
David Heinemeier Hansson says, 'Unlearn Your MBA' - jordanmessina
http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2010/07/30/entrepreneurs-unlearn-your-mba/
======
damoncali
While I don't disagree with what he's saying, there is a nuance that isn't
coming across that is pretty important:

It's not just about entrepreneurship - every real business is steeped in stuff
that just can't (or shouldn't be) taught in school. Business school theory is
meant to be _general_ , and sometimes painfully high-level in its focus.

BUT! That doesn't make the knowledge and experience of business school
worthless or something that has to be "unlearned". A broad knowledge of
business practice and theory is not a substitute for practical domain
experience and knowledge. It _is_ a great compliment, however.

It seems trendy to dismiss MBA's (the degrees, not the people) as worthless,
or even worse, apologize for having one. The truth is far less sensational:
It's a degree - nothing more, nothing less. As long as you keep an open mind,
all knowledge is good.

~~~
slantyyz
Agree.

There's this presumption that MBAs are robots. I can tell you from experience
(although mine predates the explosion of the WWW) that more than half of the
people in MBA programs are robots. Having said that, isn't that true for any
other degree? In the end, it's not the degree that matters, but the person.

Funny thing is that when I did my MBA, the professors were saying that MBAs in
Canada (where I'm from) were nothing like the US. MBA's in Canada were taught
to be middle managers, while MBAs in the US were taught to be more
entrepreneurial (there's no "American dream" in Canada). When you read about
the US tech gurus mocking MBAs you get the impression that's clearly not the
case.

I don't think it's necessarily fair to judge people by the degree, but on the
person as a whole - personality, geek level, work experience, etc.

~~~
Tamerlin
"Having said that, isn't that true for any other degree? In the end, it's not
the degree that matters, but the person."

Yes, definitely -- there are a lot of cultures that place more value on the
degree than on anything else, and these are cultures that emphasize rote
learning and memorization.

Rote learning and memorization are worthless in the long run, since the avoid
training you to think for yourself and actually USE the information you've
crammed into your head, but it's also a lot easier to teach by telling your
students to memorize things than to think.

I ran into exactly the same thing in biology, and a close friend of mine ran
into it in medical school. He told me about some of the explanations that his
med school compatriots offered up -- they demonstrated a glaring lack of
understanding of basic physics and chemistry (we're talking high school stuff,
not even college level knowledge here).

------
slantyyz
While I have a lot of criticisms of the MBA program I was in, I was lucky to
get a few important lessons that I think are useful:

1 - From my small business professor: Don't think about it, just do it. If you
overanalyze your idea, you'll never start your business.

2 - Guest speaker in advertising: The customer always gets what they deserve.

3 - Economics professor: Most of the experts out there just read a couple more
articles more than the next guy.

4 - Same economics professor: If you want to be rich, sail and ski. You'll
make your best connections. (I don't do either, but I don't disagree with his
assessment)

5 - Strategy classes: Focus on what you're good at

6 - Final Strategy Study: Learning how to work with people you want to fire
but can't

Of course, everyone gets different stuff out of their program - it seemed like
everyone in my cohort wanted to be a product manager at Proctor and Gamble,
but that's another story.

~~~
maukdaddy
Best class I took - Creativity and Innovation. I learned more in that class
than any other.

Everyone in program wants to be in finance or work for a marketing firm.

~~~
slantyyz
Some things never change. Those were the most popular goals for my peers back
in 1994 when I finished mine.

~~~
davidw
Idle thought: after taking on that much debt to get a degree, doesn't a "sure
bet" way of paying it off look more attractive than striking out on your own
and hoping for the best?

~~~
profgubler
You get an MBA for the long term. I am currently at Notre Dame and the stats
here say that most pay off their loans within 2 to 3 years. I am constantly
thinking of new ideas while getting my MBA, but at the same time am looking
for a job that will help me pay back the loans that I can work for, for 3 to 5
years and then start my own business. Most MBAs switch jobs after 2 to 3 years
anyway.

