7 ms·

I'm aware that HN is a pro-engineering, anti-MBA group of folks, but hopefully my perspective helps add a bit of color from the other side. I got a BS and MS i

I'm aware that HN is a pro-engineering, anti-MBA group of folks, but hopefully my perspective helps add a bit of color from the other side. I got a BS and MS in Computer Science and ended up working as a software engineer for a number of years. After a while, I was left wanting more, so I enrolled in an MBA program. IMO, 50-60% of classes in business school are fluff leadership rah-rah self-development bullshit. But the other 40% is valuable. Why? Because Sundar Pichai isn't losing sleep at night over which tech stack the Gmail team is using. Satya Nadella doesn't give a fuck about a 5% latency reduction on the Bing landing page. The higher you climb in the ladder, the more you focus on non-technical topics like scaling, budgeting, revenue growth, recruiting, etc etc etc. In the bubble of Silicon Valley, it's easy to generalize every incompetent MBA you meet into a group that you classify as being useless in an organization. Just remember: a handful of tech CEOs have MBAs. HBS will always produce leaders, regardless of whether or not they succeed once they're in the CEO role. McKinsey churns out more CEOs than any other company in human history. The business skill set may seem trivial, but playing the political game usually gets your further than raw skill alone.

GlennS 10y ago
Could you summarise some of the 40% that was useful? Might be interesting to hear.
- thegoldenchild 10y ago
  Finance I, II, III. Accounting I, II, III. Corporate Strategy. Emerging Markets. Micro/Macro Economics. Business Acting. Marketing Strategy. Ops Research.
  - jczhang 10y ago
    Ok so why not just take those classes online or something and save yourself the huge cost of MBA?
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      A large part of getting the MBA is the piece of paper saying you have one, and another large part of it is the network you form while getting it. Things you can't really get online.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - tingbadimalo 10y ago
      Current MBA student here. I did online classes. Read books. Still signed up for an MBA after I realized I didn't have the confidence and needed time to develop in an environment that encourages immersion and discussion of these topics. Not everyone needs to do this. But those who do, like me, should do an MBA.
mdorazio 10y ago
Of the "valuable" set of classes, what % would you have only been able to attend/learn from in an MBA program? I was accepted to several top MBA programs and decided not to go for a variety of reasons, including that virtually all of the classwork was things I had already learned or could easily learn via online coursework or community college without spending a quarter of a million dollars.
- sjg007 10y ago
  You go for the network either regional or national. You can read the 30m MBA for the other stuff.
  - mdorazio 10y ago
    Agreed, I was trying to understand what part of the classwork the parent comment found compelling enough to spend the time and money on for an MBA program.
- thegoldenchild 10y ago
  There's nothing stopping you from learning everything on your own. BUT you miss out on the MBA network. When you're forced to spend 2 years with a cohort of 75-100 people, you develop a close-knit bond when you spend most of your time eating, drinking, studying (and sometimes sleeping) with these people. If I want a job at a company that one of my MBA classmates works at, an interview is literally one phone call away.
  - tensor 10y ago
    I realize the network effect is positive for you, but I think it's negative for the world at large. One would hope that hires would be merit based, not simply that your are friends in the MBA club.
    - deong 10y ago
      It doesn't have to be binary there. It can be merit-based and heavily dependent on having friends in the club. And that's not a special property of the MBA folks. That is to say, you might be good enough to be a lead engineer at Google, and they're not going to give you that job if you aren't, but it's still a whole lot easier to put yourself into the position of being able to do that if people in your network work at Google. MBAs are no different. You don't get to be a VP of finance because you used to do bong hits with the CEO, but if you're someone who is able to do the job of VP of finance (and can convince people of that), then that connection to the CEO is hugely valuable.
sacheendra 10y ago
While MBAs might learn stuff like budgeting, recruiting, etc. Are they going to better at doing this than an accountant or a professional recruiter? Is this the additional value they add when the join a company?
- thegoldenchild 10y ago
  No, but it's the same as a CS student taking one class on operating systems, machine learning, android development, etc. You won't be an expert after one or two courses, but you develop a foundation level of understanding. As a CEO, you'll be in meetings with accountants, marketers, engineers, recruiters, lawyers, etc. Knowing the common vocabulary helps you avoid wasting unnecessary time asking questions about the core concepts.
  - deong 10y ago
    And you're going to be in the position of having people under you frequently disagree with one another, and they're going to try to provide the best argument they can as to why you should pursue their preferred strategy. If you don't know the difference between an capital and an operational expense, you're heavily compromised in your ability to decide who's right.
- phillc73 10y ago
  They don't need to be better than a professional accountant. That's not where the value is. I completed an MBT (Masters of Business and Technology) at UNSW, Australia. The course programme was certainly slanted towards technical managers, perhaps aspiring CTOs (which I'm not). There were fairly basic courses, for someone with a technical product management background, but there was also some very useful business focused topics. The one module I really learned the most from was Fundamentals of Corporate Finance. I do not aspire to know more than a professional accountant, but I can now understand what the professional accountant is telling me. I don't just know what the numbers in the budget mean, but also a pretty good idea of how they were derived. For example, I understand, in context, asset depreciation and what it means for my business. I probably could have picked up these skills elsewhere too, but that module alone made the entire MBT degree programme worthwhile.
