Why we have never hired an MBA • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we have never hired an MBA

#41

Post by z3phyr » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:05 PM UTC

benbataille wrote: post #10

fear91 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that being a MBA equates to having business skills? Being MBA is just being MBA. People who don't get higher education and just start their companies fresh out of high-schools will have WAY more business skills than MBA. I'd say that 2 years of running your own business gives you more business skills than 5 years of MBA education.

Doubtful. In the same way being an hobbyist programmer will never give you the same skill set than a CS degree. It's highly unlikely you are ever going to study extensively algorithm, os and databases design, compilation or declarative and functional programming all by yourself because objectively it's not something you need to get the job done. Nevertheless, this knowledge becomes really useful as soon as you start…

You might be familiar about this whole 'hacker' culture. Right?

The 'hobbyist' programmers were creating the most beautiful things, when the enterprise with 'trained' programmers had no idea about the term 'internet'. The hackers gave us the internet.... The spirit of software development..

They create better things with haskell and clojure, and the trained graduates are stuck with what their boss say.

True pragmatism comes from within, and believe me, it librates you.

Re: Why we have never hired an MBA

#42

Post by wpietri » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:07 PM UTC

atldev wrote: post #8

This doesn't seem any different than the language wars that take place here. In fact, you could cherry pick anecdotes to support hate towards any demographic- age, hometown, music preferences, etc. An MBA proves nothing more than the candidate was interested in pursuing graduate level education. I'm a solo technical founder. I write code, marketing copy, and proposals. I'm a product manager. And my MBA curriculum cov…

When you're looking for resumes, you're not looking to be perfectly fair. You're looking to sort wheat from chaff.

For me, for example, developer certifications are a black mark. Does that mean I auto-reject people with them? No. But it is correlated with a couple of different kinds characteristics I don't want in a developer, so they lose points.

But aren't there some good people with certifications? Am I not being unfair? Sure. My job isn't to be fair; it's to find a great person in minimum time.

Re: Why we have never hired an MBA

#43

Post by darkarmani » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:10 PM UTC

anonymousy wrote: post #4

I had the impression that GoCardless was founded by a few ex management consultants, how come when they 'become' startup founders they start attacking their own trade? Also judging the whole population of MBAs by seeing a few over-anxiously MBA job seekers doesn't do any justice?

I don't see him attacking the whole population of MBAs.

> The problem is that a large proportion of MBAs ambitions seem to have moved away from entering a large corporate to becoming part of the burgeoning startup scene, and this shift has not been reflected in the course content.

He's really talking about inexperienced, fresh-out-of-school MBAs.

Re: Why we have never hired an MBA

#44

Post by MattRob » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:12 PM UTC

atldev wrote: post #8

This doesn't seem any different than the language wars that take place here. In fact, you could cherry pick anecdotes to support hate towards any demographic- age, hometown, music preferences, etc. An MBA proves nothing more than the candidate was interested in pursuing graduate level education. I'm a solo technical founder. I write code, marketing copy, and proposals. I'm a product manager. And my MBA curriculum cov…

To be clear, it's not an auto-reject, it's an early warning mechanism.

I see the relationship between MBAs and cluelessness as one of correlation not causation.

Re: Why we have never hired an MBA

#45

Post by rayiner » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:13 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #31

rayiner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux 0.0.1 was not a sophisticated piece of code.

While I'm sure that is true, I'm sure he also learned a lot of lessons from writing that code, which goes against the idea suggested earlier that such things are only learned in the interest of formality. What it really highlights, though, is that anyone can jump in and start writing an OS (or whatever else you want to learn about). You don't need a degree to do that and people without them do.

Operatic systems are very simple creatures fundamentally. They just move bits around. They don't require anything more theoretically complicated than a linked list.

That is not to say you can't learn to do theoretically complex things without school, but when you're learning about DFA's or register allocation or the like, sitting down with a textbook and working through problems is often the best way to learn.

I'm a largely self-taught programmer, and I'm always running up against the theoretical background I don't have. Try writing a compiler for a modern language without understanding type theory, and try learning type theory by doing.

Re: Why we have never hired an MBA

#46

Post by wpietri » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:13 PM UTC

sritch wrote: post #2

It's kind of ridiculous that HN and the whole startup community has a vendetta against MBAs. Seeing it as a blackmark? You are quick to judge an MBA based on their education. Maybe if people working in startups weren't such elitists and thinking you don't need business skills to run a startup, you wouldn't have so many fail.

Most startups don't fail for reasons of business management and business strategy.

It's also a little weird to say that we're elitists because we're not hiring the elite of the business world.

Re: Why we have never hired an MBA

#47

Post by wpietri » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:16 PM UTC

sritch wrote: post #17

randomdata wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are quick to judge an MBA based on their education. People are judged by their education all the time. Why should MBAs be exempt? Though I do agree that the arbitrarily judging of someone based on what learning they have done in their life is ridiculous. Though I can't help but feel that even you have done the exact same judging: "Maybe if people working in startups weren't such elitists and thinking you don't ne…

People look at successful dropouts and think "not having a degree MUST be the key to success". People are judged better by their lack of formal education than those having attended post-secondary.

That's ridiculous. People are judged by what they've gotten done in the real world. Nobody says, "Oh, that guy just dropped out of college; he must be smart, so let's hire him."

They don't have a bias against education. They have a bias toward experience.

Re: Why we have never hired an MBA

#48

Post by seivan » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:17 PM UTC

I've been saying this forever;

"If your whole role is to come up with ideas & strategies for the product but you can’t make them happen yourself, and have a very limited understanding of how you could, you are pointless."

Best product managers and/or designers are usually the engineers working, using and breathing the product.

Re: Why we have never hired an MBA

#49

Post by antr » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:18 PM UTC

MattRob wrote: post #38

antr wrote: post #36

I haven't got an MBA but many close friends do - and none of them fit Matt's views. I repeat, none. Having an MBA is not a black and white scenario, and that same "profile" can apply to anyone with no MBA. Still, let the facts do the talking, founders/executers with MBAs: - Chris Dixon (Hunch, among others) - Jeff Skoll (eBay) - Trip Hawkins (Electronic Arts) - Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy(Sun Microsystems) - Gery Kre…

I totally agree. As I said in the original post: "I am not trying to argue that there is no place for MBAs, or that no MBA has a clue about startups – both of those are demonstrably untrue. Also having an MBA itself is clearly not the problem."

The title should be "Why we have never hired someone who wants to be a Product Manager". The MBA angle/title is total link-bait and a cheap way of stereotyping anyone. These type of posts, in the past year, have turned HN into the perfect example of double standards.

Re: Why we have never hired an MBA

#50

Post by orangethirty » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:19 PM UTC

I kindly suggest that you change the title. The points you make are very good. But the title does not do the blog post justice. It takes away from it. One of the key points when creating a headline for an HN post is to not use the word Why with an abosolute negative. It makes the community go in with a negative approach. You may try the following headline example and get more views/upvotes/comments:

Why we've had bad luck interviewing MBAs. This one talks about your experience without sounding link baity. It also relates directly to your experiences.

In regards to your experiences. I think the issues with MBAs come from their conventional business education. A lot of them are not prepared to worok with startups. There are some good people out there, but it is not the standard.