6 ms·

Why I created MBAHacks.com, or Why I am learning to program

39 points by coconutrandom 15y ago

coconutrandom 15y ago
Edward is a savvy guy not above getting his hands dirty with code.
weezer 15y ago
I think the world would be a better place if everyone, especially MBA's had at least some knowledge of programming. With the state of the job market in the US, wouldn't it be wise to require even two years of programming in high school?
- gtani 15y ago
  I used to work with at least a couple dozen MBA's from 1 school, they gave me this advice for bus school: 1) don't lose your coding skills (I was good at perl/awk, APL, C and Fortran). This I did 2) concentrate on linear algebra, stats/prob, calculus (this i didn't) 3) take law school classes (this i did, they were gnarly) tl;dr your 2nd year you can do pretty much whatever you want. You can make it a profoundly intellectual experience, or start your business, or whatever
  - curt 15y ago
    This is exactly what I did. I treat the MBA as just another tool. Started a business sadly it failed after a couple years, but I just moved out to SF last week and loving it. As an engineer with an MBA that can code well, does stats, and took a handful of law classes it's a seller's market.
    - Maven911 15y ago
      i dont get it, whats so special about stats ? dont al engineers take a stats class and then end up not using most of the concepts ?
ajaycancherla 15y ago
That's a good idea. My advice: forget the MBA. Just learn to code and start making contacts in the field you want to go into. Why pay grad schools? YC is the new grad school, and they pay you.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- oscarleung 15y ago
  lol...yes! out of all the degrees out there...I don't understand the MBA. Want to start a business? Start it! If you get the MBA you'll be stuck paying off a $100k debt.
  - viscanti 15y ago
    Starting a business is only half the battle (at best). The biggest value of the MBA is the networking that happens. You're meeting people who will go on to work in a diverse set of industries. It's not uncommon for an entrepreneur with an MBA to go a year or two in business only calling on people they met in school, or fellow alumni. That networking isn't impossible to replicate, but an entrepreneur who forgoes the MBA route needs to make a concerted effort to make up for that.
    - edcastano 15y ago
      I agree. I've also learned that there is no one path to entrepreneurship, or programming for the matter. For some people it makes sense to quit school or avoid college. Others follow a more traditional route. There are pros and cons to each. More importantly, it is an extremely personal process. What makes sense for one person does not make sense for another. As for me, I am very happy in my decision to attend business school. In addition to the networking benefits you pointed to above, I've found that some of the things that I've learned (e.g. Coaching and Mentoring) have wonderful applications to my personal life. Put differently, business school has made me a better father. I plan to write a post on this soon. All the wonderful friendships I built while I was there is icing on the cake. I should also point out that I didn’t go to business school for the hard skills (i.e. finance, accounting, etc.). You can learn a lot of that by picking up a book. I went to business school to become a better leader and person. Classes like Interpersonal Dynamics (aka "Touchy feely"), High Performance Leadership, and Leadership Coaching and Mentoring are the main reasons I attended business school. Finally, while at business school, I made an effort to meet and build friendships with brilliant graduate and undergraduate students across all of Stanford. I now know wonderful people that studied CS, Engineering, Earth Sciences, Stats, Medicine, and much more. I feel fortunate to have had the chance to study with all these people.