Retric 10y ago
The most interesting thing about MBA's is it's approval focused not success focused. If you can convince a fortune 500 company to pick you as their CEO you have already won even if the company fails because you run it into the ground. So, yes the language changes as you go up. But, so does what it means to fail.
- thegoldenchild 10y ago
  New levels, new devils ;)
digikata 10y ago
As time has gone on, I really wonder if the canonical technical/non-technical split in leadership is really the right breakdown for companies. It frequently ends up being a risk item that leadership is so separate from the low-level revenue and cost generation activities of companies. Perhaps it would work better to distribute a lot of the administrative scaling, budgeting, type activities in favor of being more organically connected to revenue activities and the skills that can open or expand various markets. This is basically more like how Amazon operates (and oddly enough some very stressful work-cooperative companies). It puts the ability to act closer to people that can see the opportunity... and lack of that rapid see-act cycle is hurt by the canonical hierarchy, and why large corporations (who should be the best resourced entities) seem to be the worst at starting & pursuing new ventures.
- digikata 10y ago
  *successful not stressful...
- dilemma 10y ago
  To me, what you're arguing for sounds like decentralization. Toyota's lean builds on decentralization of expertise and decision making, and that is what American and Western European companies miss and why their lean implementation efforts fail. Another success story is Handelsbanken, the only (?) European bank to not need govt bail outs in 2008. A third would be 3M and probably also Semco.
enraged_camel 10y ago
>>Satya Nadella doesn't give a fuck about a 5% latency reduction on the Bing landing page. He might if you are a smart engineer and demonstrate that that 5% reduction in latency results in $100 million additional revenue per year by way of more users and more ads. I just made up that number, but still. My point is, at the end of the day one doesn't need an MBA to draw the connection between their technical endeavors and the business effects of those endeavors.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  He is a very bad CEO if he can't understand that a 5% reduction in latency results in $X of extra revenue by himself¹. If an engineer can articulate his companies business cases better than him, MS board would better put that engineer as CEO. 1 - Even if "by himself" here means just taking the initiative to ask somebody
  - allengeorge 10y ago
    He shouldn't have to ask. You have to imagine that when you're at that level you're dealing with a magnitude more problems, and rely on your team to inform you of changes and their high-level impact.
jordanb 10y ago
I don't think this is an MBA vs STEMLord thing. Rather an MBA versus "everything else" thing. Especially studies and experiences that really are mind-broadening: """The strange thing about my utter lack of education in management was that it didn’t seem to matter. As a principal and founding partner of a consulting firm that eventually grew to 600 employees, I interviewed, hired, and worked alongside hundreds of business-school graduates, and the impression I formed of the M.B.A. experience was that it involved taking two years out of your life and going deeply into debt, all for the sake of learning how to keep a straight face while using phrases like “out-of-the-box thinking,” “win-win situation,” and “core competencies.” When it came to picking teammates, I generally held out higher hopes for those individuals who had used their university years to learn about something other than business administration.""" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-myth/304883/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-man...
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  > “win-win situation” There's something on that phrase that really hits me very hard, so that every time I hear it, by reflex I'll start looking for the exit and what paths I may take to run there.
  - dikdik 10y ago
    I have the same reaction to the word "opportunity" thanks to some pretty horrific past managers (who of course had MBAs).
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
The higher you climb in the ladder, the more you focus on non-technical topics like scaling, budgeting, revenue growth, recruiting, etc etc etc. You're describing a competent product manager. Those CEOs you mention are really thinking about geopolitical strategies like how do we deal with this new anti-privacy legislation, or changes in the rare earth metals market, or diversity, or what should we do about VR or cloud etc...
iends 10y ago
Can you talk more about your experiences? Did you go to a top program? A full time program? Do you think it's worth it if you already have an MS and are currently a first line manager and team lead?
- aswin8728 10y ago
  BS & MS in CS. Worked at one of the big 4 (google/apple/amazon/facebook). Got my MBA from a top 10. Currently in venture capital. If you want to stay in engineering, there's no need for an MBA. It only helps if you want to pivot.
partycoder 10y ago
But certainly they care about hiring competent people and being able to recognize, retain and reward competent people within their organization. In contrast, if your organization is full of business-oriented people, it becomes a self-reinforcing downwards spiral, because: - business oriented developers are biased towards competition. development is a collaborative effort. - many business oriented developers downplay the role of engineering, wanting to be closer to management. because of this they might not be technically competent. When hiring, they will hire more people like them. - since business oriented developers think programming is just means towards an end, they will focus on features and disregard maintainability and other important non-functional requirements. they force other people to take care of those issues for them, creating a toxic team dynamic ("want it fixed? then you fix it") and impacting their performance metrics. If you have your MBA and you don't really like engineering because you consider it as being a lower form of work, then don't be an engineer. Do something else.
- aswin8728 10y ago
  If you're going for an MBA, the intention is to pivot away from an engineering position. There's no reason to get an MBA if you want to stay as a SWE.

