> And again, I don't think the MBA program teaches skills, the main exception being presenting confidently when you don't in fact know much. What can I say, t

> And again, I don't think the MBA program teaches skills, the main exception being presenting confidently when you don't in fact know much. What can I say, this is not consistent with my experience. Perhaps it says more about the motivations and attitude of the people attending. Perhaps a core confusion is thus: running a technology-based business requires, well, technological and business acumen. If you try to supplement one with the other, things go wrong, regardless of the direction. When I hear Toyota is ran by engineers, I'm sure the engineers don't negotiate finance deals, manage HR, career development, accounting etc. These boring things are important. Equally, when I hear about Boeing or IBM becoming corporate quagmires, whose core product is developed without a proper engineering input, I'm not suggesting this can work. My personal experience of companies ran by technical folk was, as said, awful. The frustration about MBAs I hear in this thread seems to be when they encroach on technical territories they don't know about, and I agree this cannot work. I think where MBAs work best is where you have mid-career people, already with experience, using this to boost their skills in diverse areas (alongside all other benefits like networking etc.), and I maintain it is great at that. If you take someone who doesn't know anything about anything, give them an MBA, then a random start-up to run, and it all goes wrong, I wouldn't blame the MBA.