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You don't think any of the skills needed to manage people or businesses can be taught in school? I feel very fortunate that one of my cofounders has an MBA. We
by eli 10y ago
You don't think any of the skills needed to manage people or businesses can be taught in school?
I feel very fortunate that one of my cofounders has an MBA. We'd be much worse off if I had to build financial models and negotiate contracts and motivate the team myself.
Having an MBA obviously doesn't automatically qualify you to manage a dev team (nor does being a good engineer), but speaking from my first hand experience, the skills have value.
- analog31 10y agoI think the ability to manage either people or businesses varies all over the map, and between techies and MBA's, maybe it's like a pair of overlapping distributions. For managing people, I think that there are both positive and negative skills, and I'm not sure MBA's learn exclusively one kind in the absence of the other. Stack ranking and open plan offices had to have come from somewhere. Negotiating contracts is win-lose, so it's at best a coin toss. I could see certain tasks being performed by someone who has shown a motivation to learn how, such as making business plans, schedules, and contracts. The MBA's at my workplace are certainly busy. But it could be selection bias: People with MBA's are selected from among people who want to learn those skills.