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I would not be so quick to regard this as lazy thinking. It's merely shorthand for this idea: product people produce value, "MBA's" turn value into money. Obvio

I would not be so quick to regard this as lazy thinking. It's merely shorthand for this idea: product people produce value, "MBA's" turn value into money. Obviously we need both sides. Tim Cook is an Industrial Engineer with an MBA - a perfect combination. Apple is actually a great example of a company that produces a lot of value and also captures it in the form of dollars. From this point of view, to be "MBA'ed" is to focus on profit while forgetting about producing value. This then waters down brands that were established on the bedrock of value produced by product people.

ericmay 5y ago
I don’t think there’s a “both sides”. The reason this is lazy thinking in my view is because usually it’s not associated with the good (Apple example, nobody goes “dang they really MBA’d the price on that MacBook Pro that I love) and because when something “bad” occurs there’s no understanding or analysis of the situation that lead to the current state. Just a bunch of “that’s bad, must be MBAs screwing me”. You find similar issues with “those Silicon Valley engineers all screwing us and stealing our attention” and other common phrases. The MBA one I think is even less nuanced than the contrived Silicon Valley one. If we go back to the MBA thing. Well. I have one. I don’t like fast fashion. I wouldn’t want to support it even if it made more money. The degree doesn’t make you do anything, your incentives and who you are as a person are much more powerful. There’s no class on fast fashion (or similar) where MBA students are trained to maximize profit at all costs or not think about sociological impact. At least at Ohio State (Fisher) that was the case in all classes I attended. We spent a lot more time learning about not doing such things and how they are bad for business and society in the long run. My classmates had a lot of empathy. Maybe it’s because like me they were/are regular people just trying to do better. So I really hate seeing this. To the extent it can happen on an internet board I find it a little offensive and disrespectful. Not a big deal or something just saying if you joined some forum and everybody said all the bad decisions were because of software engineers, well you’d probably at least get tired of hearing about it. Especially when you’re a regular person trying to be nice and do good, value-add work. Idk. Thanks for your comment.
- FredPret 5y ago
  Perhaps you are taking it personally because you have an MBA. It's not meant as a personal attack on literal MBA's. I use the term as shorthand for the people who do the vital work of making a business run efficiently and profitably. When companies focus on that to the exclusion of the actual value-creating, bad things happen. The opposite case is when a startup does not find a market and only focuses on making a product. This, too, fails. As an investor, I look for companies that do well on both ends of the spectrum.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    No, I wouldn’t say I’m taking it personally. My self-worth exists independent of a degree, of which is obtainable by many. What I find disrespectful* is lumping large groups of people in together based on a degree, and then saying “that group is responsible for all the bad decisions”. I have to imagine you can see why this is simply lazy thinking. Let me give you another contrived example: “Social media co is found to have withheld information that lead to bad social thing” “This is what happens when companies become Software Engineered. They lose all focus on the customer and society just to create better algorithms”. You don’t think that if we just constantly repeated something like this that would be a bad thing and might alienate people? Especially when it’s not true and ignores good things that people have done as well? What I’ll say is this. It’ll stop being lazy and disrespectful when large groups here also give credit where credit is due instead of only blame without evidence. * Note that I don’t actually care, I’m never at home offended by something, I’m just commenting on the nature of the action, which I would classify as disrespectful.
    - dasil003 5y ago
      The problem with your counter example is that it doesn't recognize prevailing power dynamics. In the vast majority of cases, software engineers, designers, product managers, and other people hands-on in the business of creating commercial software products, are outranked and have less authority than MBAs within their sphere of interaction. Many of us have been forced to be party to terrible decisions made by someone who has focused on an executive career path with no skill-based qualifications, and a deficient moral compass. Very often, these type of individuals happen to have an MBA, and so the stereotype was born. While it certainly isn't fair to tar all individuals with that brush, the short-hand has been earned by the actions of many MBAs over the decades. Whether you agree with that or not, the bottom line is you're simply not going to get much sympathy around here for the plight of the poor maligned MBA.

ericmay 5y ago

I don’t think there’s a “both sides”. The reason this is lazy thinking in my view is because usually it’s not associated with the good (Apple example, nobody goes “dang they really MBA’d the price on that MacBook Pro that I love) and because when something “bad” occurs there’s no understanding or analysis of the situation that lead to the current state. Just a bunch of “that’s bad, must be MBAs screwing me”. You find similar issues with “those Silicon Valley engineers all screwing us and stealing our attention” and other common phrases. The MBA one I think is even less nuanced than the contrived Silicon Valley one. If we go back to the MBA thing. Well. I have one. I don’t like fast fashion. I wouldn’t want to support it even if it made more money. The degree doesn’t make you do anything, your incentives and who you are as a person are much more powerful. There’s no class on fast fashion (or similar) where MBA students are trained to maximize profit at all costs or not think about sociological impact. At least at Ohio State (Fisher) that was the case in all classes I attended. We spent a lot more time learning about not doing such things and how they are bad for business and society in the long run. My classmates had a lot of empathy. Maybe it’s because like me they were/are regular people just trying to do better. So I really hate seeing this. To the extent it can happen on an internet board I find it a little offensive and disrespectful. Not a big deal or something just saying if you joined some forum and everybody said all the bad decisions were because of software engineers, well you’d probably at least get tired of hearing about it. Especially when you’re a regular person trying to be nice and do good, value-add work. Idk. Thanks for your comment.

FredPret 5y ago
Perhaps you are taking it personally because you have an MBA. It's not meant as a personal attack on literal MBA's. I use the term as shorthand for the people who do the vital work of making a business run efficiently and profitably. When companies focus on that to the exclusion of the actual value-creating, bad things happen. The opposite case is when a startup does not find a market and only focuses on making a product. This, too, fails. As an investor, I look for companies that do well on both ends of the spectrum.
- ericmay 5y ago
  No, I wouldn’t say I’m taking it personally. My self-worth exists independent of a degree, of which is obtainable by many. What I find disrespectful* is lumping large groups of people in together based on a degree, and then saying “that group is responsible for all the bad decisions”. I have to imagine you can see why this is simply lazy thinking. Let me give you another contrived example: “Social media co is found to have withheld information that lead to bad social thing” “This is what happens when companies become Software Engineered. They lose all focus on the customer and society just to create better algorithms”. You don’t think that if we just constantly repeated something like this that would be a bad thing and might alienate people? Especially when it’s not true and ignores good things that people have done as well? What I’ll say is this. It’ll stop being lazy and disrespectful when large groups here also give credit where credit is due instead of only blame without evidence. * Note that I don’t actually care, I’m never at home offended by something, I’m just commenting on the nature of the action, which I would classify as disrespectful.
  - dasil003 5y ago
    The problem with your counter example is that it doesn't recognize prevailing power dynamics. In the vast majority of cases, software engineers, designers, product managers, and other people hands-on in the business of creating commercial software products, are outranked and have less authority than MBAs within their sphere of interaction. Many of us have been forced to be party to terrible decisions made by someone who has focused on an executive career path with no skill-based qualifications, and a deficient moral compass. Very often, these type of individuals happen to have an MBA, and so the stereotype was born. While it certainly isn't fair to tar all individuals with that brush, the short-hand has been earned by the actions of many MBAs over the decades. Whether you agree with that or not, the bottom line is you're simply not going to get much sympathy around here for the plight of the poor maligned MBA.