ryanlchan 15y ago
All great reasons, but there's one I would add as an MBA: Learning to program makes you a better business person. How? Made to Stick has a great story about a math teacher who struggled to convince his students of math's importance in life. As he put it, math is like weight lifting. You don't work out to prepare for the day a rogue barbell comes and traps you on the ground, you work out so you can run faster, tackle harder, and jump higher. Math is weight lifting for your analytic mind - it helps you rationally think through problems and establish logical steps to the solution. Learning to program, and to take it further, learning computer science, is not about making the best app ever created. CS is mental weight lifting on the _process_ of tackling business problems. Dissecting an app into its MVC components will help you understand the business you plan to create, what is core, and what is fluff. In other words, learning to program will make you a better business person, even if you suck.
- edcastano 15y ago
  Absolutely Ryan. Thanks for your sharing your thoughts with me. I also see other parallels between building great software and building a great business. For one, focus is important for scaling both. You don't want to be all things to all people. In addition, whether you're bug tracking or solving business problems, it's important to get to the root cause. Full disclosure: I used to be a management consultant. Finally, it takes a great team to build great software and a great company. I'm sure there are many others. Would love to hear what others here come up with.
- gbeeson 15y ago
  Very well put and I certainly agree. This thought process can also lead to far more realistic goal planning for all walks of life (you give a great example about weight lifting). Learning just to learn is admirable in and of itself but perhaps not as realistic than learning for a specific need that can be enumerated.
stfu 15y ago
Coming from a similar perspective as the OP, but so far I always failed to go through with actually mastering a language. Over the years I attempted to learn so many different ones, from Action Script to Assembler, from Delphi to C++, but always became either bored of it after a few hours or got frustrated because the ideas I had in mind turned out to be far more complicated to realise than I had hoped for.
- eru 15y ago
  That's why great programmers are boundless optimist and masochists.
  - edcastano 15y ago
    Great point. I've been accused to being dogged in the past. Truth be told, it helps to be both focused and determined. @stfu There are two ways you could try to go about it: 1) Try sticking to one technology and working on a project you're really passionate about. 2) Work on a tutorial from start to finish.
    - stfu 15y ago
      Thanks for trying to help! 1) This is really difficult. Like I tried getting started with PHP but as soon as potential project ideas became "interesting" I needed to go at least into JavaScript or Databases/MySql. Like for a seemingly simple project that I had in mind (e.g. that took data from a form and generate a pdf file based on that) I needed at least JavaScript to make it a smooth process. 2) I seem to suck there in the "transferring the knowledge" part. One of my most recent ventures is into RapidMiner, an (open source) data mining/text mining software. While I went through each and every tutorial available I am still unable to understand basic issues like when to use certain algorithms or how to adopt the knowledge towards a concrete research idea/problem that I have in mind. But if you have any suggestions for great tutorials feel free to share. I won't stop trying :)
      - civilian 15y ago

