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I have a Harvard MBA ('14, sec C), and where this whole argument falls apart for me is the idea of "The Golden Ticket". The author is confusing correlation wit

I have a Harvard MBA ('14, sec C), and where this whole argument falls apart for me is the idea of "The Golden Ticket". The author is confusing correlation with causation. My MBA has had virtually no effect on my opportunities or employability. Heck, as an engineer and entrepreneur, it has probably done more harm than good. This is a consistent experience - with the exception of (perhaps) the military and overseas students folks tend to go back to their previous career track and trajectory. Furthermore it's not really a very transformative experience. The ideals, priorities and abilities students bring to the program are generally the ones they leave with. What HBS does well, above all else, is act as a filter. They really do a remarkable job at admissions, putting together a group of folks who are likely (by nature or nurture) to go on to have an outsized impact on the world.

101km 9y ago
People who go on to have an outsized impact on the world don't usually participate in programs that are neither useful to their careers (to the point of being detrimental) nor transformative to their lives. If a Harvard MBA is essentially pointless like you describe - people go into it and come out the same - the only reason to pursue it is to buy into the network. Hence, perhaps, the "Golden Passport" nomenclature. You'd also notice the author didn't write "Golden Ticket", which I dare say, is an interesting freudian slip.
- ruleabidinguser 9y ago
  What is the difference between "passport" and "ticket" here?
  - Lavery 9y ago
    A ticket allows admission while a passport certifies identity / credentials. At least in so far as what the words signify, tickets are bought but passports are earned. I think it's a pretty good distinction in this context.
- DelaneyM 9y ago
  It's a good two-year summer camp at a time in our career when we're all racing towards our first burnout, and a good opportunity to hang out with other high-achievers. It's also the lemming effect... HBS is a rung on the "success" positive reinforcement ladder, like a big funding round. Privileged kids do the "prep school -> ivy -> wall street (quants) / MBB consulting (arts) -> HBS -> PE" track in absence of any other inspiration.
  - 101km 9y ago
    I think this is called failing upwards. As you allude, an outsider to this cohort crashing into the program should keep expectations in check. Barry Lyndon comes to mind. I wish it was more socially acceptable to have two year gaps in ones resume and sail around the world or something.
nickthemagicman 9y ago
I have trouble believing that a Harvard MBA has had no effect on opportunities or employability, unless you got the one from the continuing education school.
- IIIIIIIIIIII 9y ago
  I think OP succumbed to the problem of shifting baselines. The brain adapts and sets the base to whatever your situation is, eventually. You live in a huge house? After a few months you stop noticing it and instead start seeing the small little issues. The rich guy and the poor guy are going to complain equally. Satisfaction and contentment go back to their equilibrium value. Having the Harvard MBA becomes the new normal, life seems equally hard, because you compare with your own new baseline, not with that of other people. Doesn't mean OP can't objectively be correct in his assessment that this MBA did nothing for his employability, because that depends on what he wants to do. But did his goals shift (upwards) too, setting a higher baseline? Seems very possible.
  - DelaneyM 9y ago
    "Salary" and "organizational breadth" are pretty objectively measurable things, and are what I'm using as a measuring stick. Also: "her"
    - IIIIIIIIIIII 9y ago
      > "Salary" and "organizational breadth" are pretty objectively measurable things, and are what I'm using as a measuring stick. That is such a narrow world view. Nor does it change anything I wrote. Nor does you reply make sense, you wrote > My MBA has had virtually no effect on my opportunities or employability. That is inconsistent with what you just wrote, something completely different. I'm sure you are aware that humans come up with explanations after decisions? Shown in fMRI scan experiments. I'm not saying this explains what you just did, but it does seem to me that your brain came up with this "explanation" only after discovering my post.
yequalsx 9y ago
You mention the author confusing correlation with causation and then mention your experience. One data point. Perhaps you are engaged in fallacious reasoning.
- DelaneyM 9y ago
  My data point is the observation of three years' grads, n > 3000. Or hell, just the ones I knew well in my year, n=200 or so.
  - yequalsx 9y ago
    You know for all three years worth of people that the experience wasn't transformative? You know it didn't have an effect on opportunities or employability for these 3000 or so people? I doubt you know all these people that well. But even if you do know all these people that well and are right about them your conclusion is still not supported. You criticize the author by assuming they are confusing correlation with causation. I suggest you analyze your own reasoning. You are engaged in flawed statistical reasoning and are committing a famous fallacy. Even if you are absolutely correct about your own experience and the 30000 or so graduates that you know your conclusion could still be wrong. You need much better statistics, or provide evidence that your experience has always been the case for HBS.
    - DelaneyM 9y ago
