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> Demoralization is what happens when you spend years becoming an expert in a subject area, and nobody cares. They’d rather hire another MBA to make all the imp

> Demoralization is what happens when you spend years becoming an expert in a subject area, and nobody cares. They’d rather hire another MBA to make all the important decisions, while they stick us on committees writing reports for ghosts. That’s when teachers start to withdraw from their jobs, when we realize it doesn’t matter what we think, and it definitely doesn’t matter how amazing we are at what we do. This was really well put, and applies to any profession, not just teaching. Consider software security experts, who know all the ins and outs of making systems secure. They advise, the offer guidance and best practices on very complex material. And yet at the end of the day all that work gets thrown out by some PM’s that think it only adds complexity, or worse yet users simply don’t use the more secure features of an application.

zmgsabst 4y ago
I think we need to admit managerialism fails at knowledge fields — perhaps Taylorism entirely. I’m not sure what’s better, though.
- sul_tasto 4y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree. I think a critical examination of the MBA degree, and the values it embodies, is long overdue.
  - jaybrendansmith 4y ago
    Any MBA or Product Manager telling a security expert what's important and what's not is absolutely doing it wrong. What they teach in an MBA is simply the larger picture of a business, it's complex systems, it's architecture. Anyone that writes code should be fairly good at it because it's essentially the same thing one does as an engineer: Determine the interfaces and contracts between the teams, understand the 'organs of the body' and the processes therein, understand the inputs and the outputs and governing systems such as cash flow and income. What often happens is prioritization and risk assessment ... the needs of the customers are many and there is only so much room in the backlog. What the security expert needs to do is to make the risks clear to the manager in business terms that they can understand, which to be honest, often comes down to probable loss of money, or customers, or brand.
  - moomin 4y ago
    Honestly there’s useful and interesting stuff in an MBA course, but it has very little to do with practical management of a business at any level. Pretty useful if your job is doing financial projections of projects with relatively predictable costs and payoffs. Imagine if we put in charge of a tech firm the dude with the best understanding of category theory.
  - d4rti 4y ago
    MBAs: - do not improve - output - investment - employment growth - sales - profit - do - reduce employee wages Source : https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29874/w29874.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29874/w298...
makeitdouble 4y ago
> it only adds complexity Of course what they mean by “complexity” is money. What experts recommend costs money, where the MBA/PM will come with dumb solutions that cost less on paper.
svnpenn 4y ago
> it only adds complexity, or worse yet users simply don’t use the more secure features of an application. This is true, on both counts. Adding top end security does add complexity. The business should decide if it's worth it. And users generally want whatever is simpler, and will only use MFA if it's forced upon them.
readingnews 4y ago
I was going to quote that very paragraph, as a professor teaching three classes this semester, in addition to my 50 hour a week job as the technical director. I see at my university the outside consultants telling us how and when to teach. But OPs first sentence here seems to ring true a lot on my campus. Your boss, HR, some organization called "student success" which is made up of MBAs that have never taught a class, some VP of whatever division, they talk down to you. Tell you, as a professor with great student feedback and high marks all over the place, that you do not understand "how to teach" and that we should have Elvsiver, Pearson, or some other bookseller tell us how to teach, or even better, that we should just outsource teaching to them. They can not imagine why people are leaving.
- origin_path 4y ago
  In fairness a lot of professors are terrible teachers and don't really care about teaching at all. My own course was full of them. I'm sure they didn't like to hear it though.
  - incone123 4y ago
    My friend is a professor and admits she has no interest in teaching. She is a scientist and counts herself fortunate to have enough research funding that she is rarely expected to lecture.
  - Shorel 4y ago
    And it could be because the good ones quit. For all the reasons mentioned in the article.
  - effingwewt 4y ago
    Or could it possibly be they aren't paid enough to care? Here above you was a professor stating how shit it is to be one, and the very next comment is a student shitting on professors in general. This very thread exemplifies why no one wants to teach.
    - gms7777 4y ago
donatj 4y ago
I think there's a point though where people are so deep in it, they can't see the forest through the trees anymore. Security, as you mentioned, is definitely a balance with what your users will actually want to do. Security experts see doomsday scenarios everywhere, but if their solution is a hassle, your customers will just go to the less secure competitor. I’ve worked with DBAs who were absolutely experts and knew far more than us but wanted to normalize the data to the point where actually retrieving it would have been a major hassle of JOINs. There’s a balance there that experts miss. "Experts" in my general experience often lack the big picture. They get so honed in on their little area of expertise that they can forget that people don't value what they value to the same degree.
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  Id argue a DBA who doesn't understand the practical value of judicious use of denormalization isn't YET an expert. knowing when to dry your data and when to optimize for a specific usage pattern is part of being an "expert."

