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Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

Stanford MBAs in tech are fucking weird. I worked with a few, and had one for a CEO for 2 years. The gist of it is that they all sucked at tech but thought they didn't (trying to manage engineering teams in ridiculous micromanagy self important ways), were all very self centered, and all came from very wealthy families, being able to raise a few hundred thousands from "friends and family" (!?) and spending 4 day weekends in Tahoe and LA even though "we're bootstrapping so I'm only taking $30k a year right now".

I know, I know, anecdote != data. Having talked about it with friends, I know I'm not alone. I even see it mentioned in HN comments every once in a while (eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083219).

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I had the same reaction initially, basically thinking 'good riddance', but then stopped for a second and realized they are talking about tech, not start-ups.

I have a lot (too many, more than I ever thought I'd have) friends who are MBAs, and their is a place for them in larger technology companies, they just shouldn't be involved in developing breakthrough products. They are taught to manage big business and eke efficiency out of large systems, start-ups don't fit that mould.

Don't forget that only ~1% of startups develop breakthrough products, because only ~1% of startups break through.

Not sure if you are just trolling, but I'm pretty convinced that ~100% of startups are developing 'breakthrough' products. For various reasons only ~1% turn out to be very successful at it.

From an after-the-fact standpoint it's easy to point at the losers and say all kinds of nasty things about them. But since you can't reliably pick the winners of tomorrow, nor can the losers reliably pick themselves (they are usually both at different times) any sentiment towards failed startups being a waste is really just a misconception.

5 minutes of browsing on producthunt should change your opinion that 100% of startups are developing breakthrough products.

Maybe it'd be more precise to say 100% of startups believe they're developing breakthrough products?

as an angel investor, mba founders is a big warning sign. so there's that.

So this is a real thing? It's not just me turned off by the strangely premeditated handshakes?

MBA courses are now being promoted in Europe and many people see it as a cancer

MBA stands for "more bad advice". The current MBA curriculum is mainly based on knowledge that we know in the 1980s. Most of the advance science and management processes that we have developed since then are not in the curriculum. So basically the MBA students are unfortunately learning outdated knowledge - half of which is wrong.

Do you have a citation for that? I'm genuinely curious.

I heard that term at a conference given by Sidney Dekker. Professor Dekker is a world famous expert in risk and accident management.

The links from his talk and books are below. He said "MBA stands for more bad advice" at 14:00. It is worth a watch even if you are not interested in engineering risk management.

http://vimeo.com/102167635 http://sidneydekker.com/books/

From my own personal experience as a researcher in project management. Many of the advances in project management are not currently being taught in school. This is due to the fact that it takes so long for the idea to migrate to the core curriculum. Most undergraduate education (even some aspects of CS) has not really changed for decades. Generally undergraduate education is behind current research by about 20 years and this will vary from field to field. The masters might get you closer to the 10 year range. The PhD is the only time where you are at the current state of knowledge. Although this is not quite true since recent journal articles are usually 2 years old (the review process is so long).

I'm more interested in the 'good practices' than the snarky one-liner. I don't have an MBA nor intend to get one, but it seems like a legitimate thing to pursue for some people in some circumstances.

Is there a book you can recommend so we can get a reasonably current overview?

I study project management so I only know about things from the production perspective. The following reading should get you a modern view of managing projects.

http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2000/isbn951385566X/ http://www.leanconstruction.org/media/docs/ballard2000-disse...

This problem is precisely what leads me to doubt the value of what we currently call higher education. To put it bluntly (and in a slightly exaggerated manner), in exchange for your tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars, you get obsolete (at best) and just plain bad (at worst) vocational training.

What is your thoughts on critical chain as defined by Eli Goldratt?

Many people share that sentiment. Elon Musk sees an MBA as a detriment when hiring: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201311/profiles.cfm

Yah bookmark it. Always beware of those who have acquired some knowledge and the credentials for such. So that's this.

there are occasional exceptions, but it's a been a good first approximation for me.

On that note, why does YC let so many MBA founders in?