Remember most MBAs are there to climb the corporate ladder not start
businesses. So looking for the sure bet was their thought all along. Mine is
that now was the best chance to get a degree, so that down the road if I ever
want I can teach. I wanted higher level training and a degree and knew if I
didn't do it now I would never do it.

Not related to your comment, but I have already learned so much that will help
me in the future. Next semester I am taking a Venture Capital class where I
will get to evaluate companies all semester long with actual VCs, and they
grade my valuation. It will be immensely valuable to me in the future to have
had this experience. And that is just one example of what you can learn in
business school.

------
maukdaddy
I think a lot of the problem comes down to MBA students who have zero critical
thinking or problem solving ability. I see it all the time in my program -
students take everything they learn verbatim and act like it is gospel. In
reality, they should always be questioning what they are learning, thinking
about how it might apply in the real world, and what the benefits/consequences
are. For example, my Entrepreneurship class is making us write a business plan
with the sole intention of gaining funding. That's nice - but at the same time
I'm using it as an exercise to also see what the plan would look like as a
lifestyle or small (37signals-ish) business.

Secondly, MBA programs are just now beginning to (somewhat) teach that pure
profit maximization is not the only goal of a business. It will take a while
for this to catch on, and not all MBA students are going to adopt this way of
thinking, but there are some of us out there who do. This is happening with
both social ventures and sustainability-focused businesses.

~~~
dmh
Let us not forget that MBA programs are one of the biggest, and quickest
growing, forms of graduate education in the country. They're also one of the
most expensive, offer few scholarships compared to other para-professional
training, and cost very little to operate. And questionable online-only
programs are sprouting up, and not just from bullshit schools.

Training high-paying MBA students is a huge financial gain for the school
doing the teaching. Yet, there are few standards and core concepts to ensure
quality education, leaving a huge spread in the quality of graduates.

Your MBA, oftentimes, pays off more for the school more than for you.

~~~
slantyyz
Around the time I was finishing up mine (1994), the prices skyrocketed. I
think my fees were just over $2K CDN/semester x 4 semesters (back when the US
dollar was super strong), and then universities started introducing
accelerated "executive MBAs" that cost well over $20K for 6 months.

I got my ROI a long time ago, but if I had to do it again today, I wouldn't
bother. You have access to so much information these days (BBS's were how you
communicated back then, not the www, and the idea of youtube was just c-r-a-
z-y) that it's hard to justify the high costs of tuition.

------
milesf
This feels like link bait. The same full-length talk was given over 6 month
ago, which this story doesn't seem to link to
<http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2334>

~~~
jordanmessina
I hadn't seen it before, I apologize and I really hate when that happens. I
had been off HN for a while today and didn't realize this made the front page,
if I saw this comment earlier I would have taken it down.

~~~
milesf
No worries :) I was referring mostly to the article you linked to, not to your
submission.

------
alexkiwi
Most schools do a terrible job at teaching entrepreneurs and future small
business owners. MBA programs are meant to prepare students for mid-level
positions in big companies that already have a set plan.

If you want to run a startup, you definitely need to unlearn your MBA.

~~~
slantyyz
you definitely need to _unlearn_ your MBA.

That's a bit of a falsehood. It's arguable that any degree gives you any real
practical skills. I hear a lot of techies like Joel Spolsky on podcasts saying
that CS degrees don't necessarily yield great programmers. But should people
with CS degrees unlearn everything from school? No.

Your degree is like a tool in your back pocket. An MBA can provide you with
particular set of knowledge (depending on your area of study), some of which
are useful to teach you how to -run- a business. I don't see why there is any
need to unlearn that stuff. Revenue recognition rules, economics, financial
modeling, business law, corporate taxation, how to write a business plan...
all of those have some use in the real world, regardless of the size or type
of business you run.

That they are overpriced _today_ for what you get is a totally different
story.

------
jteo
People take MBAs to network with other people.

