9 ms·

You are sooooo right on with this. The top-10 MBA cult is awful. These are usually those people you knew in high school/college who were excellent at studying

• gaius 13y ago
  When we say a child is talented, we usually mean they are a good learner. When we say an adult is talented, we mean they are a good doer. But these are actually two different axes.
  • AnonJ 13y ago
    I don't really believe there is such a great divide. In a greater probability most of those who are "genius" in childhood will continuously perform better when they become adults, in all fields including "doing" things. Sure there are some prodigies who turn out to be quite useless in real-world scenarios, but those are really few, IMO.
    • mcculley 13y ago
      Unfortunately I have encountered the opposite. I have worked with plenty of folks who were good at learning and very poor at getting things done. Furthermore, I think that constantly being praised during childhood for being smart did them harm as it made them underestimate the value of tenacity.
• api 13y ago
  "I think that the people who are best at building things that people want don't want to get an MBA." I know MBA school will be the first thing I do in hell.
  • dylangs1030 13y ago
    GMAFB, you're just showing a personal hatred and stereotypical perspective, stop being so melodramatic. Incredible things have come from MBAs. You're being ignorant.
    • jlgreco 13y ago
      > Incredible things have come from MBAs. You're all talk and no substance; let's have some examples.
      • dylangs1030 13y ago
        The two founders of http://flightcaster.com http://flightcaster.com (tech startup) both have MBAs. Matt Soldo, a serial entrepreneur who has worked in both technology and management and founded his own startups, has an MBA. He currently works at Heroku.
        • jlgreco 13y ago
          Incredible. Truly. I would have never guessed somebody with an MBA might start a company or work in management. Somebody with an MBA who also is capable of technical things? Stunning. You have opened my eyes; clearly getting an MBA allows one to create incredible things. These are incredible. Which one of us is wearing the SV blinders again? What have MBAs done, in the capacity of MBAs, that is incredible? Founding or working at some tech startup is not incredible.
          • dylangs1030 13y ago
            I'm not wearing any blinders. That's the point. I have no loyalties or hatred towards anyone just because they have letters after their names. My examples are meant to show you that your "Us and Them" mentality with engineers and MBAs is just false and doesn't reflect reality, no matter how many anecdotes people throw around on HN. You asked for examples. I gave them. Now you're attacking me instead of my point. I've proven you wrong, bottomline. You just can't see past your anti-MBA bias.
• AnonJ 13y ago
  That's probably too far-stretched. In fact I believe conventional wisdom states the opposite, that those who get high scores in tests will likely be technical geniuses who understand how things work and do the hands-on stuffs, while those who manage are likely those who know how to talk but don't know how to study. MBA is more of a place to socialize, not to "study" things, right?
  • digikata 13y ago
    There's a cohort of people who do particularly bad in academic measures (especially the standardized testing sort that is in such fashion now), that are exceptionally good at what they do. I haven't seen a statistical study, but there are many, many anecdotal accounts of scientists, inventors, and businessmen who did poorly in academic settings but were brilliant.
  • TDL 13y ago
    "MBA is more of a place to socialize, not to 'study' things, right?" What? Go take a financial statements analysis class and then tell me how MBAs don't "study" things. There are certainly ways to coast through an MBA program, as there are ways to coast through many things. Simply because MBAs don't have to go through the mathematical rigor that an engineer or physicist does does not mean there is NO rigor or requirements necessary to attain an MBA. There are many vacuous, over-confident, arrogant MBAs out there, but that is part of the human condition not simply inherent in those who go earn MBAs. This broad (and widely inaccurate) characterization of hundreds of thousands of people is mind-boggling.
    • dylangs1030 13y ago
      I can't believe the egocentrism so many engineers demonstrate when talking about MBAs. It's like the popular kids vs the nerds in high school. It's...sad.
      • bhashkarsharma 13y ago
        Are you implying that the tables have turned?
• RyanZAG 13y ago
  I don't think it's the MBA degree itself that causes this. Most MBA programs go very heavily into the idea of culture and competitive advantage - and obviously stopping a core part of your culture like the 20% time would be against what most MBAs are taught. This problem has nothing to do with education and everything to do with short term professional management that is compensated based on short term results. If you want to blame anyone, you need to blame current financial thinking by most board of directors. Of course, most of those guys are just in it for the short term too. So ultimately you need to blame the guys with money who give it to people who don't know how to invest. I'm sure most of us, including me, are guilty of this as well.
  • SkyMarshal 13y ago
    >If you want to blame anyone, you need to blame current financial thinking by most board of directors. I don't have an MBA, but my understanding is that this is what MBA programs teach, and is at least partly to blame for Wall St's, and boards of directors, short-term, bottom-line, quarterly focus. There are some people in the MBA world trying to correct that, one of which I know of are the Throughput Accounting [1] advocates. Maybe more as well. Can't come soon enough. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throughput_Accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throughput_Accounting
    • RyanZAG 13y ago
      Not at all - MBAs teach company management and company finance. There really isn't anything in an MBA that would have anything to do with the job of corporate oversight that a board of directors handles. The board of directors are simply large shareholders who are put there to make sure management does what is in the best interests of share holders. In most large companies, these people are mostly made up of employees of pension funds and similar institutions. Their job is to try their best to make sure the company is committed to giving their investors a return of x% and are usually there because it is conventional thinking that having control of a company is in your best interests. Now obviously these guys have no idea what should be going on in a technology (or just about any other) company. They aren't really concerned with employees or anything like that - only with a few accounting and market figures such as return on equity, share price, potential acquisitions of other companies they have invested in, and whether or not to sell the company to others. Actually running the company or how the company works is the furthest thing from their minds. Now, as I said above, these guys are not actually to blame. They are just doing their jobs - giving returns to the guys who have dumped money into their funds. The people ultimately to blame are you and me. We put our money in these massive pension funds and similar. We don't even care where the money goes. Each year we check our statements and say 'oh, 13% returns only, maybe I should switch pension funds?'. As always, the problem is apathy, entitlement and 'well these guys are a big company, they must know what they are doing'.
