
MBAs go contrarian on Google - far33d
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/05/03/mbas_go_contrar.html
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especkman
This reminds me of an old Slate article about a study that compared the % of
Harvard MBAs who were working on Wall St with performance of the stock market
and found an inverse correlation. The greater the % of Harvard MBAs working on
Wall St the worse market performance. The analysis went further and suggested
that any time more than 30% of the graduating Harvard Business School class
went to work on Wall St, it was time to Sell Sell Sell!

I was working at Microsoft at the time, and the place seemed overrun with a
bunch of recently hired Ivy League MBAs (particularly Harvard grads).

The slate piece:<http://www.slate.com/id/2109982/>

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pg
I noticed near the peak of the Bubble that a lot of MBA students wanted to go
work for startups. In fact they were dropping out of B school to do it. This
struck me as odd at the time because they'd effectively announced by going to
B school at all that they were not startup type people. And it did turn out to
be a pretty good predictor of a coming crash.

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willarson
I like to think of Google as entering its third stage. Stage 1: "Do No Evil."
Stage 2: "Spend Previously Earned Goodwill on Evil." Stage 3: "Do Less Evil
Than Microsoft."

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ecuzzillo
Sounds about right. I don't think it's done anything hugely evil yet; it just
has niggling little evilisms that everybody notices because of the motto. It
hasn't smooshed anybody by doing anything other than making a better product,
I don't think.

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Goladus
Unfortunately any large company that wants to grow will have to do things that
some people, somewhere might consider evil. I suspect in this forum, no one
would think anything of Google driving a hard bargain with the local
government in Lenoir, North Carolina regarding a new datacenter. That's just
business and Google's playing fair. Not everyone agrees with that, though.

But I agree a lot of the extra scrutiny comes from the chance to point a
finger and scream "hypocrisy!"

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sbraford
I know it's trendy to hate on MBAs, but the top schools do crank out some
pretty bright talent.

I hear Google has some of these guys answering support email!

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schoudha
Why does the fact the MBA grads want to work at Google take away from the
company? There are a lot of very talented MBA graduates who are very good at
specific things.

It's not like Google is letting MBA grads run engineering.

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byrneseyeview
"There are a lot of very talented MBA graduates who are very good at specific
things."

If the best person for a job is an MBA, the job hasn't been defined very well.
A typical MBA is smart enough to get an MBA, but boring enough to think that
"Business" counts as an area of study -- it's about as specific as getting a
masters in "Stuff".

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RyanGWU82
An MBA is not a degree in "stuff." It's a degree in _business administration_
, which is a well-defined field of study.

What graduate degree is more relevant for a Director of Finance or M&A;
financial analyst than an MBA? Like any large company, Google has lots of
business needs which are most appropriately handled by businesspeople. Just
like engineers -- we can learn on the job, but we can also get professional
credentials from a university.

And I can't believe _I'm_ having to defend MBAs. I'm a grad student in
engineering and I'm somewhat unimpressed with the direction of the MBA program
here. But it's a legitimate learning experience if you're trying to be a
_business administrator_ at a medium to large company -- like Google.

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KB
With all that money you would think Google would pay for their talent to earn
their MBA and stay with the company to add increased value in the future... At
least thats the attitude where I currently work

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tx
So is it time to proclaim Google dead? :)

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pg
No; the article says MBAs want to work at Google, not that Google wants to
hire them.

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zangief
There are 10 MBAs from Stanford alone [out of a graduating class of ~300]
going to work at Google.

Google definitely wants to hire MBAs.

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zach
Talk about a leading indicator.

