171–180 of 259 posts
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The book "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy" discusses this. There seems to be a group of people that think that "grow by 8.2 percent" is a strategy. It is not, it is a goal. Companies with a good strategy will eat the lunch of a company who doesn't know what a strategy is.
I absolutely love that book! I can’t recommend it enough.
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> How is Porsche stealing the limelight? With consistently better performance. The Taycan is a sports car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcKz1OGZ7_I > but they don't seem to offer the same range per buck that Tesla does? The VW ID.3 has similar WLTP range figures to the Tesla Model 3 and the ID.3 is cheaper.
Yep, the Model S is a large family sedan, that's why it's a bit absurd for it to win. My point was that a sports car from Porsche should be winning, and not by a little. That video is comparing the Turbo S (the $185k version of the Taycan) to the $92k version of the Model S. The $140k version is significantly faster, let alone the 2021 Roadster. The ID.3 seems to have a stated range of ~200 miles?
> The ID.3 seems to have a stated range of ~200 miles?
There are 3 usable battery sizes for 3 different range figures: 48kWh (205 miles WLTP), 58kWh (261 miles), and 77kWh (342 miles).
What’s the point of an MBA? Asking anyone this question who pursues the degree or has pursued the degree or insists on its value, often gives a non-answer. Like the following: * it helps with networking. * it helps with promotion. * it helps with advancement in career. * it helps with your resume. Boiling it down, “I can show off better and tout an imaginary quality”. If I was a person who was self employed or runnin…
Not sure who you're talking to, but the answers to this are pretty straightforward. If you're only ever planning to work at or run small companies, an MBA is not for you. That's not what it was originally designed for, nor what it's meant for today regardless of what the program marketing says. If that's you, then instead you should take some community college or online classes in basic finance, accounting, statistic…
I say education is an answer to a question. Figure out the question and the knowledge becomes easy to acquire.
Your answer lets me realize I may already know at least 60% of what is taught. The other 40% will be explored on a daily basis.
I, for one, sometimes miss the knowledge that an MBA might give me. I'm a technical CTO and I have some trouble with long term planning, budget, managing people, etc.
Managing people is more of a craft. Approach it the way you would learn to build furniture as a hobby. Gradually over time through practice and experimentation acquiring tools for your shop along the way.
One book I found really interesting on this theme is "Confronting Managerialism: How the Business Elite and Their Schools Threw Our Lives Out of Balance": https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A76WZ96/ Core to their point is that managers have basically become a caste. They define managerialism as "what occurs when a special group, called management, ensconces itself systemically in an organization and deprives owners and emp…
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Academia isn’t snuffing anything out. 1) American school education, and college education is amazing. ( if you can afford it). Talk to immigrant parents From other countries for a contra point. Crushing the soul of students isn’t fully installed in America, yet (which brings us to point 2) 2) It’s the economy. At some point, the American economy stopped working as well for blue collar roles as paths to middle class i…
> the American liberal arts system Related to your second and third points, I think there is at least some case that the U.S. has moved away from the idea of liberal arts schooling towards being more vocationally minded. The intent, going back as far as the mid-1800s with the Morrill Act, was specifically intended to help serve a new growing economy. If you ask, I bet more people look at college as a way to get a job…
Finally, he says something I can agree with. MBAs are for optimizing stable firms. They're walking death for startups, I personally have seen it happen.
I'm definitely never going to work for a startup with an MBA in charge ever ever again. They enjoy negotiating and often assume that their employees do too, so it's like pulling teeth to get the smallest issues dealt with, much less big ones like getting reasonable pay without having to raise a stink first. It was stupid and counterproductive.
He is onto something there. Bean counting is useful and companies cannot survive without good cashflow, but it should not become Mission A of the company, or engineering (and other) talent will look elsewhere. If one company's de facto mission statement is "We want to grow our market by 8.2 per cent and give our bosses higher Christmas bonuses" and another one comes and says "Guys, we want to fly to fscking Mars!", c…
He is in a very specific situation, he is the founder and the CEO and has a lot of money to burn. He wants to do big things and he can do them. A lot of companies have stock holders who expect some return every year without risking too much. As a society we sure would be better off if had more Elon Musk type company leaders, but for that too happen we would need more exceptional people like him (not going to happen)…
Maybe, but good ol' Elon would be dead and gone if the US Federal Government hadn't come through with a contract that bailed him out.
He was literally begging people like Bezos to lend him money because he couldn't make payroll.
Survivor bias is a thing.
"I determined absolutely that never would I join a company in which finance came before the work or in which bankers or financiers had a part. And further that, if there were no way to get started in the kind of business that I thought could be managed in the interest of the public, then I simply would not get started at all. For my own short experience, together with what I saw going on around me, was quite enough p…