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I always figured to be an effective leader requires knowing your product. For software companies that means working in their field so you understand the tech or

I always figured to be an effective leader requires knowing your product. For software companies that means working in their field so you understand the tech or problem area then can make better decisions. You can complement your leadership by getting an MBA which rounds out the rough edges of business. Career MBAs who have no experience of the area of the business are red flags in my experience. It's like a manager who isn't technical. They make wrong decisions by themselves or listen to the wrong people.

JamesBarney 8y ago
What edges does the MBA rough out? I've always been skeptical of them, and my friends with MBAs haven't helped. They were all optimistic about how much they were going to learn, but by the end thought "at least I got a network and a degree on my resume". I don't think anyone would get an MBA if you couldn't see it on their resume.
- crazygringo 8y ago
  Whichever edges are rough for you personally, that's the point. Like if you're great at finances but terrible at understanding sales and marketing, then the sales and marketing part of the MBA will be most valuable for you. And vice-versa, and all the other combinations. MBA's ensure you have at least a minimal competence in each classic area of running a business, and aren't going to make bone-headed decisions that might otherwise seem logically plausible. That's one of the reasons MBA programs tend to be centered around case-studies: so you're exposed to a ton of ideas that seemed reasonable but then turned out to be disastrous. As long as you've done the MBA, you're unlikely to repeat those. If you don't have an MBA, you might not know any better.
  - hopler 8y ago
    A Master of Business Administration does for the business what the System Administrator does for IT systems. MBA is a fine discipline. The problem is when MBA gets equated with SVP/CEO.
bluedino 8y ago
>> I always figured to be an effective leader requires knowing your product. One of the best bosses I ever had was when I worked at a small manufacturing company. This guy spent a ton of time with our customers and our products, came up with improvements, made lots of fixes, found other products our customers could use, made some people really happy. Then he went through the production floor. Looked at everything a fresh set of eyes, why do we do this, why don't we do this. Sped up production, saved money, simplified things, made everyone's life easier. Next stop was the office. Why do we touch this document 5 times through 4 people? Why do we do this backwards? How come this person doesn't do anything all day? Let's move this schedule around. It was about that time the owners fired him for petty shit even though we had record sales and profits for the 3 years he was here. Lesson learned, don't try to make any changes or recommendations that come a little too close to home.
- klenwell 8y ago
  Interesting story. I'm curious about the "petty shit" part. Did he step on the owners' toes? Did he have an abrasive personality? Was he fudging his expense reports? Also curious what happened after he left. Did sales/profits drop? Did his legacy of reforms carry on?
  - csa 8y ago
    Not OP, but... 1. Manager insisted on proper documentation of contract deliverables in case of a lawsuit. Higher manager said “Nah, waste of time. These companies never sue.” Lawsuit happened, case was overcomplicated due to poor documentation. Result of case still unknown, but should have been a slam dunk win for the company. 2. CFO decided to delay (not reduce) part of a regular disbursement to the owner in order to pay suppliers. If suppliers had not been paid, then product line gets shut down and company has an existential crisis. Disbursement eventually got paid, suppliers were happy, company thrived. CFO permanently in the dog house (e.g., lower bonuses, lower pay increases, left out of key meetings, etc.). 3. Any whistleblower in the US (maybe not “petty”). While whistleblower protections exist, it’s trivially easy in white collar work to find minor mistakes or question judgment calls. Retaliation can be trivially masked. Usually business as usual afterwards. 4. Taking alloted and approved vacation time — this happens a lot. Usually ends up causing the company to underperform after star leaves. I’ve seen it wreck a company when the person who left recruited all of their good people to his new company. 5. Documented firing of disruptive sociopaths who are friends with a senior manager (e.g., the CEO). I’ve seen this multiple times. Overall org usually becomes better due to lack of sociopaths, but the “hero” gets the shaft in the process. 6. Tactfully bringing up issues of fraternization by senior managers that may lead to conflicts of interest. I’ve seen this several times as well. Simple case is a senior executive who is married is sleeping with a low level employee. More complex is someone who is in an open marriage who is using junior employees not in his current department (but may be in his future department since they often make lateral moves) as a personal dating/sex pool. It usually ends up as a non-issue, until it becomes an issue (e.g., Ellen Pao). 7. I’ve literally seen someone fired for streamlining their department so much that it appeared that they didn’t do much work. The person was aware of the fact, and pitched it as “maintaining the system”. The management structure was “flattened” after that person was let go, things went to shit, and no one in senior leadership seemed to know exactly why. 8. Worker (not manager) reviewing vendors said that none of the vendors who submitted bids were able to do the work to standard based on work samples. Worker was replaced, contract went out, company lost millions due to... contractor not being able to produce product to standard. There are many more...
1024core 8y ago
> You can complement your leadership by getting an MBA which rounds out the rough edges of business. If you're already a leader, an MBA can help. However, I see a lot of MBAs who come skipping out of a B school (even a good one like Wharton or Kellogg), and their approaches to problem solving are so identical! I have seen my share of CEOs, but it's staggering how similar they are in their approaches. You could, after interviewing a few of them, come up with a flow chart and you'd capture about 90% of their actions. I have seen many a CEO run the company into the ground, but very, very rarely seen a CEO lift a company up and make a difference. I think Satya Nadella in MSFT has really turned that ship around (please correct me if I'm wrong). But for every Satya, there are a 1000 mediocre ones, just trying one tool after another that was taught them in B school, and when the board gets tired, it throws them out with a golden parachute, only to be replaced by another cookie-cutter who does the same.
usrusr 8y ago
But is CEO quality really about the best decisions? Playing the MBA's advocate, maybe it is so hard to "consistently beat the market" with decisions, that their usual quality spread does not even matter that much? Amongst other reasons, because even an apparently foolish decision, if for some unexpected turn of events it suddenly is the "golden path" will give the bigger returns than an "obviously smart" decision ever could? If that is the case then the decisions themselves would be secondary to how those decisions are executed. Then you wouldn't look for the best decisionmaker for filling the CEO position, you'd search for the best at getting the team united behind a decision who isn't completely terrible at making them. Basically someone who is good at commanding respect, which is exactly what those high-status institutions are teaching/selling. Being the typical overconfident dev I always tend think that I would make the smartest decisions ever if in the captain's chair (surely this isn't true, but it feels true way too often), but I never think that this would make me an actually good CEO.

