Stanford MBAs Shift Away from Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Stanford MBAs Shift Away from Tech

#61

Post by michaelochurch » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 3:56 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #2

Stanford MBAs in tech are fucking weird. I worked with a few, and had one for a CEO for 2 years. The gist of it is that they all sucked at tech but thought they didn't (trying to manage engineering teams in ridiculous micromanagy self important ways), were all very self centered, and all came from very wealthy families, being able to raise a few hundred thousands from "friends and family" (!?) and spending 4 day week…

Damaso Effect.

http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/vc-istan-8-th...

https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/an-insight-o...

My attitude toward these numbers is... how the fuck are we not organizing? If a straight-out-of-school Stanford MBA is worth $300k, then I'm worth $750k at least on that piece of data alone, and I'm not the best programmer out there. What in fuck's name are we doing posting here, with evidence like that of the need to organize?

More (highly relevant, IMO) blog posts on the topic of what engineers are actually worth:

http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/whats-a-mid-c...

http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/software-engi...

Re: Stanford MBAs Shift Away from Tech

#62

Post by mliker » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 4:03 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #2

Stanford MBAs in tech are fucking weird. I worked with a few, and had one for a CEO for 2 years. The gist of it is that they all sucked at tech but thought they didn't (trying to manage engineering teams in ridiculous micromanagy self important ways), were all very self centered, and all came from very wealthy families, being able to raise a few hundred thousands from "friends and family" (!?) and spending 4 day week…

Your sample size is too small to judge all Stanford MBAs. This is Hacker News. Please bring more substance to the table.

Re: Stanford MBAs Shift Away from Tech

#63

Post by rdtsc » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 4:04 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #2

Stanford MBAs in tech are fucking weird. I worked with a few, and had one for a CEO for 2 years. The gist of it is that they all sucked at tech but thought they didn't (trying to manage engineering teams in ridiculous micromanagy self important ways), were all very self centered, and all came from very wealthy families, being able to raise a few hundred thousands from "friends and family" (!?) and spending 4 day week…

I interview some college kids and that is sometimes the case.

"I don't know technology but I want to manage people".

Or some stay in the CS degree but switch focus to "UI design" or "HCI" and so on. It is ok to switch, but after a talking to a many it seem the reason is that a few core CS classes were getting too hard to they switched.

Re: Stanford MBAs Shift Away from Tech

#64

Post by cylinder » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 4:10 PM UTC

mliker wrote: post #62

GuiA wrote: post #2

Stanford MBAs in tech are fucking weird. I worked with a few, and had one for a CEO for 2 years. The gist of it is that they all sucked at tech but thought they didn't (trying to manage engineering teams in ridiculous micromanagy self important ways), were all very self centered, and all came from very wealthy families, being able to raise a few hundred thousands from "friends and family" (!?) and spending 4 day week…

Your sample size is too small to judge all Stanford MBAs. This is Hacker News. Please bring more substance to the table.

Part of the point of boards like this is to be able to share anecdotes from the field. That's why I come here. While your point about sample size is true please don't discourage this.

Re: Stanford MBAs Shift Away from Tech

#65

Post by refurb » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 4:12 PM UTC

What on earth is a guaranteed bonus? If it's guaranteed, then it's not a bonus.

I've seen numbers like this before for PE. They make some assumptions about the fund's returns to come up with the $300K in "guaranteed bonus".

Re: Stanford MBAs Shift Away from Tech

#66

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 4:18 PM UTC

joshu wrote: post #3

GuiA wrote: post #2

Stanford MBAs in tech are fucking weird. I worked with a few, and had one for a CEO for 2 years. The gist of it is that they all sucked at tech but thought they didn't (trying to manage engineering teams in ridiculous micromanagy self important ways), were all very self centered, and all came from very wealthy families, being able to raise a few hundred thousands from "friends and family" (!?) and spending 4 day week…

as an angel investor, mba founders is a big warning sign. so there's that.

I'd love to understand the reasoning behind this generalization. Do you object to the content of the MBA curriculum? Is there data that suggests a causal relationship between founders with this credential and business failure?

Re: Stanford MBAs Shift Away from Tech

#67

Post by rdtsc » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 4:19 PM UTC

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #55

pptr1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that note, why does YC let so many MBA founders in?

YC lets them in because the people making that decision believe said founders have some (unspecificied, but non-trivially non-zero) chance at building a company they can sell (to other investors or "the public" in an IPO) for far more than they invest in it. It seems people are making a category error with respect to YC. YC's purpose is not to foster a cradle of technical innovation with an engineer focus; it's to ma…

> Engineers in the startup world are like engineers everywhere else in technology work: second-class workers who exist to expend their life in the form of labor for (relatively) token compensation in return

Be careful, that breaks the marketing veil too much ;-)

The problem is that to attract and keep engineers busy and happy it is important to tell them stories about changing the world, "breakthrough technologies", paradigm shifts. Also it is important to explain inability of many engineers to discern how equity gets allocated, how options and stock work and so on. "oh look you get 10000 shares!" type tricks.

Now, granted, those are not mutually exclusive, some do work on breakthrough technologies.

Re: Stanford MBAs Shift Away from Tech

#68

Post by jeangenie » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 4:20 PM UTC

dqdo wrote: post #24

davidw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a citation for that? I'm genuinely curious.

I heard that term at a conference given by Sidney Dekker. Professor Dekker is a world famous expert in risk and accident management. The links from his talk and books are below. He said "MBA stands for more bad advice" at 14:00. It is worth a watch even if you are not interested in engineering risk management. http://vimeo.com/102167635 http://sidneydekker.com/books/ From my own personal experience as a researcher in…

This problem is precisely what leads me to doubt the value of what we currently call higher education. To put it bluntly (and in a slightly exaggerated manner), in exchange for your tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars, you get obsolete (at best) and just plain bad (at worst) vocational training.

Re: Stanford MBAs Shift Away from Tech

#69

Post by jjoonathan » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 4:38 PM UTC

conjecTech wrote: post #60

jjoonathan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By definition, profit benefits society. No. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-v4zI8gKuFug/T-vpFAjdXeI/AAAAAAAAB-... More formally, Nash equilibria != global optima. It is not uncommon for companies to spend money destroying value for their customer -- and to profit from doing so! See: keurig DRM, speed grading in the semiconductor industry, Goldman Sachs cornering the Aluminum market, Enron shutting off power to create the…

You've shown profit is not necessarily optimally beneficial for customers. You haven't show that it isn't still beneficial.

It's not impossible that redistributing piles of cash from California citizens to Enron shareholders, employees, and execs in return for intentionally cutting off electricity was a net benefit for society.

But I doubt it. And so should you. Focusing on the fact that we can't finish the proof without an assumption along the lines of "financially incentivizing companies to treat customers poorly is bad for society" is very much in the same vein as arguing that we can't prove one way or another if there will be an alien invasion in the next year => let's assume there's a 50/50 chance.

Re: Stanford MBAs Shift Away from Tech

#70

Post by camelite » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 4:38 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #36

georgemcbay wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"investment firms and hedge funds will benefit their clients by investing their money and (hopefully) getting them a good return" Ideally, but in the really-real world they often fuck their clients because conflict of interest rules rarely exist or when they do aren't enforced. Goldman Sachs (already mentioned in the thread) being a prime example of this, eg the Abacus deal, the whole "muppet" culture, etc.

So how do they still have clients?

State-of-the-art salesmanship.