. It's also laughable that Sandberg would say this, having already gotten an education from a place which has been central to business trends globally for decades. It's likely that Facebook et al would not exist without HBS and similar institutions in the US.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  The usual criticism is that MBAs believe the degree endows them with far more strategic intelligence than they really have. It's like officer school. The worst graduates come out absolutely convinced they can run an entire army, when in fact they're still almost completely clueless. Aside from the networking - which is not trivial - the benefits of an MBA for talented individuals seem to be exposure to the idea that strategy, cost/benefit analysis, accounting, marketing, and the rest all exist, and are more relevant to a business than the code base. This can be a surprise to straight CS people, many of whom only care about code. But by analogy, many MBAs only seem to care about money. There's more to running a successful business than the bottom line - or at least there should be - and more subtle management principles that build businesses by making customers and employees happy as well as making shareholders rich don't seem to figure at all in MBA schools. The MBA point of view seems to be that happiness doesn't matter when there's profit to be made. Ironically, there's a lot of poverty in that view - not just morally, but politically and economically. In the longer term it leads to the kind of economic picture we have today, where there's a lot of profit being made, but at the cost of rapidly shrinking broad prosperity and economic freedom for most of the population.
ramanamit1234 11y ago
People need a general business understanding for most jobs, even government jobs.
pbreit 11y ago
Oh, it matters. It can easily be a hindrance because the thinking required by large business, consulting and wall street is quite different that that required to get a business off the ground.
allsystemsgo 11y ago
I have 3/4 of an MBA. Stopped with just an MS in IT Management. I could finish it but, didn't seem that useful.
germinalphrase 11y ago
There is a common perspective in this thread that XYZ skills/knowledge are useful to understand (even if one's not seeking the social signaling associated with a top tier MBA). Can anyone post some favored texts/resources for self-directed learning? What do we include in the HN home-brew MBA?
- rchaud 11y ago
  Unsurprisingly, someone has attempted to make a business out this exact question. The Personal MBA site has a good selection of books to get your started. It's categorized under different topics like marketing, finance, strategy, etc. https://personalmba.com/best-business-books/ https://personalmba.com/best-business-books/
efraimip 11y ago
I agree 100% with Sheryl. I'm a 7 time serial entrepreneur. built a few big ones. the only bad/failed ones were because of MBA leaders in the company. the only good ones were with techies leading who learned through experience the practical application of scientific business practices. 99% of all top tech company CEO's are techies who learned practical business through experience --- and are not MBAs. Sheryl Sandberg knows exactly what she's talking about. MBA was designed for corporate middle management. No need for that in a startup - especially at founder level. Now I invest in startups. I do not invest in MBA founders. I'm doing very good investing. Its simple. Every logical argument says the same.
the_watcher 11y ago
The biggest value an MBA provides (and this is not me claiming it does or doesn't provide other value) is that companies recruit out of them. If you are looking to make a career change, it can be tough to get considered for roles you might do well in, given your lack of experience, but companies are demonstrably more willing to hire into roles without relevant work experience if coming from a solid MBA program.

218 points by jackgavigan 11y ago

As many have noted, it's not necessarily 1:1 useful in the context of advanced skills training. However unsavory, many mid to large tech companies have a relatively high concentration of engineers who later received MBA's in very senior positions. So yes - the cliche that it's a way to climb the corporate ladder can still ring true for tech, if the tech company you want to work for is structured in the conventional way.

stvswn 11y ago

Why is it that every couple of weeks the tech world has to re-adjudicate the MBA argument? Is it just a fun debate? Why do so many people care about other people's degrees? I have an MBA, I normally go around saying it doesn't matter. Mostly it's because bragging about your MBA is douchey, and we know it. I don't feel like people I work with care either way.

marcus_holmes 11y ago

I'm in startup tech, I have an MBA, and I agree. The qualification itself is largely irrelevant. More to the point, most of what I was taught in my MBA course is irrelevant to a bootstrapping startup using Lean/Customer Development methods.