GlennS 10y ago

Could you summarise some of the 40% that was useful? Might be interesting to hear.

thegoldenchild 10y ago
Finance I, II, III. Accounting I, II, III. Corporate Strategy. Emerging Markets. Micro/Macro Economics. Business Acting. Marketing Strategy. Ops Research.
- jczhang 10y ago
  Ok so why not just take those classes online or something and save yourself the huge cost of MBA?
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    A large part of getting the MBA is the piece of paper saying you have one, and another large part of it is the network you form while getting it. Things you can't really get online.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - tingbadimalo 10y ago
    Current MBA student here. I did online classes. Read books. Still signed up for an MBA after I realized I didn't have the confidence and needed time to develop in an environment that encourages immersion and discussion of these topics. Not everyone needs to do this. But those who do, like me, should do an MBA.

mdorazio 10y ago

Of the "valuable" set of classes, what % would you have only been able to attend/learn from in an MBA program? I was accepted to several top MBA programs and decided not to go for a variety of reasons, including that virtually all of the classwork was things I had already learned or could easily learn via online coursework or community college without spending a quarter of a million dollars.

sjg007 10y ago
You go for the network either regional or national. You can read the 30m MBA for the other stuff.
- mdorazio 10y ago
  Agreed, I was trying to understand what part of the classwork the parent comment found compelling enough to spend the time and money on for an MBA program.
thegoldenchild 10y ago
There's nothing stopping you from learning everything on your own. BUT you miss out on the MBA network. When you're forced to spend 2 years with a cohort of 75-100 people, you develop a close-knit bond when you spend most of your time eating, drinking, studying (and sometimes sleeping) with these people. If I want a job at a company that one of my MBA classmates works at, an interview is literally one phone call away.
- tensor 10y ago
  I realize the network effect is positive for you, but I think it's negative for the world at large. One would hope that hires would be merit based, not simply that your are friends in the MBA club.
  - deong 10y ago
    It doesn't have to be binary there. It can be merit-based and heavily dependent on having friends in the club. And that's not a special property of the MBA folks. That is to say, you might be good enough to be a lead engineer at Google, and they're not going to give you that job if you aren't, but it's still a whole lot easier to put yourself into the position of being able to do that if people in your network work at Google. MBAs are no different. You don't get to be a VP of finance because you used to do bong hits with the CEO, but if you're someone who is able to do the job of VP of finance (and can convince people of that), then that connection to the CEO is hugely valuable.

sacheendra 10y ago

While MBAs might learn stuff like budgeting, recruiting, etc. Are they going to better at doing this than an accountant or a professional recruiter? Is this the additional value they add when the join a company?

thegoldenchild 10y ago
No, but it's the same as a CS student taking one class on operating systems, machine learning, android development, etc. You won't be an expert after one or two courses, but you develop a foundation level of understanding. As a CEO, you'll be in meetings with accountants, marketers, engineers, recruiters, lawyers, etc. Knowing the common vocabulary helps you avoid wasting unnecessary time asking questions about the core concepts.
- deong 10y ago
  And you're going to be in the position of having people under you frequently disagree with one another, and they're going to try to provide the best argument they can as to why you should pursue their preferred strategy. If you don't know the difference between an capital and an operational expense, you're heavily compromised in your ability to decide who's right.
phillc73 10y ago
They don't need to be better than a professional accountant. That's not where the value is. I completed an MBT (Masters of Business and Technology) at UNSW, Australia. The course programme was certainly slanted towards technical managers, perhaps aspiring CTOs (which I'm not). There were fairly basic courses, for someone with a technical product management background, but there was also some very useful business focused topics. The one module I really learned the most from was Fundamentals of Corporate Finance. I do not aspire to know more than a professional accountant, but I can now understand what the professional accountant is telling me. I don't just know what the numbers in the budget mean, but also a pretty good idea of how they were derived. For example, I understand, in context, asset depreciation and what it means for my business. I probably could have picked up these skills elsewhere too, but that module alone made the entire MBT degree programme worthwhile.

