111–120 of 162 posts
What is fun is CEOs like Jack Dorsey who leads two companies.
What is the difference between Jack, who leads 2 companies, and Sundar Pichai who arguably leads an order of magnitude more "companies"? or Tim Cook who leads multiple multi-billion dollar revenue products some of which could be Fortune 500 companies on their own?
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... the downvotes say so. I am wondering about the same. Peter Thiel does not seem to be someone the world should listen to. His politics are anti-human I would say. And yes, by being as influentual as he is I think we can and should talk about his politics here. I am still trying to figure out how two such different world-views like thiel and musk were able to work together.
Just because someone has bad ideas (or ideas you disagree with) in one area, why would that mean all their ideas are bad? To take an extreme example, Bobby Fischer is easily in the running for best chess player of all time. He was also an anti-semite. Does that somehow make his chess less good? Should we ignore that he was an anti-Semite? No! But should we cut all his games from chess books because of it? Indeed, if…
I can say that we disagree about scrum and we disagree about slavery, and the word "disagreement" does not work the same in both cases.
There is also difference between listening to Fischer on chess and listening to someone like him on how things should be managed or organized. In the latter case his morality and opinions we "disagree with" matter much more.
> most accomplished men and women are also among its most flawed.
That is because their flaws were their competitive advantage. They did became presidents and powerful, because they were willing to be unethical and cruel. Those who were not willing to act in immoral way were less likely to rise to power and success.
That is why it makes sense to point it out. Because otherwise your morality boils down to "but it makes you rich/powerful/successful then it is ok". And meanwhile you ignore opinions of competitors who were not willing to go there. Because apparently opinions of people who are less willing to do anything to get their way matter less.
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> Surely you shouldn't need to struggle in the dark so much to learn. You have it all wrong, IMO. Successfully clawing their way out of the dark is by far the most important skill they're learning.
That seems to me a bold claim to me - don't actually teach anything, just demand stuff! And behold, by pure magic (and LOTS of selection) we get a handful of successful students who manage to pass, validating this "teaching" style. Is that really what you have in mind? I'm actually someone who did and does not have a problem with that style. It suits me very well. At university I mostly learned from non-university so…
That is not all that bad pedagogy assuming you have reasonable demands that escalate over time. It is to extreme if you never explain anything, but if your teaching style consist primary of forcing students to learn by themselves and explaining only minimum necessary, then I strongly approve.
Giving students everything directly is more incompetent, because it imo results in weaker learning. The goal is not to show how hard-working teacher is, the goal is to produce as many as much capable as possible graduates.
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As a German, I would like to answer but I don't understand what you mean...? What is a "technican"? What is a "professional"? What "ceiling" are you talking about? And what EU rule? Anyway, notwithstanding that I don't know what you are asking, the parent is pretty much right.
I was talking about the difficulty in switching from the vocational track - to ones that require a degree.
60,000 students without "Abitur", the traditional path, if you have job experience of "several years" (don't know what that means) you can still study.
An MBA, much like most schooling, is all about signaling. Anyone who frames our educational system in any other way is missing the point.
In my view, there is a grain of truth to the "signaling" hypothesis, but it also sounds like: 1. A legitimate grievance from people who didn't get an education and are having it arbitrarily held against them. 2. Sour grapes from people who got nothing from their time spent in school. Higher education is whatever you make of it. You're legally an adult, and can make your own choices. No two people will experience it i…
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> This was in 2017 and I assume they had at least heard of the subprime crisis Brings to mind this from Peter Thiel (exclude the length): Q. You’ve written that you doubt the efficacy of MBA programs to prepare future business leaders. What would an effective MBA program look like? A. The question is, what substance of business are you focused on? The conceit of the MBA is that you don’t need to have any substance at…
And we should listen to Peter Thiel because....
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Just because someone has bad ideas (or ideas you disagree with) in one area, why would that mean all their ideas are bad? To take an extreme example, Bobby Fischer is easily in the running for best chess player of all time. He was also an anti-semite. Does that somehow make his chess less good? Should we ignore that he was an anti-Semite? No! But should we cut all his games from chess books because of it? Indeed, if…
Why promote a chess player who is anti semite if you could promote another one who is not?
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No respectable business school should admit people without substantial existing work experience into any graduate course. Unfortunately, it looks that more than a half of big name universities are happy to admit people without such, or even no undergraduate studies background.
No respectable business school should admit people without substantial existing work experience into any graduate course. All the top US MBA programmes are stuffed with people with 2-3 years investment banking or management consulting as their sole experience. The concept of a management consultant is possibly even more ridiculous to begin with
Management consultants can add incredible value. It’s ridiculous to dismiss their work.
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Or, c) principal-agent problem in action
I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but what I heard is that the most common task of management consulting is to sell an already made decision to the rest of the company. The consultant appears neutral and is expected to have good presentation and sales skills. The analysis technique and inputs can be chosen to yield the desired result. The more expensive the consultant the better for credibility. So it's obviousl…
But most of the time, at least the top consultancies, they will call out stupid ideas. They have their own reputation to keep and shareholders, the guys actually paying for the party, don't usually like being made fools constantly.
Or, most commonly, be hired to shed some light on a bunch of seemingly equally good ideas. Business strategy issues hardly have black or white and sometimes the recommendations fail. People in the company make sure to publicize the consultancy involvement as a cover your a strategy, but hardly share the credit when things work.
About the parent comment on principal-agent problem. He must be a management consultant for throwing a buzzword around in a discussion and dropping the mic :)
Actual finance is mostly concerned with pure money management, agnostic of the entity holding the money. If it's not a person, company or administrative body it's probably a mixture of those.
> [...] it also assumes substantial inequalities of income and wealth.
This is not true. For the most part it assumes that there is some need to allocate capital. Whether it is from a pension fund, an evil dictator or the Red Cross is mostly only a concern regarding specific constrains like regulation, objectives, etc.
> The greater the inequalities within any given society, the greater the interest in finance, as well as the market in luxury yachts.
No. The more capital to allocate, the greater the interest in allocating it. An economy with a greater financialization therefore requires a greater amount of financial knowledge and services. One can argue that such developments might be bad - completely fine. It is however awfully inaccurate to describe financial services as Veblen goods (luxury stuff where demand increases with price).
I like the general attitude of the article and I believe that there might be some benefit in questioning the study of management. I just do not like beating strawmen.