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Comment by bennyfreshness | Hacker News Reader

Just an anecdote of my personal experience, since there's generally a sense of uselessness for MBAs in tech and I held the same view until recently getting an MBA.

I was moving from engineering to product management and thought it would help my resume to get an MBA, but I was pleasantly surprised how useful in many other regards the process and learnings were.

For sure learning on your own, doing things, building product, is better than structured curriculum. But there's something to be said for being exposed to a broad set of business information. When heads down writing code and building businesses, it's hard to step out and learn this disparate knowledge unless you're forced to by wanting to graduate. Maybe you're more disciplined than I, but in my free time I wouldn't dabble in accounting for instance, just wasn't interested. The forcing function is surprisingly helpful.

I'm not claiming it's for everyone, but I got a ton out of my MBA and would recommend. My situation was moving from engineering to product, had full time PM job, trying to start a side business, which now has had significant growth that I attribute a lot to my learnings from the MBA.

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During my undergraduate program, I was a Teaching Assistant for a statistics department housed within a business school. The department was going through a re-branding from statistics and operations to "business analytics", and I got a lot of exposure to the inner workings of graduate education at the time.

Some students in our department were there for an MS in Statistics, others for a dual MS and MBA program. The single greatest indicator of whether or not an MBA was useless was whether the person was actively or passively choosing to get an MBA. About 70% of students were passively choosing to get a graduate degree. Either they had no idea what to do after their bachelors, they realized really quickly after their bachelors that what they thought was "adulthood" in college was not real and decided to run back to it, or they were following the trope of "bachelors -> 2-3 years in industry -> MBA -> ??? -> profit" with no idea of what "???" was except that they'd put in their 2-3 years already. For all of these students, they were passively choosing to get an MBA either to fill a checkbox or to avoid the alternative.

Then there were about 30% of students that actively chose to pursue an MBA. These students almost all had actual, real-world experience and actively chose to get an MBA because of specific needs or circumstances they had. In some cases it was to make a strategic career shift, in some cases it was to better orient themselves after making a career shift, in some cases it was to get over a ceiling in their industry where it was required to keep growing. But in all cases, if you asked them why they got an MBA, they could tell you without hesitation explicitly what prompted that decision, and the value they expected to derive from completing their MBA program (and why the MBA program was the right avenue for getting that value).

MBAs aren't useless. But a very sizable percentage of people graduate with them are useless[1], and would be equally as useless with or without the MBA. And the same holds true for most advanced degrees, from what I've seen.

[1] From the perspective of "hire a bunch of MBAs to solve problems". An incompetent worker without credentials is just as incompetent with credentials. And success in receiving an MBA from an academic environment does not denote success potential in applying the MBA in a business environment.

> Then there were about 30% of students that actively chose to pursue an MBA. These students almost all had actual, real-world experience and actively chose to get an MBA because of specific needs or circumstances they had.

Coming from the UK my assumption was that MBA degrees were only open to those with some type of actual experience. That is based on my own research around 2002 where I found that Master's in Finance, Management, etc. were the only options for someone with limited real-world experience.

Is this a case where the entry requirements have shifted, or is this a regional thing? I went down the Master's path, but found an opportunity to come to the US on an H1B so I dropped out. I found what I've learned to be incredibly useful, but given how far I made it through I can't justify an MBA for reasons other than the credential or networking.

The MBA programs of the 70s and 80s had business experience as one of the requirements, with GRE and undergraduate degree as the remainder. Since the 90s a lot of programs have completely dropped the business experience requirement. Quite a few have gone to integrated 5 year (BBA + MBA). Makes it easier to expand an expensive program from a cadre of rich, impressionable undergrads rather than a workforce who understand value for money.

The reasons are mixed. In some cases, it's a shift in entry requirements. One institution's admissions standards is another institution's market opportunity. Which is partially a regional thing, due to the sickening willingness of unsustainable institutional growth on the back of ever increasing amounts of student loan debt (which has special status in the US that makes it both incredibly easy to qualify for and almost impossible to ever discharge via bankruptcy).

But a more globally-applicable path is sideloading into an MBA. Many institutions offer "dual degree programs", where you get an MS in Finance or Management or what have you. And because the requirements overlap so heavily with an MBA, for an additional semester or two of classes you can get an MBA as well. So you get in for just the MS, then after you start you switch to the dual degree track. By that point you're already past the general qualifications, already within the graduate school, and already a student. It's mostly an administrative change internally, and as long as your faculty like you it's pretty easy for them to push through.

"can't justify an MBA for reasons other than the credential or networking"

I suspect those two reasons constitute a sizable portion -- maybe even a majority -- of a typical MBA's value proposition. At the elite schools, the networking component alone might justify the costs.