      I suspect that for a population of 80k with a relatively low variability, n=300 is more than enough. One of us needs to brush up on their stats...
      - yequalsx 9y ago
        Indeed one does. One also needs to brush up on argumentative fallacies. It's quite bad to criticize the author's reasoning whilst yourself engaged in bad reasoning. To be clear, your original post was mostly reasoning along the lines, "My experience was different therefore the author is wrong." And your second post didn't specify why you think your experience was normative. Merely that you think in a band of a few years you know how others benefitted or didn't from HBS. This is especially bad reasoning as the article talked about HBS influence over a much broader range of years.
freyir 9y ago
> My MBA has had virtually no effect on my opportunities or employability... What HBD does well, above all else, is act as a filter." And you don't think employers realize this? You don't think this pre-screening process impacts their judgement when looking at job candidates? The top management consultancies, the top investment banks and private equity groups are full of HBS grads. You think they all would have got these jobs without going through the HBS process, networking with their peers and alumni who end up working for these same companies, interning, and getting the HBS seal of approval? You refer to yourself as an engineer. That might be why HBS didn't help your employability. But if you don't think it helped others, you're dreaming.
- caminante 9y ago
  >You think they all would have got these jobs without going through the HBS process...? Despite only referring to his experience, I think the extrapolation holds for most HBS grads( i.e. If they have the skills and early success trajectory to get into HBS, they could get similar offers and opportunities without an HBS stamp. Don't discount the two years' opportunity cost.)
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    Is this the case? I know, for example, in law, your employability at desirable firms is directly linked to an aristocratic educational pedigree. Is there a reason this would not be in the case in business? While I'm sure potential HBS attendees could find something more valuable to do with their lives in those 2 years, would they really end up in investment banks and private equity firms? These seem like employers who are all about credentials, since there's no real way to demonstrate a propensity for gutting companies or engineering IPOs a priori, and since these groups are run on autopilot by corporate drones instead of people with a real sense of ownership or entrepreneurship (and thus, a desire to acquire and retain good talent regardless of its pedigree). In such cases, the hiring seems to become 99% about the value placed on the institution that granted the degree, and 1% about showing up in an adequately expensive suit and car.
    - 9y ago
cookiecaper 9y ago
Yes, a lot of people don't understand that MBAs do not carry much weight anymore (if they ever did). I have family members who aggressively pursued such degrees under the assumption that they'd practically guarantee an executive position. I've also met many who've obtained MBAs in an attempt to gain some career advancement, usually to a higher managerial position. I only know of one such person for whom this ploy was successful. I have to think that the "Harvard" name carries a lot of weight, but MBAs as a class of degrees have, at least over the last ~10 years, been accompanied with a little bit of a snicker, in my admittedly relatively shallow experience with MBA holders. At one point, I did hire a developer with an MBA, but his MBA was a point of concern rather than merit. >What HBS does well, above all else, is act as a filter. They really do a remarkable job at admissions, putting together a group of folks who are likely (by nature or nurture) to go on to have an outsized impact on the world. I have to ask. In your opinion, is access to this network really worth the cost of going through the program?
- ruleabidinguser 9y ago
  WHy was the MBA a point of concern?
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    Mainly these two reasons. 1. It signals that one may not be interested in a development career long-term. This is probably the closest you get to the "overqualified" dismissal excuse more commonly given in other fields. The potential impact on the team could be either small or large, depending on the candidate's plan to move himself to a different position. 2. To me, it demonstrated a dependence on formalized schooling processes that may signal an inflexibility of mind that makes it difficult to adapt to the fast-moving world of software. He chose to go through this program not because he was programmed to believe it was the only way he could support himself, which is why most people pursue "higher education", but because he wanted to learn about the business perspective. A strategy that involves getting an MBA is highly inefficient, as discussed elsewhere in this thread.
- DelaneyM 9y ago
  > I have to ask. In your opinion, is access to this network really worth the cost of going through the program? Not even close to worth it. Networking is pretty easy and the vaunted HBS network is very bloated. I'd still do it again, but I was coming off an exit and mostly needed a way to keep busy for two years in Boston while my wife did her grad work.
nabla9 9y ago
>remarkable job at admissions, putting together a group of folks who are likely (by nature or nurture) to go on to have an outsized impact on the world. Outsized impact has very little or nothing to do with personal abilities. HBS is the ultimate networking opportunity. HBS is way for rich kids to network. On the side it provides networking opportunities for for others who get in. New blood so to speak.