39 points by coconutrandom 15y ago

Edward is a savvy guy not above getting his hands dirty with code.

I think the world would be a better place if everyone, especially MBA's had at least some knowledge of programming. With the state of the job market in the US, wouldn't it be wise to require even two years of programming in high school?

gtani 15y ago
I used to work with at least a couple dozen MBA's from 1 school, they gave me this advice for bus school: 1) don't lose your coding skills (I was good at perl/awk, APL, C and Fortran). This I did 2) concentrate on linear algebra, stats/prob, calculus (this i didn't) 3) take law school classes (this i did, they were gnarly) tl;dr your 2nd year you can do pretty much whatever you want. You can make it a profoundly intellectual experience, or start your business, or whatever
- curt 15y ago
  This is exactly what I did. I treat the MBA as just another tool. Started a business sadly it failed after a couple years, but I just moved out to SF last week and loving it. As an engineer with an MBA that can code well, does stats, and took a handful of law classes it's a seller's market.
  - Maven911 15y ago
    i dont get it, whats so special about stats ? dont al engineers take a stats class and then end up not using most of the concepts ?

ajaycancherla 15y ago

That's a good idea. My advice: forget the MBA. Just learn to code and start making contacts in the field you want to go into. Why pay grad schools? YC is the new grad school, and they pay you.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
oscarleung 15y ago
lol...yes! out of all the degrees out there...I don't understand the MBA. Want to start a business? Start it! If you get the MBA you'll be stuck paying off a $100k debt.
- viscanti 15y ago
  Starting a business is only half the battle (at best). The biggest value of the MBA is the networking that happens. You're meeting people who will go on to work in a diverse set of industries. It's not uncommon for an entrepreneur with an MBA to go a year or two in business only calling on people they met in school, or fellow alumni. That networking isn't impossible to replicate, but an entrepreneur who forgoes the MBA route needs to make a concerted effort to make up for that.
  - edcastano 15y ago
    I agree. I've also learned that there is no one path to entrepreneurship, or programming for the matter. For some people it makes sense to quit school or avoid college. Others follow a more traditional route. There are pros and cons to each. More importantly, it is an extremely personal process. What makes sense for one person does not make sense for another. As for me, I am very happy in my decision to attend business school. In addition to the networking benefits you pointed to above, I've found that some of the things that I've learned (e.g. Coaching and Mentoring) have wonderful applications to my personal life. Put differently, business school has made me a better father. I plan to write a post on this soon. All the wonderful friendships I built while I was there is icing on the cake. I should also point out that I didn’t go to business school for the hard skills (i.e. finance, accounting, etc.). You can learn a lot of that by picking up a book. I went to business school to become a better leader and person. Classes like Interpersonal Dynamics (aka "Touchy feely"), High Performance Leadership, and Leadership Coaching and Mentoring are the main reasons I attended business school. Finally, while at business school, I made an effort to meet and build friendships with brilliant graduate and undergraduate students across all of Stanford. I now know wonderful people that studied CS, Engineering, Earth Sciences, Stats, Medicine, and much more. I feel fortunate to have had the chance to study with all these people.

ryanlchan 15y ago

All great reasons, but there's one I would add as an MBA: Learning to program makes you a better business person. How? Made to Stick has a great story about a math teacher who struggled to convince his students of math's importance in life. As he put it, math is like weight lifting. You don't work out to prepare for the day a rogue barbell comes and traps you on the ground, you work out so you can run faster, tackle harder, and jump higher. Math is weight lifting for your analytic mind - it helps you rationally think through problems and establish logical steps to the solution. Learning to program, and to take it further, learning computer science, is not about making the best app ever created. CS is mental weight lifting on the _process_ of tackling business problems. Dissecting an app into its MVC components will help you understand the business you plan to create, what is core, and what is fluff. In other words, learning to program will make you a better business person, even if you suck.

edcastano 15y ago
Absolutely Ryan. Thanks for your sharing your thoughts with me. I also see other parallels between building great software and building a great business. For one, focus is important for scaling both. You don't want to be all things to all people. In addition, whether you're bug tracking or solving business problems, it's important to get to the root cause. Full disclosure: I used to be a management consultant. Finally, it takes a great team to build great software and a great company. I'm sure there are many others. Would love to hear what others here come up with.
gbeeson 15y ago
Very well put and I certainly agree. This thought process can also lead to far more realistic goal planning for all walks of life (you give a great example about weight lifting). Learning just to learn is admirable in and of itself but perhaps not as realistic than learning for a specific need that can be enumerated.

stfu 15y ago

Coming from a similar perspective as the OP, but so far I always failed to go through with actually mastering a language. Over the years I attempted to learn so many different ones, from Action Script to Assembler, from Delphi to C++, but always became either bored of it after a few hours or got frustrated because the ideas I had in mind turned out to be far more complicated to realise than I had hoped for.

eru 15y ago
That's why great programmers are boundless optimist and masochists.
- edcastano 15y ago
  Great point. I've been accused to being dogged in the past. Truth be told, it helps to be both focused and determined. @stfu There are two ways you could try to go about it: 1) Try sticking to one technology and working on a project you're really passionate about. 2) Work on a tutorial from start to finish.
  - stfu 15y ago
    Thanks for trying to help! 1) This is really difficult. Like I tried getting started with PHP but as soon as potential project ideas became "interesting" I needed to go at least into JavaScript or Databases/MySql. Like for a seemingly simple project that I had in mind (e.g. that took data from a form and generate a pdf file based on that) I needed at least JavaScript to make it a smooth process. 2) I seem to suck there in the "transferring the knowledge" part. One of my most recent ventures is into RapidMiner, an (open source) data mining/text mining software. While I went through each and every tutorial available I am still unable to understand basic issues like when to use certain algorithms or how to adopt the knowledge towards a concrete research idea/problem that I have in mind. But if you have any suggestions for great tutorials feel free to share. I won't stop trying :)
    - civilian 15y ago