At the top 6-8 schools in the US, networking plus the placement office justified the bill. But if you’re an @$$hole then the networking won’t help.

MBA is at best dangerous without real world operations experience. Business case studies and accounting are meaningful and a lot of fun once you have contributed to a business and have tried to run your own business or marketing effort. Jamming business training into somone who has never really analyzed an operation or contributed significantly is near futile...they just will not have anything to relate it to.

If those 2-3 years in industry were in management consulting or finance, then I wouldn't have put those people as the "no idea" group, that's a normal part of progressing within those industries if you've been promoted quickly

You're exactly right, and I would put those in the the latter group, not the former. Those individuals know precisely why they're getting their MBA, and don't have the "???" step in their progression. Rather, they intend to leverage the network and exposure they developed during their 2-3 years consulting, plus the signaling from the MBA, to pivot into a particular level and type of role post-MBA.

Your caveat at the end is also pretty key. If you spend 2-3 years barely scraping by with mediocre results in consulting and don't get promoted, and expect to do the post-MBA pivot, you'll have issues (or you have family connections and it's all moot anyway).

But I was more speaking to people who go and get a random entry-level industry job after their bachelors, spend 2-3 years putting their time in, crawl back to school for an MBA, and expect the six figure job offers to just roll in. That's surprisingly common (not just for MBA, but for many graduate programs).

This is a great anecdotal argument -- I just want to note that it also applies very well, pretty much verbatim, to some other graduate school educations too, such as engineering or comp sci.

Pretty much. At my last company, I managed a data and analytics team. The vast majority of applicants were over-credentialed individuals trying to break into data science (even though we didn't brand the positions as such). While I applaud their achievements in and of themselves[1], very few were able to articulate why their advanced degree would apply or be beneficial for the roles I was attempting to fill or justify the salary requirements they'd request.

My two best performing and best paid employees on that team were exact opposites - one had just finished a masters in math and the other had an incomplete bachelors. But both were able to articulate why they had made the choices they made and demonstrated the ability to make deliberate, pragmatic, and calculated decisions. Which is an invaluable skill to have on your team.

[1] I'm a terrible academic. I focused more on working and making money while in school, and gave the bare minimum amount of attention to my classes to get by. So I do truly have appreciation for people that can dedicate themselves to school enough to achieve an advanced degree. But that appreciation is separate from them being able to derive work value from that degree.

It’s very common for PhDs in technical fields to pivot to data science once they hit a wall in their career from the oversupply problem. I’ve had a couple of friends make this jump - but they either came from a computational background or devoted at least a year to learning the necessary programming skills and math. Out of curiosity, did the overcredentialed people you interviewed have any actual experience applying analytic techniques, or were they just people with advanced degrees blindly trying to move into a hot field?

I was moving from engineering to product management and thought it would help my resume to get an MBA, but I was pleasantly surprised how useful in many other regards the process and learnings were.

I went to graduate school to get an MBA from a decently, regionally respected program after one year working full time. I went the part time MBA route. I dropped out because of $reasons after almost finishing.

What I learned from my MBA didn’t have any immediate rewards during the early parts of my career as a software developer, but it really started helping a lot for more senior architect roles - “architect” by title or responsibility - and helped me talk to CxOs and punch above my titles.

I never put anything about graduate school on my resume.

The first time I thought about going back and either getting an MBA or MS in Comp. Sci, I realized that getting either wouldn’t get me an appreciable bump in salary over just self study in technology and aggressively job hopping in my local market.

In two years when things settle down and my youngest is in college and I could realistically think about doing it, it still wouldn’t make much financial sense. I’ll have the skillset, the resume, and the certifications along with my business knowledge to make more as an overpriced “implementation consultant” than I could with an MBA. Especially since I am not willing to move to any of the financial centers and I would basically have to slowly work my way up.

Most development managers are making much less than consultants in my market. Heck when I was a Dev lead, I was making less than ordinary software developer contractors that I hired.

I'd be curious on your thoughts on this:

I have an undergrad in Computer Engineer, grad in EE from a big state university.

My employer is willing to pay for another Masters (nice perk...). I have 10 years working experience and work in Atlanta now - so I can do the Georgia Tech Executive MBA, or, their online Computer Science degree.

Assuming I have time (have a 2nd baby on the way so debatable)...and it's free. Is one more worthwhile than the other. And although the G. Tech online degree is available for free, the pressure of deadlines would actually ensure I complete the courses and not just watch a few hours and stop...like I've done already.

You should figure out why you want the next degree. If it's credentialing, then having a non-technical graduate degree would cover your "breadth". If you want to be exposed to a different audience and learn from different businesses and perspectives, MBA.