101km 9y ago

People who go on to have an outsized impact on the world don't usually participate in programs that are neither useful to their careers (to the point of being detrimental) nor transformative to their lives. If a Harvard MBA is essentially pointless like you describe - people go into it and come out the same - the only reason to pursue it is to buy into the network. Hence, perhaps, the "Golden Passport" nomenclature. You'd also notice the author didn't write "Golden Ticket", which I dare say, is an interesting freudian slip.

ruleabidinguser 9y ago
What is the difference between "passport" and "ticket" here?
- Lavery 9y ago
  A ticket allows admission while a passport certifies identity / credentials. At least in so far as what the words signify, tickets are bought but passports are earned. I think it's a pretty good distinction in this context.
DelaneyM 9y ago
It's a good two-year summer camp at a time in our career when we're all racing towards our first burnout, and a good opportunity to hang out with other high-achievers. It's also the lemming effect... HBS is a rung on the "success" positive reinforcement ladder, like a big funding round. Privileged kids do the "prep school -> ivy -> wall street (quants) / MBB consulting (arts) -> HBS -> PE" track in absence of any other inspiration.
- 101km 9y ago
  I think this is called failing upwards. As you allude, an outsider to this cohort crashing into the program should keep expectations in check. Barry Lyndon comes to mind. I wish it was more socially acceptable to have two year gaps in ones resume and sail around the world or something.

nickthemagicman 9y ago

I have trouble believing that a Harvard MBA has had no effect on opportunities or employability, unless you got the one from the continuing education school.

IIIIIIIIIIII 9y ago
I think OP succumbed to the problem of shifting baselines. The brain adapts and sets the base to whatever your situation is, eventually. You live in a huge house? After a few months you stop noticing it and instead start seeing the small little issues. The rich guy and the poor guy are going to complain equally. Satisfaction and contentment go back to their equilibrium value. Having the Harvard MBA becomes the new normal, life seems equally hard, because you compare with your own new baseline, not with that of other people. Doesn't mean OP can't objectively be correct in his assessment that this MBA did nothing for his employability, because that depends on what he wants to do. But did his goals shift (upwards) too, setting a higher baseline? Seems very possible.
- DelaneyM 9y ago
  "Salary" and "organizational breadth" are pretty objectively measurable things, and are what I'm using as a measuring stick. Also: "her"
  - IIIIIIIIIIII 9y ago
    > "Salary" and "organizational breadth" are pretty objectively measurable things, and are what I'm using as a measuring stick. That is such a narrow world view. Nor does it change anything I wrote. Nor does you reply make sense, you wrote > My MBA has had virtually no effect on my opportunities or employability. That is inconsistent with what you just wrote, something completely different. I'm sure you are aware that humans come up with explanations after decisions? Shown in fMRI scan experiments. I'm not saying this explains what you just did, but it does seem to me that your brain came up with this "explanation" only after discovering my post.

yequalsx 9y ago

You mention the author confusing correlation with causation and then mention your experience. One data point. Perhaps you are engaged in fallacious reasoning.

DelaneyM 9y ago
My data point is the observation of three years' grads, n > 3000. Or hell, just the ones I knew well in my year, n=200 or so.
- yequalsx 9y ago
  You know for all three years worth of people that the experience wasn't transformative? You know it didn't have an effect on opportunities or employability for these 3000 or so people? I doubt you know all these people that well. But even if you do know all these people that well and are right about them your conclusion is still not supported. You criticize the author by assuming they are confusing correlation with causation. I suggest you analyze your own reasoning. You are engaged in flawed statistical reasoning and are committing a famous fallacy. Even if you are absolutely correct about your own experience and the 30000 or so graduates that you know your conclusion could still be wrong. You need much better statistics, or provide evidence that your experience has always been the case for HBS.
  - DelaneyM 9y ago
    I suspect that for a population of 80k with a relatively low variability, n=300 is more than enough. One of us needs to brush up on their stats...
    - yequalsx 9y ago
      Indeed one does. One also needs to brush up on argumentative fallacies. It's quite bad to criticize the author's reasoning whilst yourself engaged in bad reasoning. To be clear, your original post was mostly reasoning along the lines, "My experience was different therefore the author is wrong." And your second post didn't specify why you think your experience was normative. Merely that you think in a band of a few years you know how others benefitted or didn't from HBS. This is especially bad reasoning as the article talked about HBS influence over a much broader range of years.

