

Why Student Programmers Rant about Business Students with “Ideas” - motoko
http://drewyates.net/why-student-programmers-rant-about-business-students-with-ideas

======
SwellJoe
The funny thing about all of these rants is that they reflect an outmoded
understanding of the engineer/MBA dynamic in the tech business.

Since the first boom, the number of wildly successful tech companies started
solely by engineers far outnumbers those started by business guys, backed up
by some engineers. The smart money has followed along, such that the
"business" requirements a VC looks for are pretty slim. They no longer care if
you have an MBA on the team. Not even a little bit. I know this to be true,
because I've talked to a half dozen VCs and a few angels. They don't care that
our company is two hackers working out of our houses. They care that we've
built something that millions of people use daily.

You need a business plan, sure, but it can be eight pages and mostly charts.
Any hacker with a couple hours to kill and a word processor and spreadsheet, a
deep understanding of their business and their market, and a couple of example
business plans, can make that happen. You need a monetization strategy that
makes sense, but business guys are no better equipped to come up with this
than the hackers who spend half their time researching the competition and
other businesses that work in similar fields (hackers are obsessive compulsive
about research, so it comes very naturally). The most successful monetization
strategy of the last ten years (context sensitive ads) was created by a nerd.

The stereotypical nerd no longer matches the stereotype. I've seen it at
several companies where I've contracted over the years. Older developers (say,
40+) are nerdy in the traditional sense. A little overweight, a little
socially inept, a little insecure in meetings except when discussing their
particular interests, etc. The younger ones are generally healthier than
average, more likely to have hot girlfriends/boyfriends, aggressive enough in
meetings to handle even the most boisterous business guy, and full of the
confidence that comes only from having a really firm grasp on your subject.
It's not always true, but true enough that I feel confident saying it about
the majority of great engineers. And, good engineers are no longer
broke...they make a lot of money when they want to work for another company.
Not MBA money, but they aren't desperate for any crumbs you want to throw
their way. If the engineer you're talking to is desperate, he's not a good
engineer, or at least, hasn't had the time in the market to establish that
he's a good engineer. A BS in computer science has recently become the highest
paying four year degree for first-time job seekers.

Business guys can certainly bring things to the table--but a hacker no longer
needs one in the roster to raise money or build a successful company. They may
hire one later, when the business side of the business is a full-time job.

So, I can understand business guys feeling a bit upset by this turn of
events...and they can certainly point to lots of hacker-founded failures that
made major business mistakes. But the road of MBA-founded tech startups is
also littered with innumerable failures, for many of the same reasons (and a
few additional ones, like: failure to deal with technology appropriately).

MBAs are certainly useful. They make a lot of money in established companies
for a reason--starting salary for MBAs at Google is higher than for a fresh-
out-of school engineer. But a tech startup doesn't NEED an MBA to reach a
reasonable level of success. Accept it and move on. Sure, you can still start
a tech startup, if you're a "business guy"...but you need a hacker, so you'd
better get used to treating them as a partner rather than an employee and
someone you can look down on as socially inferior. We've got hotter
girlfriends than you, now, you know?

~~~
motoko
Maybe a technical identity required to start a web software startup peak in
one's late 20's because good technology perpetually abstracts itself
irrelevant, but an interpersonal business skills continue to improve as one
builds a professional network and earns experience.

Given this hypothesis, it would be best to be an engineer in one's 20's and
then transition to a more strategic business identity in one's 30's and
beyond.

This fits your new YC founder profile.

~~~
SwellJoe
I'm not sure I buy this. I think the best hackers (perhaps not the same as
engineers) have a certain mindset that doesn't go away. The oldest working
developer I've ever worked with also happens to be the fellow that turned me
on to Ruby AND Lua, when nobody on Reddit was talking about them (actually
before reddit existed) and nobody else in the office was tinkering with them.
He just had a roving interest in technology and loved to play with new stuff.
But certainly even the nerdiest of sorts learns that there are some problems
that can't be solved with code--and that does make a big difference in how one
approaches running a business.

~~~
motoko
He was also working as a developer in an office with you. He may have been
wealthy or had started various startups, but he still worked for others in his
old age.

There's nothing _wrong_ with that, but it's not what I would expect from, say,
a multi-million dollar CEO in semi-retirement. Maybe more a member of the
board or a private investor who works on various fun projects.

~~~
SwellJoe
I think I must be misunderstanding you, then, and what you've just said feels
like it conflicts with your previous statement that I was addressing.

My assertion was that serious hackers don't lose their love or interest for
technology. I wasn't talking about the entrepreneurial spirit, at all. Merely
saying that nerds are nerds for life, but they might pick up other skills
along the way (and those other skills are probably valuable in starting and
running a business). The fellow I was speaking of was always without
entrepreneurial ambition (he was happily an IBM guy for years, in fact...a
private office with a view and a good salary was all he ever wanted)--and
actually perfectly fits the description I gave above about nerds over 40--but
his interest in and passion for software development never waned.

