I think he's confusing several issues. Markets are self regulating, normally. But when the government intervenes with pressure to loan to people who can't afford the loans, then has Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guarantee the securities (so the lender is not directly at risk), they become much less self regulating. Funny that people think this crisis is a reason for more government intervention. Conservatism has had a lot of bad press for the last 40 years, but maybe those old conservative bankers weren't such a bad thing.
RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise
31–40 of 57 posts
Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise
#32This would be a good place to mention a book I enjoyed reading recently:
"Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School" https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594201757?tag=dedasys-20 (yes, it has my affiliate link)
It's written by a pleasantly cynical, yet curious Englishman. It's pretty interesting to hear about the whole experience, the mindset, and some of the people involved. A particularly relevant (for me) passage:
"Rubenstein looked like any other Wall Street elder statesman, in a blue pinstriped suit and owlish tortoiseshell glasses. But the moment he spoke, eh revealed a droll, self-deprecating wit. The difference between corporate leaders and those who start their own businesses, I had observed, was startling. The latter come across as so much smarter and independent-minded, so much less prone to platitudes, so much more comfortable in their own skins. There seems to be an anarchic streak in anyone who has taken a real risk in his life. And even when it has to burn its way through a pinstriped suit, it shows."
That sort of hints at one of the "problems" with teaching business - there's lots of useful stuff you can learn, but there is also some natural, innate talent there, that doesn't necessarily correspond to doing well at an MBA course. So perhaps it's best to get out there, get some experience, and then just do it.
Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for commenting, and let me put to you a question that bothered me about this superficial article: If MBA programs are a place where people are taught technical details they won't need to know to fulfill the get-rich-quick fantasy that brought them there, what are those irrelevant technical details? What's your curricula, and what makes it valuable or not valuable?
you can argue that an MBA is very shallow on technical skills. There is a large difference between MBA, and getting something like Masters in Finance. MBA is the more generic one, where you get to learn fewer skills, many of which you can learn while working. Somebody with real finance skills, is more valuable in my eyes. Having done a year part time program, I can say that the number one thing I learned there was th…
you can argue that an MBA is very shallow on technical skills. There is a large difference between MBA, and getting something like Masters in Finance.
First of all, the top-tier programs aren't all the same. The University of Chicago MBA program, for instance, is widely considered finance-centric since it has a relatively low number of required core courses, so a student can (and many do) choose a curriculum that is very finance heavy and will end up with a better finance education than most people with straight finance degrees. However, you could end up pigeon-holing yourself in the same way you would with a straight finance degree, and this is a common reason for someone deciding against University of Chicago, especially if they already have a strong finance background.
The fact is that someone with an MBA in finance will be better equipped for pretty much any senior position than someone with a straight finance degree. There are plenty of people who can do finance, there's even probably an oversupply right now, but senior finance positions typically require a lot more than sitting in your office generating reports, which is what you'll likely end up doing with a finance degree. The fact is that a whole lot of people with straight finance degrees never learn the range of skills needed to run a business.
In fact, the value of MBAs has been made more obvious during the recent crisis in every business I'm familiar with (mostly private financial firms or web-oriented companies). People who have gone through MBA programs studying other businesses experiences in similar conditions and learning to analyze businesses in various stages and situations have been able to come up with effective strategies to keep the businesses profitable despite the odds.
MBA is the more generic one, where you get to learn fewer skills, many of which you can learn while working.
Not true. It's actually the opposite, you learn a wider variety of skills and concepts that you wouldn't have time to learn or even get exposed to at all while working.
Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone with an MBA (though not from a so-called "good" school") I definitely agree with your "know-it-all nobodies" sentiment. In fact this is one of the things I found hardest to stomach about Silicon valley - so many pundits spouting platitudes that would get you laughed out of even the worst B-school get lauded as geniuses.
That's what you get from having a huge vast thing like the Internet and giving people free reign, though. I remember joining my first forum - I was 13, and everybody who said anything and sounded decisive was a "pro" to me. I remember telling my father that Squaresoft was making Final Fantasy games based on the work these people were doing, and getting mad when he told me that wasn't the case, because this guy said i…
Good points, but:
> The Internet's less than 20
The web is less than 20, the internet is significantly older, having been put together in the late 1960ies and early 1970ies:
Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise
#35sigh I just got home from my evening MBA class after a full day of work. I'm the Director of IT at a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Florida and graduated with 4.0 in CS and Econ with Math minor as my undergrad. After my MBA, I'm hoping to pursue a CS/Math PhD degree and I consider myself a lifelong student with no desire to make millions. I mentioned all of this because I want to make it clear that my reasons to defe…
"An MBA from a good university is HARD and enlightening work." Could you elucidate what is "HARD" ? I am NOT being sarcastic. I am genuinely curious, but I've found MBA coursework , (except in advanced finance) to be relatively easy compared to, say, a compilers class. Running a real marketing campaign could be hard (depending on the context) but what is hard about the MBA course work in marketing? Could you give cou…
Well, first of all, what's hard for one person can be easy for the next. Plus, people have a lot of misconceptions about many business related fields.
Take marketing, for example. It is often misinterpreted as purely "promotion" when really it also encompasses product development, pricing and placement. For me, product development and placement come naturally while I find branding to be tremendously difficult, certainly more difficult than any technical challenge I've ever faced. What one person finds "easy" or "hard" is dependent on a lot of factors, including personality type, skills, what sector that person is operating in, etc. For one product or service, pricing may be extremely simple while in another it might require significant market analysis.
Also, whether a person finds something "hard" or not doesn't directly relate to its value. I wouldn't find it "hard" to spend hours reading case studies, but they are tremendously valuable since you can learn from other companies' successes and failures and apply them to your own company. On the other hand, someone might find advanced corporate finance "hard," but unless he or she wants to work in a job in which it would apply, it's largely useless for that person.
