Bulldoze the business school • Hacker News Board

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#131

Post by speleding » Sun, Apr 29, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #93

speleding wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top MBA programs require that applicants have at least 4 years of work experience.

Source? HBS has no such requirement (a friend got in with just 3 years of management consulting experience). Here's a quote straight from the Stanford GSB page: "Work experience is not required for entry to the Stanford MBA Program." Work experience isn't even listed as a requirement on the Wharton application. Etc. Perhaps you're referring to European programs?

They may not all list it as a hard requirement, but a school like MIT sloan says on their site applicants have an average of 5 years of work experience [1]. You can maybe get accepted with less than 4 but you would need relevant other life experience. (I'm pretty sure HBS listed 4 years when I applied decades ago, but I cannot find a reference)

[1] http://mitsloan.mit.edu/career-development-office/employment...

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#132

Post by mbagraduate » Sun, Apr 29, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

Years after spending close to 200K at an elite MBA program I've come to the conclusion that they are a waste of time for most candidates.

While students can be very smart and professors highly acclaimed, the MBA is a failed enterprise. In my opinion, business school only delivers an illusion of achievement and learning. MBA programs are too generic and formulaic to deliver meaningful value. Most notably:

1. Management science is even less scientific than Psychology. Yes, you can apply decision analysis, probability and game theory to business problems, but do these form a cohesive knowledge base? If management science does in fact exist, why do MBA programs' teachings differ so much from school to school?

MBA students get exposed to theories and frameworks transplanted from the sciences but they walk away with only a shallow understanding of these models. Are we training managers as confidence artists? As the business school alumni move across corporate ranks they ossify and think they get it, when in fact they are just managing randomly without rigorous understanding of the complexities underlying their decisions. And yes, these business school alumni are to blame for the collapse of 2008 and many others.

2. Shareholder value maximization should not be a way of life. Very few business school graduates can think of businesses in holistic terms. The shareholder value maximization mentality incubates the many destructive forces that turn corporations into sociopaths.

3. Business schools are toxic environments created by mixing a myriad of backgrounds in a room and expecting highly divergent people to learn at the same pace or even to coalesce.

In my experience, racism, discrimination, exclusion and backstabbing were the norm. Bankers drank with bankers, white Americans labeled the Chinese as "yet another international student", African Americans were severely under represented and military transplants were systematically labeled. My B-School experience was traumatic but not uncommon. I was literally swimming in a shark tank.

4.You will definitely learn a lot about corruption. I lost my faith in human nature after listening to business students talk about putting profits before lives. This are the type of people that will do anything for that bonus.

In sum, business schools are a playground for corporations to shop for high (but not very high) IQ, good appearance, business aptitude and ambitious candidates. Business school is just a runway of highly accomplished students who think they get it but in reality don't. Management can't be taught. It needs to be experienced. Business schools are the most salient cancer in academia and they need to disappear.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#133

Post by mdorazio » Sun, Apr 29, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

speleding wrote: post #131

mdorazio wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? HBS has no such requirement (a friend got in with just 3 years of management consulting experience). Here's a quote straight from the Stanford GSB page: "Work experience is not required for entry to the Stanford MBA Program." Work experience isn't even listed as a requirement on the Wharton application. Etc. Perhaps you're referring to European programs?

They may not all list it as a hard requirement, but a school like MIT sloan says on their site applicants have an average of 5 years of work experience [1]. You can maybe get accepted with less than 4 but you would need relevant other life experience. (I'm pretty sure HBS listed 4 years when I applied decades ago, but I cannot find a reference) [1] http://mitsloan.mit.edu/career-development-office/employment...

Ah, that explains it. The business school cohort average age has dropped considerably since you applied. These days it's typical to apply with 2-4 years of real-world experience (acceptance & start add a year to that) and uncommon to apply/be accepted if you're over 30. Keep in mind that average experience statements like the sloan one are heavily skewed by the few old-timers in the programs who have been working for a long time in comparison to the kids who make up the majority of cohorts.

[1] https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E12AQE7CzE_-7bwNA/articl...

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#134

Post by blurbleblurble » Sun, Apr 29, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

We don't need rich bosses. We need hands-on leaders who aren't afraid to make the world a better place and who respect the integrity of all their collaborators.

Replace business schools with institutions that foster leadership, collaboration, and inclusive positive project management skills from a wide variety of alternative forms of organization.

For example: cooperatives are a legitimate, sustainable form of business, so why aren't they being taught and innovated in business schools?

Also, project management skills should be something everyone gets. Every working person should be afforded opportunities to grow in their ability to lead.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#135

Post by cjalmeida » Sun, Apr 29, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #123

cjalmeida wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think management is only common sense, then paying 500 bucks an hour for MBA grads is ridiculously. Using that logic, either the CEO is stupid, or the company employees are utterly incompetent and lacks common sense. Or, more likely, a) there's some science/skills behind management that can be learned at school even by non experienced people; b) those young MBA people worked 60/70 hours per week for 3/4 years…

either the CEO is stupid He or she might be; plenty get those kinds of jobs on their personal connections rather than their track records. But a more usual scenario is that the CEO wants to fund their next bonus by slashing jobs, and paying management consultants - with the company's money - to facilitate that is, to that sort of person, a shrewd move.

