Ask HN: Am I the only one tired with their bullshit? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Am I the only one tired with their bullshit?

26 pointsjakobflow17 comments

I am wondering if it is me, or if other people (genuinely interested in Entrepreneurship) are tired of (generally non-tech) people (usually business majors) who wrote articles about how to achieve success when they have themselves never achieved anything particular?

Am I the only tired with hearing the same "motivational crap" over and over, again and again.

Am I the only one sick of the vultures only attracted by the "fast-money" and who don't give a damn about real change and who are 10,000 feets away from reality?

Sorry for the rantings, but I really need to know if I have anger management issues or if the hacker community is really becoming more and more poisoned by those people.

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It's the problem with the MBA guys. Ideally they should be hand's on in the skill/industry they are serving to be able to see where the other guy is coming from. If i don't know a thing about making tea obviously i won't understand if my butler comes and tells me the milk got sour bec the pot was unclean!! BTW-- I am not a manager!!

I sat on both sides of the table for two years (coding my tech startup at night, while attending MBA and CS and Law classes during the day to fill skill gaps). The doer within me couldn't wait to go to hack sessions every weekend, just so I could feel sense of substance and normalcy while building things with other hackers. During weekdays I would watch one of my entrepreneurial MBA classmates writing articles for Forbes so her Startup could be promoted in the article footer. She beat everyone in the school's startup competition that year, because of the high traction numbers she could report.

I saw 3-4 extremely passionate software engineer classmates in the MBA program who pitched at every competition and never made sense to anyone but other hackers (until they came to the valley). On the other end, the seller MBAs were polished and hit their pitches right on the mark, winning cash with ideas that promptly went nowhere. Making great lemonade and getting many customers lined up to buy it are two different skills, and the investors look at the latter when they evaluate you for funding. That is why pairing both sides in teams helps.

It all made sense, when one of the finals for an MBA class required us to sell 5lbs of hot-chocolate mix (in any way shape or form) for 4 hours and compare profits with other teams for a grade. Some teams went the conventional route - one person making the drinks, another person screaming to the crowd with a poster. Those made anywhere between -$50 and $200. The drinks required heating, everyone on the same location, mixing tables, etc. Some interesting teams made cupcakes they could distribute to offices and sell at much higher margins. One of the teams organized a "hot chocolate" party (hot chocolate pool, hot chocolate pong, you name it) - charged $10-20 per entrance and got 100 classmates to join. These are the skills you need to look for in an MBA.

If you're making killer BBQ, a good MBA can blow smoke out to get you customers, make sure you're getting your beef cheaply, and you are not harassed by the rookie janitors, because they have productive things to do while you're tweaking the recipe. (the best way to avoid needing an MBA, is to build an app that sells itself and doesn't need people to grow)

The symptoms you are seeing come from many MBAs of varied skills flowing into the valley to try and blow smoke for something or to demonstrate their smoke-blowing skills for you (and books like "Newsjacking" which teach brute-force PR to the rookies, and sites like LinkedIn which struggles to keep people coming back daily so it hired smoke-blowers to generate "career oriented" content). To avoid it, I've just stopped sniffing the air while working day and night on my mind-blowing BBQ recipe.

You do not have anger management issues. I see people around talking about stuff they really have no idea about!

It also drives me insane when MBA types think that we need them to start up anything! Or they are the 'only' ones who can talk! I have something for them - I bloody know how to talk and I know how to sell my stuff. I am building skill and someday I will sell stuff that needs to be in the market and I would not need them nor would I hire them. In fact, my firm will be probably a firm without managers !

Interesting - when you have 20 people working for you, and you need someone to manage your clients and their projects and timelines, and also figure out what your your staff should be working on, and also balance staff requests for holiday leave and sick leave, what do you plan on calling that person?

True. There would be people who 'manage' things and people but I think you missed my point here. Don't want to have people who just sit and talk a lot. Don't want to give the reigns of power to such folks. Don't want to have an 'engineering manager' who codes no more!

I don't think I missed the point, I think we agree.