However, want to really double-down on the technical path (or simply want to learn more technically and credential up at the same time), then by all means go for the free GT OMSCS, although with a graduate EE degree I have to say that it feels a little redundant. Perhaps you have a burning or specific research topic you'd like to deep-dive through one or more independent study modules in the OMSCS program, in which case that answers the "purpose" question.

Would your company sponsor a graduate degree outside of GA? If so, you could also potentially consider a higher ranked program and fly in, although your partner will probably veto that idea due to your second incoming child. My point here is that this may open up other options you didn't consider, depending on your financial situation and your real purpose for going back to school.

I think that any part-time program is harder when you have a newborn. Depending on the timing of your second child, and job stability, you may also want to consider whether you should postpone the next graduate degree for a year when your second is most likely to be sleeping through the night(s) again.

You can do both GT's OMSCS and UIUC's iMBA...

My employer (very large employer...) has partners with other universities for free grad degree. Including Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, and University of Illinois for MBA. It's more traditional, as in...recorded lectures, go to a testing center.

The draw of the G. Tech OMSCS is it's more self paced. I can take 1 class per semester while the other traditional I believe would be 2+ classes per semester.

My current position is more management/team lead, and being in a 'large company' my tech exposure hasn't been competitive (case in point...free grad degree, even though I have on already). I've solved a lot of business problems using older tech. The OMSCS would give me the exposure, plus the pressure to actually finish lectures and projects.

My Masters in EE was actually more hardware oriented. Circuits, networking, DSP, etc... I stumbled into web & software dev. I'd do the OMSCS courses in AI, Security & Data Science - I have an interest in those, anyways.

Good point on postponing. I won't start till Fall 2019 - but I think the G. Tech executive MBA I can start in the Spring if I get all my paperwork together, but that would be suicide haha.

I’m not disagreeing with your reasoning for going OMSCS route, but if the company is going to pay for it either way and support you studying, why not take advantage of it to the fullest and have them reimburse you for the eMBA?

At some point in the future if my life allows for it, I would do the OMSCS degree just for the hell of it and it’s only $7K.

Edit: A degree in STEM serves basically two purposes - education and credentials. You already have good credentials and you could teach yourself anything you want in CS.

Even more of a reason to go the eMBA route.

Yeah I agree. With 10 years as 'individual contributor', the last 2 as team lead, an eMBA might serve me better. Tech is coming to our office next week to present/recruit for eMBA, so this article and your response is perfect timing. Thanks!

Actually, I'm also in Atlanta and I have been for over 20 years and I think I have a good understanding of the local tech scene and salary.

It depends on what you want to do and whether you want to stay in Atlanta.

From what I can tell from talking to recruiters, looking at salary surveys, and friends who are also in their 40s who have been aggressive about their careers longer than I have and eschew management, the ceiling for individual contributors and low level architects/dev leads (statistical ceiling without going way out on the bell curve) is around $150-$160K total comp and that's pushing well into the 4th quintile.

You can gradually get over that hump by being an "implementation consultant" for a consulting company, but still you may be looking at around a top end of $180K - $200K. It also may require a fair amount of travel.

I'm not sure which would open more doors or what doors you are trying to travel through. Personally, I have no desire to get into management and want to stay hands on. More money is always nice, but not strictly necessary for me. The cost of living in the 'burbs in Atlanta is so low compared to what you can make as developer with 10 years of experience, it's not really worth the extra headache for me to take on more responsibilities right now.

If a company was willing to pay for my education, I would definitely go the Executive MBA route. It is so easy to teach yourself almost anything in computer science once you have the foundation and I don't think you get much "credit" for getting academic credentials in computer science as you would get for business.

Besides, the online computer science degree from GA Tech is cheap - $7000. The EMBA is $80K. A $7K reimbursement is nothing.

A couple of my direct reports are working on their masters from G-Tech online. I'm not very impressed with the curriculum (or at least the classes they're taking). I'd probably go the MBA route to cover your higher-degree, and fill in specific technical training with an area that interests you for work, like a data science course from Stanford, or whatever....

The CS degree is 5X as hard. It will be more immediately useful. The business degree will be more useful long term if you expect to land in a non-Tech role.

I am a Data Scientist w/ a MS in computer Science, but many of my CS classmates never become one despite desire to do so, while several of my MBA friends did so with ease (granted it is Wharton).

I think an MBA is more useful over a master in CS because many MBA's have great stats programs. In most CS programs you'd have to use up precious elective spots to take those. Also, business intelligence is a huge part of many ds roles. And if you really wanted to take that Machine Learning course in CS, just take it as an elective in your MBA.

I'd love to hear what others have to say on the topic

I am a data scientist who spent my early career doing lots of BI work before moving on to my current role (years ago). I don't have an MBA, only a quantitative Ph.D.

