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Have a look here at their MBA landing page. https://www.amazon.jobs/team/university-mba-graduate https://www.amazon.jobs/team/university-mba-graduate I know t

Have a look here at their MBA landing page. https://www.amazon.jobs/team/university-mba-graduate https://www.amazon.jobs/team/university-mba-graduate I know that some people love to hate on MBA's but a couple of things: - Amazon is a pretty data driven company, if MBA's provided no value, or negative value as some HN's readers seem to think, they wouldn't be hiring them. - Jeff Bezos worked for a well known hedge fund before amazon, he's no stranger to having MBA's around. - Most of these MBA's seem to be in operations, which makes alot of sense as one of the largest portions of an MBA degree is how to runa company:) Amazon is also not alone in vacuuming up new MBA grads. http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-google-amazon-hiring-mbas-2017-4?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-google-amazon-hiring-mb... Whether you want to admit it or not, MBA's provide a lot of value to larger organizations, tech or not. At this point, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple have all hired alot of MBA's in the past few years. These companies voted with their cash and made it very clear, MBA's provide alot of value.

mbesto 9y ago
> negative value as some HN's readers seem to think, they wouldn't be hiring them. HN's negative criticism is that MBAs don't know how to start things, not necessarily that they can't run things.
- muninn_ 9y ago
  Perhaps, but that gets translated into "an MBA is bad" mantra that's heard around here. It may be bad for starting things, but we can't all start things. It is what it is.
- staunch 9y ago
  Yes, it's a master's in business administration not business innovation. Amazon is the perfect example of where MBAs can be extremely effective. The way Tim Cook helped Apple optimize and improve its operations a great example.
  - mi100hael 9y ago
    The way Tim Cook Ballmerized Apple into a company coasting on its past success rather than continuing to innovate is a great example of the pitfalls.
    - petroseskinder 9y ago
      One thing to note about Ballmer's tenure is that Microsoft's stock tanked. That doesn't seem to be the case with Cook.
    - staunch 9y ago
      Steve Balmer is no Bill Gates. Tim Cook is no Steve jobs. Not exactly their fault for failing to live up to some of the most impressive founders in history. At least Tim Cook is humble and wise enough to know his limits.
  - yahna 9y ago
    Did that have anything to do with his MBA, or his 30 years experience?
- curun1r 9y ago
  I think the other criticism of MBAs is that they're taught to take a very narrow view to running a business that is overly focused on growth and efficiency. As much as startups are lionized around here, I like to hope that a lot of us also respect the "lifestyle" approach to business, bootstrapping and other approaches that are less focused on growth. I have a parent who taught at a top-10 business school. A number of years ago, she had the opportunity to act as the faculty chaperone for the student trip to meet with the leaders of various Japanese businesses and I got to come along. One of the businesses we visited was a Sake brewer that had been family owned since the 1600s. The Q&A period was particularly enlightening to me and it had more to do with the questions that the MBA students asked than it did with the answers they were given. They peppered him with questions about growth, international expansions, taking on debt for advertising campaigns, new product lines that would appeal to a younger demographic. It went on for over an hour. And, to his credit, he patiently answered them all with a variant of the same answer. He wanted to run his company like his ancestors have run it for centuries. He wanted to make the best sake he could possibly make, just as his ancestors had done. He wanted to provide a comfortable life for his family and pass the business on to his