So, perhaps you could clarify what you were trying to say about aging hackers
above, since I didn't understand you the first time?

~~~
motoko
Oh, I'm not making a statement about aging hackers. I'm thinking about what is
a good life strategy for young people making decisions about how to pursue a
successful life. I'm also assuming that such a person would be flexible enough
to walk into a party and not be seen as a nerd if they choose not be to.

------
ardit33
Let it die this already. I think this has been beaten to death. A businness
type, with just an idea, without any hackers, or capital to implement it, is
just day dreaming. And it is annoying when they think they deserve more than
half of the company just b/c of that idea.... If they were providing more than
that, capital, connections, userbase, community or something significant, then
yes that idea is more than just an idea, but more of a practical plan.

But in all this tech parties I have been, and I keep meeting this
"wantreprenours", that are just a "coder" away from getting their startup off
the ground, if they only could find a coder.... good luck.

They come across with a douchebag types, with a sense of superiority as they
think they know businness better than you, but yet are pretty oblivious on
what it takes to get something off the ground. They learn few keywords such as
Ajax, Ruby on Rails, PHP, and quite often they hugely undersestimate the
effort it takes (development wise) to build something they want, which is very
annoying to programmers.

Just go to any 2.0 parties, and you will meet these annoying wankers all the
time, with exceptions of course, as not everybody is annoying, or oblivious,
but a lot are.

Ps. In college, a lot of the businnes majors were in social frats, which tend
to be disliked from academic/smart types. Plus businnes school is not a big
deal. A CS major can easily go to MBA and be good at it, will the reverse is
very rare. At my CS programm, during the second semester, we had a class that
was kinda hard, which weeded out the people that were not capable to handle
it, or were there for the wrong reasons (money, as it was the .com boom then).
Ah, and a lot of these failed CS majors ended up either in businnes, or
"information techonology", which was half businnes. So, there you go, more
reasons not to like business types.

~~~
ssharp
>>> A CS major can easily go to MBA and be good at it, will the reverse is
very rare

The technical/science degree to MBA path is there for a reason and is
extremely common. A lot of people work in a technical job for five years and
then decide that they'd rather move on to management then spend the rest of
there careers as programmers, engineers, biologists, etc.

If there was an good enough reason for a business undergrad to pursue a
masters in CS or engineering, you'd probably see more of it. However, there
really isn't. I don't know any marketing undergrads who just decided to get
into quantum physics because it would help their career path either. It
doesn't mean they can't, it just means there isn't a practical reason to do
so.

There are MBA's who shouldn't be involved in startups just as there are PhD
CS's who shouldn't either.

~~~
mattrepl
>If there was an good enough reason for a business undergrad to pursue a
masters in CS or engineering, you'd probably see more of it.

It's a cost-benefit tradeoff and you're only considering the benefits while
treating the costs equal.

I surmise it's easier for a person without a business background to pick up an
MBA than it is for a non-CS/Math/Eng person to pick up a Masters in any of
those fields. The learning curves and requirements are different.

------
kansando
Unfortunately all these discussions are too filled with obnoxious
generalizations to be useful. In my experience good business people are rare
and when you find them you should keep them. I am a science PhD with my own
company and my first business development person (MBA dropout - employee
number 5) is worth his weight in gold. He brought a customer focus and an
outward orientation that few hackers are capable of. On the flip side, I have
found some of my hackers to be prima-donnas who think they are special just
because they know functional programming.

The real discussion should be about how to find the right business person for
your startup. Here is what I look for: 1> outgoing but pleasant to be around,
2> good listener, 3> cares about technical details, is curious, 4> has a broad
range of interests, 5> has geek/hacker friends, 6> can conceptualize a
business as a systems problem.

~~~
motoko
Erik and his rant and the emotional charge that he touched is a real
phenomenon about which many hackers feel strongly. I agree that a practical
discussion is how to work together in a business, but dismissing or
discrediting the discussion with an anecdotal counter example doesn't add or
address any new ideas.

And I agree that there are many generalizations, and I purposely avoided
hedging language to pad them. They do not apply to everyone in all cases,
which is why they are generalizations. If you could argue that these
generalizations are false or that it is false that they are widely held
---that could be interesting.

------
indiejade
There are hybrids. Talent at one does not imply a mutually exclusive lack of
talent for the other. Perhaps we were an exception in the past, but students
who are savvy at both business and technical things are becoming increasingly
more common today, thanks to Universities. Technology spurs change; people who
adapt survive. People who spend a bunch of time whining about change don't
tend to survive. Universities teach people ways of adapting to change, and
different ways of thinking.

It does take a bit of forward thinking, and that's where I think business
students have a slight advantage. Writing code is great, wonderful, and
something I love to do. Many business students would say that in the grand
scheme of things, it's a useless talent unless it solves some kind of problem.
Many techies would say that in the grand scheme of things, it's an incredibly
useful talent, as it involves understanding the underlying structure or
system. Although my formal education is in business, guess what? I agree 100
percent with the latter; I don't know where people get their stereotypes about
MBAs, but there's really no such thing as a "typical" MBA. Most of us are, on
some level or another, systems people.