BI is more related to analytics than DS (broadly defined, DS deals with predictive, while BI deals with descriptive), and typically falls under the purview of data analysts. It also isn't really a prerequisite for DS work. Also, BI is a skill that is easily acquired in industry rather than in school.

I don't know if an MBA is necessarily more useful than a MSCS if you want to become a data scientist. On the hiring end, quantitative training is strongly preferred for true DS positions over qualitative. Given a pool of people with quantitative degrees vs MBAs, it is very likely the former will have an advantage.

The only exception is if the position isn't truly a DS one; many people advertise data analyst under a DS title to get a broader pool of candidates. It's common practice these days.

I also am a data scientist, after attending Wharton. Understanding how businesses operate, both internally (which stakeholders are important to convince of a decision) and externally (what does the company need to do to succeed, big picture?) is really helpful for data scientists to drive impact.

Are you comparing CS undergrad + MBA to CS undergrad + CS masters?

I have a sibling working towards a business degree (concentration in statistics and DS) and looking to work as a SWE for a few years before going to grad school and working as a DS after getting a degree.

Would a stats focused MBA be more of a fit in your opinion vs a MS in CS?

I think most criticisms I have seen of MBAs is not of the degree itself, but of the associated costs and the amount of debt the program leaves you with.

I run an MBA admissions site on the side and did some analysis on this.

tl;dr if you are confident an MBA can create a step increase in annual comp of even $10k, the cost is more than covered over the remainder of your career.

"Between 2008 and 2014, the average salary of MBA graduates three years after they left business school increased by just 4 per cent to $127,000." https://www.ft.com/content/a2813230-d69b-11e7-a303-9060cb1e5...

10k/year is far more than the value of the median MBA. Especially, when you adjust the numbers for inflation and expected raises.

Is this from a fancy school? Most MBAs I know are working jobs that have nothing to do with their MBA, making less than $50,000. The only people who benefited from it are guys who did engineering + MBA.

I'm not sure if it's to the same degree as law degrees, but there's definitely a strong element of credential value from top schools. The conventional wisdom for law degrees is that, if you can't get into a top school, most people shouldn't bother. That's probably at least somewhat true with MBAs as well.

There is a pretty strong power law in effect for the ROI on an MBA depending on the strength of the school. https://gmatclub.com/forum/value-of-a-top-10-mba-213365.html

Many people go to law school for reasons other than working in BigLaw wasting their lives away in an office. For example, a great number of lawyers (and budding law school students) work for (or want to work for) for smaller firms, or in-house at companies, or at non-profits, and go home in the evenings to their friends and families.

But yes, if you plan to go to law school solely because you want to make money, it's not worth it unless you go to a top school or graduate at the literal top of your class.

People making crazy 20+ million a year salaries boosts the average quite a bit. But, yea the median change in salary is much worse than the average change in salary.

What roles did those people end up having after the MBA?

You can say that about most degrees, though. I know plenty of advertising degrees who are waiting tables. I know plenty of CS grads who are stocking shelves. I know mechanical engineers who deliver pizza. I know people with just high school diplomas who make six figures in the Midwest (a lot of money for a cheap area of the country).

No degree guarantees you a job, there's always work and ambition and a lot of luck and timing that factor into anyone's career success.

That seems low especially since a run of the mill b-school undergrads from Big Ten schools have average salaries in the 50ks.

I think it’s more the opportunity cost potentially. Amount of lost income by not working for 2 years + can you get that $10k increase in salary by having 2 more years of experience

Why would you have to not work for two years?

There are plenty of executive MBA and part time MBA programs from reputable schools (not just for profit and online schools) that would allow you to work and go to school. There are some that only meet on weekends.

My casual observation is that these programs are not taken as seriously (likely because the reduce time commitment is seen as less rigorous) and therefore the payback is more difficult to achieve.

Even from the same top tier schools?

The one person I know that got an EMBA from a decent respected school is a manager at a FAANG. Total comp is somewhat higher than mine, but he is also on the west coast where the cost of living negates much of the difference and if I went into consultancy, it would negate all of the difference.

Depends on the school. If it is a nationally ranked school then it is very likely that on-premise and online versions are the same. You would have to research this for each school.

> My casual observation is that these programs are not taken as seriously

In many schools there is no external difference between full time and part time (evening) MBA programs. You walk out the door of both programs with the exact same degree. Nobody outside the program will ever know which path you took to get the degree.

Nobody outside the program will ever know which path you took to get the degree.

Will they not notice the overlap between a job and the programme?

Even if they do notice, anybody who was ever in a school with both a full time and an evening program knows that there are tradeoffs to both. Working a real, full time day job and then taking school on nights and weekends is not easy.

