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Comment by Cherian | Hacker News Reader

Couldn’t agree more. This is one of those reasons why I desist have lawyers, media gurus, MBA (just business) as bosses of “Tech” companies.

They just don’t have it in them to jump in and out of situations to think through the most trivial of problems from multiple angles. They don’t know in “5 seconds” if something can be done or if it’s complicated. It’s often a rush to tackle competition or cutting out the oxygen and “do whatever it takes”. Ordering subordinates to “deliver” in 3 weeks.

This is precisely the reason why I love someone like Larry Page or Sergey running Google. They just knew that recruiting Urs Holzle to build world class infrastructure early on was worth it.

A lifetime of learning to take noise in & conclude on the one signal that’s worth it.

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I started as a programmer and got an MBA from an ok school (top 20). The combination is very valuable (at least to me) for exactly the reason you cite: the best decisions require wading around in the mucky details.

The MBA gives you a few tools that are helpful, but mainly it's a way to brand yourself and have people give you the benefit of the doubt that you can do things other than strictly build stuff.

I personally think the anti-patterns you describe-- the "do whatever it takes" without having the first idea what that is-- are intellectually dishonest and a sort of management-by-roulette. Sometimes you get lucky and it works out, but I don't know how you'd sleep running things that way.

Oh really, what did the MBA teach you? What tools are useful in your arsenal of building a great business and product?

I also got my MBA after getting my BS in Computer Science and while I think I could have learned most everything we talked about by reading books, I did learn:

- public speaking because we had to do a presentation just about every other week

- how business people with little or no technology experience think and their perceptions about technology

- how to talk to the people in the above bullet about technology

- firing people because one of my groups had a member that was not pulling her own weight, and we were told to fire her from the group

I also agree that the branding aspect is also (somehow) helpful. I recently moved from Florida to SF and when I was looking for jobs you wouldn't believe how many people were really excited/impressed/whatever that I had an MBA in addition to being able to answer the tough software questions.

If I had a choice to go back and either spend $50k on an MBA or spend it traveling the world, I would definitely choose the latter, though.

I almost got an MBA in my twenties but decided to start a company instead. My reasoning was that it would cost me $40-50k to acquire, at which point I would need to take a job for 3-4 years to pay it off. I always knew I wanted to start a company so I figured I'd use those 5-6 years educating myself.

I don't regret the choice, but I think an MBA from a top school can expose you to more complex and big $$$ business environments than you're likely to discover on your own as an outsider without much experience.

- accounting and financial statement analysis (useful in pricing and fundraising)

- quantitative marketing models (useful in forecasting + modeling)

- market research techniques (probably the most valuable skill to building products)

- VC from two internships @ early stage funds (useful in understanding how VC's think)

- negotiations

- entrepreneurship classes on opportunity analysis, fundraising, and valuation (useful in helping to avoid solving the wrong problems; articulating the business to investors; building with the end/exit in mind)

I desist having them in general. Just lawyers are an evil necessity.

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