Retric 10y ago

The most interesting thing about MBA's is it's approval focused not success focused. If you can convince a fortune 500 company to pick you as their CEO you have already won even if the company fails because you run it into the ground. So, yes the language changes as you go up. But, so does what it means to fail.

thegoldenchild 10y ago
New levels, new devils ;)

digikata 10y ago

As time has gone on, I really wonder if the canonical technical/non-technical split in leadership is really the right breakdown for companies. It frequently ends up being a risk item that leadership is so separate from the low-level revenue and cost generation activities of companies. Perhaps it would work better to distribute a lot of the administrative scaling, budgeting, type activities in favor of being more organically connected to revenue activities and the skills that can open or expand various markets. This is basically more like how Amazon operates (and oddly enough some very stressful work-cooperative companies). It puts the ability to act closer to people that can see the opportunity... and lack of that rapid see-act cycle is hurt by the canonical hierarchy, and why large corporations (who should be the best resourced entities) seem to be the worst at starting & pursuing new ventures.

digikata 10y ago
*successful not stressful...
dilemma 10y ago
To me, what you're arguing for sounds like decentralization. Toyota's lean builds on decentralization of expertise and decision making, and that is what American and Western European companies miss and why their lean implementation efforts fail. Another success story is Handelsbanken, the only (?) European bank to not need govt bail outs in 2008. A third would be 3M and probably also Semco.

enraged_camel 10y ago

>>Satya Nadella doesn't give a fuck about a 5% latency reduction on the Bing landing page. He might if you are a smart engineer and demonstrate that that 5% reduction in latency results in $100 million additional revenue per year by way of more users and more ads. I just made up that number, but still. My point is, at the end of the day one doesn't need an MBA to draw the connection between their technical endeavors and the business effects of those endeavors.

marcosdumay 10y ago
He is a very bad CEO if he can't understand that a 5% reduction in latency results in $X of extra revenue by himself¹. If an engineer can articulate his companies business cases better than him, MS board would better put that engineer as CEO. 1 - Even if "by himself" here means just taking the initiative to ask somebody
- allengeorge 10y ago
  He shouldn't have to ask. You have to imagine that when you're at that level you're dealing with a magnitude more problems, and rely on your team to inform you of changes and their high-level impact.

jordanb 10y ago

I don't think this is an MBA vs STEMLord thing. Rather an MBA versus "everything else" thing. Especially studies and experiences that really are mind-broadening: """The strange thing about my utter lack of education in management was that it didn’t seem to matter. As a principal and founding partner of a consulting firm that eventually grew to 600 employees, I interviewed, hired, and worked alongside hundreds of business-school graduates, and the impression I formed of the M.B.A. experience was that it involved taking two years out of your life and going deeply into debt, all for the sake of learning how to keep a straight face while using phrases like “out-of-the-box thinking,” “win-win situation,” and “core competencies.” When it came to picking teammates, I generally held out higher hopes for those individuals who had used their university years to learn about something other than business administration.""" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-myth/304883/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-man...

marcosdumay 10y ago
> “win-win situation” There's something on that phrase that really hits me very hard, so that every time I hear it, by reflex I'll start looking for the exit and what paths I may take to run there.
- dikdik 10y ago
  I have the same reaction to the word "opportunity" thanks to some pretty horrific past managers (who of course had MBAs).

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

The higher you climb in the ladder, the more you focus on non-technical topics like scaling, budgeting, revenue growth, recruiting, etc etc etc. You're describing a competent product manager. Those CEOs you mention are really thinking about geopolitical strategies like how do we deal with this new anti-privacy legislation, or changes in the rare earth metals market, or diversity, or what should we do about VR or cloud etc...

iends 10y ago

Can you talk more about your experiences? Did you go to a top program? A full time program? Do you think it's worth it if you already have an MS and are currently a first line manager and team lead?

aswin8728 10y ago
BS & MS in CS. Worked at one of the big 4 (google/apple/amazon/facebook). Got my MBA from a top 10. Currently in venture capital. If you want to stay in engineering, there's no need for an MBA. It only helps if you want to pivot.

partycoder 10y ago

But certainly they care about hiring competent people and being able to recognize, retain and reward competent people within their organization. In contrast, if your organization is full of business-oriented people, it becomes a self-reinforcing downwards spiral, because: - business oriented developers are biased towards competition. development is a collaborative effort. - many business oriented developers downplay the role of engineering, wanting to be closer to management. because of this they might not be technically competent. When hiring, they will hire more people like them. - since business oriented developers think programming is just means towards an end, they will focus on features and disregard maintainability and other important non-functional requirements. they force other people to take care of those issues for them, creating a toxic team dynamic ("want it fixed? then you fix it") and impacting their performance metrics. If you have your MBA and you don't really like engineering because you consider it as being a lower form of work, then don't be an engineer. Do something else.

aswin8728 10y ago
If you're going for an MBA, the intention is to pivot away from an engineering position. There's no reason to get an MBA if you want to stay as a SWE.