MBAs who can't find jobs
wsj.com
wsj.com
Contract manufacturing sounds like a very specific field. Were you working in contract manufacturing before, or did you basically make a career pivot into manufacturing because that's where the opportunities were? (If so, very savvy!)
Everyone loves a small business success story because they think they could do that but like 95% of small businesses fail in the first 5 years.
And normal wagies probably aren't able to take these kinds of high risk activities.
So that person is either extremely talented or extremely lucky or has inherited wealth.
Statistics is on the side of inherited wealth.
Until you look at them. The vast majority of small businesses aren’t created by wealth and the majority of millionaires are self made.
Basically using the company as your savings account. If you don't mind paying yourself a lower salary you can take advantage of progressive tax as well.
It is about minimizing how much you work, it doesn't really help you to maximize how much you earn if you want to work full time with no pauses. It essentially levels out your tax burden across multiple years.
B) Over the last decade I’ve observed the MBA becoming a lot less fashionable than it once was. I get the whole “it’s a great networking experience” thing but as a value-add degree there seems to be a lot less interest in people who specialize in “management” vs folks that focus first and foremost on being an expert at something. The “professional mid-level manager” definitely seems to be less of a thing than it used to be, with that now more of a meme for poorly performing companies (eg commentary about “the MBAs rocked up and messed up this org/company/product”). The days of armies of MBA hires consistently forming the next generation of leaders in high performing companies seems to have broadly passed. Not saying don’t do an MBA but it’s not the ticket to a senior role that it once was.
Particularly in tech there’s a lot less pathways in for an MBA than say a brilliant technologist that has some experience managing teams/products.
But what about all the "help wanted" signs I hear about from the media. I think it's more like they don't necessarily need a work, but are more like looking for candidates who may be offered a job.
I rented my own to excavate my house, rental charges with full delivery and maintenance only 40/hr which leaves a good 120 for labor overhead.
What I'm really curious about is the actual people management that is taught in MBA schools, and surviving middle management Machiavellianism. Is this explicitly taught in MBA schools? Suppressing labor costs? Anti-union? Bypassing regulatory costs? Acquiring regulatory capture?
Anyway, a lot of that doesn't seem like stuff that schools would teach well.
In the classroom, the emphasis typically is on business ethics and responsible leadership.
As the title itself suggests, it is to understand how to run a business. That might not be the outcome for most MBA students, that might not even be their intent behind pursuing an MBA etc. but it is the 'essence'.
> [...] middle management Machiavellianism. Is this explicitly taught in MBA schools?
Short answer: rarely. But is it explicitly mentioned in MBA literature? Yes, if you know what to look for -- as is exactly the case in its real life manifestation.
Source: why, I have an MBA.
I have no formal programming education but started coding 35 years ago. I also have an MBA in finance. For my brain, learning something like functional monadic composition is something I was able to do on my own, but there is no way I'd ever have learned finance at that same level on my own.
It is worth noting that there is a pretty big difference between an MBA in finance, marketing, or operations/supply-chain. As different as developer, tester, and devops at least.
If you were an engineer four years out of college, working at HP, and wanted to become an investment banker, how else would you break into the field? You can't just email Goldman Sachs and ask for an interview and say you've read some finance books. The MBA program gives you the do-over pass, and most of my classmates did it for this reason. Separately, back then it was really cheap (mine cost a total of $10k, and my salary in my new field was $50k higher) so it was usually worth the money. At current tuition prices, the deal may not be as clear. Anyway, I think people asking "couldn't you just learn accounting in night classes?" are missing the point of the program: Learn something new PLUS get a career do-over without penalty.
To have a business means to have revenue, so you you have to sell stuff (sales). You also have to figure out how to sell stuff better to more people for more money (marketing). To sell something you have to have something, product or service, so you have to build it/design it (product/service development/R&D), and then make it in large quantities (manufacturing/operations). To manufacture it you have to get things from which you will make your products (inbound logistics). When you're ready to sell you need to physically deliver things you're selling (outbound logistics).
These are your primary business functions. There's also support functions. Many businesses employ people, and they need to be managed, you need to find and hire good people, you have to make sure they don't slack off, do what they're supposed to do and don't do what they're NOT supposed to do, and don't cause any issues for the business etc (that's human resources). You have to make sure the business follows all appropriate regulations (that's Legal). You have to know how much money you're spending and making, not an easy task as large businesses have hundreds/thousands projects and activities going on at the same time (that's your accounting). You can also find out how you can optimize your financial resources and get the most bang for you buck (finance). There's obviously a small group of people running the whole thing and deciding on the strategy and then coming up with plans to implement it (Executive function).