FWIW, I'm not in an MBA program, but I do the web business thing while my wife is in a top-tier MBA program and is an exec in the financial industry. She has an analytical background but prefers strategy and operations. I know one of the things she finds both challenging and valuable is being exposed to fields that are outside of her interests but are important for having a well-rounded view of how businesses and marketplaces function. In bad business conditions this is especially valuable since you can't just stumble and guess your way around like you can when money flows easily.
Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone with an MBA (though not from a so-called "good" school") I definitely agree with your "know-it-all nobodies" sentiment. In fact this is one of the things I found hardest to stomach about Silicon valley - so many pundits spouting platitudes that would get you laughed out of even the worst B-school get lauded as geniuses.
That's what you get from having a huge vast thing like the Internet and giving people free reign, though. I remember joining my first forum - I was 13, and everybody who said anything and sounded decisive was a "pro" to me. I remember telling my father that Squaresoft was making Final Fantasy games based on the work these people were doing, and getting mad when he told me that wasn't the case, because this guy said i…
>On the other hand, there're a lot of people online who are famous for being famous: people like Julia Allison or Cory Doctorow come to mind.
that line doesn't seem to follow logically from it's previous one. seems almost like you went out of your way to diss these people on the internet. in any case, i have to say that i've enjoyed what few i've read from doctorow.
Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise
#37sigh I just got home from my evening MBA class after a full day of work. I'm the Director of IT at a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Florida and graduated with 4.0 in CS and Econ with Math minor as my undergrad. After my MBA, I'm hoping to pursue a CS/Math PhD degree and I consider myself a lifelong student with no desire to make millions. I mentioned all of this because I want to make it clear that my reasons to defe…
The truth is Engineering colleges are churning out more Entrepreneurs than MBA schools.
Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise
#38sigh I just got home from my evening MBA class after a full day of work. I'm the Director of IT at a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Florida and graduated with 4.0 in CS and Econ with Math minor as my undergrad. After my MBA, I'm hoping to pursue a CS/Math PhD degree and I consider myself a lifelong student with no desire to make millions. I mentioned all of this because I want to make it clear that my reasons to defe…
"An MBA from a good university is HARD and enlightening work." Could you elucidate what is "HARD" ? I am NOT being sarcastic. I am genuinely curious, but I've found MBA coursework , (except in advanced finance) to be relatively easy compared to, say, a compilers class. Running a real marketing campaign could be hard (depending on the context) but what is hard about the MBA course work in marketing? Could you give cou…
Here is a real example. Pretend like you are in a finance class. It's a case study. On Microsoft buying Yahoo! Determine how much Microsoft should be willing to pay for Yahoo! and the assumptions and rationale behind your conclusion. Or how much is AOL worth as a spinout of Time Warner. The core of the answer lies in something called the Capital Asset Pricing Model and it is as every bit as complex as the fixed point combinator for which YC was named.
A little more practical and more marketing aligned, doing real market research for a natural foods store to determine if they should expand their footprint to other locations or just increase the size of their current store. It took over a month to design the questionnaire before the prof deemed it acceptable.
With that said, the real challenge, and what any top school does, is teach students how to prioritize. They give you so much work that you can not possibly get it all complete at the level of excellence in which you want to operate so you have to learn when something is good enough and move on to the next pressing issue. Which, BTW, is pretty much what you need to do in a startup as well.
Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what you get from having a huge vast thing like the Internet and giving people free reign, though. I remember joining my first forum - I was 13, and everybody who said anything and sounded decisive was a "pro" to me. I remember telling my father that Squaresoft was making Final Fantasy games based on the work these people were doing, and getting mad when he told me that wasn't the case, because this guy said i…
Good points, but: > The Internet's less than 20 The web is less than 20, the internet is significantly older, having been put together in the late 1960ies and early 1970ies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History
Yep! Sorry, I was too lazy to write out "world wide web." And technically, with UseNET included the web is closer to 30 than to 20.
Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what you get from having a huge vast thing like the Internet and giving people free reign, though. I remember joining my first forum - I was 13, and everybody who said anything and sounded decisive was a "pro" to me. I remember telling my father that Squaresoft was making Final Fantasy games based on the work these people were doing, and getting mad when he told me that wasn't the case, because this guy said i…
>On the other hand, there're a lot of people online who are famous for being famous: people like Julia Allison or Cory Doctorow come to mind. that line doesn't seem to follow logically from it's previous one. seems almost like you went out of your way to diss these people on the internet. in any case, i have to say that i've enjoyed what few i've read from doctorow.
I try not to take needless potshots: in this case I think the two names I picked fit my argument perfectly. These aren't people who are famous thanks to credentials or expertise: they're famous because it's easy to be famous online regardless of aptitude or skill.
Julia Allison is pretty harmless - she's a socialite, and part of being a socialite has always been fame-seeking - but Doctorow is a lot more insidious. Here's a guy who has no credentials other than that he started a big blog, and somehow he's become an authority on art and writing and copyright. I think that a part of his popularity is that he's championing something people like to like - end copyright and all that - and so even though his writings are fairly clueless, people read them because they're simple and agreeable. But it pisses me off when I see him in newspapers writing about things like the future of art, because there are a lot of really bright people (Clay Shirky?) writing about this who actually know somewhat what they're talking about, and they're all better writers than Doctorow is too, but they're less read because they have less public attention.
Sometimes I think there ought to be a movement online attempting to highlight those bright people who don't seek attention. I don't know how it would work objectively, but I still feel that some very bright people get overlooked.