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Stanford MBAs Shift Away from Tech
- GuiA 12y agoStanford MBAs in tech are fucking weird. I worked with a few, and had one for a CEO for 2 years. The gist of it is that they all sucked at tech but thought they didn't (trying to manage engineering teams in ridiculous micromanagy self important ways), were all very self centered, and all came from very wealthy families, being able to raise a few hundred thousands from "friends and family" (!?) and spending 4 day weekends in Tahoe and LA even though "we're bootstrapping so I'm only taking $30k a year right now". I know, I know, anecdote != data. Having talked about it with friends, I know I'm not alone. I even see it mentioned in HN comments every once in a while (eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083219).
- joshu 12y agoas an angel investor, mba founders is a big warning sign. so there's that.
- gaze 12y agoSo this is a real thing? It's not just me turned off by the strangely premeditated handshakes?
- easytiger 12y agoMBA courses are now being promoted in Europe and many people see it as a cancer
- dqdo 12y agoMBA stands for "more bad advice". The current MBA curriculum is mainly based on knowledge that we know in the 1980s. Most of the advance science and management processes that we have developed since then are not in the curriculum. So basically the MBA students are unfortunately learning outdated knowledge - half of which is wrong.
- davidw 12y agoDo you have a citation for that? I'm genuinely curious.
- dqdo 12y agoI heard that term at a conference given by Sidney Dekker. Professor Dekker is a world famous expert in risk and accident management. The links from his talk and books are below. He said "MBA stands for more bad advice" at 14:00. It is worth a watch even if you are not interested in engineering risk management. http://vimeo.com/102167635 http://vimeo.com/102167635 http://sidneydekker.com/books/ http://sidneydekker.com/books/ From my own personal experience as a researcher in project management. Many of the advances in project management are not currently being taught in school. This is due to the fact that it takes so long for the idea to migrate to the core curriculum. Most undergraduate education (even some aspects of CS) has not really changed for decades. Generally undergraduate education is behind current research by about 20 years and this will vary from field to field. The masters might get you closer to the 10 year range. The PhD is the only time where you are at the current state of knowledge. Although this is not quite true since recent journal articles are usually 2 years old (the review process is so long).
- davidw 12y agoI'm more interested in the 'good practices' than the snarky one-liner. I don't have an MBA nor intend to get one, but it seems like a legitimate thing to pursue for some people in some circumstances.
- dmpk2k 12y agoIs there a book you can recommend so we can get a reasonably current overview?
- dqdo 12y agoI study project management so I only know about things from the production perspective. The following reading should get you a modern view of managing projects. http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2000/isbn951385566X/ http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2000/isbn951385566X/ http://www.leanconstruction.org/media/docs/ballard2000-dissertation.pdf http://www.leanconstruction.org/media/docs/ballard2000-disse...
- desdiv 12y agoMany people share that sentiment. Elon Musk sees an MBA as a detriment when hiring: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201311/profiles.cfm http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201311/profiles.cfm
- ronilan 12y agoYah bookmark it. Always beware of those who have acquired some knowledge and the credentials for such. So that's this.
- joshu 12y agothere are occasional exceptions, but it's a been a good first approximation for me.
- pptr1 12y agoOn that note, why does YC let so many MBA founders in?
- bengali3 12y agoI haven't seen any stats to say that it's lopsided or not, but i'd wager because education alone doesn't define an individual or the company?
- foobarqux 12y agoBecause people who matter still see an elite MBA as a useful imprimatur.
- Iftheshoefits 12y agoYC lets them in because the people making that decision believe said founders have some (unspecificied, but non-trivially non-zero) chance at building a company they can sell (to other investors or "the public" in an IPO) for far more than they invest in it. It seems people are making a category error with respect to YC. YC's purpose is not to foster a cradle of technical innovation with an engineer focus; it's to maximize returns on high-risk investments in what happen to be technology companies. Engineers in the startup world are like engineers everywhere else in technology work: second-class workers who exist to expend their life in the form of labor for (relatively) token compensation in return, with lots of ego stroking to help deflect attention from that.