I haven't seen any stats to say that it's lopsided or not, but i'd wager because education alone doesn't define an individual or the company?

Because people who matter still see an elite MBA as a useful imprimatur.

YC lets them in because the people making that decision believe said founders have some (unspecificied, but non-trivially non-zero) chance at building a company they can sell (to other investors or "the public" in an IPO) for far more than they invest in it.

It seems people are making a category error with respect to YC. YC's purpose is not to foster a cradle of technical innovation with an engineer focus; it's to maximize returns on high-risk investments in what happen to be technology companies. Engineers in the startup world are like engineers everywhere else in technology work: second-class workers who exist to expend their life in the form of labor for (relatively) token compensation in return, with lots of ego stroking to help deflect attention from that.

> Engineers in the startup world are like engineers everywhere else in technology work: second-class workers who exist to expend their life in the form of labor for (relatively) token compensation in return

Be careful, that breaks the marketing veil too much ;-)

The problem is that to attract and keep engineers busy and happy it is important to tell them stories about changing the world, "breakthrough technologies", paradigm shifts. Also it is important to explain inability of many engineers to discern how equity gets allocated, how options and stock work and so on. "oh look you get 10000 shares!" type tricks.

Now, granted, those are not mutually exclusive, some do work on breakthrough technologies.

curious, but do you differentiate between if they're also the technical founder or not?

Asked another way: Are you identifying this as a lack of tech expertise, or as a 'poisoning' of the mind irregardless of the experiences?

Thanks!

Yes, though I am still not thrilled with it.

I've just seen too many "two mbas and a PowerPoint" startups, "we just need some money to build a prototype"

I would rather see a prototype (or a soft launch with a little traction) than a PowerPoint that poorly explains the implications ("lipstick is a 40 billion:ur business, if we get just ONE PERCENT")

anyway.

The trading desk I worked on, many years ago, did not hire folks wih MBAs either. Inheritance?

Small world, I was an editor at memepool. Good to see you're still around in the trenches here after the big delicious sale.

Yay! I should reboot it. Something that isn't eithet delicious or reddit.

I'd love to understand the reasoning behind this generalization. Do you object to the content of the MBA curriculum? Is there data that suggests a causal relationship between founders with this credential and business failure?

I just don't like investing in tech startups where the founders have neither engineering nor product skill.

What do you mean by product skill?

product is engineering (as in negotiation of constraints) as much as building. i look for that.

"they all sucked at tech but thought they didn't"

Gah...these are the worst people!

The worst is one they spew out all their personal assumptions as though its the divine word that all must obey and follow.

People who really know tech share the same trait; they listen and learn. Every engineer knows that learning new things is part of overcoming challenges.

When someone acts like they know it all, that's usually a good indicator that they don't know shit.

I've known engineers who fit your MBA description and MBAs who fit your engineer description. It's about people in the end.

Obligatory link to Hunter Walk's great post on exactly this point: http://hunterwalk.com/2011/12/24/its-fine-to-get-an-mba-but-...

I'm wondering if we worked at the same company.

We got press in TC in order to reach out to the "nerds".

I interview some college kids and that is sometimes the case.

"I don't know technology but I want to manage people".

Or some stay in the CS degree but switch focus to "UI design" or "HCI" and so on. It is ok to switch, but after a talking to a many it seem the reason is that a few core CS classes were getting too hard to they switched.

Your sample size is too small to judge all Stanford MBAs. This is Hacker News. Please bring more substance to the table.

Part of the point of boards like this is to be able to share anecdotes from the field. That's why I come here. While your point about sample size is true please don't discourage this.

Damaso Effect.

http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/vc-istan-8-th...

https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/an-insight-o...

My attitude toward these numbers is... how the fuck are we not organizing? If a straight-out-of-school Stanford MBA is worth $300k, then I'm worth $750k at least on that piece of data alone, and I'm not the best programmer out there. What in fuck's name are we doing posting here, with evidence like that of the need to organize?

More (highly relevant, IMO) blog posts on the topic of what engineers are actually worth:

http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/whats-a-mid-c...

http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/software-engi...

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