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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

> It's a sort of clueless MBA thinking that believes software engineers should be furiously typing all the time

(Your point is good, but the dig against MBAs is unnecessary and I wish it was less acceptable here on HN. It wouldn't be ok to make fun of people with Sociology degrees or History degrees here, but jokes about MBAs get a pass. We really should be better than that, but I realize I'm swimming against the current on this one.)

That aside, I have found a lot of clueless folks in tech leadership have that "furiously typing" misconception, as if developers are only productive when their fingertips are pounding keys. I once worked with a CEO who refused to set aside time in the schedule for things like setting up source control and a bug tracker, because he believed that developers should be furiously typing code in at all times.

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What is the problem with criticism "mba thinking"? It's a legit complaint against the kind of naive "efficiency" analyses and measures that happen, and is completely justified. I have an MBA, I certainly don't find it offensive, I think the criticism is apt.

The usual art student tropes are more offensive because they are about people in a chosen degree being dumb (incidentally, when I did engineering all the hardcore "haha artsies are so dumb" engineers failed out after first year). That's not the same as criticizing a specific flaw in their education. If there's some big blind spot the average sociology degree leaves, that should be fair game.

I'm a software dev with an MBA, and yes, my classmates were very much "our job as managers is to make the minions work harder" [0] so I'm equally OK with the MBA slur.

I struggle trying to educate people that the best way of measuring developer productivity is measuring outcomes, and that a developer going for a walk in the park is a great thing for them to do.

[0] In Australia, where management is generally still locked into 1950's-style authoritarianism. YMMV.

It’s such a hilarious misdirection, that mentality. Finding ways for every employee to work less is the definition of efficiency and profit.

MBA programs have (generally) moved past Taylorism. Apparently McKinsey not so much.

If sociology or history degrees doled out management positions the way MBAs somehow do I guarantee you they would be met with derision. It’s like making fun of politicians, it happens because they are often inappropriately given power.

How is that being better? There’s a pattern of management coming out of business schools that’s clearly not working because at the end of the day, you have managers trying to micro not macro manage highly skilled workers working in areas they don’t understand well. The result is hilarious. We’re supposed to suppress that? To be better? Is laughing bad now?

> the dig against MBAs is unnecessary

You're right. Ironically, I've seriously considered getting an MBA myself.

I changed it to "management-consultant thinking," which feels much more fair, given we are ripping on a McKinsey article in the first place. :) Thanks for the note.

History and sociology are respectable academic disciplines.

My respect in fields is directly proportional to relevant maths used.

How do physics and math stack against each other?

Lately physics has been providing seed ideas for mathematicians to explore them rigorously. e.g. mirror symmetry and amplituhedron.

I’ll join the current with you. I have an MBA. I write code. It’s an unfair trope. I understand the stereotype I guess I just haven’t experienced it so yeah..but I understand the vitriol against McKinsey in particular.

I'd agree with that. I mean (usually?) most people are referring to the person straight from high school to college to MBA to management/executive/consultant without having worked a day in their life, but still.

Does grate on me, though I might be biased, having worked 20 years in IT progressing upwards, and now looking at an MBA to round out my formal business education for further advancement.

Seems like criticism to "clueless MBA thinking" in the software engineering context.

99% of MBA's are certainly clueless about SWE because they never did SWE professionally.

It didn't seem to me like a criticism of MBA's fundamentally speaking.

> 99% of MBA's are certainly clueless about SWE because they never did SWE professionally

Anecdotally, most of the MBAs I know are former coders. The last decade of Silicon Valley thinking it can reinvent commerce from first principles has massively increased the value and leverage of former coders with MBAs.

Anecdotally, I worked with several brilliant engineers who have MBAs. Folks who are extremely technical and can go deep in their fields of expertise, yet they see the bigger picture in terms of business outcomes, and have tools in their toolbox to navigate ambiguity, mitigate escalating complexity, influence senior stakeholders (technical or not), etc.

Of course an MBA is not the only way of acquiring those skills, but it is certainly an effective way. It can be incredibly powerful to someone with already strong technical skills. So I'd agree with OP that this trope is unwarranted and out of touch with reality.

edit: I like OP's edit, replacing "MBA" with "management-consulting thinking". Lots of old school consulting companies come up with recommendations for areas that they have no domain expertise. While it may look good on paper, it's a recipe for disaster, like the original article describes.

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