cumeadius 11y ago
ehh... MBAs are pretty useful when you raise ridiculous later stage round and need to justify a high burn rate so you hire a team of them.... The MBA could be useful but most MBA curriculums have not adjusted to the speed of firm development in the startup space. the degree needs a 21st century revamp.
- marcus_holmes 11y ago
  It needs decoupling from academia, like a lot of university education. It's not a vocational qualification, yet industry treats it as if it is (Computer Science also suffers from this), so the universities do their best to make it as vocational as they can. It really needs to be separated out into "advanced management training", a "masters of business research" for the academics, and really a "business teaching qualification" as a third option. Trying to wedge all these objectives into one course is hurting everyone.
supahfly_remix 11y ago
There are MBA programs that claim to be entrepreneurial-focused. Do you think they could be worthwhile?
- marcus_holmes 11y ago
  An MBA is an academic qualification, taught mostly by academics. Academics generally won't teach Lean because there hasn't been much academic discussion of it (yet). Mind you, I completed mine in 2013, so it's possible there's been some changes since. Entrepreneurial units in my MBA focussed on writing 40-page business plans for conventional bricks-and-mortar businesses with known business models. Which is fine, because that's what 90% of entrepreneurs do. Building a business without knowing the business model before you start is stupid risky according to this mindset (and they're right, it is, but that's half the fun).

n3on_net 11y ago

I wonder if she would still become COO of Facebook without Harvard MBA and all the oportunities resulted from it. MBA is probably really not necessary, but if you have the oportunity to do one on a top school, it may open some doors and expand your network. At least it has no negative effects (if you can efford it). Especially if you have technical background and want to move to management position. It simply diversifies your background and strengthens signaling.

jackgavigan 11y ago
> At least it has no negative effects... That's debatable. https://www.quora.com/Why-are-MBAs-looked-down-upon-in-Silicon-Valley https://www.quora.com/Why-are-MBAs-looked-down-upon-in-Silic...
pwm 11y ago
Yes, someone saying something is unnecessary in a given context, while they possess that thing, which may or may not have helped them getting where they are in that very context causes some cognitive dissonance. I actually agree with her, however, I wonder whether she'd be where she is how having had listened to her own advice.
phillmv 11y ago
Just make sure you went to an elite school, preferably Stanford or MIT.
netheril96 11y ago
> At least it has no negative effects It has opportunity costs though. Assuming that MBA is indeed useless, she would have achieved greater things in lesser time had she spent the time on something more meaningful than pursuing the MBA.
- jevgeni 11y ago
  Well, on the other hand, there are a lot of people who haven't paid that opportunity cost, but they aren't the COO of Facebook...

secondbond 11y ago

To be honest, you don't need MBA in management too.

kabouseng 11y ago

>> "Sandberg suggested a career in tech might not even be necessary to catch Facebook’s attention. “We don't look for a specific background or skill-set when we make hiring decisions,” she wrote. “As my friend and Instagram COO Marne Levine says, we hire athletes and cross-train them.” So how does one interpret this? It sounds like she doesn't really have a good idea as to what makes a great employee, and falls back to magic catch phrases, altough this is probably an industry (actually multiple industries) wide problem currently (How to identify a great employee a-priori). So if she doesn't really know what makes for great employees, is her advice about MBA's really relevant then? IMHO yes MBA's have a bad rap, but just like everything the knowledge you gain from a MBA program can open your mind to thinking about problems in a whole different way. A lot of techies have no concept of how the business side of the industry works, and it would not be a bad thing to understand it. But you can also gain that awareness from a couple of good books on the subject, not just from attending a MBA. Just for completeness the other advantage of a MBA is the network, which is another discussion. (Of value for the person, not necessarily for the business, which is the point of the article)

revelation 11y ago
I interpret this as "Sandberg has no clue what cross-training is".
jackgavigan 11y ago
> ..the other advantage of a MBA is the network... This may be true for a small number of top-ranked business schools (and even then it's debatable) but not for the vast majority of educational institutions offering MBA degrees.
edanm 11y ago
"So how does one interpret this? It sounds like she doesn't really have a good idea as to what makes a great employee, and falls back to magic catch phrases [...]" How is that your interpretation? She's making a perfectly valid, and fairly common, point: as long as you're smart and talented, your specific background isn't so relevant because we can teach you the specific technologies you need. I think most developers will agree to this to some extent.

gtpasqual 11y ago

Most people with a top-tier MBA would never wanna work in tech. Sure, it may seem interesting to be an executive in Facebook, but that is not nearly as lucrative (and interesting) as working in trades or billion dollars deals in finance.

