I am an MBA, and also have a Masters in Comp Sci. Technical Nerd. Why all the hate?
Forget Wall Street. M.B.A.s Want to Work for Amazon
71–80 of 84 posts
Re: Forget Wall Street. M.B.A.s Want to Work for Amazon
#72A common complaint everywhere within Amazon is that there are too many chiefs not enough indians. For every doer, it feels like there are 20 talkers with ideas but no ability to execute on them. Everybody wants to be the strategy guy. Good leadership, in practical terms, becomes your ability to convince a technical team or analyst to add something to their already overloaded queue of things to do, in between your sch…
I've had a similar problem where sometimes it seems like my company has too many "software architects".
Re: Forget Wall Street. M.B.A.s Want to Work for Amazon
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think if you compare across all MBA programs in the US and all CS programs, and account for debt, you'll find that the average CS program has a better return. This is because even shitty MBAs cost a fortune and don't necessarily teach a lot of useful skills, whereas even a shitty CS degree teaches you to program enough to be employable. Now if you compare a Harvard or Wharton MBA to say a Stanford or MIT CS degree,…
>whereas even a shitty CS degree teaches you to program enough to be employable I met someone with a CS degree from Stanford who couldn't do a basic HTTP request in their main programming language (with access to Google / documentation), nor implement and reverse a linked list. These seem like really basic things that anyone with a CS degree should be able to do... I think you should rephrase your statement to "even…
Maybe they hadn’t worked in that area recently. If you work on a large software application your focus might be very narrow.
It’s like saying you don’t know what 13 times 14 is off the top of your head so you aren’t good at maths.
Re: Forget Wall Street. M.B.A.s Want to Work for Amazon
#74Sigh, looks like this one's going to be the weekly HN MBA Hate Thread™. In defense of the degree: Has it ever occurred to you guys that maybe some (many?) of these people were hackers prior to getting their MBA, and are very competent? Quite a few of my classmates had engineering (including software) backgrounds, and even the ones who had engineering degrees but didn't actually code were still clued in. Why this blan…
> by the way, outside the valley, most companies consider it a plus Maybe that's why they will never come up with the next Apple/Google/SpaceX/etc. Every single MBA I have met, without exception, has been extremely good at talking and making presentations. Ask them to do real work, and they will find a million excuses. Another thing I have noticed, is the kind of people attracted to doing an MBA. They have seen all o…
SpaceX? Elon Musk studied Business and Physics at Wharton/Penn and recommends that any founder should have some MBA style business training.
Re: Forget Wall Street. M.B.A.s Want to Work for Amazon
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
>whereas even a shitty CS degree teaches you to program enough to be employable I met someone with a CS degree from Stanford who couldn't do a basic HTTP request in their main programming language (with access to Google / documentation), nor implement and reverse a linked list. These seem like really basic things that anyone with a CS degree should be able to do... I think you should rephrase your statement to "even…
Maybe they hadn’t worked in that area recently. If you work on a large software application your focus might be very narrow. It’s like saying you don’t know what 13 times 14 is off the top of your head so you aren’t good at maths.
It's more like saying you can't figure out what 13 times 14 is with access to a pen (or pencil) and paper.
Re: Forget Wall Street. M.B.A.s Want to Work for Amazon
#76Sigh, looks like this one's going to be the weekly HN MBA Hate Thread™. In defense of the degree: Has it ever occurred to you guys that maybe some (many?) of these people were hackers prior to getting their MBA, and are very competent? Quite a few of my classmates had engineering (including software) backgrounds, and even the ones who had engineering degrees but didn't actually code were still clued in. Why this blan…
> by the way, outside the valley, most companies consider it a plus Maybe that's why they will never come up with the next Apple/Google/SpaceX/etc. Every single MBA I have met, without exception, has been extremely good at talking and making presentations. Ask them to do real work, and they will find a million excuses. Another thing I have noticed, is the kind of people attracted to doing an MBA. They have seen all o…
I'm a developer who is interested in getting an MBA. One thing I've learned is that like any degree, an MBA from one school is not equal to an MBA from another.
