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Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups

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Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups

#41

Post by andrew1 »

flipper wrote: post #29
sridharvembu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I question to value of MBA even for large companies. I see value in structured, methodical, analytical thinking for many classes of business problems (not all, many crucial business decisions involve creative guesswork!), but an MBA is way overkill, and whatever it is supposed to teach can be learned on the job. If a person cannot learn that on those skills on the job, I seriously would question his/her ability to be…

Based on my own experience of MBAs I tend to agree with you. My company brought in a US name-brand management consulting firm to assist with a large M&A. One of the MBAs was assigned to help me write a transition plan for the integration of the IT systems my company would inherit. She correctly recognized that helping me was useless to her real purpose (inserting herself into my company at a high enough level that sh…

Isn't the fact she had an MBA incidental to her behaviour? Her job could have been filled by someone without an MBA who might have acted in exactly the same way. I've met many self-serving, selfishly ambitious people who don't have MBAs!

Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups

#42

Post by brc »

ryanhuff wrote: post #27
brc wrote: post #11

I think the point missed in here is that if you go into your MBA with a consulting, banking, etc direction, then you'll get all the lessons that go with that. If you did an MBA with the express purpose of concentrating on making startups work, you'd concentrate on taking away the parts of that education that focus on entrepreneurship. It's fashionable to diss the MBA but they contain a non-trivial amount of learning…

Agreed. An MBA is a strange animal. Two people coming out of the same school can have vastly different career goals, and have taken much different coursework. While the core courses may be the same, the real meat is often in the elective courses that allow you to focus on a specific area of business. A brand management person is going to exit business school with a much different skill-set than somebody who wants to…

I would just add to that - most MBA courses (well, mine, anyway, a sample size of 1) involve a lot of case studies. In many cases, you can choose the topic of the case study, just be getting approval from the assessor for suitability. Thus, you can decide to study GE, Digg or Microsoft, whether it's for marketing, industrial relations or strategy.

When I went through I had a fellow student who was preparing to take over the family cleaning business with several hundred staff. A friend was a career airline pilot getting ready to step out of the cockpit and into administration. I also had career public servants learning on the public dime to get to the next pay grade. There was also aimless students who weren't ready to leave university because they had no direction in life. The things that these different groups studied vary a lot.

The one thing that did come through, unfortunately, was a heavy reliance on Powerpoint.

Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups

#43

Post by brc »

andrew1 wrote: post #41
flipper wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my own experience of MBAs I tend to agree with you. My company brought in a US name-brand management consulting firm to assist with a large M&A. One of the MBAs was assigned to help me write a transition plan for the integration of the IT systems my company would inherit. She correctly recognized that helping me was useless to her real purpose (inserting herself into my company at a high enough level that sh…

Isn't the fact she had an MBA incidental to her behaviour? Her job could have been filled by someone without an MBA who might have acted in exactly the same way. I've met many self-serving, selfishly ambitious people who don't have MBAs!

Exactly. A lot of people have taken to using 'MBA' as a heuristic for 'lazy self promoting asshole'. While I agree there is probably some overlap, it's extremely unfair to go around painting with this wide brush.

The fact that the consultant wsa trying to get more work out of the company had nothing to do with her qualifications.

Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups

#44

Post by plinkplonk »

snowbird122 wrote: post #20

I am an entrepreneur, a hacker, and an MBA. I am intelligent enough not to apply big-company processes to a start-up and vice versa. An MBA is an education in business. That can't be a bad thing if you operate a business, large or small.

"An MBA is an education in business."

So some people claim. Other people think it isn't that clear cut. On another discussion (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1330878), someone asked

"I presume you get an MBA to give you a better understanding about business. And startups are in essence businesses. Then how come having a better understanding not impact your startup?"

pg replied,

"The cause of the apparent paradox is that "business" spans a huge range. MBAs train you to be junior officers in the armies of managerial capitalism. But there is almost zero overlap between that sort of work and what startups do."

and later

"Actually I would say it's a slight net minus to have an MBA when doing a startup. You learn nothing of use to you, but investors discriminate against you slightly.

Almost all investors are looking for founders who match past stars. So what they're looking for at this point is hackers.

I have to say I agree with them. I can't imagine Bill Gates or Larry & Sergey enduring B School."

So there are intelligent people with differing viewpoints on whether "An MBA is an education in business." is a valid premise.

Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups

#45

Post by Maro »

dkokelley wrote: post #13

I like to think of this topic using an automotive racing analogy: Fortune 500 companies are the formula 1 cars. They need a great big team to perform efficiently, and minor tweaks applied correctly can yield significant results. The MBAs are the specialists who work the electronics and the advanced controls for the race cars. A team working on a formula 1 car could find a way to increase down force by 5%, or they cou…

I downvoted you because I believe your F1 analogy is off. F1 cars are highly optimized to do one thing: go around the given circuits in the calendar that year as fast as possible, within the rules. For a specific GP weekend, they are further optimized to go around that circuit, even if it means doing weird things to the car's balance.

What are Fortune 500 companies optimized for? Certainly not for making money, they're wasting money left and right --- for example, on legions of MBAs.

Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups

#46

Post by arethuza »

ericd wrote: post #30
mos1b wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every MBA is lousy and incapable of seeing the forest for the trees, even though lots of startup techs think so. Not every tech is lousy and incapable of understanding that IT needs to serve business needs, even though lots of MBAs think so. Broad brush hatred of all MBAs is moronic.

It serves a useful purpose as a teaching tool for new initiates into the startup community. If they develop a phobia of MBAs, then they will know not to hire them into a brand new company without being very skeptical of that particular one's skills. If one checks out and is actually just a really good person for the job, sure, but on average, the stereotype is there for a reason.

I'd agree with that - I've met some pretty decent people with MBAs but I've probably met more absolute scoundrels with MBAs than any other qualification (even more than law degrees).

This has nothing to do with the concept of the MBA or the courses, but more to do with the type of people who feel drawn to a short cut to senior management or influence over senior managers.

Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups

#47

Post by [deleted] »

andrew1 wrote: post #41
flipper wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my own experience of MBAs I tend to agree with you. My company brought in a US name-brand management consulting firm to assist with a large M&A. One of the MBAs was assigned to help me write a transition plan for the integration of the IT systems my company would inherit. She correctly recognized that helping me was useless to her real purpose (inserting herself into my company at a high enough level that sh…

Isn't the fact she had an MBA incidental to her behaviour? Her job could have been filled by someone without an MBA who might have acted in exactly the same way. I've met many self-serving, selfishly ambitious people who don't have MBAs!

[deleted]

Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups

#49

Post by flipper »

andrew1 wrote: post #41
flipper wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my own experience of MBAs I tend to agree with you. My company brought in a US name-brand management consulting firm to assist with a large M&A. One of the MBAs was assigned to help me write a transition plan for the integration of the IT systems my company would inherit. She correctly recognized that helping me was useless to her real purpose (inserting herself into my company at a high enough level that sh…

Isn't the fact she had an MBA incidental to her behaviour? Her job could have been filled by someone without an MBA who might have acted in exactly the same way. I've met many self-serving, selfishly ambitious people who don't have MBAs!

Perhaps, but I did point out that I was talking about my direct experience. I must say that all of her colleagues I dealt with appeared to behave in exactly the same way.
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