>He or she might be; plenty get those kinds of jobs on their personal connections rather than their track records.

I'm yet to see a stupid person as the CEO of a large corp. Sociopath maybe, but hardly stupid.

Now an unpopular opinion: maybe the slashed jobs were no longer necessary and letting people go was needed for the company to remain competitive?

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#136

Post by hinkley » Sun, Apr 29, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #121

hinkley wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I marked myself as passively looking on LinkedIn recently and it’s been depressing. Now I get that only a certain type of recruiter is out there contacting people but it’s a little unsettling how little information people are providing about the companies. Am I interested? Are you being serious? How would I even know? If there’s something wrong with me for wanting to know more than two bits of information about a com…

Have you tried actually asking for that? It is counterproductive (and a bit arrogant) to assume that other people, especially strangers, are able to deduce what aspects of a job you care about. My observation is that the recruiters cold-emailing me will generally be heavy on emphasising cool new tech, the opportunity to influence the stack at a greenfield project etc etc, which I don't really care about, I want to wo…

Your experience is pretty similar to mine I think.

Doesn’t it bother you that the pitch is so... amoral? As first impressions go it makes me pretty uncomfortable.

Hey we use ML and are growing quickly, come work with us. I’ve gotten that one three times. One of them was an ad network. Another was ‘disrupting’ some large industry that we all use every day but wouldn’t say what. The third I still have no idea.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#137

Post by flyingcircus3 » Sun, Apr 29, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

dhimes wrote: post #130

flyingcircus3 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all anecdotal. I've found though from simply asking around, that most Engineering schools, as well as other fields, have weed out classes. They aren't technically labelled as such, but there is no better description, given their passing rates. They are curved grading, so by simple distribution of scores, large numbers of people will fail. There are so many students per teacher, the scarcity of resources deman…

My focus is on the student who gets to college and has all of the aptitude but simply doesn't know how to learn. In engineering, they go to class, listen to the theory, work the problems, and hope for the best on the test. They don't understand that there is a way to learn abstract concepts or even what an abstract concept is- what they are good for, and so on. They need to be taught that consistent review is essenti…

I found in my experience that there were too many things to learn, and not just in class. I was also learning about being self sufficient, and restraining my impulses, and basic life habits that had been taken care of for me my whole life up to that point. Turns those courses are fraught with peril as well.

The confluence of social pressure, having to take care of all my domestic needs, and being exposed to tens of thousands of healthy young adults from all walks of life was nothing short of a quantum leap for me.

Not to conclude that the school of technology fixed all or any of those things for me. But their teaching method was infinitely more contextual to me, at where I was at that point in my life.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#138

Post by infinite8s » Sun, Apr 29, 2018, 6:34 PM UTC

Meegul wrote: post #48

throwawayjava wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I recently had to write a scheduling algorithm for our home-grown operating system. I was running into some very difficult to debug issues, so I asked my TA for help. They had no clue and told me to consult the professor. The professor wouldn't help. Our textbook offered no guidance. We're not allowed to discuss projects whatsoever with other students. So after north of 5 hours spread over a few days of trying to fig…

Who's going to help you in real life when no one has the answer?

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#139

Post by jimnotgym » Sun, Apr 29, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #98

jimnotgym wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK there are MBA programs in every town that are willing to admit anyone who will pay. A provincial backwater I know of has recently opened a University (with various associations with other real institutions) and the first thing they opened was a business school. A person I know well with a poor academic background, no management experience and no-undergraduate degree joined an MBA program at a similar school…

That’s a great point. Auditors are in a unique position as they observe and measure success and failure without making business decisions.

It is also interesting that some UK accounting qualifications cover so much MBA type material, that it is possible to get a conversion onto an MBA in some accelerated amount of time. The big difference with accounting qualifications (ICAEW/CIMA etc) is that they have a really serious practical requirement including years of on-the-job experience. I guess that is a world away from an MBA

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#140

Post by mseebach » Sun, Apr 29, 2018, 7:07 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #136

mseebach wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried actually asking for that? It is counterproductive (and a bit arrogant) to assume that other people, especially strangers, are able to deduce what aspects of a job you care about. My observation is that the recruiters cold-emailing me will generally be heavy on emphasising cool new tech, the opportunity to influence the stack at a greenfield project etc etc, which I don't really care about, I want to wo…

Your experience is pretty similar to mine I think. Doesn’t it bother you that the pitch is so... amoral? As first impressions go it makes me pretty uncomfortable. Hey we use ML and are growing quickly, come work with us. I’ve gotten that one three times. One of them was an ad network. Another was ‘disrupting’ some large industry that we all use every day but wouldn’t say what. The third I still have no idea.

No, doesn't bother me. I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that when I want to look for a new job, the onus is on me to articulate what I want to do, and in the meantime, the cold emails give me a bit of intelligence into what's stirring out there. As for morality, different people feel differently about different things. I have nothing against adtech or hedge funds (that's what they try to recruit me for) per se, but that's not to say I'd be excited about working on it. Again, a recruiter can't tell from a sparse LinkedIn profile what I may or may not care about.