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Once you put an accountant or MBA in charge of any company the company is dead. You can’t cost manage your way to growth.
by fnordpiglet 4y ago
Once you put an accountant or MBA in charge of any company the company is dead. You can’t cost manage your way to growth.
- jibe 4y agoSatya Nadella has an MBA from The university of Chicago and has been doing a good job.
- hardware2win 4y agoI think OP meant pure, non tech related MBA
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hef19898 4y agoHow many of those do actually exist? At tech companies in the broadest possible sense?
- spamizbad 4y agoNadella got an engineering degree in India, followed up with a masters in the US - with that Booth MBA coming after he'd worked at Sun and Microsoft as an engineer. Pretty much every "Wow this MBA does a good job of running a tech company!" person has a story similar to this where they trained and worked as an engineer before obtaining their MBA.
- Kon-Peki 4y agoOk fine :) Go read “The HP Way” by Dave Packard. It was standard procedure for HP to hire promising engineers from Flyover State U and take the best and send them to Stanford for an MBA. This worked really, really well. Until it didn’t.
- conductr 4y agoThat was the intent of the MBA, as a supplement to some other core expertise so they could manage the business effectively. Then, MBA's became an entire profession. Many consulting firm MBA's go to business school twice before having any real world experience (undergrad then MBA). I did business school for undergrad and refuse to get an MBA for this reason, I seriously had MBA students sitting in the classes I took as an undergrad.
- zmgsabst 4y agoHas he? I had to maim the Windows Update process to keep it from freezing my computer whenever I tried to use it. Clearly right when the user logs on is the correct time to install updates — pinning the HDD to 100% use and preventing the user from accomplishing their task. After all, Microsoft is more important than the user and their needs come first. …where is the improvement supposed to be?
- Karunamon 4y agoI don't think n=1 software bugs are really relevant to the overall trajectory of the company.
- swagasaurus-rex 4y agoi got some news for you about the quality of windows software
- toast0 4y ago> I had to maim the Windows Update process to keep it from freezing my computer whenever I tried to use it. Windows update for Windows XP got worse than that. It would churn your drive for hours, but not make progress. There was an update to install manually and then you were good. But if you're running Windows 10 off a hard drive, you need to replace it with an SSD. Although, I guess you can probably blame that on Nadella, the mass layoff that included essentially ending the developer-in-test QA program was June 2014, and Nadella became CEO in Feb 2014. IMHO, quality dropped significantly since then, especially quality on hardware developers probably don't have or don't use (like hard drives and Windows Phone)
- maximilianburke 4y agoMicrosoft gets blamed when updates are applied because it makes the system less responsive. Microsoft gets blamed when users don't install updates and their systems get owned. In either case, Microsoft gets blamed.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
- dangerboysteve 4y agoHe was an engineer first.
- simonh 4y agoThat's true, but he got a degree in electrical engineering and a masters in computer science first, and picked up the MBA later in his career while at Microsoft. When people complain about MBAs they usually mean people who's primary qualification is an MBA.
- zamalek 4y agoNadella is a terrible MBA.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Brian_K_White 4y agoHe has an MBA like I have a suit. Sure I have one, a few even. Yet I'm not "a suit".
- ssharp 4y agoTim Cook, Satya Nadella, Jamie Dimon, et. al. are in charge of companies that are doing just fine.
- vlovich123 4y agoIt’s interesting that those are the people you chose. Were you unaware of the background of the engineers? Tim Cook: degree in industrial engineering and by all accounts an operational wizard for supply chain management. That’s why he was COO of Apple for long time focused on how to get components into its iPhone. Satya Nadella: electrical engineer with a CS degree and then an MBA and at Microsoft started as an engineer. Can’t speak to Jamie Dimon as banking and finance is outside my wheelhouse, but certainly neither Cook nor Nadella are examples of MBAs who don’t understand their product line. Arguably Apple’s is a much simpler product line to understand whereas Nadella has many more B2B and B2C product lines, but I don’t think the only thing Cook is thinking about are cost downs.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ssharp 4y agoI don't think my choices were particularly interesting, I'm was just loosely aware of their backgrounds and confirmed them as MBA graduates with a few searches. The parent comment (and a common HN trope) was about how awful MBAs are at running companies. Those are 3 counterexamples to that trope. All three are highly successful in their CEO roles. Given that Engineer -> MBA is a pretty common path, maybe we should just stop with the broad strokes?
