111–120 of 259 posts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparatchik
Is our ultimate goal to do things or to move money around? For the past ~50 years we've been optimizing for moving money around as the most important activity.
So maybe not just MBAs, but who knows maybe MBAs came up with that plan.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spot on. MBA's aren't meant for 0 to 1. They're meant to optimize and sustain business models with the foundation of innovation and revolutionary ideas. Companies that only stick to one or the other are doomed, or require their industry to be that much more technical or business focused.
How is this working for other car makers, who are full of MBAs? Elon comes along and takes their market share.
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…
This isn't a bad thing. Profit and price are, in most cases, still reasonable signals for what consumers want, and growing your market means you're serving real demand in the actual world. This is what creates employment and utility.
Flying to Mars and ignoring market share is nice but doesn't serve any actual point, other than Musks idiosyncratic desire for it. He can pursue it because in other areas the company actually does pay attention to growing their market and funding it.
But overall companies should pursue growing their market share because it means they're serving customers. I don't think the world would necessarily be better served if Walmart focussed on shooting rockets to the moon, rather than making it so the shelves are stocked and the products are cheap.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need decently large populations of risk takers living in reasonably close proximity to create an environment like silicon valley. There are plenty of places that have low cost of living, but as soon as you create that environment, the costs of living will skyrocket. Further, while costs may be lower than is SF, costs are rising nearly everywhere faster than inflation. For example in Cleveland the median home pric…
Nitpick: 2008 after the worst housing crisis in generations is not a reasonable baseline, that is the floor.
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 mean, Doordash just IPOed this week, and that come out of Stanford GSB. If you want something with an arguably more innovative product, Stitch Fix also came out of Stanford GSB, and it was a pretty unique business model at the time. Some MBAs are pretty good, although I suspect it’s mostly selection bias (the people would’ve been great even without attending b school).
I've had a lot of bad experiences with what I think of as MBA types. Lots of lack of experience, naive about what they're managing and etc. They have often seemed heavily metric focused to the point that only the given metrics matter. I've worked with managers and executives that I thought were great, but the folks who sort of step into a role seemingly because they have an MBA, it just seems like a recipe for just a…
However, often times the reason the MBA is dropped into that situation is the resident domain expertise owners inability to communicate effectively with senior managment via financial metrics/KPIs etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spot on. MBA's aren't meant for 0 to 1. They're meant to optimize and sustain business models with the foundation of innovation and revolutionary ideas. Companies that only stick to one or the other are doomed, or require their industry to be that much more technical or business focused.
How is this working for other car makers, who are full of MBAs? Elon comes along and takes their market share.
> “I think there might be too many M.B.A.s running companies,” the Tesla Inc. chief executive said. “There should be more focus on the product or service itself, less time on board meetings, less time on financials.” > Many business-school leaders shot back, saying that Mr. Musk’s comments don’t match the reality of what is taught in M.B.A. programs and that more students than ever who are pursuing the graduate degre…
I think that's being uncharitable to "business-school leaders". Ignoring the people who are going to business school for a two year vacation, which a lot of M.B.A.s do, there's a growing contingent of people who are going in with technical skills and experience. I think business schools deserve some credit for that. There are still plenty of people from non-technical backgrounds hoping to be your traditional M.B.A.s,…