Sheryl Sandberg Says an MBA Doesn't Matter in Tech

It has also helped me in one more way - getting a feel and helping me understand why my own company behaved the way it did - including business strategy, sales dynamics as well as HR policies and practices.

I think the point that Sandberg might have been making was there are some good fundamentals learned in going to business school, however, in tech we move so fast that the education is diluted.

I'd also say that in tech we are pre-disposed to attract a lot of self-educated/self-starter types, those folks seem to take a modular approach where if they are deficient in some piece of information they go out and learn it.

Most entrepreneurs need to spend a significant amount of time thinking about non-tech related objectives (e.g. sales, pricing, marketing, etc). Sure -- there are tons of publications out there teaching a technical entrepreneur the fundamentals of marketing and sales, but it is always specific to the author's/interviewee's own experience which happens to be unlike all others. Or, and perhaps more commonly, these publications tend to gloss over a really important fact (or facts): the author/interviewee had insane connections or a very rich uncle that allowed her to achieve success as an entrepreneur/businessperson without an MBA.

For those would-be entrepreneurs without insane connections, deep pockets, or a future unicorn in the making, the MBA provides an opportunity to build skills and knowledge important to getting a business off the ground and, more generally, teaches one how to operate in a world that revolves around money, not tech. Personally, my MBA gave way to a great new career path, higher salary, great connections, and -- most importantly -- a much more holistic view of the world.

In the end, I do believe that an MBA is not required for success. However, I disagree with Thiel and Sandberg drawing such a hard line in the sand. People looking to learn is never a useless act.

For context -- I picked up an EE degree in undergrad and eventually went on to grab an MBA.

After you did your MBA, did you take up new responsibilities in work? Did you get compensated for being a more valuable member of the team?

Do you think it would be worthwhile for someone in my position to do an MBA considering I don't feel like you did?

To each his own, I guess. Perhaps I just don't like to glorify schools of any sort.

Another anecdata is that when working in oilfield services, it was beneficial to understand geology and related fields.

And I can understand what Sandberg is saying -- it's definitely not an explicit requirement; some people are great engineers and have excellent soft skills and can play that up into management. They can play the politics game well, and likely had role models who taught them the rules of the game.

But for myself, an MBA was absolutely necessary. I wasn't ignorant about how to run a business, but I was completely unprepared for how corporate politics work. There are some things you can learn by trial and error, but the complex dance between operations, product, sales, and finance is something I didn't even fully understand until I was working post-MBA.

I'm from South America, have a b.s. in computer science and worked in management consulting before going to business school. For the past few years, I've been working in tech and living with my family in the Bay area solely because of my MBA.

I'm not referring to the academic knowledge I gained, or the global mindset I now have, nor the network I built, which are all valuable. For internationals like myself, the MBA is a great opportunity to make a radical change in your career, as well as your personal life.

For the rest, if you want a foot in the door at Facebook and don't have Harvard or Stanford on your resume, a MBA from Booth or MIT Sloan will definitely help

That's debatable. https://www.quora.com/Why-are-MBAs-looked-down-upon-in-Silic...

I actually agree with her, however, I wonder whether she'd be where she is how having had listened to her own advice.

It has opportunity costs though. Assuming that MBA is indeed useless, she would have achieved greater things in lesser time had she spent the time on something more meaningful than pursuing the MBA.

Thing is, the useless MBA image comes from the indiscriminate and formalistic practices of HR recruiters, who would equate an "MBA" with "value". So the incentives have changed from "I want to bring my company forward" to "I want a cushy job with little actual work".

And it is true, that traditional business education has now suffered from this. What I ask myself, if CS will be immune to this. Judging that Fizz Buzz is still a thing, I'd say no.

I asked a friend who had a technical degree from an excellent university, and later got an MBA what useful skills he learned, and he flat out said that he only got it for signaling purposes. As far as new ideas/notions, it was basically absolutely nothing.

A quick glance at any publication on 'managerial studies' will confirm the total vacuity of the field. The average published article is a 'just so' story backed up by a dramatically statistically underpowered study. Managerial science makes social psychology look like quantum physics.

It's like officer school. The worst graduates come out absolutely convinced they can run an entire army, when in fact they're still almost completely clueless.

Aside from the networking - which is not trivial - the benefits of an MBA for talented individuals seem to be exposure to the idea that strategy, cost/benefit analysis, accounting, marketing, and the rest all exist, and are more relevant to a business than the code base.

This can be a surprise to straight CS people, many of whom only care about code.

But by analogy, many MBAs only seem to care about money.

There's more to running a successful business than the bottom line - or at least there should be - and more subtle management principles that build businesses by making customers and employees happy as well as making shareholders rich don't seem to figure at all in MBA schools.

The MBA point of view seems to be that happiness doesn't matter when there's profit to be made.

Ironically, there's a lot of poverty in that view - not just morally, but politically and economically. In the longer term it leads to the kind of economic picture we have today, where there's a lot of profit being made, but at the cost of rapidly shrinking broad prosperity and economic freedom for most of the population.

Also, I remember reading somewhere that one of the Google founders (Brin, I think) was actually proud of not having an MBA. Not 100% about the validity of the story though.