~~~
marknutter
People join Facebook and Linkedin to network with other people. Oh, and they
don't cost $100k+ to join.

------
MartinCron
I have an undergraduate business degree from the University of Washington in
Seattle and I think it was very helpful. I'm sort of a "business geek" and I
really enjoyed learning some things that I wouldn't have been able to learn on
my own. Basically, I know I can teach myself a new programming language, but I
can't really teach myself finance or marketing. I did take a handful of CS
courses, just enough to realize that CS isn't really about writing software.

A few months ago, I went to an informational seminar for the UW Technical
Management MBA and I realized that MBA, in that context, stands for
_Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon_. Something like 76% of the students came from
those three local companies. I see the value in networking, but if I wanted to
meet a bunch of Microsofties, I would go work at Microsoft. (Not that I have
anything against Microsoft, but I know it's not the right culture for me)

And while I don't doubt the quality of the education (some of the professors
were the same ones I had in my undergrad and they were awesome) the whole
thing was pitched not as "look at all the cool stuff you'll learn" it was
pitched as a way to break through into a better job/better salary at your
current big company, which felt a little discouraging. I felt a sense that
actually writing code was somehow distasteful to some of the audience, and
they were willing to pay around $80K to not have to do it anymore.

If the lack of paper diploma is really holding you back, then I guess it's a
good thing. If you really just want the education, there are plenty of better
learning experiences to be had for that kind of money.

~~~
tptacek
Got a "top 5" of the things you're happiest to have learned in an MBA setting?
I'm interested.

~~~
MartinCron
It wasn't an MBA setting, it was a BBA, but here's an off-the cuff top 5
things that a programmer got out of business school.

1\. Strategic Management: SWOT Analysis. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities,
Threats. It's simple, but applicable almost everywhere.

2\. Accounting... Feeling comfortable with the basic jargon and rules of
business. Revenues, expenses, assets, liabilities, etc.

3\. Marketing. Marketing is more than just advertising. Everything is
marketing. A lot of marketing can be handled by running through checklists to
make sure you haven't overlooked something stupid. Much in the same way that
pilots always run through checklists before taking off.

4\. Judging people based on shallow stereotypes is, well, shallow. I remember
a cute-as-a-button sorority girl who surprised me by being really, really good
at relational algebra. That prejudice is really embarrassing to me, because I
always thought I was really enlightened.

5\. Microsoft Excel is an amazing piece of software, in that it's simple to
use, but has incredible depth of capability for solving very sophisticated
problems.

\---

And as a free bonus, the things that weren't of value.

1\. The "software systems" class was total waterfall indoctrination. Complete
waste of time.

2\. Networking (with humans). I'm an introvert, I made a handful of friends,
but I was a self-employed non-traditional student with a wife and a child, and
everyone else was around 19 or 20 years old.

3\. Networking (with software). The professor teaching the computer networking
class didn't really know his stuff. He was recruited into the position at the
last minute, and got a bunch of basics wrong. Right now, there are dozens of
Business School graduates who don't really understand how DNS MX records work,
which I guess isn't a huge tragedy.

4\. Business Ethics. I remember being horrified by the rationalizations that
some of my peers were willing to make in our hypothetical scenarios. Many of
them were willing to put workers in unnecessary mortal peril because they
didn't feel they had any risk of legal liabilities. I'm sorry, but even really
good lawyers can't bring people back from the dead.

5\. The support staff and advisors were never very helpful or encouraging. The
first advisor insisted that there was no way I could ever get into the
(competitive) program with my substandard GPA. Ha! I showed her.

------
agentargo
This directly addresses an internal struggle I have been having as of late.
Pursue an MBA or not?

The way I see it is that business is a fluid process and while learning the
basic framework of it is beneficial, it in no way corresponds to success. Any
of the classes in an MBA can be learned through books. What you are paying for
is the experience and the network that you can gain at a low risk, while
firmly rooting a foundation of fundamentals.

