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Google CEO Sundar Pichai has an MBA. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has an MBA. AWS CEO Andrew Jassy has an MBA, etc. It is easy to undervalue marketing, sales, f

by ziszis 10y ago

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has an MBA. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has an MBA. AWS CEO Andrew Jassy has an MBA, etc. It is easy to undervalue marketing, sales, financial and other non-technical skills. There are definitely terrible MBAs, but also amazing ones.

aviraldg 10y ago
But they have that in addition to an engineering degree.
- ziszis 10y ago
  No True Scotsman? [0] What is Andy Jassy's engineering degree? What is Sheryl Sandberg's engineering degree? The reality is that people aren't one-dimensional. If you have overly simple rules: no MBAs, must have University degree, must have Ivy league, Uber people are unethical etc, you make worse decisions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
  - benchaney 10y ago
    "No True Scotsman?" Nope.
Chris2048 10y ago
You don't look at what successful people have an MBA, you see which MBAs are successful. There are many factors to success, you could just as easily conclude that people managed to succeed, despite wasting time on an MBA...
based_log 10y ago
Jeff Bezos is also an MBA, though I do concur with they guy who said all those people have MBAs in addition to engineering training.
- arjunnarayan 10y ago
  False. Bezos was EECS at Princeton, and then went to work in finance for ~8 years before starting Amazon.com
yuhong 10y ago
John Sculley is a marketer not an engineer, but is probably one of the least bad ones.
Retric 10y ago
Sundar Pichai is the nominal CEO as Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.
consp 10y ago
I don't know about them, but since they rose up in the companies you usually get an MBA from that company. So the cause/effect relationship is off. I assume they were proper managers (like actual management, not shitty middle management) before getting the MBA. This is what usually happens to some of the engineering guys I went to university with who stay at companies and do not specialize in anything engineering but want to progress in management.
- stvswn 10y ago
  Everytime we do this on HN, the same argument shows up -- "MBAs are the worst." "Well what about these popular CEOs?" "Well they're not really MBAs, c'mon." Sundar Pichai went to Wharton for his MBA before joining Google. He is also ex-McKinsey. So, by HN standards, he's the absolute worst, right? Google's leadership ranks are filled with MBAs, including tons of VPs that aren't household names but are nonetheless very influential here. MBA programs are one of the primary ways we recruit product managers (it's how I became a Google PM, full disclosure). Sales, strategy, ops are also full of MBAs. The next phase of this monthly argument on HN will be, then: "Well, that's what's wrong with Google then, it's all crap after they started hiring MBAs!" which is also nonsense, because lots of the senior people w/ MBAs were hired a decade ago or more.
  - slantyyz 10y ago
    I find it odd how MBA's are painted with such a broad brush here. It's literally just a degree. IMO, anyone who hires purely based on a degree - whether it be a PhD, MBA, CS or whatever, is probably lazy and bad at hiring. If MBAs ruined a company, the people to blame should be the people who hired those individuals who happened to have MBAs and allowed them to ruin the company. Granted, MBA programs do attract certain types of personalities - there were plenty of jerks when I started my MBA almost a quarter of a century ago (wow, i'm getting old), but there are also plenty of people with MBAs who aren't stereotypical money-grubbing, buzzword-spewing drones either.
  - ashark 10y ago
    > The next phase of this monthly argument on HN will be, then: "Well, that's what's wrong with Google then, it's all crap after they started hiring MBAs!" which is also nonsense, because lots of the senior people w/ MBAs were hired a decade ago or more. To be fair, "a decade ago, give or take" may fit perfectly with some people's view of when Google (and with it, the rest of the Web) become crap.

by ziszis 10y ago

aviraldg 10y ago

But they have that in addition to an engineering degree.

ziszis 10y ago
No True Scotsman? [0] What is Andy Jassy's engineering degree? What is Sheryl Sandberg's engineering degree? The reality is that people aren't one-dimensional. If you have overly simple rules: no MBAs, must have University degree, must have Ivy league, Uber people are unethical etc, you make worse decisions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
- benchaney 10y ago
  "No True Scotsman?" Nope.

Chris2048 10y ago

You don't look at what successful people have an MBA, you see which MBAs are successful. There are many factors to success, you could just as easily conclude that people managed to succeed, despite wasting time on an MBA...

based_log 10y ago

Jeff Bezos is also an MBA, though I do concur with they guy who said all those people have MBAs in addition to engineering training.

arjunnarayan 10y ago
False. Bezos was EECS at Princeton, and then went to work in finance for ~8 years before starting Amazon.com

yuhong 10y ago

John Sculley is a marketer not an engineer, but is probably one of the least bad ones.

Retric 10y ago

Sundar Pichai is the nominal CEO as Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.

consp 10y ago

I don't know about them, but since they rose up in the companies you usually get an MBA from that company. So the cause/effect relationship is off. I assume they were proper managers (like actual management, not shitty middle management) before getting the MBA. This is what usually happens to some of the engineering guys I went to university with who stay at companies and do not specialize in anything engineering but want to progress in management.

stvswn 10y ago
Everytime we do this on HN, the same argument shows up -- "MBAs are the worst." "Well what about these popular CEOs?" "Well they're not really MBAs, c'mon." Sundar Pichai went to Wharton for his MBA before joining Google. He is also ex-McKinsey. So, by HN standards, he's the absolute worst, right? Google's leadership ranks are filled with MBAs, including tons of VPs that aren't household names but are nonetheless very influential here. MBA programs are one of the primary ways we recruit product managers (it's how I became a Google PM, full disclosure). Sales, strategy, ops are also full of MBAs. The next phase of this monthly argument on HN will be, then: "Well, that's what's wrong with Google then, it's all crap after they started hiring MBAs!" which is also nonsense, because lots of the senior people w/ MBAs were hired a decade ago or more.
- slantyyz 10y ago
  I find it odd how MBA's are painted with such a broad brush here. It's literally just a degree. IMO, anyone who hires purely based on a degree - whether it be a PhD, MBA, CS or whatever, is probably lazy and bad at hiring. If MBAs ruined a company, the people to blame should be the people who hired those individuals who happened to have MBAs and allowed them to ruin the company. Granted, MBA programs do attract certain types of personalities - there were plenty of jerks when I started my MBA almost a quarter of a century ago (wow, i'm getting old), but there are also plenty of people with MBAs who aren't stereotypical money-grubbing, buzzword-spewing drones either.
- ashark 10y ago
  > The next phase of this monthly argument on HN will be, then: "Well, that's what's wrong with Google then, it's all crap after they started hiring MBAs!" which is also nonsense, because lots of the senior people w/ MBAs were hired a decade ago or more. To be fair, "a decade ago, give or take" may fit perfectly with some people's view of when Google (and with it, the rest of the Web) become crap.