So in MBA you review all of these functions in detail so that you know the best practices, what to do and what not to do, bunch of examples (case studies) from various companies etc etc.
That's all there is to it. The idea is that once you understand the whole picture you can then move up the chain to management or even to Executive function so that you can run the whole thing.
There's also books like "Portable MBA" where all this knowledge is put in one book in a condensed manner, and you will probably learn just as much from it as you would from a class, in the same way you can get through all the coursework on CS major and (kinda) learn most of it.
EDIT: Ironically I forgot to mention another somewhat important support function called Information Technology. :)
That's balancing things out, getting a better grasp of corporate leadership knowledge (in the sense of finances, accounting, corporate structure, legal).
There's a large difference between that and the "high school to college to MBA to Big 4 to management" pipeline, which is being looked at with a lot more skepticism at least, if not cynicism.
I did an MBA in my 30’s after being a CTO of a company for a few years (parent company closed us down after 9/11). For me an MBA rounded out some of the gaps in my experience and knowledge and re-enforced the concept of being able to hold to contradictory ideas in my head and evaluate them
In Europe most MBAs are people who’re mid career and already have business experience
I disagree. A career in management is very different from a specialist career, and both are essential. I made the switch from an IC (individual contributor) position to tech management about five years ago and received proper training at my company.
My anecdotal experience and consultations with my professional network (from startups to colleagues at FAANGs) indicate that most companies value both management and specialist career ladders (The 'Y career' [1]).
[1] https://hrconsultantuk.co.uk/y-career-understand-what-it-is-...
I took that post to be a criticism of people who seek to go into management without the expertise you will have gathered as an IC, or without the industry or domain knowledge you will have as you go transfer to the management track.
They weren’t criticising management, but rather the “MBAs who rock up” without the necessary expertise to do a good job (and quite often not even much experience of actually managing).
From skeleton racing to management in technology? Did he really expect the Yale MBA would be enough, combined with "hundreds" of applications - rookie numbers?
I've applied to several hundred positions that are very much in line with my experience and skillset since summer without success - I would assume someone who has never worked in tech would need to be applying for at least as many positions as I have.
Many of the people applying for 100s of jobs are either unqualified or completely green. Especially now more than ever the bottom 10-15% of the workforce has been trimmed in various layoffs so if you are completely green you are competing with people who have industry experience.
The experience was very draining, and it was interfering with my work and my home life. The last thing I wanted to do was lose my job because of job search created performance issues - so now I'm holding off on this until I have no choice.
In the longer-run, I've observed a few of the people who did apply did struggle greatly, and either had to find a new position, or lost interest in the new line of work they were trying. But others did a good enough job (after a rough start) to do well at their new position, which would then give them the work experience to easily be competitive for similar positions or even better opportunities for their career.
So, in general, I've seen that it's a good idea for the applicant to apply, even if they aren't fully qualified.
--
For Edelman specifically, he both competed in the olympics in his sport, and was a seven-time national champion in his country. He even has a detailed Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Edelman
That level of competitiveness in the sport takes a lot of persistence, discipline, and skill, so it's a fair basis for a resume—especially with an MBA from a recognizable university. His background as an Olympian and national athlete is a fair basis for his resume.
But he also has a rigorous background in engineering. According to Wikipedia, he has a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT, and is potentially well-connected through his father (who also has a Wikipedia page), who is an engineering professor at MIT and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
In his case, I wonder if he would find success by talking with people he has worked with before (such as fellow athletes or sponsors), or people he's known from his experience at university. He likely also has a potentially strong professional network through his family.
Perhaps he's only applying for a narrow range of opportunities in a specialized area. But then again, it does sound like he's applying cold for hundreds of positions. Another possibility is that some miscommunication occurred when he spoke to the journalist for his relatively minor part in the article.
Perhaps he's holding out for a senior or at least mid-level role as an executive or co-founder at a company in a specific part of the technology industry. But then again, as the article describes, he sent out hundreds of applications—while this is plausible for these types of roles, I always imagined these openings to be primarily shared via word-of-mouth. So out of personal curiosity, I wish the article included more details about his process in attempting a career change, and what kinds of jobs he is applying to.
The other issue is what people expect from these MBA programs. They see it as a way to get career flexibility, but in reality an MBA really opens up two spaces: Consulting, and becoming an executive in the field you're already poised to become an executive in.
