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Comment by 0zymandias | Hacker News Reader

The takeover of tech by MBAs continues. It has now happened at the top 4 largest tech companies in the US.

We will have Apple (Tim Cook), Amazon (Andy Jassy), Alphabet (Sundar Pichai), Microsoft (Satya Nadella & Steve Ballmer) all taking over from non-MBA founders. Facebook is next in size and has Sheryl Sandberg as COO but don't know if Mark Zuckerberg would ever hand over the reins.

Why don't non-MBAs manage to get to the top?

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Don't hold having an MBA against Jassy :). I have been in those ops meetings at AWS when Andy Jassy and Charlie Bell used to hold court. There wasn't much MBA-speak there. Jassy can burrow through deeply technical issues, spot fundamental flaws and process a monumental amount of information on the spot - skills they sure as hell don't teach at any B-school I know of...

> Why don’t non-MBAs manage to get to the top?

Because smart and talented people who are interested in business or administration tend to go on and study it. It’s self selecting. I think maybe you are imprinting “MBA” as some sort of personality? I know designers, coders and biologists with MBAs. It’s just an accreditation.

Every business has its roots or foundation with makers. But that doesn’t mean a chef should be running McDonalds, or a woodworker should be running Home Depot...

Errr...both Sundar and Satya were software engineers first?

Clearly the CEO should have no formal business training, regardless of their prior work.

An MBA has always been the way to signal that you want to move from engineering to senior management. Almost every senior manager I've met with an engineering background has an MBA (or a PhD). I have to assume that MBA programs teach the kind of stuff one would need to know to rise up the ranks.

Disagree on Sundar.

Three of the four have engineering degrees and have previously worked as engineers. Maybe having an MBA on top is not a bad thing to run a trillion-dollar company?

I'm as skeptical of MBAs as you are but this is a bad take considering Pichai and Nadella were both actual engineers first.

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