UK-AL 11y ago
I believe tech has been competing pretty well against Management consulting and investment banking for top mba grads.

harryf 11y ago

Once could make the argument that having an MBA is actually a hinderance in tech...

edanm 11y ago
Do you have something substantive to add to the discussion, instead of simply offering a baseless semi-insult? You might even be right, but just writing it without any supporting evidence isn't adding much to this discussion.
- emirozer 11y ago
  I think its pretty clear, the time invested in a mba degree is quite enough to really improve or learn new technical skills.
  - forgetsusername 11y ago
    >"I think its pretty clear, the time invested in a mba degree is quite enough to really improve or learn new technical skills." By "technical skills", do you mean programming? Because plenty of financial based technical skills are taught in MBA programs. Of course, HN loves to blame MBAs for everything that goes wrong in tech companies; meanwhile, how many founders can't read financial statements, have no idea how to market, can't budget, can't do HR and get suckered in by VCs? Plenty. I think there's a direct correlation between people who think MBAs are "useless" and those who don't understand that running a business is much more involved and harder than it seems. MBAs aren't required in tech in much the same way Computer Science degrees aren't required. But they're certainly valuable.
samsolomon 11y ago
I don't know that more education is necessarily a bad thing. For a startup it's the opportunity cost of someone who has spent several years in an MBA program that makes that candidate unattractive.
- djhn 11y ago

asfandyaar 11y ago

I guess an MBA is more for networking and opening doors, and not necessarily for important job skills.

swingbridge 11y ago

Honestly the MBA has always mostly been an advanced degree for people who didn't get an advanced degree in a real subject. Lets people tick the 'grad school' box. The real world value has always been quite questionable and yes I'd agree here that in tech it's mostly useless, if not actually even a disadvantage. For what's it's worth nearly all the excellent executives I've met over the years didn't have an MBA and nearly all the worst ones did...

jevgeni 11y ago
Well, I have had the opposite experience, but then again I'm not in tech. Thing is, the useless MBA image comes from the indiscriminate and formalistic practices of HR recruiters, who would equate an "MBA" with "value". So the incentives have changed from "I want to bring my company forward" to "I want a cushy job with little actual work". And it is true, that traditional business education has now suffered from this. What I ask myself, if CS will be immune to this. Judging that Fizz Buzz is still a thing, I'd say no.
- x1024 11y ago
  So you're saying that "No true MBA graduate is useless".
  - jevgeni 11y ago
    Why are people on HN so obsessed with trying to find argument fallacies in comments? No, I am not saying that. The words "true MBA" have the same amount of content to them as "a true kitchen sink": zero. I say that people buy education for different reasons. Some get an MBA because they want to flash their CVs, have a cushy job, and avoid the strains of being original. Others get an MBA because they need the skills, the language, the professional network, and the confidence, that such degrees (at least from good universities) bring for a specific goal they want to accomplish, be that within an already established business or not. Saying that those kind of mind sets (or only one of those mind sets) is strictly particular to a group of people, which made a certain academic choice is wrong. In my professional experience, for example, I've met a lot more engineers who were absolutely useless from a business perspective, than I've met useless MBAs. Of course, this is because I've met way more engineers than MBAs.

noir-york 11y ago

> She said her MBA helped her get a basic sense of business, which might be instrumental “for some people and in some situations,” but dismissed the notion that the training would offer a leg up at Facebook. My background is economics (and political philosophy) - and I work in tech - first as a programmer, the product manager, and now as founder: knowing economics has been useful in my roles as PM and founder. Everyone should know some basic economics - micro-econ concepts such as marginal utility, producer/consumer surplus - as its useful for business. And everyone should know basic macro stuff (interest rates/GDP/etc) because in a democracy it pays to have informed citizens. An MBA, however, is overkill.

xacaxulu 11y ago

In a tech consultancy, especially if you are in the payments space or do any work with financial institutions can be very helpful. Closely defined, yes it doesn't seem helpful in tech alone but we work in/for businesses and our software solutions are often used by business. Understanding overarching business drivers is very helpful.

