5 ms·

Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Jamie Dimon, et. al. are in charge of companies that are doing just fine.

by ssharp 4y ago

vlovich123 4y ago
It’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 ago
  I 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 ago
    Yes, 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.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    In my comment MBA is a state of being, not a conferred degree. Jamie Dimon comes from financial services, which is a very different industry. Engineering minded firms in financial services were sponsored by finance folks that believed engineering / science / math / computer techniques towards finance would make them more competitive. Internally at JPMC Dimon invests heavily in tech and gives tech engineering leadership autonomy. So as CEO he has delegated a lot to the engineering culture and shielded it from the accountants and MBAs. (Again, MBA the state of being which can not be attributed solely to spending two years in a program)
    - abakker 4y ago
      See also: no true scotsman.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        Nah, just an error of description. The question is whether the person you put in charge is deeply knowledgeable about the product, capable of working on the product, and using that to make decisions. As opposed to someone making decisions in a trained-for-generic-business way. MBA vs. not-MBA is an oversimplification. Especially since someone can have an engineering degree or whatever and an MBA. But that's not a no true scotsman. There is a pretty clear dividing line between the two groups.
  - newsclues 4y ago
    The MBAs people hate, are the people who lack experience and took a short path to the MBA because they see it as a way to accelerate their career. It's a lack of experience + ego inflation from an advanced degree that is a dangerous combination.
    - ssharp 4y ago
      Are there good examples of people like this that then rose to the position of CEO and failed? There are plenty of CEOs who have failed, so is a disproportionate amount these "short-path" MBAs who have failed after climbing so high?
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    Broadly speaking, anyone drawing broad conclusions on the basis of education is wrong. Anti-MBA, anti-engineering, anti-non-Ivy, anti-Ivy, et cetera. To the degree there is information in these conversations, it’s someone holding these broad-brush views being generally unqualified for higher leadership.
  - btilly 4y ago
    I think that the broad strokes capture something real. Namely that an MBA does not qualify you to run a tech company. As your examples show, it also doesn't disqualify you. In fact there are plenty of roles where it brings value. But the model of "I have an MBA, I can run any kind of business" is dramatically false. You need to have useful theories about how the company actually works to run it. And the theories by which tech companies work usually make a lot more sense if you have a tech background. There are exceptions - for example Meg Whitman did an excellent job of building eBay when she took over early on - but they are notable as exceptions. And I know of no exceptions among companies who are in one way or another primarily selling their tech expertise.
mschuster91 4y ago
Microsoft has been "doing fine" financially, but look at their products and user feedback. Windows Vista and 8 were widely seen as colossal failures, Windows Mobile got utterly destroyed by a series of dumbass decisions, Windows 10/11 is a mess UI-wise, where the fuck does one even want to begin when it serves ads in the start menu, vendors keep pushing bloatware crap because Microsoft allows them to, developer experience is a mess because there are just so many different UI and other frameworks (although tooling does have improved since the days you had to shell out thousands for Visual Studio), Microsoft software in general is riddled with bugs and security issues to a degree it puts even Adobe Flash to shame, its Office suite is a hotbed of UI issues, bugs and privacy issues... Microsoft is only being kept alive because of business moat, the competition being too focused on fucking up each other in bike-shedding and purity contests (a general issue in anything Linux sans, to a degree, the kernel) and doesn't have the money to hire actual UI/UX experts or, in the case of Apple, is just too expensive.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  Windows is no longer Microsoft's main focus, and hasn't been for quite a few years. It's about 12% of their revenue. The main income is now Azure, Office 365, and an assortment of other smaller (comparatively) things like Surface, X-box, GitHub, etc. If Windows revenue would drop off to 0 tomorrow it would be a blow, but Microsoft would survive just fine. People keep thinking about Microsoft in 2001 terms but it's not the same company. This what Satya Nadella brought to Microsoft (don't think it would have played out like this under Balmer).
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > (a general issue in anything Linux sans, to a degree, the kernel) What do you suggest instead?
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    On one side, people recognizing when they have lost, the competition is inarguably better and converging to that as a new standard. On the other side, projects aiming to replace sometimes decades-old infrastructure like init scripts also have to be more open towards community feedback. Both sides need to relax, the effort lost on clearly doomed projects is absurd, and the sometimes extremely heated and rough, barely civilized "debates" continue to alienate new and existing developers. People whine and complain all the time about "codes of conduct" - and sometimes for good reason, power tripping committees are just as bad as what they want to prevent - but it is clear that all the infighting is the major factor keeping open source software from widespread recognition.
mrguyorama 4y ago
I don't know of Mr Dimon, but tim cook headed apple while they pursued form over function, removing ports and creating the god awful butterfly keyboard for.... reasons? Satya has overseen microsoft to be very profitable yeah, but they haven't exactly been the best company, buying a bunch of popular companies that most people probably would rather they not own, and investing as much as possible into making using windows a terrible, ad ridden, telemetry infused pain.

Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Jamie Dimon, et. al. are in charge of companies that are doing just fine.

by ssharp 4y ago

Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Jamie Dimon, et. al. are in charge of companies that are doing just fine.

It’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 ago
I 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 ago
  Yes, 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.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  In my comment MBA is a state of being, not a conferred degree. Jamie Dimon comes from financial services, which is a very different industry. Engineering minded firms in financial services were sponsored by finance folks that believed engineering / science / math / computer techniques towards finance would make them more competitive. Internally at JPMC Dimon invests heavily in tech and gives tech engineering leadership autonomy. So as CEO he has delegated a lot to the engineering culture and shielded it from the accountants and MBAs. (Again, MBA the state of being which can not be attributed solely to spending two years in a program)
  - abakker 4y ago
    See also: no true scotsman.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      Nah, just an error of description. The question is whether the person you put in charge is deeply knowledgeable about the product, capable of working on the product, and using that to make decisions. As opposed to someone making decisions in a trained-for-generic-business way. MBA vs. not-MBA is an oversimplification. Especially since someone can have an engineering degree or whatever and an MBA. But that's not a no true scotsman. There is a pretty clear dividing line between the two groups.
- newsclues 4y ago
  The MBAs people hate, are the people who lack experience and took a short path to the MBA because they see it as a way to accelerate their career. It's a lack of experience + ego inflation from an advanced degree that is a dangerous combination.
  - ssharp 4y ago
    Are there good examples of people like this that then rose to the position of CEO and failed? There are plenty of CEOs who have failed, so is a disproportionate amount these "short-path" MBAs who have failed after climbing so high?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  Broadly speaking, anyone drawing broad conclusions on the basis of education is wrong. Anti-MBA, anti-engineering, anti-non-Ivy, anti-Ivy, et cetera. To the degree there is information in these conversations, it’s someone holding these broad-brush views being generally unqualified for higher leadership.
- btilly 4y ago
  I think that the broad strokes capture something real. Namely that an MBA does not qualify you to run a tech company. As your examples show, it also doesn't disqualify you. In fact there are plenty of roles where it brings value. But the model of "I have an MBA, I can run any kind of business" is dramatically false. You need to have useful theories about how the company actually works to run it. And the theories by which tech companies work usually make a lot more sense if you have a tech background. There are exceptions - for example Meg Whitman did an excellent job of building eBay when she took over early on - but they are notable as exceptions. And I know of no exceptions among companies who are in one way or another primarily selling their tech expertise.

mschuster91 4y ago

Microsoft has been "doing fine" financially, but look at their products and user feedback. Windows Vista and 8 were widely seen as colossal failures, Windows Mobile got utterly destroyed by a series of dumbass decisions, Windows 10/11 is a mess UI-wise, where the fuck does one even want to begin when it serves ads in the start menu, vendors keep pushing bloatware crap because Microsoft allows them to, developer experience is a mess because there are just so many different UI and other frameworks (although tooling does have improved since the days you had to shell out thousands for Visual Studio), Microsoft software in general is riddled with bugs and security issues to a degree it puts even Adobe Flash to shame, its Office suite is a hotbed of UI issues, bugs and privacy issues... Microsoft is only being kept alive because of business moat, the competition being too focused on fucking up each other in bike-shedding and purity contests (a general issue in anything Linux sans, to a degree, the kernel) and doesn't have the money to hire actual UI/UX experts or, in the case of Apple, is just too expensive.

Beltalowda 4y ago
Windows is no longer Microsoft's main focus, and hasn't been for quite a few years. It's about 12% of their revenue. The main income is now Azure, Office 365, and an assortment of other smaller (comparatively) things like Surface, X-box, GitHub, etc. If Windows revenue would drop off to 0 tomorrow it would be a blow, but Microsoft would survive just fine. People keep thinking about Microsoft in 2001 terms but it's not the same company. This what Satya Nadella brought to Microsoft (don't think it would have played out like this under Balmer).
Gordonjcp 4y ago
> (a general issue in anything Linux sans, to a degree, the kernel) What do you suggest instead?
- mschuster91 4y ago
  On one side, people recognizing when they have lost, the competition is inarguably better and converging to that as a new standard. On the other side, projects aiming to replace sometimes decades-old infrastructure like init scripts also have to be more open towards community feedback. Both sides need to relax, the effort lost on clearly doomed projects is absurd, and the sometimes extremely heated and rough, barely civilized "debates" continue to alienate new and existing developers. People whine and complain all the time about "codes of conduct" - and sometimes for good reason, power tripping committees are just as bad as what they want to prevent - but it is clear that all the infighting is the major factor keeping open source software from widespread recognition.

mrguyorama 4y ago

I don't know of Mr Dimon, but tim cook headed apple while they pursued form over function, removing ports and creating the god awful butterfly keyboard for.... reasons? Satya has overseen microsoft to be very profitable yeah, but they haven't exactly been the best company, buying a bunch of popular companies that most people probably would rather they not own, and investing as much as possible into making using windows a terrible, ad ridden, telemetry infused pain.