JamesBarney 8y ago

What edges does the MBA rough out? I've always been skeptical of them, and my friends with MBAs haven't helped. They were all optimistic about how much they were going to learn, but by the end thought "at least I got a network and a degree on my resume". I don't think anyone would get an MBA if you couldn't see it on their resume.

crazygringo 8y ago
Whichever edges are rough for you personally, that's the point. Like if you're great at finances but terrible at understanding sales and marketing, then the sales and marketing part of the MBA will be most valuable for you. And vice-versa, and all the other combinations. MBA's ensure you have at least a minimal competence in each classic area of running a business, and aren't going to make bone-headed decisions that might otherwise seem logically plausible. That's one of the reasons MBA programs tend to be centered around case-studies: so you're exposed to a ton of ideas that seemed reasonable but then turned out to be disastrous. As long as you've done the MBA, you're unlikely to repeat those. If you don't have an MBA, you might not know any better.
- hopler 8y ago
  A Master of Business Administration does for the business what the System Administrator does for IT systems. MBA is a fine discipline. The problem is when MBA gets equated with SVP/CEO.

bluedino 8y ago

>> I always figured to be an effective leader requires knowing your product. One of the best bosses I ever had was when I worked at a small manufacturing company. This guy spent a ton of time with our customers and our products, came up with improvements, made lots of fixes, found other products our customers could use, made some people really happy. Then he went through the production floor. Looked at everything a fresh set of eyes, why do we do this, why don't we do this. Sped up production, saved money, simplified things, made everyone's life easier. Next stop was the office. Why do we touch this document 5 times through 4 people? Why do we do this backwards? How come this person doesn't do anything all day? Let's move this schedule around. It was about that time the owners fired him for petty shit even though we had record sales and profits for the 3 years he was here. Lesson learned, don't try to make any changes or recommendations that come a little too close to home.

