Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech

#101

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 5:27 PM UTC

eitally wrote: post #90

I've never worked with MBAs before, in all my tech career, which included stints as a programmer and then a long period as a manager/director where I was in a much more business-oriented role. I always had a preconception that "MBA" essentially meant "management consultant", those high-priced guys who were paid to support bad news the CEO didn't want to seem came from himself. Restructuring advisement is certainly a…

This is a great comment, and I love seeing these kinds of testimonials counteract the dog pile of MBA bashing you usually see in this forum when the degree gets mentioned. Also, the advice about only bothering to consider tier 1 schools (basically top-10 or top-15 depending on who you talk to) is accurate. I think the degree gets a bad rap and is severely under-appreciated here in the Valley, but it's hard to change people's minds and correct biases.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech

#102

Post by jevgeni » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

x1024 wrote: post #80

jevgeni wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people on HN so obsessed with trying to find argument fallacies in comments? No, I am not saying that. The words "true MBA" have the same amount of content to them as "a true kitchen sink": zero. I say that people buy education for different reasons. Some get an MBA because they want to flash their CVs, have a cushy job, and avoid the strains of being original. Others get an MBA because they need the skills,…

Well, when you quantify your opinion like that, there's not much of an opinion left to even debate. "Different people get an education for different reasons" is a nice statement, and I would even agree that it's true. But nothing follows from that. It's not a statement that one can draw conclusions from. In your original statement you're saying "MBAs are useless now, but it's because of HR, and it sucks that MBAs are…

I haven't claimed a strong point. Neither have I said anything like what you are implying I've said. I've only tried to clarify my previous comments at which I seem to have failed.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech

#103

Post by bayer_rggb » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 5:53 PM UTC

wsc981 wrote: post #92

enraged_camel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely true. Quoting Justine Musk (Elon's ex-wife, I think): "...Choose one thing and become a master of it. Choose a second thing and become a master of that. When you become a master of two worlds (say, engineering and business), you can bring them together in a way that will a) introduce hot ideas to each other, so they can have idea sex and make idea babies that no one has seen before and b) create a competit…

That's also what Steve Jobs said in his commencement speech. He talked about the DTP industry not existing before the Mac, but by adding greatly designed fonts to the system a whole new market was created. And Steve got the fonts idea back from his college years, when he followed a calligraphy class at Reed college [0]. --- [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA&feature=youtu.be...

Similar to what UWaterloo Prof. Larry Smith says https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Titm4d1lt74

Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech

#104

Post by alex_c » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #77

thedogeye wrote: post #51

Taking two years out of your life to study business full-time will improve your business judgement. That this is controversial always surprised me.

I haven't found this to be universal. If anything, I think it can warp your thinking in a way that can be beneficial in certain circumstances, but is really scary in others. By way of example: I have a parent who teaches at a top-5 business school. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Japan on a trip where my parent acted as a faculty chaperone and was able to attend some of the meetings with Japanese…

Part of the lesson that was drilled into our heads in my MBA program as it relates to strategy consulting was to always start by understanding the goals and motivations of owners/management. The fact that you should understand people's motivations before you can claim to understand a situation seems self-evident to me, but it's obviously not that evident to many.

I'm not sure how much I would blame MBA programs for this - there are a lot of idiots with MBAs, just like there are a lot of idiots with other degrees. An MBA gives students a set of tools and hopefully some understanding of how to apply them - but it's still up to the individuals to use their own judgement.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech

#105

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

anjc wrote: post #99

It confuses me endlessly that MBAs should be so misunderstood by so many people, it being suggested that they are only good for networking, that people with MBAs are cold and evil, and so on. They're simply a course which teach you the fundamentals of several areas which are relevant to business. It'd be like saying that a degree in CS would be superfluous for somebody who wants to program. If you love programming, t…

The usual criticism is that MBAs believe the degree endows them with far more strategic intelligence than they really have.