Thing is, if it's true, I can understand the sentiment of rebelling against the older business culture that people with MBAs represented at the time. Thing is, all the VCs that bankrolled early Silicon Valley did (and do) have MBAs. So the point is the stance is a bit hypocritical.

When we complain about empty-suit MBAs running a software company, that's assuming the suits are just MBAs, not engineers who also got MBAs. They have no skill in or respect for the craft of programming, they probably don't even understand what it consists of, and yet they are in charge and the programmers are not.

Working for a technical or formerly technical manager, rather than an MBA who studied Information Systems 10 years ago and reads InfoWorld, as if that qualifies him to be CIO/CTO, is in large part what draws people to Silicon Valley and away from corporate IT departments.

The MBA could be useful but most MBA curriculums have not adjusted to the speed of firm development in the startup space. the degree needs a 21st century revamp.

If someone is really skilled outside the MBA and it was more of a tack-on then they'll probably be fine. ...but in my experience the person relying on their MBA is the type of clueless executive that demands all the metrics for their division be totally reworked into some crazy ridiculous Excel spreadsheet because that's the only thing they know how to use and they think this means that they are doing analytics. These are the types that slowly destroy companies these days.

I have a parent who teaches at a top-5 business school. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Japan on a trip where my parent acted as a faculty chaperone and was able to attend some of the meetings with Japanese business leaders. One of the trips was to a 400+ year-old sake brewer. After the tour of the brewery, there was a Q & A period with the president of the company. The business school students asked him question after question about expansion, new product lines, finding new markets, advertising campaigns...everything they could think about to achieve growth. His answer was always basically the same and to the effect of, "I'm happy with the current situation. I make a profit making the best sake in the world, just as my ancestors have made it for the past 400 years. I provide a comfortable life for my family and the families of the people who work for me. Why would I want to change?"

It was a profound experience for me to watch him try to explain what should be a completely reasonable position to a group of people that have had the ideal of growth beyond all else drilled into their head so thoroughly that they simply couldn't understand contentment with the status quo. On the ride home, the whole group was complaining about why they'd even wasted their time talking to someone so ignorant. Comments ranged from, "He'll be out of business in 10 years" to "At least we got to drink sake."

I worry that putting MBAs in charge of businesses puts a skewed view on risk and desired outcomes. Each and every one of their suggestions could have backfired immensely and most would have required taking on considerable debt. It's this way of thinking that gives people the unicorn-or-bust mentality and look down on those who try to build "lifestyle businesses" (I hate that term). The world would be a much better place with fewer unicorns and more lifestyle businesses. The hockey stick isn't necessary to be successful, at yet it seems to be all that MBAs understand.

Regarding business, same thing. Some folks can pick it up by reading books, the newspaper, and just soaking it up at work. Others might benefit from learning it in a classroom.

I've found that different people find different things valuable in their MBA. We had an entrepreneurship prof who was also an investor who took us yoking from term sheets to buy outs. Found that super valuable, but yes, no doubt could read up more on this online as well. Same for finance, which was a topic that I didn't know that well before. From a course perspective also got more out of strategy than I expected, but that seems to be very dependent on the prof teaching. (Read 'profit or growth' by bala if you want a book, but more suited for large corporates)

Above all though, i think you get more out of the MBA in personal development (leadership in group work, dealing with pressure, being confident with new material, etc.) and network (after 1-2 years you are at least well connected to a group of people that have high business ambitions, plus alumni). In that sense it's difficult to replace the full MBA experience with a set of MOOCs.

Finally, I've always found it powerful if someone in a room full of technical people knows more about business than any other tech guy in that room (or vice versa, being the only biz guy who understands tech or can program in a room full of biz guys). The MBA is one way for technical people to make that step.

realizing that I didn't answer the question... Here are some things I think would also be interesting, regardless of the paper for more tech oriented people:

- time value of money (finance)

- basics of accounting (p&l vs cash flow, you'd be amazed how many startups die by running out of cash even though their p&l is positive)

- understanding competitive advantage & successful market entry (strategy)

- basic operations: the difference between efficient and market responsive supply chains (right supply chain for right product, i.e. Don't typically airfreight toilet paper); and the newsfeed or model if you make real products

- lots around marketing (pricing, channels, etc.)

- some stuff on more executive lvl management (do executives have most impact by the decisions they make themselves, or by the premises they set for others in the organization within which they make decisions? If the latter, how do you work best as an exec?)

- negotiation 101: there are some great HBS cases available online, it's even fun as a Friday afternoon to negotiate between people and see what works best.

- governance and boards

- basics of investing, leveraged buyouts, private equity/VC

https://personalmba.com/best-business-books/

You might even be right, but just writing it without any supporting evidence isn't adding much to this discussion.

This may be true for a small number of top-ranked business schools (and even then it's debatable) but not for the vast majority of educational institutions offering MBA degrees.

How is that your interpretation? She's making a perfectly valid, and fairly common, point: as long as you're smart and talented, your specific background isn't so relevant because we can teach you the specific technologies you need.

I think most developers will agree to this to some extent.