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I know its popular to hate on Peter Thiel here but I think he's been right about this cohort for a long time, and that its not really surprising. Emphasis mine:

I know its popular to hate on Peter Thiel here but I think he's been right about this cohort for a long time, and that its not really surprising. Emphasis mine: > I think one challenge a lot of the business schools have is they end up attracting students who are very extroverted and have very low conviction, and they put them in this hot house environment for a few years — at the end of which, a large number of people go into whatever was the last trendy thing to do. They’ve done studies at Harvard Business School where they’ve found that the largest cohort always went into the wrong field. So in 1989, they all went to work for Michael Milken, a year or two before he went to jail. They were never interested in Silicon Valley except for 1999, 2000. The last decade their interest was housing and private equity. > So there is something about the way in which business school is decoupled from anything really substantive that I’d want to rethink. From this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/10/10/peter-thiel-on-what-works-at-work/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/10... (but I heard him express this in a talk on Youtube that I can't find, and not in that article.) There seems to be something that's almost by definition generic about MBA types that's built in to the network of people (paraphrasing Thiel and others, who decides to go to business school, unless they simply have no other ideas and its the "thing to do"?) or the education itself. They are probably still excellent for lots of businesses, but they may be the businesses that Warren buffet calls "a business that's doing so well an idiot could run it." They may not be businesses that need to pivot in any meaningful way.

demonshalo 10y ago
It IS popular to hate on Thiel but it is also very hard to dispute most of the stuff that he says. Granted, everyone is wrong about something, but in this case, I think he nails it pretty darn well!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
maxxxxx 10y ago
"very extroverted and have very low conviction" I see that a lot in middle management in my company. There is this whole layer of people who are really good at going along with trends but can't make up their mind when hard decisions have to be made. As soon as someone else makes that decision they jump on the bandwagon again and take credit. It seems a really good way to climb the corporate ladder.
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  I wouldn't necessarily explain this by properties of the individual middle manager. Middle management frequently had very little decision making power and it's their job to represent "the company's" decisions to their reports. In many organizations they are also heavily discouraged from taking any risks and frequently function as scape goats for bad decisions higher ups made. So even if someone in middle management seems bad at making decisions it might not be because they don't have a strong opinion but because they aren't sure if it clashes with what their boss wants and are unsure how far they can push it. They also might be turn to maybe do what they think is the wrong thing because they know it will be accepted by the organization. They also might seem to be slow or hesitant making decisions when it's in fact someone above them they are waiting for. Middle management is easily blamed, but they are also the ones who get to feel most when an organization is dysfunctional because they sit between the people who make the real decisions and between the people who are doing the ground work.
  - maxxxxx 10y ago
    There are middle managers who take a position and tell you. They may not always get their way but at least you know where they are at. But I also see a lot people who take no position, call meetings all day, don't contribute anything concrete but in the end still manage to get credit.
bmpafa 10y ago
I have an MBA from one of the top 3 programs, and I see a lot of evidence to support this, but I disagree that it's a lack of conviction. I came from a diff't background than most of my classmates, but the sense I got was that, for a lot of them, life was a series of clearly defined competitions & steps. I took to calling it the Gilded Pipeline, but in general, it was ivy undergrad -> banking/consulting -> private equity -> MBA -> ???. The '???' triggered a surprising # of identity crises. A lot of people felt they'd had a clear way ahead their entire lives, and now there was no clear goal in the horizon. Most of them had strong convictions--from community work to personal beliefs to long-term goals--at least as strong as the general pop., I'd argue. But give anyone $100k of student debt & the promise of exit options galore, and I'd wager most would take the 'last big thing.'
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Same observation here [top 10, but as we like to say everyone in the top-15 are within the margin of error of each other :)]. The "Gilded Pipeline" post-MBA pretty much has to be "back to banking or consulting". Otherwise the MBA has a negative ROI. Ask me how I know. You can soul search all you want, but end of the day you're dropping $100K+ on your degree and foregoing 2 years of career growth (opportunity cost). So you need to exit into the highest paying jobs THAT ALSO HAVE CAREER GROWTH and they are always banking and consulting.
- overcast 10y ago
  diff't ??
  - c0achmcguirk 10y ago
    diff't = different
saosebastiao 10y ago
I hate on Peter Thiel all the time, but he's absolutely right here. MBA schools teach a form of strategic analysis that is almost purely driven by fatally flawed ex post facto reasoning. Hell, the case study model pioneered at Harvard is a case study in ex post facto reasoning. Just read their most popular business books...always looking to the past and trying to find mystical reasons why one company did well and another company didn't (while completely ignoring counterfactuals). We shouldn't be surprised that this form of reasoning leads to really bad ideas about what the next big thing is.
- cmahler7 10y ago
  hate the artist, not the art. You don't have to like Thiel's political beliefs to admit he's smart as hell.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- tingbadimalo 10y ago
  Current MBA student here. I certainly agree with the fact that a lot of business (especially case studies and popular business books) is a posteriori However, I don't think that means that it is always flawed reasoning. There are kernels of truth that can be gained. The challenge is that most of the analysis and synthesized learnings will apply for specific companies and points in time. BUT, it's the analytical ability and reasoning skills that are important to develop as an MBA and NOT the specific learnings that applied to companies in the past. Any MBA that tells you otherwise is obviously flawed.
mosaiclifestyle 10y ago
This is a doctrine that now starts with kids at a very young age. People reverse engineer their way into that Ivy League school, then the herd mentality drives them into finance / consulting, etc. The further they go down this road, the greater the perceived risk of leaving it becomes. Add in the financial aspect for many, and you get the golden handcuffs. Spend too many years here and I suspect it just becomes your entire worldview, especially as your social circles thin out and become more homogeneous, especially in environments like business school. In my own experience those who eventually escape are often driven out by what can be the psychological stress of conformity, or the realization that they are far from what they had wanted for their lives 5, 10, 15 years ago.
greenhatman 10y ago
This is the video you're talking about, probably. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k

