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Comment by thegoldenchild | Hacker News Reader

There's nothing stopping you from learning everything on your own. BUT you miss out on the MBA network. When you're forced to spend 2 years with a cohort of 75-100 people, you develop a close-knit bond when you spend most of your time eating, drinking, studying (and sometimes sleeping) with these people. If I want a job at a company that one of my MBA classmates works at, an interview is literally one phone call away.

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I realize the network effect is positive for you, but I think it's negative for the world at large. One would hope that hires would be merit based, not simply that your are friends in the MBA club.

It doesn't have to be binary there. It can be merit-based and heavily dependent on having friends in the club. And that's not a special property of the MBA folks. That is to say, you might be good enough to be a lead engineer at Google, and they're not going to give you that job if you aren't, but it's still a whole lot easier to put yourself into the position of being able to do that if people in your network work at Google. MBAs are no different. You don't get to be a VP of finance because you used to do bong hits with the CEO, but if you're someone who is able to do the job of VP of finance (and can convince people of that), then that connection to the CEO is hugely valuable.

Networks aren't just for MBAs. I'm a software engineer, and I got my current job partially because one of my best friends works here and he gave me a referral. Now, I'm sure I passed the interview on my own merits, but I might not have even gotten to an interview if not for my friend letting me put his name on my job application.

How are they going to hire you if they don't know you exist?

Most referrals for jobs aren't based of real deep friends, but based off acquaintance connections..

I said nothing about the network, which is indeed likely valuable (though I argue you get a much better ROI by working with/networking with people who are already successful instead of with people who might one day be successful). The parent comment was specifically about the value of classes, which I strongly disagree with.

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