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To me, the obvious sign of the bubble isn't the high valuations, but the asphyxiating red tide of MBA-culture people who are in technology for all the wrong rea
by michaelochurch 13y ago
To me, the obvious sign of the bubble isn't the high valuations, but the asphyxiating red tide of MBA-culture people who are in technology for all the wrong reasons.
They're an invasive species. They come in during bubble times, compete successfully for attention and funding, because they have superior social polish (and, more importantly, can exploit the "just like me" bias of chickenhawking VCs) to the real technologists, build a self-referential junk-pile of nothing, and then leave just before the silly bubble-world they've created collapses.
Then real technologists get a few years of relative calm and meritocracy (although there's not nearly as much money in it, then) before the cycle repeats.
Technology is incredibly rewarding and I wouldn't want to be in any other career, but it's hard and you gotta be real to get any good at it. It takes years of realness-- hard work (often unrecognized) that kicks your mental ass-- just to get the basics. When people who aren't real try to come in and get the rewards-- Harvard MBA CEOs who don't even understand linear algebra setting themselves up as "data whizzes" because they were able to hire smart people-- it's irksome.
- adventured 13y agoThis. Along with the banks / bankers that start drooling over the crumbs they can pick up and 'making deals happen.' These parasites mostly only show up when the money is flowing in a big way, and they start pushing everything higher and attempting to generate absurd mega deals (eg AOL + Time Warner; HP + Compaq; Nortel + Bay Networks; Microsoft + WebTV; Yahoo + Geocites & Broadcast.com; endless others).
- seivan 13y agoThis... I've met them, I've seen them. They are scum. I've noticed they tend to ingrain themselves into startup news and blogs or similar things. I know some MBA's that run some startup news site in Stockholm/Sweden as well as their own startup. Really disgusting personality. Really fits into the mild of "superior social polish and exploitation".
- jstandard 13y agoHow do you define "real technologists" and how do they handle all of the other aspects (marketing, sales, operations) better than "MBA-culture"? Your statements as a whole seem to take a very narrow view that technology companies are purely a meritocratic enterprise based solely on the quality of technological contribution (however one can judge that). This has never and will never be the case. Technologists are just as apt to build steaming heaps of bad technology for technology's sake and contribute just as much to the bubble as everyone else. I think the MBA hate is a meme that manages to perpetuate as an easy scapegoat for people making bad decisions, regardless of background.