We had one friend who today would probably fall loosely under the moniker of Edge Lord. He was always stirring shit, and we also always suspected that his mouth was writing checks his skills couldn't cash. Most of us were working on little personal projects. Which is essentially what you do at that school - the teachers are almost world class, but the computer labs were undersubscribed, and maybe twenty hours out of the month was there a wait for hardware. You could almost always justify using a machine to work on 'frivolities'. So we all did. Games, Unix tools, whatever. But he never did.
Come graduation time, all of my friends were scattering to the west coast, Chicago, NYC, for their new jobs, meanwhile he elected to enroll for a masters degree instead. In the middle of a gold rush. Somehow never believed that higher education was his main priority.
I wonder why U.S. universities issuing MBA degrees take a "graduate as many as possible" approach, whereas medical schools use a "intentionally limit the supply of doctors" approach. Perhaps it's a game theory thing. Any one school can easily and independently increase the number of MBAs it graduates, and so they all do despite wanting there to be fewer graduates overall, but it's harder for any one medical school to independently decide to create more doctors on its own.
Law schools might be better comparison. The number of lawyers graduated is not limited...
surely there is a limit to this, unless people don't care about metrics like median graduate salary?
I got my MBA covered by my employer, but honest to god - I didn't learn or see much new.
Prior to that I had a MSEE, as well as a Bachelor in Econ and Business Administration. All the classes were just mixes of core finance/accounting/management classes. Had electives, but again, nothing I wouldn't have learned on the job or in my own spare time.
I guess you can get some academic/knowledge value if you're completely green to things related to business. But undergrad econ/finance/management/etc. grads? Same old.
The real value lies in the networking. It's just a formality to land certain jobs, or if you want a career change.
Jumping on the startup bandwagon, I surfed the wave, ultimately establishing myself as an MBA with a robust tech background. Today, I find myself outpacing most CTOs. While the initial journey was challenging, I managed to redirect the course successfully.
For what it's worth, I went to a good B school, but my deployment to IRAQ with the Marines far out weights my MBA.
In May 2005, my team (S3 shop) was responsible for training, operations, future operations, and logistical coordination of a provisional Military Police Battalion. We managed four separate missions, comprised of 800 Marines, spread across Al-Anbar province (RCT-8, if my memory serves me correctly).
There were no textbook to reference. Prior to the Iraq war, myself and my Marines where trained as Artillery men, but now we were trained as convoy ops, detention operations and local security. Furthermore, 99% unit personnel were operating at full capacity, because of the combat environment. (No HR issues, slackers, or vacations) Adapt and overcome.
The only other environment I've encountered that comes close to matching this level of challenge, teamwork, and excitement is within a startup.
I was activated for 1 year, easily I believe this hands on experience is worth many more years. My MBA was a great experience, I learned some new things but this real world combat experience surpasses anything that can be learned at B School.
Really the only value for the degree I see is if you already have a business. And some value if you want to start one (on top of the 200k debt you just took for the MBA).
We used to award about 70K MBAs each year. In the 2010s we awarded close to 200K every year. We've declined somewhat but we're still minting tons of degrees.
Even factoring in our economic growth in the US, there's just no way there's actually that much demand for people with this training.
One sentence in and we are already on the warning track. A few months after, not a few months before?
I took the attitude that I would be working for my entire career, and that it didn't matter if I took some time to enjoy myself. I don't regret it.
More importantly: A degree isn't a guarantee of work. We often forget that there is some risk in getting a fancy degree in a particular field.
Don’t forget the academic fraud and plagiarism!
That may be a Band-Aid covering a red flag, and this may be a special circumstance, but the people I know considering continued education are feeling this.
For example I know several people that wanted to pivot into something more software focused. There are boot camps, but they’re looked down on. Most colleges will not allow you to enroll for a bachelor’s in CS if you already have a bachelors in something else (and also is looked down on), and likewise a master’s in CS is very unlikely. So instead they went for an MBA that has a specialization in data analytics, which for many has been a good foot in the door to more tech-focused roles.
I’m skeptical of this claim.
Programs like the Georgia Tech Online Masters in Computer Science were tailor made for this scenario - and I’ve known several who have followed it to great success.
Edit: looking into it - blocking second baccalaureates seems to be mostly a problem with California schools. Plenty of other state schools have no such restriction:
https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/prep...
I’d probably tell someone to grab some CS classes at a community college and apply anyway.