Finding an online MBA offering that is decent quality is next to impossible or the price far exceeds what most people are willing to pay. I've tried some courses from MIT & Wharton online. Their content is great & possibly well worth the price if you are able to relocate & can afford the cost. I would imagine a few of the other top schools are worth it as well. After that, I would seriously question the value from most any other MBA.
On a side note, many people with an MBA often say the most valuable thing they received was a "network".
Re: Forget Wall Street. M.B.A.s Want to Work for Amazon
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> by the way, outside the valley, most companies consider it a plus Maybe that's why they will never come up with the next Apple/Google/SpaceX/etc. Every single MBA I have met, without exception, has been extremely good at talking and making presentations. Ask them to do real work, and they will find a million excuses. Another thing I have noticed, is the kind of people attracted to doing an MBA. They have seen all o…
SpaceX? Elon Musk studied Business and Physics at Wharton/Penn and recommends that any founder should have some MBA style business training.
Wharton is an elite school for Business. Very few schools match their education in business. Had Elon went to a random state school that isn't a top 5 business school, he might not be saying that.
Re: Forget Wall Street. M.B.A.s Want to Work for Amazon
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard so many bad things about it. Someone always eventually chimes in with "it depends what team you're on" but somehow I don't find that very comforting. My point is programmers already shouldn't want to work there, but it's Amazon, so.
> My point is programmers already shouldn't want to work there, but it's Amazon, so. I don't understand how you can make a blanket statement like that. Why should programmers not want to work there?
Because it seems like a nightmare based on many things, but, again, you always get the people that are like "my team is amazing and full of geniuses who ship everything on time and never disagree".
Look, if you want to work there, go nuts. It seems like a mostly bad place to me. I'm sorry for that "blanket statement". (Of course if I said it seems like a great place to work that would be just fine.)
Re: Forget Wall Street. M.B.A.s Want to Work for Amazon
#79That would explain some of the stupid things that are going on at Amazon right now - e.g. they are now witch-hunting new sellers to prove they aren't selling counterfeits by disabling their accounts right after they list their first items literally seconds after they do it and then demand all kinds of proof. I was shown an email where Amazon stated: "you might be selling counterfeits" without company selling a single…
Wow, this is amazing news! Amazon is actually doing something about counterfeits?
Yeah, like ignoring those Chinese companies that spawn up quickly, dump 100,000 items on the marketplace, then disappear; and instead chase naive new sellers that didn't expect to climb algorithmic wall when they paid for "seller privileges"?
Re: Forget Wall Street. M.B.A.s Want to Work for Amazon
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think if you compare across all MBA programs in the US and all CS programs, and account for debt, you'll find that the average CS program has a better return. This is because even shitty MBAs cost a fortune and don't necessarily teach a lot of useful skills, whereas even a shitty CS degree teaches you to program enough to be employable. Now if you compare a Harvard or Wharton MBA to say a Stanford or MIT CS degree,…
>whereas even a shitty CS degree teaches you to program enough to be employable I met someone with a CS degree from Stanford who couldn't do a basic HTTP request in their main programming language (with access to Google / documentation), nor implement and reverse a linked list. These seem like really basic things that anyone with a CS degree should be able to do... I think you should rephrase your statement to "even…
Eh, some languages make HTTP really annoying, and if you never work with that it could be a slog. But, this is anecdata. I guess I could clarify; mediocre to poor CS programs serve as a strong employability signal than an equivalent MBA often for less than 1/4 the price, and programming offers a number of good opportunities to rub digital elbows with well known/connected programmers. No such opportunity exists for MBAs insofar as I am aware.
I guess my thesis is that if you can't go top 10, don't get an MBA unless you company pays for it.