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Comment by jdhawk | Hacker News Reader

Sadly, MBA is billed as a "career changer" for a lot of people that either a) had technical degrees and ended up hating their life as an engineer or b) people with a complete and total lack of any real skill set beyond some generic "soft skills" and vocabulary learning who couldn't apply nut to bolt.

Type A's generally crush the accounting, finance, and enter into banking or back into tech as a Operations centric manager.

Type B's go off to become the organizational gunk that you expect. They're just dangerous enough with some generic managerial skills, but they have learned a whole new level of meaningless vocabulary, spent a few years polishing their XLS, PPT and Public Speaking chops, and are ready to continue to be dumbasses for the rest of their career, but with more pay.

source: jdhawk, MBA.

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>> MBA is billed as a "career changer"

This is the true problem. There's a false perception of what a business education actually provides people.

All it does is provide you with some knowledge. Whether that knowledge is applicable to your real professional career is up to the person receiving the education. And not all MBAs are equal, since there are multiple disciplines within the degree itself.

I got my MBA before the proliferation of the high priced "executive MBA", so I can't necessarily speak for the more recent MBA grads, but from my time, you didn't really acquire any real world skills from the degree. You basically acquired some knowledge that could help you understand certain situations you'd get in. There definitely was nothing that made a person behave or operate a certain way in a business situation.

The problem with the perception of MBAs is that it is somewhat conflated to the level of a profession or certification by people who don't know any better. Assuming that an MBA grad is a business expert is like assuming an English major is a grammar expert. It might be the case, but most likely, it's not.

> All it does is provide you with some knowledge.

Maybe if you are talking about MBAs in general. But for an MBA from an elite school the knowledge is secondary: The primary benefit is the stamp of approval; the filtering in the selection process.

But what you're saying applies to any degree from an elite school -- whether it's a law degree from Harvard, engineering degree from MIT, etc.

In the end, a diploma from a prestigious school reduces the risk of hiring a lower quality candidate, but it is still no guarantee that you're getting a good one.

Not any degree, some degrees are more competitive than others and select on different things. Importantly, (elite) MBAs filter on demonstrated leadership and work accomplishments.

The issue isn't about guaranteeing high quality candidates but narrowing the search. Instead of looking at all applicants you only look at the top 20% from the most elite programs. As you note that is not exclusively MBA: Most people who want to hire a Harvard MBA would be happy with a Rhodes scholar or Harvard Law alumnus.

For someone in type A, how do you decide if it's worth pursuing an MBA vs moving into technical management without an MBA vs sucking it up?

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