It's not that all managers are bad. Good managers are invaluable. Bad managers are highly destructive.

"Manager" is a power relationship. There are other ways to organize teams.

For example, at my last startup we had a shared vacation calendar and we'd just negotiate time off. We'd manage projects and timelines by discussion. We'd figure out who was working on what through short conversations every morning.

A major tomato processor has no power relationships; nobody can tell anybody else what to do:

http://morningstarco.com/index.cgi?Page=Self-Management

They're now putting together an institute to teach people their approach:

http://www.self-managementinstitute.org/

False.

Management refers to the coordination of people, not the exercise of power. It is to coordinate the people towards a goal in conjunction with available resources in an efficient manner.

Example - A Project Manager has no power over the workstream leads other than to assign them tasks, resources and milestones in line with the vision of the Project Board.

Self-Management is nonsense. One or two use cases does not make it applicable to the entire corporate world. How does one discipline a colleague for taking 180 days off per year?

Who exercises executive authority over mergers/acquisitions/hiring/firing/downsizing/scaling/purchasing?

You are arguing for the sake it, no need to reply. I am done with your drama.

Interesting you should mention people talking about stuff they know nothing about.

You are one of them.

I see your point, Sir. I have similar feelings about the fake motivational success crap. Yes indeed - 99% of those are written by people on payroll who are not actually an example of financial independence.

It is in the nature of humans to feel attracted to the future self-image they try to follow. Perhaps feeling the emotions of this expected self-image is what most people like. (Of course, the reality is different - having success has its own domain of issues)

Those articles are simple, easy to grasp, easy on the mind and wishful thinking. Everyone capable of reading can understand them. And project their dreams around them.

In reality, reaching success is a messy, confusing, tough, unpredictable and usually rather long journey. Not to mention the big luck factor that (almost) none of those article mention.

Yet people like them. They don't want the harsh reality. They want the dreamy shit to read between their jobs. No matter how it can delude their expectations of the real world.

edit: but I admit, it can work. People take action based on this motivation and sometimes this is the necessary step to actually do something.

If we create more value than the money we take home, we are on the right track. If we take more money home than value we create, then we are unintentional (or in some cases, intentional) thieves. It’s really that simple.

I believe a successful business major can also have a knack for finding value in something that others have not yet uncovered and delivering this value to the masses. The creator does not always have the vision to find value in what has been created.

I am a self-taught novice at programming who works in the front-office/business side of finance at the moment. My mother was a programmer and my father was on the team that designed the first IBM PC. I have nothing but the greatest respect for those who are able to build things from scratch. I am fascinated by it, so I try to teach myself in my spare time. Sometimes I get stuck and it feels even more satisfying to unstuck myself.

I agree though, as far as technical skills go, programmers can often be unsung heroes, but only to those who have never scratched their head endlessly at one of the bugs you guys have to solve.

Opportunity cost. I could hire a different MBA and potentially make a lot more - and hiring additional MBAs doesn't give me linear returns (and sometimes gives you negative returns regardless of skill level via the Mythical Man Month problem).

I'm with you. The "I'll teach you what I learnt failing" really makes me hit the roof.

Well it's hard to figure out what exactly you are upset about without more specific examples. That said, I'd really think about what you consider to be success factors in real businesses.

Tech. solutions are very, very rarely the important part of successful business ventures. If you can't understand the importance of things like sales, cash flow, ROI, HR & marketing then you are naive in the best case.

Calm down and spend some time understanding a holistic approach to business solutions.

Arrogant know-best has long been the rule of the day. People don't feel comfortable in this talking-head universe unless they are an authority about something, and this is such an infectious social mode that its unavoidable in our industry.

You think technologists have the market cornered in Entrepreneurship?

Last time I checked the Dutch East India Company existed before you were learning front end development.

No tech company in history would be able to go public without an army of lawyers, finance and management graduates.

I suggest you educate yourself about the real world. Your post is typical of "CS Engineers need no one else. Ever."

He's not talking about those people. He's talking about the types who talk a lot but have no real skills, no track record, and add no value to the ecosystem.

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