An excessive number of people got MBA degrees therefore it ends up being a bad choice for many of them. That then feeds back and noticeably reduces the number of people getting an MBA in the future.
More excess credentials than people. Someone with an MBA can easily be employed in a job that doesn’t make use of that MBA.
Also, nothing says those people can’t find a management/consulting job in 1 or even 5 years. That delay would still discourage people from getting an MBA.
try - personal story; wider market for new MBAs in 2024; importance of the MBA degree at all; then much larger topics about business size and structures, level playing fields, advantages and leverage of established entities in the finance environment, other things.
Can we agree that employment replaced by automation is in the news daily; capital asset bubbles as well; post-covid, brick and mortar retail, restaurants, and local small business of all kinds, continue to die off in most of the USA. replaced with a single Walmart or Home Depot for example. It is a given that most business, business is very competitive even in stable situations.
Here is a charismatic and recently trained person who completed an MBA. The degree is for increasing their own business skills, to both maximize personal gain perhaps, and to be saavy in practical ways to lead, sell and manage. (I agree that the MBA itself is oversold by its nature, and that plenty of graduates are looking for personal gain first) One could cynically say, and not be wrong, that this MBA found a way to get some publicity, often an asset.. and really, why does this one person need so much attention.
but .. is the whole society really so overflowing with able people who commit to formal training that they are "not able" to work with their training? lots of caveats to that but.. this is a trend on a large scale. Other societies may not work this way at all.. (thinking Asia and Islam offhand). In this environment, can this MBA really just "easily work in some other capacity".. I know a guy that got a real ulcer from working in a demeaning situation in an office, while looking for other jobs.
so - any empathy at all for an individual who is making clear advances but ends up badly .. or any concern for a system of economics that may be overcharged heading in a destructive direction .. or in the middle thinking about how real people start to fit into non-trivial, competitive business environments.
If all that mattered is that you know how to do 'stuff', then paying for a brand-name school wouldn't matter, because the 'stuff' is the same. (except for non-accredited schools I suppose)
Just getting an MBA is not necessarily going to guarantee success as a deal maker or whatever. You should have a plan beforehand if only to reduce risk of time and money wasted.
He's just at his old job, which is something deep in the bowels of health insurance that somehow extracts more money from insurance providers and feeds it to hospitals. It is fairly well-paid and he works from home, but this was not the outcome he wanted nor the $200k debt.
Another tidbit, since this will probably turn into that kind of thread: I will advise anyone who listens that getting 3-5 years of work experience will, for most people, be substantially more valuable for prospective lawyers than going directly through to law school from undergraduate. The funny thing is that I finished so high in my class in part because, after working for several years, the bad parts of law school seemed pretty trivial.
Note this is a US perspective and other countries educate their professionals differently.
This is how people should treat any schooling. My plans weren't as thought out when I went to undergrad long ago, but even something as simple as 'pick a major that has a high likelihood of financial stability' helps.
> I will advise anyone who listens that getting 3-5 years of work experience
Don't many of the top b-schools also require some work experience prior to attending?
I don't mind a major that, by itself, has limited financial utility. My own degree is laughably unprofitable. In my experience, you can accomplish the exercise of developing excellent research and writing habits, time management, etc. using just about any degree. In hiring, I also like to see someone who is more than their job, who has interests and motivations beyond the blinders of their profession. But, to your broader point, _thinking about what you want to accomplish_, even if it ends up changing completely, is better than just marking the box of "going to college".
Any advice on how to go about getting a degree that is reasonably priced, getting experience? Is there industry knowledge around which (ideally online) school is the most legit?
The only other things I would say are that the first semester is the most important in determining how you feed into the job market (assuming a traditional summer associate track) and the third year ... shouldn't exist. I would also have a concrete idea of what you want to accomplish (mine: combine the principles of software development with business experience and a risk management mindset to help companies find the best chance of success with their projects -- I have done everything from massively automating legal processes using developer tools to IP to privacy to infosec to dispute resolution .. it's been great). Just saying "I want to do transactions" or "I want to focus on international law or nonprofits" (admirable but cliche and absolutely not financially viable) is not enough. This isn't meant to criticize what you said about civil litigation at all--it's one part of a 4-line reply and not a personal statement--but what can YOU bring to the interests you want to serve?
Oh, and the Bar Exam isn't as bad as everyone says it is. I wouldn't do it recreationally, but I've done project justification meetings with leadership that were more taxing.
"On this course you'll be learning why the the people who graduated before you won't be hiring you after you leave."