children. And he wanted to supply good jobs for his employees since he viewed them as his extended family. None of the stuff the MBAs were interested in interested him. He was happy running a stable, self-sustaining business that didn't need to grow. Life, mastery of his craft and being happy were more important to him. If it had ended with that, I might not have taken such a dim view of MBAs. But on the bus ride home, all I heard from these early-20-something-self-proclaimed-future-leaders-of-America was how stupid the guy was and how he was ruining his business. I couldn't help but think that they'd entirely missed the point of his answers. A few years later, I worked at a company that served small businesses building a product that handled reputation management and lead sourcing. We tried a number of iterations that ended up failing. It wasn't until we made the realization that small businesses didn't want growth as much as they wanted stability. Too much business could overwhelm them. Too little could starve them. They needed a product that kept them as close to full utilization as possible without ever going over. Even after we made that leap, it took a ton of effort for us to convince our own management to allow us to take the product in that direction. There was something about their own MBA training that made it difficult to accept that this view could be correct. My own view of MBAs, considering I have a parent that has helped produce multiple generations of them, is that they're very valuable when applied to a somewhat narrow band of situations but that, as a society, we've applied them to many circumstances where they're counterproductive. I think we produce too many of them and the ones that are misapplied end up giving the rest a bad reputation.
saosebastiao 9y ago
> Amazon is a pretty data driven company, if MBA's provided no value, or negative value as some HN's readers seem to think, they wouldn't be hiring them. Having been the guy whose job it was to collect, analyze, and present data to these MBAs, I can honestly say that 99% of them are dead weight for their analytic capabilities. MBAs do much better at managing people. And by that, I mean only 70% of them are dead weight. The other 30% were pretty great and are probably the reason I'm not in jail for arson right now.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  OP isn't saying MBAs are good at making data driven decisions. He's saying Amazon is good at making data driven decisions and that their decision to continue hiring MBAs is backed up by their data analysis.
  - gcb0 9y ago
    you're defending someone who dreamed up something ("Amazon is good at data driven decisions") versus someone presenting a fact ("Amazon does lots of dumb things but got very lucky so far"). why?
    - chollida1 9y ago
      I'm not sure why you had to react so angrily but there are a lot of people who would defend Amazon as being a data driven company. here is one instance. This is not a hard claim to back up by any means. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237326 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237326 http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-amazons-data-driven-approach-becoming-more-common-2015-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-amazons-data-driven-approa... Here they are being called out for being too data driven http://splinternews.com/the-amazon-way-why-the-data-driven-workplace-is-a-nigh-1793850081 http://splinternews.com/the-amazon-way-why-the-data-driven-w... https://hbr.org/2015/08/data-driven-management-can-also-be-compassionate https://hbr.org/2015/08/data-driven-management-can-also-be-c... And I hope your day gets better:) We've all been there!!
rothbardrand 9y ago
Amazon is not a data driven company. Like most "data driven" companies they use the data when it confirms their notations when it doesn't they do what they want anyway and in amazon this is called "bias for action". It doesn't matter how many people you abuse (also favored at amazon) it's all about how you play the political game.

