Taking two years out of your life to study business full-time will improve your business judgement. That this is controversial always surprised me.
Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech
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Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech
#52As many have noted, it's not necessarily 1:1 useful in the context of advanced skills training. However unsavory, many mid to large tech companies have a relatively high concentration of engineers who later received MBA's in very senior positions. So yes - the cliche that it's a way to climb the corporate ladder can still ring true for tech, if the tech company you want to work for is structured in the conventional way.
Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech
#53Would she be where she is without her Harvard MBA? Its not all about the education. Its about the doors it opens and the connections you make.
More important was her connection to Larry Summers, the Secretary of Treasury. She was given a role that far exceeded her experience, which gave her an advantage over the other 2000 Harvard MBA grads in her class.
Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech
#54I'm a developer at a financial services company. I was content to be a developer and let the "business" folks define our stories and I'd just code them. I never understood the application I was building on a deep level--it was always superficial. A friend convinced me to take a few MBA classes at a local university. The first class was accounting. It opened my eyes to understanding what our product and business owner…
This has been my experience as well - getting a deeper, business insight into the applications that I was building for my customers. It has also helped me in one more way - getting a feel and helping me understand why my own company behaved the way it did - including business strategy, sales dynamics as well as HR policies and practices.
IMO, you can go a long way by picking up a few basic textbooks for whatever your coding. A basic understanding of terminology is really useful and takes far less time than going to class.
PS: If you have never looked into the topic an MBA has plenty of useful ideas. But, I find the cost / benefit of getting an MBA is a negative indicator.
Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech
#55Honestly the MBA has always mostly been an advanced degree for people who didn't get an advanced degree in a real subject. Lets people tick the 'grad school' box. The real world value has always been quite questionable and yes I'd agree here that in tech it's mostly useless, if not actually even a disadvantage. For what's it's worth nearly all the excellent executives I've met over the years didn't have an MBA and ne…
> For what's it's worth nearly all the excellent executives I've met over the years didn't have an MBA and nearly all the worst ones did...
I sort of draw a comparison between that and something I heard the director of a local accelerator say once: "We look for founders who are open to taking advice from mentors, but at the same time, don't take everything everyone says to them as gospel."
I think there's something similar to an MBA program. The people who do best are the ones who are able to take what they've learned and run with it, rather than use exactly what was taught in school as playbook for every business.
Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech
#56I'm a developer at a financial services company. I was content to be a developer and let the "business" folks define our stories and I'd just code them. I never understood the application I was building on a deep level--it was always superficial. A friend convinced me to take a few MBA classes at a local university. The first class was accounting. It opened my eyes to understanding what our product and business owner…
So, for a financial services company a MBA will offer vertical expertise.
Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech
#57I'm always skeptical about stuff like this. Sandberg's springboard into her career was two-fold: working at McKinsey after HBS, and working under Larry Summers, who was her thesis advisor at Harvard UG. She went to Google as a VP after her stint in government.
There is a huge "getting your foot in the door" advantage to that credential. I can totally believe she didn't use much of what she learned at HBS in what she did at Google. But would she ever have gotten that VP job at Google without that sterling resume?
Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech
#58I'm a developer at a financial services company. I was content to be a developer and let the "business" folks define our stories and I'd just code them. I never understood the application I was building on a deep level--it was always superficial. A friend convinced me to take a few MBA classes at a local university. The first class was accounting. It opened my eyes to understanding what our product and business owner…
So, for a financial services company a MBA will offer vertical expertise.
For finance in particular, yes, but business decisions at any company are driven by similar core concepts taught in those same classes.
Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech
#59I wonder if she would still become COO of Facebook without Harvard MBA and all the oportunities resulted from it. MBA is probably really not necessary, but if you have the oportunity to do one on a top school, it may open some doors and expand your network. At least it has no negative effects (if you can efford it). Especially if you have technical background and want to move to management position. It simply diversi…
The issue with pointing to things like "the Harvard MBA" is that people who are selected into top tier programs are likely to have done just fine on their own anyway... so it's really hard to say that the MBA is why she was successful. I think she was successful because of qualities she already had, not something she learned in business school.
The assumption underlying your point is that Harvard does a good job selecting people who have the qualities to be successful and would be successful anyway. That's probably true. But the catch is that lots of employers make the same assumption, and use the Harvard credential to screen the candidate pool. Which makes total sense if the assumption is true, but also makes it risky to forgo the credential on the reasoning that if you are smart enough to get into Harvard, you'll be successful anyway.
Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech
#60I'm a developer at a financial services company. I was content to be a developer and let the "business" folks define our stories and I'd just code them. I never understood the application I was building on a deep level--it was always superficial. A friend convinced me to take a few MBA classes at a local university. The first class was accounting. It opened my eyes to understanding what our product and business owner…
Can I offer a different point of view? I think that the situation you were in would have benefitted from any effort to learn the other aspects of the business. Going to b-school to do so was just one path. Alternatively you could have sought out someone in the business and asked them for help on learning the other part of the business. Its not universal but I've never met someone who wouldn't help me learn the business better if it helped me to provide a better product.
I think the point that Sandberg might have been making was there are some good fundamentals learned in going to business school, however, in tech we move so fast that the education is diluted.
I'd also say that in tech we are pre-disposed to attract a lot of self-educated/self-starter types, those folks seem to take a modular approach where if they are deficient in some piece of information they go out and learn it.