freyir 9y ago

> My MBA has had virtually no effect on my opportunities or employability... What HBD does well, above all else, is act as a filter." And you don't think employers realize this? You don't think this pre-screening process impacts their judgement when looking at job candidates? The top management consultancies, the top investment banks and private equity groups are full of HBS grads. You think they all would have got these jobs without going through the HBS process, networking with their peers and alumni who end up working for these same companies, interning, and getting the HBS seal of approval? You refer to yourself as an engineer. That might be why HBS didn't help your employability. But if you don't think it helped others, you're dreaming.

caminante 9y ago
>You think they all would have got these jobs without going through the HBS process...? Despite only referring to his experience, I think the extrapolation holds for most HBS grads( i.e. If they have the skills and early success trajectory to get into HBS, they could get similar offers and opportunities without an HBS stamp. Don't discount the two years' opportunity cost.)
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  Is this the case? I know, for example, in law, your employability at desirable firms is directly linked to an aristocratic educational pedigree. Is there a reason this would not be in the case in business? While I'm sure potential HBS attendees could find something more valuable to do with their lives in those 2 years, would they really end up in investment banks and private equity firms? These seem like employers who are all about credentials, since there's no real way to demonstrate a propensity for gutting companies or engineering IPOs a priori, and since these groups are run on autopilot by corporate drones instead of people with a real sense of ownership or entrepreneurship (and thus, a desire to acquire and retain good talent regardless of its pedigree). In such cases, the hiring seems to become 99% about the value placed on the institution that granted the degree, and 1% about showing up in an adequately expensive suit and car.
  - 9y ago

cookiecaper 9y ago

Yes, a lot of people don't understand that MBAs do not carry much weight anymore (if they ever did). I have family members who aggressively pursued such degrees under the assumption that they'd practically guarantee an executive position. I've also met many who've obtained MBAs in an attempt to gain some career advancement, usually to a higher managerial position. I only know of one such person for whom this ploy was successful. I have to think that the "Harvard" name carries a lot of weight, but MBAs as a class of degrees have, at least over the last ~10 years, been accompanied with a little bit of a snicker, in my admittedly relatively shallow experience with MBA holders. At one point, I did hire a developer with an MBA, but his MBA was a point of concern rather than merit. >What HBS does well, above all else, is act as a filter. They really do a remarkable job at admissions, putting together a group of folks who are likely (by nature or nurture) to go on to have an outsized impact on the world. I have to ask. In your opinion, is access to this network really worth the cost of going through the program?

ruleabidinguser 9y ago
WHy was the MBA a point of concern?
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  Mainly these two reasons. 1. It signals that one may not be interested in a development career long-term. This is probably the closest you get to the "overqualified" dismissal excuse more commonly given in other fields. The potential impact on the team could be either small or large, depending on the candidate's plan to move himself to a different position. 2. To me, it demonstrated a dependence on formalized schooling processes that may signal an inflexibility of mind that makes it difficult to adapt to the fast-moving world of software. He chose to go through this program not because he was programmed to believe it was the only way he could support himself, which is why most people pursue "higher education", but because he wanted to learn about the business perspective. A strategy that involves getting an MBA is highly inefficient, as discussed elsewhere in this thread.
DelaneyM 9y ago
> I have to ask. In your opinion, is access to this network really worth the cost of going through the program? Not even close to worth it. Networking is pretty easy and the vaunted HBS network is very bloated. I'd still do it again, but I was coming off an exit and mostly needed a way to keep busy for two years in Boston while my wife did her grad work.

nabla9 9y ago

>remarkable job at admissions, putting together a group of folks who are likely (by nature or nurture) to go on to have an outsized impact on the world. Outsized impact has very little or nothing to do with personal abilities. HBS is the ultimate networking opportunity. HBS is way for rich kids to network. On the side it provides networking opportunities for for others who get in. New blood so to speak.