
Forget Wall Street. M.B.A.s Want to Work for Amazon - robertgk
https://www.wsj.com/articles/forget-wall-street-m-b-a-s-want-to-work-for-amazon-1507114801
======
ryandrake
Sigh, looks like this one's going to be the weekly HN MBA Hate Thread™. In
defense of the degree:

Has it ever occurred to you guys that maybe some (many?) of these people were
hackers prior to getting their MBA, and are very competent? Quite a few of my
classmates had engineering (including software) backgrounds, and even the ones
who had engineering degrees but didn't actually code were still clued in. Why
this blanket dismissal of anyone with the degree?

This kind of generalization, "All X are bad/dumb/incompetent" would be shunned
here and down voted to oblivion if X were "women", "men", "offshore
developers", "no college degree", "interns", etc. But somehow "MBA" is totally
OK. Bash away!

Because of this bizarre stigma in Silicon Valley (by the way, outside the
valley, most companies consider it a plus), I tend to not even mention mine
unless asked. When it comes up and I mention that I did the MBA thing a decade
ago, I get reactions from my software colleagues ranging from "Wait, but you
seem to know your shit!" to "Why would you do such a thing??" There are
competent MBAs and there are shitty ones. Why can't this be acknowledged? Such
a strange little quirk of our bubble out here...

~~~
sage76
> by the way, outside the valley, most companies consider it a plus

Maybe that's why they will never come up with the next
Apple/Google/SpaceX/etc.

Every single MBA I have met, without exception, has been extremely good at
talking and making presentations. Ask them to do real work, and they will find
a million excuses.

Another thing I have noticed, is the kind of people attracted to doing an MBA.
They have seen all of Steve Jobs' talks/speeches, talk incessantly about Brand
Building and strategy. Ask them to dial for dollars and you get radio silence.

~~~
anindha
SpaceX? Elon Musk studied Business and Physics at Wharton/Penn and recommends
that any founder should have some MBA style business training.

~~~
sage76
Late reply, but business training and MBA are 2 separate things.

Elon has categorically stated that MBAs are a bad idea :
[http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201311/profiles.cfm](http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201311/profiles.cfm)

------
1_2__4
I’m watching tech companies be more and more infested with these business
types. As in, it used to be you’d see technical product managers, but they’re
largely MBA types now. Ditto for engineering upper/exec management. Ditto for
sales engineering. Ditto for professional services. Ditto for customer
support.

They churn through technical H1Bs at a shocking rate, treat engineering like
shit, and add almost no value beyond blowing hot air and shorty software
development practices. They always have lots of reasons why things aren’t
getting done predictably and slide decks on how to fix it, all of which
involve further neutering engineering and especially engineering management.
They like to build fake engineering teams outside the engineering organization
with absolutely atrocious engineering practices but because they deliver on
short notice - never mind what they’re delivering is garbage - the sales
idiots and execs love them to death.

They and PMO are cancers on the tech industry and it’s just getting worse.

~~~
SaltyBackendGuy
> atrocious engineering practices but because they deliver on short notice -
> never mind what they’re delivering is garbage

I am pretty sure this is true for most companies. Product and sales never care
what the code looks like. They care about velocity. Remember your code can be
a work of art, well tested, and the epitome of best practice; none of that
means anything if you don't ship or if you're always pushing back on deadlines
or wont switch context to fix something more high in business priority. (as
engineers we build our own dream or someone else's)

~~~
Gracana
I wouldn't apply startup thinking to "most companies." Things are really weird
when you're just trying to build an empire to sell it off. Obviously other
companies care about growth too, but knowing that your company and its
products will continue to exist in five years gives everyone a reason to focus
on quality and maintenance.

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jrs95
Well if that's the case, it shouldn't be too much longer before programmers
don't ;)

~~~
uptownfunk
Some of us MBA's have also written (and write) code and can also think from a
dev mindset. Why all the hate for MBAs on here?

~~~
jbob2000
Because the tech landscape changes, and in a few years the tech skills you
have will become outdated. Nobody will tell you this, though, so you'll
confidently and move forward in your MBA career thinking you're still as good
as you were when you developed full time. In a few years, you're going to butt
heads with a developer who tells you you are wrong, but because you are an MBA
and you used to develop, you must be right.

I deal with this all the time as a developer. I am tired of guys who "used to
develop, so they know what they're talking about".

~~~
devmunchies
Would that also apply to any technical managers and directors?

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socalnate1
Every time the topic of an MBA comes up here, I am confused at the vitriol it
inspires. There seems to be a significant portion of the HN audience that is
convinced that all MBA's (100%) are empty suits who add nothing but fancy
powerpoints and bureaucratic layers.