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c0achmcguirk 11y ago

I'm a developer at a financial services company. I was content to be a developer and let the "business" folks define our stories and I'd just code them. I never understood the application I was building on a deep level--it was always superficial. A friend convinced me to take a few MBA classes at a local university. The first class was accounting. It opened my eyes to understanding what our product and business owners were saying on my projects at work. Now I could understand the "why" behind the screens I was building! I asked questions that made them re-think their screen mockups. Since then I've graduated and taken classes in Finance, Leadership, Economics, and my favorite: Strategy. I use more knowledge from my MBA in my coding career than the stuff I learned in my undergrad in Computer Engineering. In my experience, an MBA doesn't make me a better "coder." But it has given me confidence and competence in my interactions with customers and the leadership team. I'm very glad I took the time and effort to pursue my MBA.

zeeshanm 11y ago
That all sounds good. But why not just grab a book and read. I recently read "Crossing the Chasm," and it was completely eye opening as I was able to reflect on mistakes I made in terms of early market development when I "started out." To each his own, I guess. Perhaps I just don't like to glorify schools of any sort.
- matwood 11y ago
  Grabbing a book and reading also works. The thing that a school gives is a standard curriculum so that a student doesn't miss concepts they may simply not know about. I did things a bit opposite of who you are responding to though. In undergrad when I did my CS degree, I also did business classes on the side (economics is simply interesting to me). I ended up only a few classes away from an undergrad business degree when I graduated. Later I went back and got my MSc in CS. The business knowledge I gained from those few classes early on has helped more than anything else in my career.
jacquesm 11y ago
The real value creation happens on the cross roads between different fields. You now have two of these at your disposal. Don't stop, add another one!

xivzgrev 11y ago

Then why do several prominent tech companies have MBA preferred in their business job postings? I noticed maybe 9 months ago during a job search. I also have a friend who is MBA and works at FB. They have a whole formal program set up for them. So while it may not be advantangeous per Se I think companies do use it as a proxy for character traits or pattern of achievement. Because of that it is an advantage. Even if not if they have a formal Recruiting program then IT is an advantage.

code4tee 11y ago
Because, honestly, HR at most of these "tech companies" is rather clueless. Also as an investor if I see a tech companies looking to pack the halls with MBAs that tells me a lot about its soon to be bloated future. If someone is really skilled outside the MBA and it was more of a tack-on then they'll probably be fine. ...but in my experience the person relying on their MBA is the type of clueless executive that demands all the metrics for their division be totally reworked into some crazy ridiculous Excel spreadsheet because that's the only thing they know how to use and they think this means that they are doing analytics. These are the types that slowly destroy companies these days.
- stvswn 11y ago
  So you stopped investing in Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple? Each has formally hired MBAs for years. Google just promoted one to CEO. I assume you're calling the top of each of these companies? How have they managed the MBA death spiral for the past five years -- is their demise just a matter of time?
atom-morgan 11y ago
It's a matter of walking the talk. Every tech company says, "We don't care about years of experience with a specific language. We want someone who can learn quickly no matter what they do". Then you interview and they ask you specifics on whatever programming languages they're using internally.

samfisher83 11y ago

Would she be where she is without her Harvard MBA? Its not all about the education. Its about the doors it opens and the connections you make.

silverlake 11y ago
More important was her connection to Larry Summers, the Secretary of Treasury. She was given a role that far exceeded her experience, which gave her an advantage over the other 2000 Harvard MBA grads in her class.

