Why we have never hired an MBA
mattjackrob.com
mattjackrob.com
I'm a solo technical founder. I write code, marketing copy, and proposals. I'm a product manager. And my MBA curriculum covered areas that would be a huge help to product managers.
If you auto-reject CVs with an MBA, you're missing out on a great talent pool. Perhaps you should only give "black marks" to candidates who are clueless about what it takes to manage products. But don't tie that to the MBA.
For me, for example, developer certifications are a black mark. Does that mean I auto-reject people with them? No. But it is correlated with a couple of different kinds characteristics I don't want in a developer, so they lose points.
But aren't there some good people with certifications? Am I not being unfair? Sure. My job isn't to be fair; it's to find a great person in minimum time.
I see the relationship between MBAs and cluelessness as one of correlation not causation.
People who think there's a correlation with MBA's and cluelessness are themselves, just as clueless.
1) He was referred to my startup by someone in our network, so he had at least a basic understanding of how our company worked.
2) He offered to come in as an intern just to get his foot in the door, and was extremely humble about his value to the company; basically recognized that he wouldn't that productive at first. (We brought him in as an analyst and he made because a lead PM in about 7 months).)
There is a lot to like about people with that background: extremely smart, hardworking, with hard analytical skills. If the two basic criteria from above are met (basic understanding of the business, strong desire to come in and learn), then I would strongly recommend snagging an MBA if you can.
Clearly a five year delay.
Seriously though, let's not overanalyze here.
An MBA is an important step towards becoming a stronger manager for most people, however it probably shouldn't be the first step you take out of undergraduate studies.
I'm finishing an MBA-type program (it's a Masters in Technology Management actually, but 2/3rds of the courses are shared with the MBA), and I definitely wouldn't have gotten so much out of it 5 years ago.
Similarly, many of the things I was taught as an undergrad only made sense many years later (and I regret not having given them more attention).
In fact, my MBA-type program actually has an emphasis on entrepreneurship - we had an entire class based on Steve Blank's Customer Development model, which involved "getting outside the building" a lot.
They encourage startup building so much, I'm planning to turn my business plan into a startup :)
People who don't get higher education and just start their companies fresh out of high-schools will have WAY more business skills than MBA.
I'd say that 2 years of running your own business gives you more business skills than 5 years of MBA education.
In the same way being an hobbyist programmer will never give you the same skill set than a CS degree. It's highly unlikely you are ever going to study extensively algorithm, os and databases design, compilation or declarative and functional programming all by yourself because objectively it's not something you need to get the job done. Nevertheless, this knowledge becomes really useful as soon as you start designing complex system.
Doing an MBA (or an MSc for what it's worth, MBA cult is mostly anglo-saxon) is exactly the same thing. You will study a broad range of subjects and business areas and see different theories on them.
Don't misunderstand me, practical knowledge is invaluable and running your own company gives you a good understanding of your area. It's just than MBA will give you a broader if less practical view.
That is not to say you can't learn to do theoretically complex things without school, but when you're learning about DFA's or register allocation or the like, sitting down with a textbook and working through problems is often the best way to learn.
I'm a largely self-taught programmer, and I'm always running up against the theoretical background I don't have. Try writing a compiler for a modern language without understanding type theory, and try learning type theory by doing.
The first genuinely complex system I built in my career, back in the mid-90's, was a scripting language. It did indeed force me up against a lot of background I didn't have; I had a very good mentor though and largely did learn it by doing.
I've since learned-by-doing distributed systems (quorum and 2pc commits and logical timestamps in one sprawling system we built around 2000) and routing, graph theory (for routing and later for analyzing binaries, also graph visualization, which is a tricky problem), code generation for compiler backends, and very large scale data storage (for instance, in order to sample all the flows running over a tier 1 NSP backbone). To that obviously add all the security and cryptography stuff; I've always been involved in security but I consider myself a developer by training.
There are things I have run up against that have been too challenging to just learn. Linear algebra was one of them (although I've been slowly clearing that hurdle). RF and signal processing another. But those things are the exception, not the rule.
I might also contest how simple operating systems are fundamentally. They just move bits around, yes, but they're moving bits to and from a very complicated asynchronous and sometimes distributed system, and bridging it to code that runs under artificially simplified assumptions. It's true that most of it tends not to be interesting from a data structures perspective --- especially back in the 90's, when the whole process list and every TCP TCB were just stored in simple linked lists --- but there are parts, like the virtual memory system, that are much trickier. And all of that code runs in a much more complicated environment than userland.
Now, a PhD in CS is a bit of a double-edged sword. It's often a danger sign that someone has spent too much time on just one theory. I wouldn't recommend getting or using a PhD as a signal of being a good developer since there is way too much variance.