• vitobcn 13y ago
  I really don't see the need to stereotype, and even less to call names. Personally, I have worked as a software developer, and I do also have an MBA, and I strongly believe that my broad/diverse education allows me to better interface with people from different backgrounds within a work environment. Are there ways to obtain broad skills (technical, management, etc.) which are more time effective, cost effective, etc.? Maybe, maybe not. Each person is free to make their own choice. However, back to the article's point, if Google's 20% is dying down it is ultimately due to Larry Page, who is clearly a technical guy, doesn't have an MBA (1) and most likely is seen as a "doer". (1) According to wikipedia, he actually received an honorary MBA for his entrepreneurial spirit.
  • SkyMarshal 13y ago
    >allows me to better interface with people from different backgrounds within a work environment. Personally, I like to relate to people, rather than interface with them.
    • jmduke 13y ago
      "Personally, I like to understand problems, rather than grok them."
      • panacea 13y ago
        "Personally, I like people"
        • skormos 13y ago
          Personally, I like persons.
      • Radix_ 13y ago
        The two following comments are spammy but the only real issue with jmduke's comment was the form. Had it been: >You could also say: "Personally, I like to understand problems, rather than grok them." It would have gotten the point across that the grandparent's comment was an unfair dig at a style of speech rather than the content of that speech.
• onebaddude 13y ago
  >"The top-10 MBA cult is awful." SV technorati pretentiousness is awful. >"MBA people love to go to school and get pieces of paper that say "pay me I'm smart." As opposed to some "Silicon Valley" types that don't have a clue about what it means to run a business, and say "pay me with investors money, I have lots of users!" >"I have to go in and deal with these assholes all the time. I have hard numbers, they have hand-wavey MBA speak bullshit." You sound like you don't have a clue what getting an MBA actually entails. Your comment is full of ignorance and generalizations. Where does this idea that "an MBA" made this decision even come from? Google is run by an engineer. Point your misinformed, misdirected, stereotype hatred elsewhere. This community is getting worse every day.
  • api 13y ago
    SV technorati pretentiousness is indeed awful sometimes, and stereotypical MBAs do not have a monopoly on brain-dead business ideas. But last I checked SV and California in general pumped out more innovation than the rest of the country combined, and is preparing to colonize another planet and electrify transport. There is obviously something fundamental in the "California mindset" that differs starkly from the majority of the rest of the world, and that ought to be understood. I think it has something to do with reasoning from first principles, and with an expansive risk-tolerant business culture. That risk tolerance and general liberal thinking is going to generate a fair amount of silly stuff, but it's also going to permit genius. I forget who said this, but I recall reading it somewhere: "the further West you go, the further into the future you go." I'd say it's not true literally but certainly philosophically.
    • jmduke 13y ago
      But last I checked SV and California in general pumped out more innovation than the rest of the country combined, and is preparing to colonize another planet and electrify transport. This is what people refer to as a 'reality distortion field'.
      • api 13y ago
        Reality distortion fields don't emit actual products that work. It's a field alright, and it does have some reality-distorting side effects, but there is actually a "there" there. If I had to boil it down I'd say it's this: (1) California believes in the future. People in California (stereotypically) think about what they can do tomorrow, building on what they have today. Everyone else thinks about what they already have today and fears losing it tomorrow. (2) California reasons from first principles more than elsewhere. Everyone else looks at what everyone else is doing and tries to superficially copy what looks like it works, or looks to the past. Ideas from the past will only get you what was done in the past, and other peoples' ideas will not make you competitive since they're everyone else's advantages. (Assuming you succeed in copying them at all, and don't just end up cargo-culting them.) I quoted this elsewhere in the thread. It bears repetition. "For the engine which drives Enterprise is not Thrift, but Profit." - John Maynard Keynes California runs on this.
• boomzilla 13y ago
  The root cause of this is company ownership. Even if Page wants to follow an innovative approach, he might not be able to convince the board and the big shareholders to invest long term because they want to see their shares "appreciated". If you want to keep innovating, the company need to stay nimble, with the owner(s) only interested in innovation. I don't know, maybe that's why the startup eco system works. Another model that seems to work as well is the "duel roles". For example, Jeff Bezos lets the MBA optimize the hell out of Amazon, while he can play with Blue Origin in his spare time and focuses on more innovative technology ideas. Again, this is possible because Bezos probably has far more influence at Amazon than Page at Google.
  • vidarh 13y ago
    Unless something has changed that I'm not aware of, Google has a share structure that gives Brin and Page effectively full control through shares in a separate class that has 10 times the voting power of the A shares that were offered in the IPO. So if Page can't convince "the board and the big shareholders" I believe it means he can't convince Brin, not some horde of faceless MBA's or institutional investors. Your assumption about Bezos relative influence over Amazon seems unlikely, as Bezos Amazon holdings and the lack of a similar share structure means Bezos has far less voting power at Amazon than Page has at Google. Last I heard, Bezos held less than 20% of the voting power at Amazon.
• nwzpaperman 13y ago
  Not surprised...I am hearing rumors that the "do no evil" policy is next to go. What then? It's the JDs and MBAs, IMO.