jheriko 11y ago

I think this depends on the kind of person you are, as well as the field you are in. If you can learn things for yourself effectively then there are a whole range of degree level courses which are completely unnecessary. In fact, not wasting your time with them, can be an advantage of its own... Although even then... its always good to have others with experience teaching you. Regardless of the subject matter. There is no 'rocket science' in business and there is plenty of material available to learn from.

davnicwil 11y ago

Aside from the value of the degree itself, can anyone attest to the usefulness of any particular knowledge gained from doing an MBA, particularly around running small companies and startups? If so, any recommendations for resources, books etc? This whole issue (usefulness of MBA in tech management) sounds very similar to the usefulness of CS degree in development issue. We can talk all day about the effect the CS degree has on getting jobs in the first place, but putting that entirely aside, as a developer with a CS degree, I can certainly point to some very useful things for the job that I learned in the course of doing the degree, and I could tell somebody without a CS degree what those were and where to read about them. Ignoring the entire issue of whether or not the 'piece of paper' would help them in their career, this knowledge certainly would. If anyone (MBA or not) has any such advice, I'd be very grateful to hear it!

analog31 11y ago
Carrying the analogy further, the value of getting a CS degree is relative to how you learn. If you're good at learning a lot of stuff in a classroom (as I was in my college majors, math and physics), then getting a degree makes sense. If you're good at learning stuff at home (as I was with computer programming), then getting a degree might be less useful. A person could adopt the strategy of using college for learning the stuff that's hard for them to learn at home. Regarding business, same thing. Some folks can pick it up by reading books, the newspaper, and just soaking it up at work. Others might benefit from learning it in a classroom.
- davnicwil 11y ago
  I agree. Veering slightly off on a tangent but another major (and oft-forgotten and undervalued, I think) advantage of the degree path is that a good course will lead you down the best and possibly most efficient paths of discovery for the important things, and also give you a bit of a kick in directions you maybe wouldn't naturally go on your own, but which turn out to be very valuable after some uphill struggling. These are things you can figure out, and discipline yourself into, but on your own time and with a fair probability you won't do a great job, when self-learning. With a degree much of that work is outsourced to specialists who have a lot more context and ability to iterate on experience, and that gives you a much smoother path to just focusing on your main job - learning. So, a good compromise, and the reason I ask this question, is to get recommendations on what to learn, then decide myself how I will do it and on what schedule, etc.

thedogeye 11y ago

Taking two years out of your life to study business full-time will improve your business judgement. That this is controversial always surprised me.

curun1r 11y ago
I haven't found this to be universal. If anything, I think it can warp your thinking in a way that can be beneficial in certain circumstances, but is really scary in others. By way of example: I have a parent who teaches at a top-5 business school. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Japan on a trip where my parent acted as a faculty chaperone and was able to attend some of the meetings with Japanese business leaders. One of the trips was to a 400+ year-old sake brewer. After the tour of the brewery, there was a Q & A period with the president of the company. The business school students asked him question after question about expansion, new product lines, finding new markets, advertising campaigns...everything they could think about to achieve growth. His answer was always basically the same and to the effect of, "I'm happy with the current situation. I make a profit making the best sake in the world, just as my ancestors have made it for the past 400 years. I provide a comfortable life for my family and the families of the people who work for me. Why would I want to change?" It was a profound experience for me to watch him try to explain what should be a completely reasonable position to a group of people that have had the ideal of growth beyond all else drilled into their head so thoroughly that they simply couldn't understand contentment with the status quo. On the ride home, the whole group was complaining about why they'd even wasted their time talking to someone so ignorant. Comments ranged from, "He'll be out of business in 10 years" to "At least we got to drink sake." I worry that putting MBAs in charge of businesses puts a skewed view on risk and desired outcomes. Each and every one of their suggestions could have backfired immensely and most would have required taking on considerable debt. It's this way of thinking that gives people the unicorn-or-bust mentality and look down on those who try to build "lifestyle businesses" (I hate that term). The world would be a much better place with fewer unicorns and more lifestyle businesses. The hockey stick isn't necessary to be successful, at yet it seems to be all that MBAs understand.
- icebraining 11y ago

rayiner 11y ago

I'm always skeptical about stuff like this. Sandberg's springboard into her career was two-fold: working at McKinsey after HBS, and working under Larry Summers, who was her thesis advisor at Harvard UG. She went to Google as a VP after her stint in government. There is a huge "getting your foot in the door" advantage to that credential. I can totally believe she didn't use much of what she learned at HBS in what she did at Google. But would she ever have gotten that VP job at Google without that sterling resume?