mbesto 9y ago

> negative value as some HN's readers seem to think, they wouldn't be hiring them. HN's negative criticism is that MBAs don't know how to start things, not necessarily that they can't run things.

muninn_ 9y ago
Perhaps, but that gets translated into "an MBA is bad" mantra that's heard around here. It may be bad for starting things, but we can't all start things. It is what it is.
staunch 9y ago
Yes, it's a master's in business administration not business innovation. Amazon is the perfect example of where MBAs can be extremely effective. The way Tim Cook helped Apple optimize and improve its operations a great example.
- mi100hael 9y ago
  The way Tim Cook Ballmerized Apple into a company coasting on its past success rather than continuing to innovate is a great example of the pitfalls.
  - petroseskinder 9y ago
    One thing to note about Ballmer's tenure is that Microsoft's stock tanked. That doesn't seem to be the case with Cook.
  - staunch 9y ago
    Steve Balmer is no Bill Gates. Tim Cook is no Steve jobs. Not exactly their fault for failing to live up to some of the most impressive founders in history. At least Tim Cook is humble and wise enough to know his limits.
- yahna 9y ago
  Did that have anything to do with his MBA, or his 30 years experience?
curun1r 9y ago
I think the other criticism of MBAs is that they're taught to take a very narrow view to running a business that is overly focused on growth and efficiency. As much as startups are lionized around here, I like to hope that a lot of us also respect the "lifestyle" approach to business, bootstrapping and other approaches that are less focused on growth. I have a parent who taught at a top-10 business school. A number of years ago, she had the opportunity to act as the faculty chaperone for the student trip to meet with the leaders of various Japanese businesses and I got to come along. One of the businesses we visited was a Sake brewer that had been family owned since the 1600s. The Q&A period was particularly enlightening to me and it had more to do with the questions that the MBA students asked than it did with the answers they were given. They peppered him with questions about growth, international expansions, taking on debt for advertising campaigns, new product lines that would appeal to a younger demographic. It went on for over an hour. And, to his credit, he patiently answered them all with a variant of the same answer. He wanted to run his company like his ancestors have run it for centuries. He wanted to make the best sake he could possibly make, just as his ancestors had done. He wanted to provide a comfortable life for his family and pass the business on to his children. And he wanted to supply good jobs for his employees since he viewed them as his extended family. None of the stuff the MBAs were interested in interested him. He was happy running a stable, self-sustaining business that didn't need to grow. Life, mastery of his craft and being happy were more important to him. If it had ended with that, I might not have taken such a dim view of MBAs. But on the bus ride home, all I heard from these early-20-something-self-proclaimed-future-leaders-of-America was how stupid the guy was and how he was ruining his business. I couldn't help but think that they'd entirely missed the point of his answers. A few years later, I worked at a company that served small businesses building a product that handled reputation management and lead sourcing. We tried a number of iterations that ended up failing. It wasn't until we made the realization that small businesses didn't want growth as much as they wanted stability. Too much business could overwhelm them. Too little could starve them. They needed a product that kept them as close to full utilization as possible without ever going over. Even after we made that leap, it took a ton of effort for us to convince our own management to allow us to take the product in that direction. There was something about their own MBA training that made it difficult to accept that this view could be correct. My own view of MBAs, considering I have a parent that has helped produce multiple generations of them, is that they're very valuable when applied to a somewhat narrow band of situations but that, as a society, we've applied them to many circumstances where they're counterproductive. I think we produce too many of them and the ones that are misapplied end up giving the rest a bad reputation.

saosebastiao 9y ago

> Amazon is a pretty data driven company, if MBA's provided no value, or negative value as some HN's readers seem to think, they wouldn't be hiring them. Having been the guy whose job it was to collect, analyze, and present data to these MBAs, I can honestly say that 99% of them are dead weight for their analytic capabilities. MBAs do much better at managing people. And by that, I mean only 70% of them are dead weight. The other 30% were pretty great and are probably the reason I'm not in jail for arson right now.

hkmurakami 9y ago
OP isn't saying MBAs are good at making data driven decisions. He's saying Amazon is good at making data driven decisions and that their decision to continue hiring MBAs is backed up by their data analysis.
- gcb0 9y ago
  you're defending someone who dreamed up something ("Amazon is good at data driven decisions") versus someone presenting a fact ("Amazon does lots of dumb things but got very lucky so far"). why?
  - chollida1 9y ago
    I'm not sure why you had to react so angrily but there are a lot of people who would defend Amazon as being a data driven company. here is one instance. This is not a hard claim to back up by any means. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237326 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237326 http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-amazons-data-driven-approach-becoming-more-common-2015-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-amazons-data-driven-approa... Here they are being called out for being too data driven http://splinternews.com/the-amazon-way-why-the-data-driven-workplace-is-a-nigh-1793850081 http://splinternews.com/the-amazon-way-why-the-data-driven-w... https://hbr.org/2015/08/data-driven-management-can-also-be-compassionate https://hbr.org/2015/08/data-driven-management-can-also-be-c... And I hope your day gets better:) We've all been there!!

rothbardrand 9y ago

Amazon is not a data driven company. Like most "data driven" companies they use the data when it confirms their notations when it doesn't they do what they want anyway and in amazon this is called "bias for action". It doesn't matter how many people you abuse (also favored at amazon) it's all about how you play the political game.