------
mattsoldo
DHH makes a few mistakes in his reasoning here. I have an MBA and work for a
successful YC startup. Here are the flaws with his argument:

1\. Mediocre business schools aren't worthwhile. And although school rankings
are only an approximate quality measure, any school that isn't in the top 30
in the world or top 10 in the US is probably mediocre. He is basing his
analysis on his experience at the University of Copenhagen, which doesn't make
most global rankings ([http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-
mba-ran...](http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-
rankings),
[http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/MB_07_Score...](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/MB_07_Scoreboard.pdf),
<http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/>), doesn't crack the top 30 in
Europe ([http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/european-
busin...](http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/european-business-
school-rankings)), and doesn't actually offer an MBA
(<http://uk.cbs.dk/degree_programmes>). In addition, the 3 year program the
DHH refers to is actually an undergraduate program (the MBA is a graduate
degree).

2\. Internet businesses operate at large scale (if they are successful), and
understanding large scale businesses operations requires quantitative
analysis. Working for a YC startup myself, I can attest that what I learned in
business school is _incredibly_ useful. My school (Wharton), focused on
quantitative analysis, and I came out of it with a set of tools that I use
everyday. These include statistical analysis, quantitative model building,
quant marketing tools, and financial analysis. Of course you can learn these
tools on your own, but you risk not knowing what tools are available to
address the problems you face.

3\. In addition to tools, a good MBA program will teach a general problem
solving technique to systematically break down, analyze, and solve business
problems. And it will teach you to effectively communicate your solutions to
others (you boss, a client, a VC, whoever). Some people are naturally good at
this and don't need an MBA to do it. But many need to be taught how to think
in this manner.

4\. As another commenter pointed out, a lot of value from getting an MBA comes
from networking. However if you get an MBA in one country (Denmark) and then
move to another continent, that network will be less useful.

5\. Many of DHH's lessons about building a successful startup - including
charging for your product, picking a competitor, and rejecting conventional
thinking about starting a tech company - are exactly the type of things you
learn while getting an MBA. In fact, rather than learn specific lessons like
these, you learn a framework for evaluating your business and market, and
formulating the right way to structure your company.

DHH does make a few good points, both explicit and implied:

1\. Strategy frameworks like the Porter's 5 Forces (he incorrectly describes
it as a management theory) aren't particularly useful for starting companies.
Although these frameworks can help to gut check if a startup is entering a
good or bad market, they won't be at all useful in the day-to-day running of a
company.

2\. Based on my small sample set (of 1 school), I don't think business school
is useful for learning how to build a product or be entrepreneurial. Granted,
some schools specialize in this and mine did not, so other schools may be
useful in this regard (Stanford GSB is known for entrepreneurship).

~~~
Jd
Actually, Paul Graham's explicit statement re: success is that you should sell
out before you are operating at large scale (else you might start growing
pointy hair).

As it turns out I'm poking about Wharton these days myself and, although
already a semi-successful tech entrepreneur, I am fascinated by the lack of
concern for scaling that seems to permeate the startup world (inclusive of
HN). An addendum is that probably most people who read this will instantly
think of purely technological scaling (servers, etc.) while within an HR
context there are large number of other issues that you will not be
particularly well placed to address merely by being tech saavy. Apropos to
this I thought was Andy Grove's recent article in Bloomberg
([http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-01/how-to-make-an-
amer...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-01/how-to-make-an-american-job-
before-it-s-too-late-andy-grove.html)), which is likely to go unheeded.

~~~
wglb
_which is likely to go unheeded._ : I suspect you are right there, and it
would not be the first thoughtful thing he has said that goes unheeded ("If
you are concerned about dependence on foreign energy, support electric energy.
That is stuck to the continent.).

So I wonder if his book "High Output Management" is on any of the top school's
MBA reading lists?

------
nivertech
DHH is too overconfident. Even if it's true, how can you talk about MBA, if
you never got one?

------
aseem
I think there are too many people on the internet who are making money telling
others how to make money on the internet.

