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>"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.

>"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.
    - jmduke 13y ago
      Reality distortion fields don't emit actual products that work. I'm not saying that a lot of great stuff doesn't come out of California/SV (just like Apple, for whom the 'reality distortion field' thing was first coined, also produces great products). The casualness with which you suppose that California alone is producing more innovation the entire rest of the country suggests that you're overwhelmingly focused on a very, very specific definition of 'innovation'.
      - api 13y ago
        I was talking about an idea more than a place, and should have made that clear. The places where innovation comes from are going to be places that believe in the future, are open to experimentation and risk, and reason from first principles instead of cargo-cultism. It just seems like California (and SV in particular) has an above-average amount of these things.
        dylangs1030 13y ago
- mynewwork 13y ago
  How much innovation has come out of San Diego, LA, Fresno or Sacramento? How many tech workers moved to silicon valley from somewhere else after college? I'm not sure 'California mindset' is the right way of framing the innovation inside silicon valley.
  - digikata 13y ago
    San Diego is something of a Silicon Valley for genetics and other life sciences, LA is/was something of a hub for aerospace and arguably movie technology (it's more diversified now, but does have a Silicon Beach movement). I'm not sure what objective measurement one could use to really determine "innovation", maybe economic activity from industries or products established within the last x years?
    - cpeterso 13y ago
      And Qualcomm is headquartered in San Diego.
- jarek 13y ago
  > electrify transport. Oh good, maybe you can show Europeans and Asians how to get around their countries without internal combustion engines.
JPKab 13y ago
"This community is getting worse every day." You've been in "this community" for less than 3 months according to your username. I'm not SV technorati, and I've run a business, as well as been a founder in a non-tech business that grew to 150 employees. I know business, and I know what I said is correct. "SV technorati" is itself a stereotype.
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  It doesn't matter how long he's been here. His statement about the community may have been hyperbolic; do you have a real rebuttal against the content? Or will you nitpick one sentence you can attack? SV Tehnorati is a stereotype because he's drawing comparisons, he wouldn't normally make a steretype argument unless you had already. The point was to demonstrate a different perspective, and this entire thread is just demonstrating a disgusting level of stereotyping for a category of people - MBAs. The bottom line is that there is nothing inherently evil or pejorative about an MBA. Judge human beings on individual merit, not on a piece of paper.
- dkrich 13y ago
  Yep, absolutely correct. Well, save for Nike, which was founded by an MBA. Oh yeah, and Apple, whose CEO has an MBA and was personally selected by Steve Jobs. Well, now that I think about it, Meg Whitman, the current CEO of HP and former CEO of eBay has an MBA. And wasn't Bonobos founded by a Stanford MBA? I think Birchbox was born by a group of MBA's as well. Except for those and probably thousands of other exceptions, your logic is water-tight and well-reasoned. Kudos, sir.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - bskap 13y ago
    But Apple's founder didn't have an MBA. You know, the guy that came back in 1997 and brought the company from the brink of bankruptcy after it's collapse under the leadership of John Sculley, MBA.

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.
  - jmduke 13y ago
    Reality distortion fields don't emit actual products that work. I'm not saying that a lot of great stuff doesn't come out of California/SV (just like Apple, for whom the 'reality distortion field' thing was first coined, also produces great products). The casualness with which you suppose that California alone is producing more innovation the entire rest of the country suggests that you're overwhelmingly focused on a very, very specific definition of 'innovation'.
    - api 13y ago
      I was talking about an idea more than a place, and should have made that clear. The places where innovation comes from are going to be places that believe in the future, are open to experimentation and risk, and reason from first principles instead of cargo-cultism. It just seems like California (and SV in particular) has an above-average amount of these things.
      - dylangs1030 13y ago
mynewwork 13y ago
How much innovation has come out of San Diego, LA, Fresno or Sacramento? How many tech workers moved to silicon valley from somewhere else after college? I'm not sure 'California mindset' is the right way of framing the innovation inside silicon valley.
- digikata 13y ago
  San Diego is something of a Silicon Valley for genetics and other life sciences, LA is/was something of a hub for aerospace and arguably movie technology (it's more diversified now, but does have a Silicon Beach movement). I'm not sure what objective measurement one could use to really determine "innovation", maybe economic activity from industries or products established within the last x years?
  - cpeterso 13y ago
    And Qualcomm is headquartered in San Diego.
jarek 13y ago
> electrify transport. Oh good, maybe you can show Europeans and Asians how to get around their countries without internal combustion engines.

JPKab 13y ago

"This community is getting worse every day." You've been in "this community" for less than 3 months according to your username. I'm not SV technorati, and I've run a business, as well as been a founder in a non-tech business that grew to 150 employees. I know business, and I know what I said is correct. "SV technorati" is itself a stereotype.

dylangs1030 13y ago
It doesn't matter how long he's been here. His statement about the community may have been hyperbolic; do you have a real rebuttal against the content? Or will you nitpick one sentence you can attack? SV Tehnorati is a stereotype because he's drawing comparisons, he wouldn't normally make a steretype argument unless you had already. The point was to demonstrate a different perspective, and this entire thread is just demonstrating a disgusting level of stereotyping for a category of people - MBAs. The bottom line is that there is nothing inherently evil or pejorative about an MBA. Judge human beings on individual merit, not on a piece of paper.
dkrich 13y ago
Yep, absolutely correct. Well, save for Nike, which was founded by an MBA. Oh yeah, and Apple, whose CEO has an MBA and was personally selected by Steve Jobs. Well, now that I think about it, Meg Whitman, the current CEO of HP and former CEO of eBay has an MBA. And wasn't Bonobos founded by a Stanford MBA? I think Birchbox was born by a group of MBA's as well. Except for those and probably thousands of other exceptions, your logic is water-tight and well-reasoned. Kudos, sir.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- bskap 13y ago
  But Apple's founder didn't have an MBA. You know, the guy that came back in 1997 and brought the company from the brink of bankruptcy after it's collapse under the leadership of John Sculley, MBA.