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> Newcomb joined the company 20 years ago as a packer of chair mats, which the facility made at the time. He took on new roles as years went by. When he reached
by conductr 1y ago
> Newcomb joined the company 20 years ago as a packer of chair mats, which the facility made at the time. He took on new roles as years went by. When he reached a point where he wanted a leadership position, Newell’s human-resources department said the company would give him the job, but he would need an undergraduate degree, the cost of which the company would cover.
> Mike Newcomb now leads the molding department.
Newcomb obtained a business degree from a local college and now leads the molding department, overseeing production of the 4.3 billion pen barrels and caps the facility makes each year.
My question is always, why? Why was the degree required for this? He has 20 years of experience. Send him to a 4 week management training course or something. I went to business school for undergrad and it prepared me very little to run a molding department. I think this guys experience was already his biggest asset and this investment could have been significantly less expensive.
- magicalhippo 1y agoI wouldn't be surprised if the degree is one of those hard requirements they just have for such positions. That said, as someone who doesn't have a business degree, shouldn't it ideally prepare him better for working with the rest of the organization? Dealing with budgets, strategic plans from upper management, marketing etc?
- conductr 1y agoMost of those are politics and that’s not part of the education. You’ll learn what a textbook definition of strategic planning is, the concept behind it but every company has its own strategic planning process and it’s always evolving. Management training would cover all this in a few weeks. He got a full undergrad degree, meaning half his courses were just core like history and English and all that stuff. It could have been much more focused is my point.
- AndrewKemendo 1y agoBecause - and I hate the fact that it’s this way - they need to ensure there is a salary gate for other positions at a similar level. Part of the challenge of organizational management is making decisions structurally bound to prevent negotiations for every single possible response. “Well Mike didn’t have a degree, so why not me?” Would become the next big thing The “Simple” answer is, don’t have dumb gates for hiring and have your managers actually behave like leaders who have a personal stake in the success of their business and hires. Other than rare, personality driven cases, this approach isn’t even available as a concept for people who get into business for money or power - primarily because “the market” doesn’t reward training people, because the last century has shown that people with money don’t want to take the risk
- mulmen 1y ago> Because - and I hate the fact that it’s this way - they need to ensure there is a salary gate for other positions at a similar level. What evidence do you have to support this opinion as fact?
- AndrewKemendo 1y agoAbout 20 years as a line manager, military officer with a dozens of troops, CTO for a multi billion a year 1300 person engineering team, and Management Director at Unity. You?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mulmen 1y agoYou made the claim. The burden of proof is on you. I’m asking for more than personal anecdotes.
- fluoridation 1y agoI think you're close but not quite there. I'm reminded of the scene from Office Space, where the Bobs say they prefer to avoid confrontation if possible. >“Well Mike didn’t have a degree, so why not me?” "Because you don't have the right degree" is an easier and less confrontational answer than the truth ("the position was filled nepotistically", "you know what you did but the incidents are not properly documented", etc.).
- AndrewKemendo 1y agoWhich is just lazy and indicative of an inhuamane organization
- johnnyanmac 1y ago>The “Simple” answer is, don’t have dumb gates for hiring and have your managers actually behave like leaders who have a personal stake in the success of their business and hires. There's too much bureaucracy focused on CYA than being adults and properly talking with employees.
- WalterBright 1y agoIn my experience, people who are self-taught or who learned by experience tend to have odd gaps in their knowledge. For example, the Shazam app. I knew right away it must be using Fourier analysis. But if one was self-taught, one might have never understood what the point of FA was, or even have been aware of its existence, and instead used kludgy, inept methods. For a personal example, I was once given the job of taking the graphic display on a CRT and mapping it onto a printer page. The addressing was different, the axes were different, the pixels/per inch were different. I knew what the tool was - a transformation matrix. Had it ginned up in an hour and it worked first try. A co-worker was completely baffled at this. He didn't know what a transformation matrix was, and likely would have otherwise spent a couple weeks on the problem and done a crappy job. I.e. one doesn't know what one doesn't know. The advantage of an accredited degree program is the curriculum is selected by people who know what you need to know, and the order in which information is best presented.
- greazy 1y agoBut does that apply to business management?
- WalterBright 1y agoI do not have formal training in business management. But I'm pretty sure that formally learning it is not useless knowledge, if one intends to manage a business. For one example, learning accounting. A lot of people try to run a business without understanding how double-entry bookkeeping works. This gets them into trouble with the IRS, for one result, and with bankers, for another. During summer vacation, at loose ends, I signed up at the local college for a course in double-entry bookkeeping. It's paid off for me ever since.
- greazy 1y agoMy personal opinion is that BM is a weird world and I don't know how it can be standardized and taught in a formal setting. It is domain specific and sometimes even company specific. How such a thing can be standardised and formally taught is the question I'm interested in.
- ecshafer 1y agoI am torn on this. I have friends who complain that they are engineers, and had to take so much math in school they don’t use. They apparently dont see much value in just the fact they learned it, or the increased knowledge. However, no matter how much experience someone may have, I am not sure I am willing to trust a bridge designed by an engineer that couldnt pass a basic calculus sequence. To steelman this position, the college degree is a singal that they are capable of learning some more complex concepts. So even if it isnt a business degree, if they start talking about cost basis they can pick that up, and that they can read and write at a high enough level to function in management. It also shows that the person is serious about moving up.
- JadeNB 1y ago> I have friends who complain that they are engineers, and had to take so much math in school they don’t use. This seems to me like saying "I could be a better engineer by combining engineering expertise with mathematical knowledge, and I have that knowledge, but I prefer not to use it." I don't always learn new things well enough to realize their potential, but I've never once regretted learning something new, and, if I don't know how to use it, then I usually assume that's on me, not on the subject.
- sowbug 1y agoI have friends who complain that they are engineers, and had to take so much math in school they don’t use. Every liberal arts major could make this complaint. The curriculum is supposed to teach you to think, not necessarily to teach you things.
- hn_acc1 1y agoI don't use, and barely passed that circuits course using partial differential equations. But at least now I have some idea of what they are, and where they are useful. I also don't use Fourier transforms much, or Taylor or McLaurin expansions - but it gives me a solid foundation for understanding how people do various signal analysis, function approximation, etc. I.e. I agree that I had to take a lot of math. And I don't use much of it. But I'm not really resentful of it - I'm only resentful of the sometimes useless profs we got.
- 1y ago
- mulmen 1y agoIt has become popular to dismiss the benefits of higher education but I think there’s still immense value in completing an undergraduate education. An undergraduate degree demonstrates an ability to succeed in a multi-disciplinary environment and to work collaboratively with peers. It gives the student knowledge outside their core domain which creates opportunities for cross-pollination of ideas. The only argument against higher education is the cost which wasn’t a factor here.
- conductr 1y agoHe’s been with the company for 20 years and they basically thought he was management material but just needed to check this box and they were willing to pay for him to do it. Strong signals that this situation specifically he was already well vetted and most of this wasn’t their concern. For people starting their career with no experience and no network, yes the undergrad signals everything you mentioned.
- mulmen 1y agoThey didn’t think he was management material. They thought he would be if he had a degree.