- rdtsc 12y ago> Engineers in the startup world are like engineers everywhere else in technology work: second-class workers who exist to expend their life in the form of labor for (relatively) token compensation in return Be careful, that breaks the marketing veil too much ;-) The problem is that to attract and keep engineers busy and happy it is important to tell them stories about changing the world, "breakthrough technologies", paradigm shifts. Also it is important to explain inability of many engineers to discern how equity gets allocated, how options and stock work and so on. "oh look you get 10000 shares!" type tricks. Now, granted, those are not mutually exclusive, some do work on breakthrough technologies.
- bengali3 12y agocurious, but do you differentiate between if they're also the technical founder or not? Asked another way: Are you identifying this as a lack of tech expertise, or as a 'poisoning' of the mind irregardless of the experiences? Thanks!
- joshu 12y agoYes, though I am still not thrilled with it. I've just seen too many "two mbas and a PowerPoint" startups, "we just need some money to build a prototype" I would rather see a prototype (or a soft launch with a little traction) than a PowerPoint that poorly explains the implications ("lipstick is a 40 billion:ur business, if we get just ONE PERCENT") anyway. The trading desk I worked on, many years ago, did not hire folks wih MBAs either. Inheritance?
- drzaiusapelord 12y agoSmall world, I was an editor at memepool. Good to see you're still around in the trenches here after the big delicious sale.
- joshu 12y agoYay! I should reboot it. Something that isn't eithet delicious or reddit.
- ryandrake 12y agoI'd love to understand the reasoning behind this generalization. Do you object to the content of the MBA curriculum? Is there data that suggests a causal relationship between founders with this credential and business failure?
- joshu 12y agoI just don't like investing in tech startups where the founders have neither engineering nor product skill.
- johnnybazooka 12y agoWhat do you mean by product skill?
- joshu 12y agoproduct is engineering (as in negotiation of constraints) as much as building. i look for that.
- pedalpete 12y agoI had the same reaction initially, basically thinking 'good riddance', but then stopped for a second and realized they are talking about tech, not start-ups. I have a lot (too many, more than I ever thought I'd have) friends who are MBAs, and their is a place for them in larger technology companies, they just shouldn't be involved in developing breakthrough products. They are taught to manage big business and eke efficiency out of large systems, start-ups don't fit that mould.
- 3beard 12y agoDon't forget that only ~1% of startups develop breakthrough products, because only ~1% of startups break through.
- qwtel 12y agoNot sure if you are just trolling, but I'm pretty convinced that ~100% of startups are developing 'breakthrough' products. For various reasons only ~1% turn out to be very successful at it. From an after-the-fact standpoint it's easy to point at the losers and say all kinds of nasty things about them. But since you can't reliably pick the winners of tomorrow, nor can the losers reliably pick themselves (they are usually both at different times) any sentiment towards failed startups being a waste is really just a misconception.
- brianbreslin 12y ago5 minutes of browsing on producthunt should change your opinion that 100% of startups are developing breakthrough products.
- pzxc 12y agoMaybe it'd be more precise to say 100% of startups believe they're developing breakthrough products?
- hwang89 12y agoI'm wondering if we worked at the same company. We got press in TC in order to reach out to the "nerds".
- capkutay 12y ago"they all sucked at tech but thought they didn't" Gah...these are the worst people! The worst is one they spew out all their personal assumptions as though its the divine word that all must obey and follow. People who really know tech share the same trait; they listen and learn. Every engineer knows that learning new things is part of overcoming challenges. When someone acts like they know it all, that's usually a good indicator that they don't know shit.
- amirmc 12y agoI've known engineers who fit your MBA description and MBAs who fit your engineer description. It's about people in the end.
- jedc 12y agoObligatory link to Hunter Walk's great post on exactly this point: http://hunterwalk.com/2011/12/24/its-fine-to-get-an-mba-but-dont-be-an-mba/ http://hunterwalk.com/2011/12/24/its-fine-to-get-an-mba-but-...
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- michaelochurch 12y agoDamaso Effect. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/vc-istan-8-the-damaso-effect/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/vc-istan-8-th... https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/an-insight-on-the-damaso-effect/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/an-insight-o... My attitude toward these numbers is... how the fuck are we not organizing? If a straight-out-of-school Stanford MBA is worth $300k, then I'm worth $750k at least on that piece of data alone, and I'm not the best programmer out there. What in fuck's name are we doing posting here, with evidence like that of the need to organize? More (highly relevant, IMO) blog posts on the topic of what engineers are actually worth: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/whats-a-mid-career-software-engineer-actually-worth-try-779000-per-year-as-a-lower-bound/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/whats-a-mid-c... http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/software-engineer-salaries-arent-inflated-at-least-not-for-the-99/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/software-engi...