zmgsabst 4y ago

I think we need to admit managerialism fails at knowledge fields — perhaps Taylorism entirely. I’m not sure what’s better, though.

sul_tasto 4y ago
I wholeheartedly agree. I think a critical examination of the MBA degree, and the values it embodies, is long overdue.
- jaybrendansmith 4y ago
  Any MBA or Product Manager telling a security expert what's important and what's not is absolutely doing it wrong. What they teach in an MBA is simply the larger picture of a business, it's complex systems, it's architecture. Anyone that writes code should be fairly good at it because it's essentially the same thing one does as an engineer: Determine the interfaces and contracts between the teams, understand the 'organs of the body' and the processes therein, understand the inputs and the outputs and governing systems such as cash flow and income. What often happens is prioritization and risk assessment ... the needs of the customers are many and there is only so much room in the backlog. What the security expert needs to do is to make the risks clear to the manager in business terms that they can understand, which to be honest, often comes down to probable loss of money, or customers, or brand.
- moomin 4y ago
  Honestly there’s useful and interesting stuff in an MBA course, but it has very little to do with practical management of a business at any level. Pretty useful if your job is doing financial projections of projects with relatively predictable costs and payoffs. Imagine if we put in charge of a tech firm the dude with the best understanding of category theory.
- d4rti 4y ago
  MBAs: - do not improve - output - investment - employment growth - sales - profit - do - reduce employee wages Source : https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29874/w29874.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29874/w298...

makeitdouble 4y ago

> it only adds complexity Of course what they mean by “complexity” is money. What experts recommend costs money, where the MBA/PM will come with dumb solutions that cost less on paper.

svnpenn 4y ago

> it only adds complexity, or worse yet users simply don’t use the more secure features of an application. This is true, on both counts. Adding top end security does add complexity. The business should decide if it's worth it. And users generally want whatever is simpler, and will only use MFA if it's forced upon them.

readingnews 4y ago

I was going to quote that very paragraph, as a professor teaching three classes this semester, in addition to my 50 hour a week job as the technical director. I see at my university the outside consultants telling us how and when to teach. But OPs first sentence here seems to ring true a lot on my campus. Your boss, HR, some organization called "student success" which is made up of MBAs that have never taught a class, some VP of whatever division, they talk down to you. Tell you, as a professor with great student feedback and high marks all over the place, that you do not understand "how to teach" and that we should have Elvsiver, Pearson, or some other bookseller tell us how to teach, or even better, that we should just outsource teaching to them. They can not imagine why people are leaving.

origin_path 4y ago
In fairness a lot of professors are terrible teachers and don't really care about teaching at all. My own course was full of them. I'm sure they didn't like to hear it though.
- incone123 4y ago
  My friend is a professor and admits she has no interest in teaching. She is a scientist and counts herself fortunate to have enough research funding that she is rarely expected to lecture.
- Shorel 4y ago
  And it could be because the good ones quit. For all the reasons mentioned in the article.
- effingwewt 4y ago
  Or could it possibly be they aren't paid enough to care? Here above you was a professor stating how shit it is to be one, and the very next comment is a student shitting on professors in general. This very thread exemplifies why no one wants to teach.
  - gms7777 4y ago

donatj 4y ago

I think there's a point though where people are so deep in it, they can't see the forest through the trees anymore. Security, as you mentioned, is definitely a balance with what your users will actually want to do. Security experts see doomsday scenarios everywhere, but if their solution is a hassle, your customers will just go to the less secure competitor. I’ve worked with DBAs who were absolutely experts and knew far more than us but wanted to normalize the data to the point where actually retrieving it would have been a major hassle of JOINs. There’s a balance there that experts miss. "Experts" in my general experience often lack the big picture. They get so honed in on their little area of expertise that they can forget that people don't value what they value to the same degree.

cultofmetatron 4y ago
Id argue a DBA who doesn't understand the practical value of judicious use of denormalization isn't YET an expert. knowing when to dry your data and when to optimize for a specific usage pattern is part of being an "expert."