Ask HN: Should I go for MBA? Feeling torn and down. Please please advice | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should I go for MBA? Feeling torn and down. Please please advice

4 pointsroboemotion11 comments

Hi , I have been lurking on this for past couple of months and posting first time. Sorry for the long post.

I am from India currently working on H1-B visa in US. I have 7 years of experience. Over the years I have worked on primarily in BI and Data warehouse area. Technically I do okay ; not the super coder kind of good but not noob as well. Lately, I am feeling torn between multiple choices that I have to go from here.

1. I have studied engineering in the past. I would like to go for MBA. However, it is becoming very hard to land job. I am confident that I can land at least in top 25 school in US. Doing MBA mean I will put 2 years more in study ; will empty 30k I have accumulated so far and will be in debt for around another 80k. Even after that finding decent paying job going to be major challenge.

2. Getting job ( or even reply ) is increasingly getting difficult. I completed project management certification from reputed university but employer doesn't seem to care. My current job pays okay but nothing great to expect there. Plus, it is increasingly becoming dull day by day. I am yet to learn Hadoop and related big data technologies. By realistic expectation learning these technologies is going to take time.

3. I have couple of ideas for startup but United States law does not allow to start business on visa. Going back to India and working on startup is altogether different story ( won't go in much detail but been lived for 25 years I can tell you that it will be x100 times difficult than in US ). Not sure what to do at this point. Struggling internally to make any kind of decision and feeling frustrated day by day.

Many of you have worked on startups, achieved quite a bit of success and could have been in similar situation. What do you think would be best way to move forward ?

I've been in the BI and data warehousing industry nearly my entire career, so hopefully I can help a bit.

1. Get an MBA if you want to transition more to management. This will relinquish really any technical responsibilities. MBAs matter a lot trying to get manager roles at large companies. They also are brilliant for networking--you can have a safe haven to meet potential cofounders who are very good at the business side of things while you work on the technical aspects. That said, just like I wouldn't encourage a woman to go to college to find a husband, I don't encourage you to go get an MBA just to find a co-founder. It's something you should be open to, but it may not happen.

2. The space is definitely moving quickly, but there's still a lot of traditional data warehousing stuff out there. Unfortunately, it's increasingly commoditized. If you're not getting a job because you don't know the latest technologies, then you should probably learn them. This would most likely be a bit more valuable use of your time than an MBA if you really want to remain technical. It may or may not be Hadoop (you may want to latch onto Cloudera or Hortonworks), but whatever your local market is bearing--I actually see quite a bit of variation throughout the country in terms of tools being used. If, however, you're not getting jobs because your price is too high, you may want to take the time to learn the things that will increase your value while biding time on the lower paying projects.

3. I don't know immigration law well enough to have any sort of comment about a startup in the US vs India.

1. Should you get an MBA?

I think there are 2 situations where an MBA could be helpful. First, if you plan to move into management, then an MBA is helpful. Second, if you plan to start a company, an MBA is helpful.

The advantage of an MBA is it'll give you an understanding of the business aspects of building a startup.

However, if you plan to stay technical then obviously an MBA would not help.

2. Project Management

There's a lot to be said about experience with PM. But to get this type of a role you need to show the employer that you're the type of person who takes responsibility.

3. Startups - India vs. US

Starting a business is hard. I have experience starting 2 companies in the US, and 1 in India. Both environments have pluses and minuses. I would not say its 100x harder to start a business in India, but it's definitely different.

The US is a mature economy, the rules are very clear, and starting a company is fast. So is shutting it down.

In India, the economy is growing, the rules are defined, but getting stuff done is tough. Setting up a company requires more capital, more clarity about what you're doing, and shutting down (in case of failure) is way more expensive.

Ideally the choice would depend on what kind of work you want to do for the rest of your life - Do you enjoy the business side of things or would you prefer being on the tech side?

Apart from a career in Management, one of the biggest reasons to do an MBA is simply for the "networking opportunity".

Here in the Philippines, if the person has technical skills its better for them to get more certifications and training to acquire higher salary. Some get an MBA, if they want management position, but only a few do it. Our HR is looking more on the added skills.

I had been in technology consulting and software development for about 6 years when I decided to potentially peruse my MBA. My undergraduate degree was in engineering and I had a business minor, but I was curious to see if an MBA would be worthwhile, so I listed my options: - No MBA - Full time MBA - Part time MBA (many schools offer various flavors of this)

I also considered several factors: - Is an MBA still a desirable degree? (the answer may vary depending on industry, location, position, etc.) - Do I need to go to a top X school to receive a decent ROI? - What are the costs (tangible, intangible, opportunity, etc.) with each option above? This is a complex question with several sub-components. For example: a full time MBA would mean two years less career progression on top of salary loss.

There are many variables that can be difficult to estimate: - Actual cost of an MBA - Opportunity cost of lost salary (full time MBA) - Opportunity cost of lost salary increase (no MBA), if any - Networking value of attending certain schools - Etc. ad nausea

Of course, many of these are recurring. Which rate do you use to estimate current value of the time series? Student loan rates if you need financing? Discount rate used to quantify risk of any of the options? More uncertainties…

I created a spreadsheet to estimate my various models and came up with the following solution for my particular use case (YMMV!):

I enrolled in a professional MBA program from a top 25 public school (part time, one weekend per month, 16 months, with online work to supplement) of which my employer would cover some of my costs (no stipulations on repayment). Net result? I felt that I learned a lot and that the program was worthwhile for me. The most important piece of knowledge: how to best find out what I do not know about a given situation. I will never be a corporate accountant, but I now know what I do not know about corporate accounting (A LOT!). I know now that I do not know a lot about valuating pre-revenue startups, etc.

Do I feel that every person in my cohort received the same amount of value from the program? No. You get out what you put in.

Do I think an MBA is right for you (or anyone)? That depends on your situation. A driven person can learn most, if not all, of the material on their own. They can network on their own. They may not derive any benefit from an MBA. At the end of the day, I estimated all of the constraints and variables to the best of my ability and went for the option that I felt was the most “correct” for me, at that time.

So basically, I just rambled on for a TLDR answer of: it depends.

Seriously don't do it.

Why not find a startup cofounder and apply to an incubator ( like YC) ?

No. MBAs are parasites.

Could you elaborate? One of my lecturer suggest me to get an MBA, instead of getting master on CS (although i want to get my master)

CS is a field of value creation. BA is a field of sucking things dry, i.e. destroying value.

I want to go into this in more detail.

The skills learned in a business administration program, in themselves, are useless for actually creating a product or service to sell or practicing some field (e.g. law, medicine, etc.). The skills taught in such programs instead are about destroying value by trying to milk everything as much as possible, i.e. maximize profits at any cost. This results in dumb short-term thinking - do everything possible to maximize profits this quarter, who cares if the customers leave next quarter. This is why I call them parasites.

Someone might say, "well, isn't that a useful skill in itself, the MBA and [CS|whatever degree] can work together." I disagree. In order to be in business, you need to have something of value to offer in exchange for people's money. Business administration is about sucking value from other people's work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com