pvnick 11y ago
Good point. Pedigree is and always has been a huge advantage. A disproportionate number of execs' backgrounds I've looked into have Yale/Harvard/Stanford/etc somewhere. I wonder if that will ever change. Having worked with many folks who attended those universities, most do not strike me as being intrinsically more capable than their counterparts who attended other universities, although a few have a high degree of self-assuredness (which, granted, is quite valuable as a career trait).
achow 11y ago
It's about pedigree. An MBA from an unknown school will not open the doors, however great the education was.
gohrt 11y ago
By far the most important thing she learned at HBS was the phone numbers of her classmates.
puranjay 11y ago
I think it's wise to rephrase her statement: "An MBA is not useful in the tech field if you already have a degree from a top university" For the rest, if you want a foot in the door at Facebook and don't have Harvard or Stanford on your resume, a MBA from Booth or MIT Sloan will definitely help

oldmanjay 11y ago

I think of Sheryl Sandberg as an ad exec who happened to get into tech at the right time. I'm not really aware of any technical bona fides, just the usual executive ability to extract money from technical processes for personal gain. Am I missing something?

onesixtythree 11y ago

I have to disagree with this claim. Leverage matters immensely. The truth about "merit" is that no one knows how to assess it, so people judge based on external leverage and status, and having an MBA from a top-5 school gives a person a huge advantage. If you're a walk-on for a $250,000-per-year sinecure, then they're going to give you a real tech job, and not some lowly code-the-stories position.

enraged_camel 11y ago
>>and having an MBA from a top-5 school gives a person a huge advantage. Certainly. There's a saying that having an MBA from Harvard will guarantee you at least an interview anywhere in the world. The problem is that the vast majority of MBAs did not get their degree from Harvard, or even the other top 4 schools. They got their MBAs from regional universities or no-name business departments.
- onesixtythree 11y ago
  Yep. There's a reason why people in technology complain about the "Damaso Effect". Even though those Harvard MBAs get mocked by "real programmers", they get the last laugh because they decide what most of those programmers work on. All of that said, the networking opportunities drop off rapidly, even from Harvard to Stanford or Stanford to Wharton, much less out of the top 5. The education is the same, and the academic quality of the students is probably better at non-top schools, but you're not meeting people who are so loaded and connected that they'll hand out sinecures and venture funding (which are two forms of the same thing, but that's another discussion) to their drinking buddies.

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DannoHung 11y ago

Corporations are legal constructs that require specific domain knowledge to correctly administer and develop. MBAs are ostensibly targeted at that (in the same way Computer Science degrees are ostensibly targeted at teaching you domain knowledge to think and reason about the specific mathematics that underlie computers and software). What you get out of them and their utility probably is very contextual in the same way any degree is. My suspicion is that for many roles and at many times in a technology business, the utility is low, but that for some roles at some times, it is quite high. Ultimately, the thing that's might be funky is that if you hire someone for their expertise in domains pertinent to MBAs, you are putting them very close to having control of the legal construct of your business. Like a sysadmin, you need to place a lot of trust in them to ensure they are doing their job correctly if you don't have the domain knowledge to provide careful oversight.