(Ob: I have also worked with great developers with no formal education.)
I agree, you can't become a good chemist without proper education, the same goes for particle physics. Business is not a hard science, it's a set of skills you have to develop such as: perseverance, creativity, people-skills and confidence. You can't learn it in any school, even the top-ones.
You can be a great actor, amazing cook, great musician or artist without having any degrees. Running a business is similar - it can't be simply in schools because it's not a hard science.
You get the experience from running your own company, look: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison
They don't seem to have any degrees and there are thousands of CEO's just like them who didn't get higher education yet built something amazing.
The 'hobbyist' programmers were creating the most beautiful things, when the enterprise with 'trained' programmers had no idea about the term 'internet'. The hackers gave us the internet.... The spirit of software development..
They create better things with haskell and clojure, and the trained graduates are stuck with what their boss say.
True pragmatism comes from within, and believe me, it librates you.
People are judged by their education all the time. Why should MBAs be exempt?
Though I do agree that the arbitrarily judging of someone based on what learning they have done in their life is ridiculous. Though I can't help but feel that even you have done the exact same judging: "Maybe if people working in startups weren't such elitists and thinking you don't need business skills to run a startup, you wouldn't have so many fail." Not having an MBA doesn't mean you do not have business skills.
They don't have a bias against education. They have a bias toward experience.
I receive lots of applications every day. When nine out of ten that share one common characteristic (MBA), share another (no understanding of how they could add value in an early stage startup), you begin to connect the dots.
It's also a little weird to say that we're elitists because we're not hiring the elite of the business world.
- Chris Dixon (Hunch, among others)
- Jeff Skoll (eBay)
- Trip Hawkins (Electronic Arts)
- Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy(Sun Microsystems)
- Gery Kremen (Match.com)
- Alexandra Wilson and Alexis Maybank (Gilt Groupe)
- Jeff Fluhr (Stubhub)
- Miriam Naficy (Minted, Eve.com)
- Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard (Wildfire)
- Mike Cassidy (Stylus Innovation, Direct Hit, Xfire, and Ruba)
- Inaki Berenguer (Pixable)
- Neil Blumenthal, Andrew Hunt, Jeffrey Raider, David Gilboa (Warby Parker)
- Cyrus Massoumi (ZocDoc)
- Jessica Flannery (Kiva.org)
The list can go on...
"I am not trying to argue that there is no place for MBAs, or that no MBA has a clue about startups – both of those are demonstrably untrue. Also having an MBA itself is clearly not the problem."
The typical routes out of MBA programs are managerial or consulting roles. That's great; the degree was designed to give future managers a broad, intellectual understanding of business as practiced by large American corporations.
Startups don't have those roles. At all. If you've hired right, everybody has smart opinions and nobody needs much management. What you need is people who can get things done right now. People with experience in designing interfaces, in interviewing users, in banging out prototypes, in running ad campaigns.
MBA programs teach a lot of great stuff. But none of my friend with MBAs got significant hands-on practical experience there.
As a startup founder let me just say that NO degree prepares you for a startup. I guess you are right on one thing, the common denominator: "People with experience" - with my caveat of: regardless of your background. Your comment comes across like a double standard - which I do mention out above.
From what I've seen, fresh developer grads expect to take entry-level positions. Fresh MBA grads generally don't; they expect to be listened to as high-level advisors or managers. That is not an unreasonable expectation, in that their programs train them for that.
Another way to look at it: It's well-known that large-company execs often adapt poorly to working at startups, partly because they are used to having other people around to do the actual work. An MBA trains people for that sort of large-company position, so it's unsurprising that people fresh out of MBA programs would have the same issues.
Looking through your comments on other threads I can see that you clearly have an "agenda" against MBA grads. Looks like a smart way of using your time. Good luck with that <- this, sarcasm.
I don't have an agenda against MBA grads; many of my friends have MBAs. What I have an agenda against is parts of what the MBA programs teach, and the sense of entitlement that many fresh MBA grads either started with or caught at school.
I have this agenda because I believe both are causing real harm to people, and to America as a whole. E.g., what a brace of MBAs did to the Simmons Mattress Company: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons...
Chris Dixon, for example, worked for years as a developer and more years at a VC before he founded anything.
Jeff Skoll joined eBay after it was already profitable. And he had started two businesses before getting his MBA.
Trip Hawkins joined Apple specifically to work with successful entrepreneurs to learn how they did it, and he joined them at 50 people, not 15.
None of these people would have made the mistake that the MBAs who approach Matt did, which was assuming that the mere having of an MBA qualified them to take a major role at a startup.
You just haven't found the right MBA :)
Some quick background: I'm attending school part-time for my MBA (Richard Ivey, case-based). I've also been with a successful YC startup from the the ground floor as a technical hire, and am currently the co-founder of a very early stage startup.