I've had a job since I was ~15 years old and have a masters in CS. No one has ever wondered about the overlap.

I also did my Masters part-time. Noone’s ever mentioned it, but it’s pretty obvious that that’s what I did from the dates.

I will actually give more credit to the Executive programs because they require prior work experience (normally 5 years). People are much more likely to remember and be able to use the concepts they have learned in class if they can immediately apply them to real world situations that they have been in.

You can do an executive MBA and also a lot of companies will pay back your tuition when they hire you. Or you can get a company to pay for it outright.

>>[...] also a lot of companies will pay back your tuition when they hire you.

By all general measures, company sponsorship in any significant manner is shrinking[1]. I believe the US employer education assistance tax credit is limited to around $5,250[2] per individual per year. Companies that will foot the entire bill for an executive MBA program seem to be few and far between.

[1] https://poetsandquantsforexecs.com/2014/07/22/how-to-get-an-...

[2] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/tax-benefits-for-education-info...

To clarify, my calcs included the lost salary (by far the biggest cost for most ppl)

I think some people will be focusing on what benefit an MBA can bring to their salary, but I think others may look at it as a way to hedge against long-term obsolescence. It's a way to make the jump to management, architecture, and consultancy - especially in the case of larger organisations.

These roles are rightly challenged by many on HN since they aren't "true" technical architecture roles, for example. Even so, they do exist to support the businesses that create them until there is rationalisation during a recession when many of these roles are jettisoned.

Is that really the case for people in tech though - that they could get a step increase of over 10K by pursuing an MBA instead of getting experience at $latest_tech_fad?

After staying at one job for way too long 10 years ago, I’ve hopped jobs 4 times, pursuing that strategy (and learning about modern architecture) and have seen jumps of $7K, $10K, $25K, and $20K. Unless the market sours, I should be able to put together a resume and skillset to get another $25K bump as a consultant within the next 3 years.

This isn’t in Silicon Valley, NY, or DC.

I can’t see an MBA helping.

Anecdote: was in software, went to top-10-ish MBA school, went back to software industry with higher salary and have not done very badly since. But was it higher than I would have been making in 2 years without going to school? Impossible to know. Is my subsequent trajectory steeper enough to make up for the costs? Impossible to know.

I do feel it’s nice to have that base business, accounting, finance, general management knowledge as a foundation to use to understand things, but is it $150k + $opportunity cost of 2 years worth of education? Not sure...

As I said in another post, I was an MBA dropout but I did learn a lot. I’m not sure how much that knowledge has helped me in my career, but it has helped me communicate with CxOs during the second part of my career without looking like a deer in headlights when they started talking about the business end of things.

If you are spending $150K on an MBA, you are spending way too much. In Louisiana, LSU's Executive MBA costs under $60K including all books and meals during the program. If you go Southeastern Louisiana University, their Executive MBA program costs around $20K with the same things included. I went to Southeastern for mine, and I found it very useful in moving into the management chain inside of IT.

Then again, as someone above pointed out, I knew why I was getting an MBA. I can teach myself tech, but some of the business aspects are a pain to teach myself so I paid someone else to teach me those.

Yes, but from what others have said, if you are getting an MBA for the salary increase and not just to learn, getting an MBA from a non top tier school isn't really worth it if you are already in a high paying field.

In the parent's case, it probably made sense though. He was looking to get into management with an eMBA program with (I'm assuming) a school in the state that's probably well-represented at the company. A degree from a regional school is probably going to be less useful in another part of the country and/or for a less well-defined purpose.

Would you make that kind of decision with only an eye toward your current company or the market in general?

It depends? If there's an immediate concrete benefit and they're planning to stay regional anyway? Possibly/probably? And a lot of people actually stay with an employer for a significant length of time. And even just using as a near-term/midterm stepping stone may pay benefits down the road beyond the degree itself.

I tend to think personally that law and MBA grad degrees do generally tilt toward benefiting top schools but I'd never suggest that was an ironclad rule.

The next question is, how long does the affect of the college you attend vs. experience matter with an MBA?

For software development, from personal experience of going to an unknown state school in the mid 90s, I was just as competitive with people coming from well known schools within three or four years. It probably would have helped with me landing that first job.

Again, I think it depends. My MBA definitely played into my first job after; the process started with an on-campus interview. I doubt the school (or probably even that I had an MBA) made a bit of difference after that but then I was in that job for 13 years and my subsequent jobs weren't even business roles per se. I think the background was useful but it didn't matter from a hiring perspective if I had a degree from X school or not.