This has always confused me. After, all I have an MBA and I'm not like that (I
think). Furthermore the majority of MBA's I know are not like this either,
although some certainly are. And what of the people that were engineers before
the got their MBA? Twenty nine percent of my MBA program (UCLA) was made up of
people who got their degrees in Engineering, Math or CS. Did this entire
cohort lose their brains during the procress?

Why the disconnect? I have a new theory: selection bias.

Very few people I work with know that I have an MBA, because it doesn't come
up or really matter. I don't have "socalnate1, MBA" as my e-mail signature or
on my business cards. I rarely if ever mention my degree in conversation, even
if I am using a tool I learned at B-school. My linkedin profile only mentiones
it under education. My diploma hangs in my home, not at work. However, there
are a number of people who REALLY want you to know that they have an MBA
(weirdly, these people tend to come from 3rd tier schools). It's on their
signature, they lead with it as a qualification or reason they should be
listened to. I have no doubt that this group of people fit's the caraciature
that is painted here.

So anyway, that's my theory. People who "make sure you know they have an MBA"
are over represented in the collective Hacker News hivemind, and those
competent folks who you didn't even know had an MBA are not.

~~~
joezydeco
_" There seems to be a significant portion of the HN audience that is
convinced that all MBA's (100%) are empty suits who add nothing but fancy
powerpoints and bureaucratic layers."_

Maybe we speak from experience. We witness how the three letters magically can
override any level of business experience or knowledge necessary to make an
organization function. C-level management somehow believes having a headcount
with that diploma will magically fix their business problems or get their
company on the hockey stick. It never happens.

Kawasaki's Law of Pre-Money Valuation ("For each full-time engineer, add 500K.
For each MBA, subtract 250K") wasn't written in a vacuum.

------
saosebastiao
A common complaint everywhere within Amazon is that there are too many chiefs
not enough indians. For every doer, it feels like there are 20 talkers with
ideas but no ability to execute on them. Everybody wants to be the strategy
guy. Good leadership, in practical terms, becomes your ability to convince a
technical team or analyst to add something to their already overloaded queue
of things to do, in between your scheduled pointless meetings where you talk
strategy with fellow MBAs. To an engineering manager, it often feels like
being told to build mansions with the budget of a house of cards.

Hopefully Amazon takes all of the MBAs and keeps them.

~~~
base698
Partly as a joke, I've started wanting to ask the question, "Will I be
reporting to an MBA?"

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bitL
That would explain some of the stupid things that are going on at Amazon right
now - e.g. they are now witch-hunting new sellers to prove they aren't selling
counterfeits by disabling their accounts right after they list their first
items literally seconds after they do it and then demand all kinds of proof. I
was shown an email where Amazon stated: "you might be selling counterfeits"
without company selling a single item as a fresh new account (and having
reputable suppliers that don't risk supplying counterfeits). To me it seems
like ML + MBA fail (ML for identifying risks with too many false positives,
MBA for setting up such an insane policy since June)

~~~
exhilaration
Wow, this is amazing news! Amazon is actually doing something about
counterfeits?

~~~
bitL
Yeah, like ignoring those Chinese companies that spawn up quickly, dump
100,000 items on the marketplace, then disappear; and instead chase naive new
sellers that didn't expect to climb algorithmic wall when they paid for
"seller privileges"?

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bousaid
While I was at Microsoft this summer I learned that the PM position has become
highly sought after by MBAs from schools like Duke etc.

~~~
jrs95
Maybe a lot of them just want to live out some sort of Steve Jobs fantasy

~~~
gaius
Spolsky was a PM at MS, I don't think Jobs ever was.

~~~
jrs95
I didn't mean it _that_ literally. Just in general, I can imagine a bunch of
people buying into some sort of faux-enlightenment aesthetic and parading
around as product gurus.

~~~
gaius
I've been in the industry 20+ years and I still have no idea what a product
manager actually does. As far as I can tell everyone completely ignores them.
Maybe their job is just to be a warm body filling a chair in pointless
meetings, so programmers can do real work? Seems perfect for an MBA when the
weather's too bad to play golf.

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wolfi1
I'm not sure if that's a good sign

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vippat
I am an MBA, and also have a Masters in Comp Sci. Technical Nerd. Why all the
hate?

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bob2001
is it just me that has a problem with the paywall or does everybody else on HN
have a wsj subscription?

~~~
bob2001
never mind, it seems like google is filtering my results, but bing to the
rescue: [http://www.morningstar.com/advisor/t/120651764/forget-
wall-s...](http://www.morningstar.com/advisor/t/120651764/forget-wall-street-
m-b-a-s-want-to-work-for-amazon.htm)