demonshalo 10y ago

It IS popular to hate on Thiel but it is also very hard to dispute most of the stuff that he says. Granted, everyone is wrong about something, but in this case, I think he nails it pretty darn well!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

maxxxxx 10y ago

"very extroverted and have very low conviction" I see that a lot in middle management in my company. There is this whole layer of people who are really good at going along with trends but can't make up their mind when hard decisions have to be made. As soon as someone else makes that decision they jump on the bandwagon again and take credit. It seems a really good way to climb the corporate ladder.

ajmurmann 10y ago
I wouldn't necessarily explain this by properties of the individual middle manager. Middle management frequently had very little decision making power and it's their job to represent "the company's" decisions to their reports. In many organizations they are also heavily discouraged from taking any risks and frequently function as scape goats for bad decisions higher ups made. So even if someone in middle management seems bad at making decisions it might not be because they don't have a strong opinion but because they aren't sure if it clashes with what their boss wants and are unsure how far they can push it. They also might be turn to maybe do what they think is the wrong thing because they know it will be accepted by the organization. They also might seem to be slow or hesitant making decisions when it's in fact someone above them they are waiting for. Middle management is easily blamed, but they are also the ones who get to feel most when an organization is dysfunctional because they sit between the people who make the real decisions and between the people who are doing the ground work.
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  There are middle managers who take a position and tell you. They may not always get their way but at least you know where they are at. But I also see a lot people who take no position, call meetings all day, don't contribute anything concrete but in the end still manage to get credit.

bmpafa 10y ago

I have an MBA from one of the top 3 programs, and I see a lot of evidence to support this, but I disagree that it's a lack of conviction. I came from a diff't background than most of my classmates, but the sense I got was that, for a lot of them, life was a series of clearly defined competitions & steps. I took to calling it the Gilded Pipeline, but in general, it was ivy undergrad -> banking/consulting -> private equity -> MBA -> ???. The '???' triggered a surprising # of identity crises. A lot of people felt they'd had a clear way ahead their entire lives, and now there was no clear goal in the horizon. Most of them had strong convictions--from community work to personal beliefs to long-term goals--at least as strong as the general pop., I'd argue. But give anyone $100k of student debt & the promise of exit options galore, and I'd wager most would take the 'last big thing.'

ryandrake 10y ago
Same observation here [top 10, but as we like to say everyone in the top-15 are within the margin of error of each other :)]. The "Gilded Pipeline" post-MBA pretty much has to be "back to banking or consulting". Otherwise the MBA has a negative ROI. Ask me how I know. You can soul search all you want, but end of the day you're dropping $100K+ on your degree and foregoing 2 years of career growth (opportunity cost). So you need to exit into the highest paying jobs THAT ALSO HAVE CAREER GROWTH and they are always banking and consulting.
overcast 10y ago
diff't ??
- c0achmcguirk 10y ago
  diff't = different

saosebastiao 10y ago

I hate on Peter Thiel all the time, but he's absolutely right here. MBA schools teach a form of strategic analysis that is almost purely driven by fatally flawed ex post facto reasoning. Hell, the case study model pioneered at Harvard is a case study in ex post facto reasoning. Just read their most popular business books...always looking to the past and trying to find mystical reasons why one company did well and another company didn't (while completely ignoring counterfactuals). We shouldn't be surprised that this form of reasoning leads to really bad ideas about what the next big thing is.

cmahler7 10y ago
hate the artist, not the art. You don't have to like Thiel's political beliefs to admit he's smart as hell.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
tingbadimalo 10y ago
Current MBA student here. I certainly agree with the fact that a lot of business (especially case studies and popular business books) is a posteriori However, I don't think that means that it is always flawed reasoning. There are kernels of truth that can be gained. The challenge is that most of the analysis and synthesized learnings will apply for specific companies and points in time. BUT, it's the analytical ability and reasoning skills that are important to develop as an MBA and NOT the specific learnings that applied to companies in the past. Any MBA that tells you otherwise is obviously flawed.

mosaiclifestyle 10y ago

This is a doctrine that now starts with kids at a very young age. People reverse engineer their way into that Ivy League school, then the herd mentality drives them into finance / consulting, etc. The further they go down this road, the greater the perceived risk of leaving it becomes. Add in the financial aspect for many, and you get the golden handcuffs. Spend too many years here and I suspect it just becomes your entire worldview, especially as your social circles thin out and become more homogeneous, especially in environments like business school. In my own experience those who eventually escape are often driven out by what can be the psychological stress of conformity, or the realization that they are far from what they had wanted for their lives 5, 10, 15 years ago.

greenhatman 10y ago

This is the video you're talking about, probably. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k