klenwell 8y ago
Interesting story. I'm curious about the "petty shit" part. Did he step on the owners' toes? Did he have an abrasive personality? Was he fudging his expense reports? Also curious what happened after he left. Did sales/profits drop? Did his legacy of reforms carry on?
- csa 8y ago
  Not OP, but... 1. Manager insisted on proper documentation of contract deliverables in case of a lawsuit. Higher manager said “Nah, waste of time. These companies never sue.” Lawsuit happened, case was overcomplicated due to poor documentation. Result of case still unknown, but should have been a slam dunk win for the company. 2. CFO decided to delay (not reduce) part of a regular disbursement to the owner in order to pay suppliers. If suppliers had not been paid, then product line gets shut down and company has an existential crisis. Disbursement eventually got paid, suppliers were happy, company thrived. CFO permanently in the dog house (e.g., lower bonuses, lower pay increases, left out of key meetings, etc.). 3. Any whistleblower in the US (maybe not “petty”). While whistleblower protections exist, it’s trivially easy in white collar work to find minor mistakes or question judgment calls. Retaliation can be trivially masked. Usually business as usual afterwards. 4. Taking alloted and approved vacation time — this happens a lot. Usually ends up causing the company to underperform after star leaves. I’ve seen it wreck a company when the person who left recruited all of their good people to his new company. 5. Documented firing of disruptive sociopaths who are friends with a senior manager (e.g., the CEO). I’ve seen this multiple times. Overall org usually becomes better due to lack of sociopaths, but the “hero” gets the shaft in the process. 6. Tactfully bringing up issues of fraternization by senior managers that may lead to conflicts of interest. I’ve seen this several times as well. Simple case is a senior executive who is married is sleeping with a low level employee. More complex is someone who is in an open marriage who is using junior employees not in his current department (but may be in his future department since they often make lateral moves) as a personal dating/sex pool. It usually ends up as a non-issue, until it becomes an issue (e.g., Ellen Pao). 7. I’ve literally seen someone fired for streamlining their department so much that it appeared that they didn’t do much work. The person was aware of the fact, and pitched it as “maintaining the system”. The management structure was “flattened” after that person was let go, things went to shit, and no one in senior leadership seemed to know exactly why. 8. Worker (not manager) reviewing vendors said that none of the vendors who submitted bids were able to do the work to standard based on work samples. Worker was replaced, contract went out, company lost millions due to... contractor not being able to produce product to standard. There are many more...

1024core 8y ago

> You can complement your leadership by getting an MBA which rounds out the rough edges of business. If you're already a leader, an MBA can help. However, I see a lot of MBAs who come skipping out of a B school (even a good one like Wharton or Kellogg), and their approaches to problem solving are so identical! I have seen my share of CEOs, but it's staggering how similar they are in their approaches. You could, after interviewing a few of them, come up with a flow chart and you'd capture about 90% of their actions. I have seen many a CEO run the company into the ground, but very, very rarely seen a CEO lift a company up and make a difference. I think Satya Nadella in MSFT has really turned that ship around (please correct me if I'm wrong). But for every Satya, there are a 1000 mediocre ones, just trying one tool after another that was taught them in B school, and when the board gets tired, it throws them out with a golden parachute, only to be replaced by another cookie-cutter who does the same.

usrusr 8y ago

But is CEO quality really about the best decisions? Playing the MBA's advocate, maybe it is so hard to "consistently beat the market" with decisions, that their usual quality spread does not even matter that much? Amongst other reasons, because even an apparently foolish decision, if for some unexpected turn of events it suddenly is the "golden path" will give the bigger returns than an "obviously smart" decision ever could? If that is the case then the decisions themselves would be secondary to how those decisions are executed. Then you wouldn't look for the best decisionmaker for filling the CEO position, you'd search for the best at getting the team united behind a decision who isn't completely terrible at making them. Basically someone who is good at commanding respect, which is exactly what those high-status institutions are teaching/selling. Being the typical overconfident dev I always tend think that I would make the smartest decisions ever if in the captain's chair (surely this isn't true, but it feels true way too often), but I never think that this would make me an actually good CEO.