In my current job, to the degree my educational pedigree made any difference at all, it was my undergrad because that's where my hiring manager went. However, I'm sure there are many cases where business school networks associated with top schools can be important.

not to sound elitist, but MBAs are usually only worth it if its a Top25

I posted previously that I took all of the classes to get an MBA but ended up with slightly less than 3.0. I looked at the salary projections of just staying in tech and keeping my skills relevant and worrying about an MBA from a non top 25 school and it wasn’t worth worrying about the degree.

I did learn a lot that helped me years later.

If you are technical then no, an MBA is not designed to help. If the consulting is management consulting then it might help at first.

I disagree. If you are building business software, it is very helpful even as a developer.

To add to that value, if you become a team lead and have management responsibilities or have to manage budgets, it becomes even more helpful.

Will you be building “business software” for enough of your career to make it worthwhile? I’ve had to learn enough about plenty of verticals over the years to build software. We hire/contract the experts if they don’t already work for us.

This should be tempered with the (surely unquantifiable) negatives that come with continued employment at places that value credentials in this way. Often I've seen, though not in every case, that "step increase for MBA" type employers rarely sustain the type of merit-based increases that occur at places where merit is the only reason for the increases.

This analysis overlooks what losing financial freedom for 5-10 years in the most productive part of your life does to you. Ie even if you make the money back later, if there are 5-10 years where your decisions are constrained then you never really make that back.

I've seems criticism of the idea that an MBA makes you ready to manage anything, without any particular domain knowledge.

The part I find unsatisfactory about MBA training is that it seems to be two degrees fused at the hip. Some people pursue one because they want to work in finance, whether as traders or analysts or some sort of deal-makers. Others pursue one because they want to be managers or executives in industry, running companies that are responsible for a wide variety of products or services. It seem like these two tracks should be disentangled.

I've seems criticism of the idea that an MBA makes you ready to manage anything, without any particular domain knowledge.

Sort of the same problem as being ready to program anything, without any particular domain knowledge.

I'm glad you brought this point up, because in both cases it comes down to having the humility to understand your general skills aren't very useful without specialized knowledge.

I think software development is less guilty of this, because the usual refrain is "if they're good, they can learn the specific stuff on the job." So the industry (generalizing here) might not always hire for expertise, but it does clearly value having it long term.

On the other hand, MBA's were invented with the idea of "general management" as a career. Sometimes it works, often it doesn't. Even in the elite business schools I've spent time around, I don't often see a culture of valuing expertise. The MBA's I've met who did have domain/discipline expertise either already had it going into their MBA program, or specifically sought out optional classes for it.

All of that said, if you pay attention, MBA usually have a lot to offer in teaching soft skills. I've seen Harvard Business School's curriculum, and I genuinely believe that classes to teach communication and negotiation should be undergraduate core requirements rather than attached to an expensive secondary degree. I wouldn't have paid HBS's asking rate for that kind of training, but if I had that in undergrad, I would have been much more effective coming out of college.

I think this discounts how similar most of the code written at different companies is, the nuances determined by business rules that are established elsewhere in the org chart.

I think that depends on how you're looking at the problem. College hires, for example, don't usually come into the industry having clear Frontend/Backend differentiation, but they will probably pick one path (or have it picked for them) on the job.

On the topic of business rules though: I don't think it's just business rules. As engineers, we're much better at our jobs when we can internalize the customer mindset, and that takes time. I recently switched industries, and my ability to make architectural decisions is noticeably weaker because I don't have the long view of my problem domain yet. Some PM's like to think that they have that all covered (in my experience, that happens about 50-75% of the time), but even technical PM's don't spend that much time thinking about the architecture, so in my experience it still falls on the engineer to spend some time thinking about the what/why and not just the how.

I think that applies to MBA's too. Business often look pretty similar, but technical and industry expertise makes all the difference.

So true. I'm a data engineer but I have to understand the customer's problem so I end up getting trained on the specifics of certain engineering problems related to jet engines and I have to study technical manuals so that I know what parts and sensors are producing certain data and why under an array of conditions. I could get my job done without learning all that but it would slow everything down and I would generally be a pain in everyone's ass.

> I genuinely believe that classes to teach communication and negotiation should be undergraduate core requirements

It's generally hard to absorb the full value of classes like these in undergrad without having any real life experience so to speak. That's why the top MBAs require applicants to have at least 3+ years of a solid career to help them achieve the full value of the courses they will take

Those 2 tracks are typically disentangled. I encourage you to check out MBA curriculum.

Like most degree programs, there's a core set of business classes and a variety of electives allowing you to specialize[1].

[1] Example: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/mba/academic-experienc...

I wonder as well if it's not more valuable for somebody who's been in business for at least a few years and has some context to put the lessons into.

I assume it is still the case that most of the top programs strongly favor candidates with full-time work experience. (Both because they have more context and can share those experiences and context.)