It's like officer school. The worst graduates come out absolutely convinced they can run an entire army, when in fact they're still almost completely clueless.

Aside from the networking - which is not trivial - the benefits of an MBA for talented individuals seem to be exposure to the idea that strategy, cost/benefit analysis, accounting, marketing, and the rest all exist, and are more relevant to a business than the code base.

This can be a surprise to straight CS people, many of whom only care about code.

But by analogy, many MBAs only seem to care about money.

There's more to running a successful business than the bottom line - or at least there should be - and more subtle management principles that build businesses by making customers and employees happy as well as making shareholders rich don't seem to figure at all in MBA schools.

The MBA point of view seems to be that happiness doesn't matter when there's profit to be made.

Ironically, there's a lot of poverty in that view - not just morally, but politically and economically. In the longer term it leads to the kind of economic picture we have today, where there's a lot of profit being made, but at the cost of rapidly shrinking broad prosperity and economic freedom for most of the population.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech

#106

Post by genericresponse » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #89

> Sandberg suggested a career in tech might not even be necessary to catch Facebook’s attention. “We don't look for a specific background or skill-set when we make hiring decisions,” she wrote. “As my friend and Instagram COO Marne Levine says, we hire athletes and cross-train them.” From a randomly selected job posting on Facebook's web site: Requirements B.S. or M.S. Computer Science or related field Experience bui…

Her words are carefully chosen. They don't look at it when they make hiring decisions. They do look at background and skill set when selecting candidates. (i.e. If you can lateral into the interview process it's cool that you don't meet the job description. If you come in off the street looking to interview, you better check all the boxes if you want our time.)

Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech

#107

Post by meat_fist » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

c0achmcguirk wrote: post #34

I'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…

But, from the article, they're talking about the tech industry. You work in the finance industry.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech

#108

Post by jevgeni » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 6:06 PM UTC

anjc wrote: post #99

It confuses me endlessly that MBAs should be so misunderstood by so many people, it being suggested that they are only good for networking, that people with MBAs are cold and evil, and so on. They're simply a course which teach you the fundamentals of several areas which are relevant to business. It'd be like saying that a degree in CS would be superfluous for somebody who wants to program. If you love programming, t…

Exactly.

Also, I remember reading somewhere that one of the Google founders (Brin, I think) was actually proud of not having an MBA. Not 100% about the validity of the story though.

Thing is, if it's true, I can understand the sentiment of rebelling against the older business culture that people with MBAs represented at the time. Thing is, all the VCs that bankrolled early Silicon Valley did (and do) have MBAs. So the point is the stance is a bit hypocritical.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech

#109

Post by eastbayjake » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #89

> Sandberg suggested a career in tech might not even be necessary to catch Facebook’s attention. “We don't look for a specific background or skill-set when we make hiring decisions,” she wrote. “As my friend and Instagram COO Marne Levine says, we hire athletes and cross-train them.” From a randomly selected job posting on Facebook's web site: Requirements B.S. or M.S. Computer Science or related field Experience bui…

I believe Sandberg was referring to positions where someone might think an MBA is required, like product management. No one is asking whether an MBA might be useful for highly technical roles, like the above posting for someone doing the technical implementation of an online ad engine.

Re: Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech

#110

Post by exelius » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

c0achmcguirk wrote: post #34

I'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…

FS is a bit of a special circumstance -- you are expected to understand complex financial instruments well enough to write code around them, so a background in investment finance is almost required. There are few places to learn about investment finance outside of an MBA, so it's almost a requirement.

And I can understand what Sandberg is saying -- it's definitely not an explicit requirement; some people are great engineers and have excellent soft skills and can play that up into management. They can play the politics game well, and likely had role models who taught them the rules of the game.

But for myself, an MBA was absolutely necessary. I wasn't ignorant about how to run a business, but I was completely unprepared for how corporate politics work. There are some things you can learn by trial and error, but the complex dance between operations, product, sales, and finance is something I didn't even fully understand until I was working post-MBA.