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I have an undergraduate business degree from the University of Washington in Seattle and I think it was very helpful. I'm sort of a "business geek" and I really

I have an undergraduate business degree from the University of Washington in Seattle and I think it was very helpful. I'm sort of a "business geek" and I really enjoyed learning some things that I wouldn't have been able to learn on my own. Basically, I know I can teach myself a new programming language, but I can't really teach myself finance or marketing. I did take a handful of CS courses, just enough to realize that CS isn't really about writing software. A few months ago, I went to an informational seminar for the UW Technical Management MBA and I realized that MBA, in that context, stands for Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon. Something like 76% of the students came from those three local companies. I see the value in networking, but if I wanted to meet a bunch of Microsofties, I would go work at Microsoft. (Not that I have anything against Microsoft, but I know it's not the right culture for me) And while I don't doubt the quality of the education (some of the professors were the same ones I had in my undergrad and they were awesome) the whole thing was pitched not as "look at all the cool stuff you'll learn" it was pitched as a way to break through into a better job/better salary at your current big company, which felt a little discouraging. I felt a sense that actually writing code was somehow distasteful to some of the audience, and they were willing to pay around $80K to not have to do it anymore. If the lack of paper diploma is really holding you back, then I guess it's a good thing. If you really just want the education, there are plenty of better learning experiences to be had for that kind of money.

tptacek 16y ago
Got a "top 5" of the things you're happiest to have learned in an MBA setting? I'm interested.
- MartinCron 16y ago
  It wasn't an MBA setting, it was a BBA, but here's an off-the cuff top 5 things that a programmer got out of business school. 1. Strategic Management: SWOT Analysis. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. It's simple, but applicable almost everywhere. 2. Accounting... Feeling comfortable with the basic jargon and rules of business. Revenues, expenses, assets, liabilities, etc. 3. Marketing. Marketing is more than just advertising. Everything is marketing. A lot of marketing can be handled by running through checklists to make sure you haven't overlooked something stupid. Much in the same way that pilots always run through checklists before taking off. 4. Judging people based on shallow stereotypes is, well, shallow. I remember a cute-as-a-button sorority girl who surprised me by being really, really good at relational algebra. That prejudice is really embarrassing to me, because I always thought I was really enlightened. 5. Microsoft Excel is an amazing piece of software, in that it's simple to use, but has incredible depth of capability for solving very sophisticated problems. --- And as a free bonus, the things that weren't of value. 1. The "software systems" class was total waterfall indoctrination. Complete waste of time. 2. Networking (with humans). I'm an introvert, I made a handful of friends, but I was a self-employed non-traditional student with a wife and a child, and everyone else was around 19 or 20 years old. 3. Networking (with software). The professor teaching the computer networking class didn't really know his stuff. He was recruited into the position at the last minute, and got a bunch of basics wrong. Right now, there are dozens of Business School graduates who don't really understand how DNS MX records work, which I guess isn't a huge tragedy. 4. Business Ethics. I remember being horrified by the rationalizations that some of my peers were willing to make in our hypothetical scenarios. Many of them were willing to put workers in unnecessary mortal peril because they didn't feel they had any risk of legal liabilities. I'm sorry, but even really good lawyers can't bring people back from the dead. 5. The support staff and advisors were never very helpful or encouraging. The first advisor insisted that there was no way I could ever get into the (competitive) program with my substandard GPA. Ha! I showed her.

tptacek 16y ago

Got a "top 5" of the things you're happiest to have learned in an MBA setting? I'm interested.

MartinCron 16y ago
It wasn't an MBA setting, it was a BBA, but here's an off-the cuff top 5 things that a programmer got out of business school. 1. Strategic Management: SWOT Analysis. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. It's simple, but applicable almost everywhere. 2. Accounting... Feeling comfortable with the basic jargon and rules of business. Revenues, expenses, assets, liabilities, etc. 3. Marketing. Marketing is more than just advertising. Everything is marketing. A lot of marketing can be handled by running through checklists to make sure you haven't overlooked something stupid. Much in the same way that pilots always run through checklists before taking off. 4. Judging people based on shallow stereotypes is, well, shallow. I remember a cute-as-a-button sorority girl who surprised me by being really, really good at relational algebra. That prejudice is really embarrassing to me, because I always thought I was really enlightened. 5. Microsoft Excel is an amazing piece of software, in that it's simple to use, but has incredible depth of capability for solving very sophisticated problems. --- And as a free bonus, the things that weren't of value. 1. The "software systems" class was total waterfall indoctrination. Complete waste of time. 2. Networking (with humans). I'm an introvert, I made a handful of friends, but I was a self-employed non-traditional student with a wife and a child, and everyone else was around 19 or 20 years old. 3. Networking (with software). The professor teaching the computer networking class didn't really know his stuff. He was recruited into the position at the last minute, and got a bunch of basics wrong. Right now, there are dozens of Business School graduates who don't really understand how DNS MX records work, which I guess isn't a huge tragedy. 4. Business Ethics. I remember being horrified by the rationalizations that some of my peers were willing to make in our hypothetical scenarios. Many of them were willing to put workers in unnecessary mortal peril because they didn't feel they had any risk of legal liabilities. I'm sorry, but even really good lawyers can't bring people back from the dead. 5. The support staff and advisors were never very helpful or encouraging. The first advisor insisted that there was no way I could ever get into the (competitive) program with my substandard GPA. Ha! I showed her.