I've often wondered this too. how can one be a master at something they have never actually done? and running a small online or mom and pop shop doesn't really count in most cases. MBA right after a bachelors seems silly to me.

MBAs are great once you have real work experience in your field already. Duke’s MBA program won’t even admit you until you’ve been working for 10 years.

Without the experience, it’s a different perspective on the program.

EDIT: That was the Global Executive MBA program at Duke. Citation in comment.

From a career perspective, there's definitely a best-before date, after which an MBA does not buy you advancement. It seems that the optimal period for most people is after about 5-8 years of working experience.

Get your MBA too early, you come without practical perspectives.

Get it too late (once you reach senior management or about a decade of managerial experience), and you don't really need it anymore. Your real-life experiences have already exceeded what an MBA has to offer.

In most places, acquiring an MBA doesn't automatically lead to a pay increase or promotion. You still have to work for those. That said, an MBA may break some glass ceilings.

> Get it too late (once you reach senior management or about a decade of managerial experience), and you don't really need it anymore. Your real-life experiences have already exceeded what an MBA has to offer.

Is this generally true? Just curious. So as a person in a senior management position, if I read a good selection of books or watch a bunch of videos, would that make me on part with an MBA education?

I will let folks in senior management comment on this.

This was advice I received from folks in senior management.

As with everything else in life, it depends.

Duke won’t admit without 10 years of experience? That’s a lie. Please cite sources because their admission stats beg to differ.

When I looked into about 10 years ago that was the case. Looking for citation now.

https://www.mbamission.com/blog/2010/10/21/mbamission%E2%80%...

EDIT: That is for their Global Executive MBA program. Cited in the last paragraph. Apologies for the confusion.

Your side business saw growth from what you learned from your MBA? Could you elaborate on that a bit more? What did you learn that you were able to apply to your business that lead to growth?

Can you give examples of things you learned that were useful? My own impression of the MBA is that it's more of a trade degree where you learn anecdotal "best practices" but little to no actual science. I don't put it in the same league as a science master's degree for that reason.

Maybe my impression is wrong though.

If you want to run a software company or lead a product, the things you learn in an MBA program are very worthwhile: how to measure clients' worth to a company, how to put together a cash flow statement, how to think like "marketing people", business applications of your product (e.g. I learned several new industries that would benefit from my product).

Outside of your specific job, one item I fall back on constantly is financial analysis. For example, you can say Tesla is a great company, if you learn how to read a cash flow statement and net income report you would see otherwise.

I agree with everything you said and I’ll add that knowing how to read a company’s financial statements won’t make you a good stock picker (ask me how I know), but not knowing these things will make you a bad stock picker.

One of the major intangible benefits of a business education I’ve found was simply the immersion in the language (written and verbal) of business. I can sit down with a CEO or other non-technical stakeholder and discuss his/her business without sounding like an idiot. Helps in an enormpus number of situations.

Why do I need a degree to read financial reports? Can't I get a book or just Google it?

If I'm running a business, why do I need to be able to read financial reports at all? Especially for some other random company. If I need to make a financial report, couldn't I use an online generator, template, accounting software, or hire someone to do it? Looking online there seem to be many services for less than a few thousand dollars for financial reporting.

If I have a product wouldn't I be able to take time to research applications for it thoroughly rather than relying industries that I remembered from some course.

As far as measuring clients worth, do I need a course on that really or do I just need to be aware that there are clients that will waste our time and try to get practical evidence that won't be the case.

Can I not get quite a bit of useful knowledge by reading and carefully digesting some key books like The Mom Test?

When you say think like a marketer, so far every article that comes up when I google that is listing things that any used car salesman would apply.

Just based on what you said it sort of makes MBA degrees seem like a waste of time to me.

The value of financial modeling is mostly in being able to run various scenarios quickly, not in the final report. You can plug in different assumptions for development velocity, labor costs, market segmentation, sales conversion rate, cost of inputs, financing sources, etc. and then see what their effect on the bottom line (= net income) is, along with other metrics like burn rate, IRR, etc. Then you use your domain knowledge to judge how likely all these scenarios are, giving you a much more complete picture than if you aren't conversant with these financial tools.

But yes, you can learn all of this from books & the Internet, you don't need an MBA for it.

Sure but I taught myself how to use Excel when I was in 6 or 7th grade. It's actually not very hard.

By your definition, neither is learning to code. Just pick up a book that describes the programming language you are gonna use and boom. You are a coder!

Excel is easy. Knowing what to put into excel is not at all easy. And yeah you can get a template but if you don't know how that template is created or why the creator did what they did you are gonna set your business up for failure. Accounting is not just math but an art.

