141–150 of 259 posts
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…
What’s the point of an MBA? Asking anyone this question who pursues the degree or has pursued the degree or insists on its value, often gives a non-answer. Like the following: * it helps with networking. * it helps with promotion. * it helps with advancement in career. * it helps with your resume. Boiling it down, “I can show off better and tout an imaginary quality”. If I was a person who was self employed or runnin…
Where an MBA will help you is if you do not have a business background, but want to either run a company that will one day be medium-large or work directly at a medium-large company. If that's you, a decent MBA program will teach you how large businesses actually operate - how they're structured, how they measure performance, how they interact with shareholders, how they make financial decisions, how they choose which market strategies to pursue, etc. - and how you can talk with and interact with other executives without being a naïve "engineering is the only thing that matters" idiot. Additionally, if a large company career path is for you, the network and credentials that come with a high-tier MBA tend to pay for themselves because outside of tech, hiring and job hopping don't depend on github profiles and whiteboard coding to get $250K+/year jobs.
There is a middle ground to be found here. Musk is managing his companies as pure hype-machines. This can only successfully work for a couple companies that operates as cult. If there is one thing that made Tesla successful, is the charismatic leader personality of Musk. Tesla is only a success on the stock market. They are not profitable, and the coming years will be the turning point for EVs. I don't see them comin…
Pioneer teams don't need MBAs.
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.
EVs are still only a small percentage of the overall car market. The world's biggest car companies won't stop being the world's biggest car companies. They'll just start selling more EVs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"We want to grow our market by 8.2 per cent and give our bosses higher Christmas bonuses" 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…
Right. But the company needs to have a point . Growing market share doesn't mean you're serving your customers' needs. You can grow your market share quite well by acting anti-competitively, or by exploiting your customers' weaknesses (gambling). No thanks.
There is a middle ground to be found here. Musk is managing his companies as pure hype-machines. This can only successfully work for a couple companies that operates as cult. If there is one thing that made Tesla successful, is the charismatic leader personality of Musk. Tesla is only a success on the stock market. They are not profitable, and the coming years will be the turning point for EVs. I don't see them comin…
Tesla has had 5 straight quarters of profitability.
It’s a matter of phase of company. MBAs are better at measuring and capturing value. Weaker at creating it. Therefore the non-MBA expert outperforms in the growth phase, though it takes a different mindset for mature companies.
Spot on! I've described the difference as "creating vs scaling value."