- mliker 12y agoYour sample size is too small to judge all Stanford MBAs. This is Hacker News. Please bring more substance to the table.
- cylinder 12y agoPart of the point of boards like this is to be able to share anecdotes from the field. That's why I come here. While your point about sample size is true please don't discourage this.
- rdtsc 12y agoI interview some college kids and that is sometimes the case. "I don't know technology but I want to manage people". Or some stay in the CS degree but switch focus to "UI design" or "HCI" and so on. It is ok to switch, but after a talking to a many it seem the reason is that a few core CS classes were getting too hard to they switched.
- Animats 12y agoAway from tech, back into finance. It's not like they're going into manufacturing or something useful. "Finance was able to reclaim its No. 1 position at Stanford because of some extraordinary pay packages it dangled in front of the newly minted MBAs. Graduates who accepted jobs in private equity—12% of the entire class—pulled down median base starting salaries of $170,000, 36% higher than the $125,000 median base for the entire class and $20,000 higher than last year’s $150,000 median in private equity. The PE crowd also grabbed some of the highest signing bonuses and guaranteed other compensation. The average sign-on bonus in private equity was $46,250, highest of any sector..."
- 7Figures2Commas 12y agoYeah, it's not like those useless folks on Wall Street have ever helped manufacturers or tech companies. Oh wait[1][2]. [1] http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/progress/titan/ http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/progress/titan/ [2] http://fortune.com/2014/10/08/wellington-management-gets-into-pre-ipo-game-with-new-fund/ http://fortune.com/2014/10/08/wellington-management-gets-int...
- yen223 12y agoHelp me out here, because I have a very tough time imagining a world where society is worse off because financial companies didn't exist. Is it really the case that if Goldman Sachs didn't exist, Titan International somehow can't exist either?
- Meekro 12y agoCompanies don't exist to improve society, but to provide something of value to their customers in exchange for money. If society benefits along the way, that's a happy coincidence. A plumber will fix your leaky sink, and that benefits you personally -- whether it benefits society or not is really beside the point. Similarly, investment firms and hedge funds will benefit their clients by investing their money and (hopefully) getting them a good return.
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- palosanto 12y agoWell, shit. How are any of us toiling away in tech going to create value now?
- grabcocque 12y agoI guess the primary function of private equity is to run companies into the ground for a quick tax writeoff. And destroying viable companies efficiently is something to which MBAs are uniquely suited.
- badname 12y agoGood riddance
- reledi 12y agoAn 8% decrease from one year to the next isn't very newsworthy IMO. This trend may not continue next year for all we know.
- nt591 12y agoThere's a weird attack on MBAs for not being good at creating value in tech. But the biggest, most successful new tech companies over the last few years are hardly valuable in the grand scheme of things. Social networks are just new advertising platforms. Sure, there are companies like SpaceX, but I'd imagine the vast majority of people here on HN are not building anything so significant. So why the outrage? Live and let live.
- pinaceae 12y agoat best, an MBA signals that a person does not know what job they like and are in for a career change. it can augment existing, core skills. haven't gotten/seen a candidate where an MBA was the core of his/her skillset. if you get an MBA at very expensive institutions, you also get access to a network of likely-minded, rather rich people. personnally, if you're already in tech and love it, getting an MBA seems like a giant waste of time.
- refurb 12y agoWhat on earth is a guaranteed bonus? If it's guaranteed, then it's not a bonus. I've seen numbers like this before for PE. They make some assumptions about the fund's returns to come up with the $300K in "guaranteed bonus".
- maephet 12y agoWith any group of people, you always have a spectrum of talent and usefulness. I've worked with Stanford CS grads who would shock you with the inability to produce anything useful without handholding and worked with Stanford MBAs that I was surprised could even get their pants on in the morning. The problem is that the admissions process for most of these programs is less about the numbers and more about your ability to network or tell a compelling life story. If you can tell a story that impresses the admission folks, you're likely to get in. Sometimes this is reflective of actual talent, sometimes its a reflection of great story telling. That being said, there a few incredibly talented and intelligent people in each class that will continue to allow these types of institutions hold the prestige that they do.