Come on... most MBA programs are 2 years of full time study. You really going to compare "just Google it" or "digesting some key books like The Mom Test" to a MBA program? To push the logic further, what if it was a Harvard or Stanford MBA?

Oh man, all the questions you just asked only highlight exactly why an MBA is so beneficial for mid-career people haha! I'm an adult student doing concurrent CS and business degrees after a long time dabbling in both, and in both cases the value of college was in the things I wouldn't have thought to learn or wouldn't have thought were valuable, especially in places where the signal-to-noise ratio is really low and snake oil is everywhere, like the marketing example you just gave.

Just as a small example, why do you need to read financial report at all? Because that is the language of investors and managers. Why read financial reports for some random company? Benchmarking, so you can tell investors and stakeholders "this is how well we are doing vs comparable companies." A template generator won't help you with this kind of analysis, and those services you mention won't help you if you can't really understand them.

I'm not saying you need an MBA to be a good business person, and I felt like my BBA (which I'm told is mostly the same material as an MBA, at least at my school) only confirmed that my instincts and self-learning after 8 years in the workforce was pretty good...but man, those little bits I didn't know and hadn't thought to learn (especially around finance and proper marketing) were the ones that have ended up mattering the most.

> Why do I need a degree to read financial reports? Can't I get a book or just Google it?

It isn't just "how to read financial reports" but learning how companies can game those financial reports. It is learning that the most important stuff you'll get out a financial report isn't the top level balance sheet but in all the footnotes where they describe how they derived some top level figure.

Accounting is way, way more than simply counting numbers. It is every bit as much of an art as it is a science. For example, learning all the different ways to recognize revenue and, more important, how the particular revenue recognition strategy you use can incentivize behavior--both good and bad.... you probably aren't gonna get that out of a book. You need to be made aware of it.

That is the value of a good MBA program. Sure you can "learn it all out of a book", but not in a holistic way.

Just to reply to one of your lines of thought. Measuring a clients worth. How do you measure who's a waste of time? How should you factor in fixed costs vs variable costs, opportunity cost, legal costs, license fee structures, travel costs, whether to bring on new employees for clients, everything that entails what a client's actual worth is to you beyond simply saying "you're a waste of time"?

I think everything you said makes me appreciate my MBA more and how I can truly understand the finer points of running my successful business.

(And I like your comment about learning Excel in 7th grade...truly the key to a successful business is knowing Excel)

Your second point kind of negates your first point. You don't need an MBA to see that Tesla's financials are hopeless. It just requires some simple projections - this much money in, this much out, this much growth, etc...

Sure you want a certificate to do official accounting, but for making business decisions I don't see why the MBA is helpful.

I went a bit of the opposite route. My undergrad was a BS in Computer Information Systems. Basically a CS degree where some classes like physics/high level math electives were replaced with business courses like stats, management, accounting, economics, etc... Later I went back to school and got my MS in Computer Science. I love doing the tech side of things, but I can say that almost without fail I have used business basics I learned (and continued to add to) every single day. I've debating doing an MBA because I enjoy the structure of school, but I just don't have the time right now.

One other non-obvious aspect of school I wished I had focused on more at the time was literature and writing. Communicating in a clear and concise manner becomes increasingly important the more senior you become.

I think an MBA is great in addition to other training or you have some work experience. I think what most people object to is people who only have an MBA and immediately get into leadership roles. A leader should have some experience how things are on the bottom before they start to lead.

Case Study education is extremely valuable and it is a shame that it is locked away in Ivy League curriculums.

It is valuable.

The opportunity cost (time, benefit, other opportunities) for people in tech is still too high. There becomes a time when it is worth it. The Executive MBA may be up people's alley, but even then the network itself is the most important.

For me, I ended up finding a cofounder who was a generation older than me, all of their connections have already done this stuff or floated to the top of the organizations they represent.

An MBA is not in the cards for me.

This my experience with case study in business school:

It obviously depend on the case but, in general, the main advantage of a case study comes from making the learning experience more interactive and involving than the experience of solving a mere, abstract, exercise. It raises the interest like "based on a true story" does in movies.

You learn from a case, but you learn what the case author decided you should learn from it.

A real experience is a lot better. There are ton of pieces of data and things going on at once. Most of them are less relevant. Some situations look not very relevant but they are actually "the difference that make the difference." In a case for the sake of time, the author needs to focus only some aspects and write a plot around them.

Can you provide some examples of how the MBA helped your business' growth? Was it accounting and statistics? Or development of product features via understanding customer needs?

(I don't have much experience with MBAs. So I'm always curious about the benefits.)

Could I ask where you did your MBA? I’ve been going back and forth about getting it for a few years. Did you do a local school? Online?

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