- ghaff 4y agoYes, and especially for people above a certain age, an MBA--whether a regular two-year program or an executive program--was often treated as table-stakes for a lot of roles at companies that weren't hands-on engineering roles. And, yes, in many cases, MBA grads who were looking to work at companies in computer-related fields had some sort of engineering undergrad degree.
- missedthecue 4y agoDelta Airlines has improved drastically, both financially and in terms of the product since their current CEO, Ed Bastien who is an accountant, took over. Meanwhile, Boeing sold deadly products under leadership by their engineer CEO. I see the "bean counter bad" narrative a lot here, but I don't think it's that black and white.
- CamperBob2 4y agoThe decisionmaking behind those deadly products happened long before the CEO in question came on board.
- rocqua 4y agoReportedly at Boeing the culture at the executive level remains 'bean-counter focussed'. Does the opposite hold for Delta Airlines? It seems to me like the disposition of the CEO matters a lot more than their formal background. If an engineer rose through the ranks by siding with the MBA/accountants/bean-counting-culture in a company, he is likely to run it in the (presumably correctly maligned) bean-counting ways. Whereas an accountant who understands the bean-counters but has seen the pitfalls of that kind of management could easily decide not to manage like a bean-counter.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoI think it’s also a canard that the CEO is in charge. They’re responsible, but often the CFO or COO are in charge, or some rule class culture of middle management. My understanding from engineers at Boeing it has not had engineers in charge for a long time and it’s entirely run by accountants and business development.
- robszumski 4y agoOne cool fact is that prior to running Red Hat, Jim Whitehurst was COO of Delta Airlines. He could absolutely talk the talk on open source software. I always thought that was cool.
- dralley 4y ago"When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm. It is a great engineering firm, but people invest in a company because they want to make money." - Harry Stonecipher, Boeing executive and CEO until 2005 https://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-0402290256feb29-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-0402290256feb29-story.htm...
- nprateem 4y agoI know right. Why would you want someone who's actually studied business to run one?
- rocqua 4y agoThe general counter-point is, why would you want someone who doesn't understand the work done by the company to run that company. Besides that, the polarization between management and 'the work floor' naturally leads the work floor to see someone who studied 'management' as the epitome of management, and thus as the epitome of 'the enemy'. Personally I believe the work-floor is right to be skeptical of the management style that is commonly taught. Because the style is not based on treating employees as humans but instead about extracting a much value from these human resources as possible.
- nprateem 4y agoOnly if your curriculum is from the 1950s. Modern leadership & HR programs emphasise multiple benefits of happy workers: * More productive * Less likely to leave (which is expensive) * More motivated to share cost saving ideas which can save companies millions of dollars annually. Healthy companies can employ workers longer too. A good manager doesn't need to know how to build the product. They need to understand their market, the company's strengths, make strategic decisions and create an inspiring culture.
- nerdawson 4y ago> The general counter-point is, why would you want someone who doesn't understand the work done by the company to run that company. That reminds me of a great quote and one of the most important takeaways (running the opposite direction) from The E-Myth Revisited. "That Fatal Assumption is: if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work."
- bachmeier 4y agoSince I can't reply to your other comment: > They need to understand their market, the company's strengths, make strategic decisions and create an inspiring culture. I'd say that's largely orthogonal to studying business. You need to understand why customers buy from you and what kind of value you are offering. An MBA isn't going to help or hurt on that dimension.
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago> You can’t cost manage your way to growth. Likewise, no family has ever moved up the economic ladder by penny-pinching. The best that penny-pinching can do is to stave off bankruptcy.
- mrguyorama 4y agoBut they spend four whole dollars every other day buying coffee!!! If they save two and a half of those coffees they could buy a whole banana! Surely they will be a millionaire like me in no time right?
- conductr 4y agoIt can fund R&D, or a college degree for the kids. Those are often done for growth.
- xadhominemx 4y agoThere are about 50 of founder-led publicly listed tech companies with share prices down 90%+ over the past 18 months
- hodgesrm 4y ago> Once you put an accountant or MBA in charge of any company the company is dead. You can’t cost manage your way to growth. What about all the techie founders who have run companies into the ground? Most startups I know are run by techies. Only a small number actually succeed.
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y agoYou can be passionate about product and customer service, and be an accountant. I think it is rare to be passionate about product, when you are an MBA. Because your passion in seeking an MBA is yourself ( ladder climbing, status seeking ), and that path is not forged on sacrifices for customer service.