ryandrake 11y ago

> Sandberg suggested a career in tech might not even be necessary to catch Facebook’s attention. “We don't look for a specific background or skill-set when we make hiring decisions,” she wrote. “As my friend and Instagram COO Marne Levine says, we hire athletes and cross-train them.” From a randomly selected job posting on Facebook's web site: Requirements B.S. or M.S. Computer Science or related field Experience building high-performance, large-scale server applications and reliable software Expert knowledge developing and debugging in C++ End-to-end experience in online ad serving and background in online advertising/auction theory strongly preferred Knowledge of Perl, PHP, or Python a plus Knowledge of Hadoop/MapReduce a plus

genericresponse 11y ago
Her words are carefully chosen. They don't look at it when they make hiring decisions. They do look at background and skill set when selecting candidates. (i.e. If you can lateral into the interview process it's cool that you don't meet the job description. If you come in off the street looking to interview, you better check all the boxes if you want our time.)
eastbayjake 11y ago
I believe Sandberg was referring to positions where someone might think an MBA is required, like product management. No one is asking whether an MBA might be useful for highly technical roles, like the above posting for someone doing the technical implementation of an online ad engine.
- niels_olson 11y ago
  From what I've read of Sandberg, she is an executive looking at grooming executives. In her mind, "professional" is equivalent to a plumber: not her children. Her athlete analogy makes a special sort of sense in that context. I have seen a strong connection from the athletes and spec-ops people I went to school with now moving into executive positions. I'm not sure what the common denominator is, because I know a lot of athletes who are now in construction too. But if you're an athlete and can hang intellectually, there's a desirable mindset there. And I think that mindset is the striver: they see themselves every day as a little faster or a little slower, never the same. And they always want to be faster. In Plato's Republic, there's a chapter on training the guardians, and I think that reflects her ideas reasonably well, in so far as a lot of Western leadership practices derived from the Greeks and the Republic in particular.

eitally 11y ago

I've never worked with MBAs before, in all my tech career, which included stints as a programmer and then a long period as a manager/director where I was in a much more business-oriented role. I always had a preconception that "MBA" essentially meant "management consultant", those high-priced guys who were paid to support bad news the CEO didn't want to seem came from himself. Restructuring advisement is certainly a valid role business consultants fulfill, but it's definitely not the only one, or even one of the more common ones. I joined Google this summer and I have 2 ex-consultant MBAs in the team I'm managing, along with a third employee who is ex-BCG-but-no-MBA. They are awesome. They freaking rock at analysis, and are highly skilled at asking good & pointed questions to help nail down business opportunities & good/bad ideas. Two of them have technical BSes (EE & CS) and are fantastic PMs: well organized, analytical, strong communicators, outgoing, and perhaps most importantly, they know when they're weak in an area and how to recruit complimentary team members. This by no means should be considered advice that everyone needs an MBA, that all MBAs are equal, that all tech PMs need an MBA, or even that all Google MBAs are good at their jobs, but MINE ARE, and they'd be much less proficient if they hadn't spent that extra two years in business school (along with tech internships both years). Just like everything else, people need to set goals and work appropriately to achieve them. For some individuals this will suggest an MBA; for many others, not so much. Honestly, the biggest piece of business school advice I'd offer anyone is that if you can't get into or afford a top tier school, don't bother paying a school at all. Just try to DIY it the best you can. The gap between what students get out of the tier 1 programs and everything else (with a few notable exceptions) is immense. I'm not counting exec MBA programs at all. They're specifically targeted at people who are already execs and just look to amp up certain skills (M&A, international development, etc).

matwood 11y ago
IT people with MBAs are super valuable. Every company HAS to have a tech strategy beyond what JS lib to use next year on the website. This merging of technology and business is hard and requires people who can live comfortably in both lands. Typically it means starting as a technologist and moving towards the business side, although I have seen it come from the other direction also.
11y ago

therealchiko 11y ago

I think Sheryl might be missing the point that it depends with where you're coming from. Career paths differ and I think it's hyperbolic to reduce it to one "true" way and discredit some things from a privileged position. A lot of top execs do have the credentials often dismissed so I'm not personally sure they'd be there without that kind of education. The value of attending business school (assuming it's a top school) might be more related to "outside" factors such as more opportunities, tapping into good networks and of course, involvement in different disciplines with all the resources you need to grow your thinking and expertise. What I am concerned about is that some statements can easily be taken the wrong way by people who honestly would benefit from MBAs. Facebook not choosing or using an MBA as main criteria is fine, but Facebook is not the only company that matters and i'm sure having an MBA does also not discredit you in their eyes.