Your article raises some really good points - most of which I agree with completely. Execution is key, and becoming a PM at an early stage startup is misguided if you're not able to implement your ideas.
That said, should a startup outright ignore applicants with MBAs? Like most things...it depends. The leadership, communication and (yes) strategic skills that a good MBA provides are important. Coupling these strengths with a technical background is a pretty powerful combination.
If that person with the MBA has the skills and more importantly the desire to get in an get their hands dirty executing on their own ideas, then great! But from my experience, most MBAs want to come up with the ideas and want others to execute them.
Like you say, the key is the ability and desire to execute.
Disclaimer: I have an MBA from a top tier school, and despite that fact, I have the utmost respect for execution. I clean data, I test, I write database queries that include all sorts of joins and I even code a little. The big data company I co-founded in NYC (CB Insights http://www.cbinsights.com) is aggressively seeking talented PHP / MySQL developers. If you happen to have an MBA, that's cool, but regardless we take all shapes and sizes so long as you like to code and ship weekly. Email me at the address in my profile if interested.
Why we've had bad luck interviewing MBAs. This one talks about your experience without sounding link baity. It also relates directly to your experiences.
In regards to your experiences. I think the issues with MBAs come from their conventional business education. A lot of them are not prepared to worok with startups. There are some good people out there, but it is not the standard.
The intention was not to attack any trade but to highlight a worrying misconception that seems to be particularly prevalent amongst MBA grads and ex-consultants. A segment that I feel my background makes me particularly able to comment on.
> The problem is that a large proportion of MBAs ambitions seem to have moved away from entering a large corporate to becoming part of the burgeoning startup scene, and this shift has not been reflected in the course content.
He's really talking about inexperienced, fresh-out-of-school MBAs.
more than that, i helped one of them on some module, because they knew i "knew about computers" and it turned out that they were learning how to configure firewalls (!) (in a very abstract way - the idea was to understand what a firewall was, not how iptables worked - and we got top marks for that assignment ;o). i guess it was some kind of i.t. security basics. anyway, the breadth of what they were covering surprised and impressed me.
I do think that these folks can add value in much larger organizations, but in my experience, the only good ones are the ones who would be useful on small teams. In short, a "software architect" who couldn't immediately transition to a highly productive role writing code almost certainly isn't a good software architect. A "user experience designer" who couldn't immediately sit down with a programmer and start creating a polished site almost certainly isn't a useful "UX Designer". And by could, I also mean would. The good designers and architects are kind of delighted to get a chance to get their hands into code again.
It sounds like the problem with MBAs (based on this essay) is that they seek those higher level roles 1) where they don't exist, or 2) without the more hands-on background that seems to be a prerequisite for success at a more abstract level.
I do sympathize with the people who object to the "black mark". A black mark is a conviction for embezzlement, not a degree honestly earned (albeit of potentially dubious value). But you know, filters are both a luxury and a necessity. Some people won't look at any resume that doesn't have a CS degree from a top school. If you're so deluged with candidates that you can afford to (and need to) do this, obviously you're in a position or real strength.
Aside from my "black mark" objection, I think the rest of this essay is spot-on. The rejection is based more on a conversation than a rigid filter, he engages with the interested candidate a bit to see how they might fit.
"If your whole role is to come up with ideas & strategies for the product but you can’t make them happen yourself, and have a very limited understanding of how you could, you are pointless."
Best product managers and/or designers are usually the engineers working, using and breathing the product.
Oh boy... I agree with the whole "idea-guys are hacks" thing but this phrasing is no less alarming. Don't worry about the product, we can always jut pivot!
I would say Most people get MBA's in order to change their job. Either they want a promotion or want to switch industries and MBA programs are great for doing that. For a startup that just isn't the profile of person you're looking for.
In that heap of MBA's there are some people I'd call business nerds. They love to learn about how business works and are cluefull if you talk with them. Hire a business nerd if you can find one.
No need to apologize to me, by the way.
At one point I asked him: What's an MBA good for?
His answer: Absolutely nothing.
He then argued that an MBA devoid of solid experience in another field, well, just didn't get reality. Academic studies don't necessarily converge with reality, at least not perfectly. In his case, having spent so many years in various engineering disciplines the advantage was that he came into the MBA program with a great deal of context in reality and came out of it with knowledge that was well founded, modulated and qualified by the reality filters he had developed over the years.
That portion of the discussion matched what I had seen. The only MBA's I had come into contact with that "got it" seemed to be those who went into the MBA program after having worked in the real world for a good while.
Would I hire an MBA? They'd really have to show me that they get reality and are not living inside of some star-trek-ish distortion field.