anjc 11y ago

It confuses me endlessly that MBAs should be so misunderstood by so many people, it being suggested that they are only good for networking, that people with MBAs are cold and evil, and so on. They're simply a course which teach you the fundamentals of several areas which are relevant to business. It'd be like saying that a degree in CS would be superfluous for somebody who wants to program. If you love programming, then you'll get value from every aspect of a CS degree. Likewise for an MBA and business. Also, truly they only teach the fundamentals. An MBA's exposure to marketing/accounting/management would be far more diluted than that of an 18 year old who pursues a degree in one of these specific areas, so I'm not sure why people seem to be so threatened by the MBA. It's also funny to read in the article that Thiel has said MBAs are useless, because his books are a joke when compared to the most basic business courses. It's also laughable that Sandberg would say this, having already gotten an education from a place which has been central to business trends globally for decades. It's likely that Facebook et al would not exist without HBS and similar institutions in the US.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
The usual criticism is that MBAs believe the degree endows them with far more strategic intelligence than they really have. It's like officer school. The worst graduates come out absolutely convinced they can run an entire army, when in fact they're still almost completely clueless. Aside from the networking - which is not trivial - the benefits of an MBA for talented individuals seem to be exposure to the idea that strategy, cost/benefit analysis, accounting, marketing, and the rest all exist, and are more relevant to a business than the code base. This can be a surprise to straight CS people, many of whom only care about code. But by analogy, many MBAs only seem to care about money. There's more to running a successful business than the bottom line - or at least there should be - and more subtle management principles that build businesses by making customers and employees happy as well as making shareholders rich don't seem to figure at all in MBA schools. The MBA point of view seems to be that happiness doesn't matter when there's profit to be made. Ironically, there's a lot of poverty in that view - not just morally, but politically and economically. In the longer term it leads to the kind of economic picture we have today, where there's a lot of profit being made, but at the cost of rapidly shrinking broad prosperity and economic freedom for most of the population.

ramanamit1234 11y ago

People need a general business understanding for most jobs, even government jobs.

pbreit 11y ago

Oh, it matters. It can easily be a hindrance because the thinking required by large business, consulting and wall street is quite different that that required to get a business off the ground.

allsystemsgo 11y ago

I have 3/4 of an MBA. Stopped with just an MS in IT Management. I could finish it but, didn't seem that useful.

germinalphrase 11y ago

There is a common perspective in this thread that XYZ skills/knowledge are useful to understand (even if one's not seeking the social signaling associated with a top tier MBA). Can anyone post some favored texts/resources for self-directed learning? What do we include in the HN home-brew MBA?

rchaud 11y ago
Unsurprisingly, someone has attempted to make a business out this exact question. The Personal MBA site has a good selection of books to get your started. It's categorized under different topics like marketing, finance, strategy, etc. https://personalmba.com/best-business-books/ https://personalmba.com/best-business-books/

efraimip 11y ago

I agree 100% with Sheryl. I'm a 7 time serial entrepreneur. built a few big ones. the only bad/failed ones were because of MBA leaders in the company. the only good ones were with techies leading who learned through experience the practical application of scientific business practices. 99% of all top tech company CEO's are techies who learned practical business through experience --- and are not MBAs. Sheryl Sandberg knows exactly what she's talking about. MBA was designed for corporate middle management. No need for that in a startup - especially at founder level. Now I invest in startups. I do not invest in MBA founders. I'm doing very good investing. Its simple. Every logical argument says the same.

the_watcher 11y ago

The biggest value an MBA provides (and this is not me claiming it does or doesn't provide other value) is that companies recruit out of them. If you are looking to make a career change, it can be tough to get considered for roles you might do well in, given your lack of experience, but companies are demonstrably more willing to hire into roles without relevant work experience if coming from a solid MBA program.