Indeed, one of the more valuable lessons I gained from mine was to stop seeing
"problems" and start seeing "opportunities". There have been so many times
I've used a search engine to look for something, not found it, and thought
'now _that_ would be a great idea for a business'.

So yeah, it's very true that in business school, we're taught to seek out
competitors' weaknesses, and "exploit" those weaknesses. But as every hacker
knows, just because you _can_ do something doesn't mean you _should_. And then
are there those (the majority) who just don't care: what I find quite humorous
is how some people consider themselves "programmers" if they know how to set
the TiVo to record 'American Idol.' A little bit funny, b/c the original rant
reminds me a lot of a high-school cliche about cliques. Nonetheless, cheers to
Mr. Yates for his frank opinions. :)

------
systems
Because implementing an Idea is most of the time harder than having an Idea

And becausing aquiring the knowledge to implement the Idea is also a lot
harder than the effort needed to aquire an Idea

Finally, I think because people who do and know how to do are so preocupied
with the tuff-ness of implementing the Idea they sometimes loose enthusiam and
in many way this sometimes ties them down or set them back a little, and it
the worry free business student just irritates them

~~~
Tichy
"Because implementing an Idea is most of the time harder than having an Idea"

I think the difficulty is not in the hacking skills, though. Therefore it
seems to me the arrogance of hackers is unwarranted. While I have a science
degree, I taught myself programming with a couple of books - it really is not
a secret superpower that should make the rest of mankind bow down before me.
It is a skill like any other.

Personally, I would be delighted to meet a business person who is dedicated to
making an idea a reality.

There might be an issue of trust: typically, business people are perceived as
the people who screw things up and make life bad for the programmers.
Therefore, just bumping into a random business person, a hackers enthusiasm
might be limited.

Another thing that sucks about hacker arrogance: most hackers really only want
to work on their own ideas. That makes finding co-founders very difficult.
Last year I really tried to meet eligible candidates (ie on barcamps), but
even though I met a few capable people whom I also liked, finding common ideas
and visions was too unlikely in the end. Of course, I myself am no exception,
I would also prefer to work on my own ideas. I try to be open for other ideas,
but still.

~~~
motoko
But _why_ are hackers arrogant, and how does one differentiate between "bad"
arrogance (what you described) and "good" arrogance (like Steve Jobs)?

I don't have the answer to suggest for this question now, but I hope that it
starts an interesting discussion. I'll try to reply tomorrow morning.

~~~
Tichy
Not all hackers are arrogant, but I think some suffer from tunnel vision.

------
carpal
I wouldn’t necessarily say this has anything to do with students or school.
I’ve been out of school for a couple of years now and have been working as a
developer for about 5 years.

One incident, in particular, drove most of the hatred for my original (and now
replaced) rant. It involved an M.B.A. recruiting me to work for “his idea”,
promising a bunch of money and a sizable stake in equity (~35%). However, once
the boss-employee relationship set in, the money evaporated and the equity
shrank to 5%. In the end, I wasted 6 weeks of incredibly hard work and came
away with a chip on my shoulder.

The argument doesn’t really have much to do with Hackers and Business types.
As he points out, it simply has to do with the fact that in a small group of
people (2 or 3), there is no room for pure leaders. At that group size they
merely become bullies, and the whole group is less powerful because of it.

~~~
icky
Maybe you should write an article titled, "Get it in Writing."

------
nsimpson
A lot of the biz types would be surprised at how truly unoriginal their
"ideas" are. It takes deep technical insight to come up with something truly
groundbreaking.

I would rather talk about the opposite case: i.e. A hacker has a brilliant
technology idea and needs to find a business person with the connections,
sales skills, finance skills, channel knowledge (and at least some technical
understanding) to make it commercially viable. That seems like a harder
problem... your fresh out of college MBA guy might not be the right fit.

------
m0nty
"Further, many business students are aggressive and gregarious, many
programmers are socially awkward..."

I can generally agree with the article, but the old, old stereotypes aren't
really helping, are they? I see very few "socially awkward" programmers in my
work. They might not be game-show hosts, but they're not Rain Man either. As
the author points out in the footnote, if you can master computing arcana, you
can pick up the basic ideas around business and accounting fairly quickly.

~~~
motoko
I made another note to the essay.

What I mean to say is that successful programmers will try business, but what
successful business people try engineering? But "trying to" is not a
sufficient condition for "succeeding at."

~~~
m0nty
Like I said, generally I agree with the article, and it makes some good
points. But the button-pusher for me (and the point I'm trying to make) is
that labeling the technically adept as "socially awkward" is about as
acceptable as saying that black people have "soul", poor people have
"dignity", women are more "empathetic", and business-people are "aggressive",
as though the one naturally leads to another. I honestly don't recognise the
stereotype of the "socially awkward" programmer, and feel it's unhelpful to
keep recycling and perpetuating it.

~~~
motoko
I wish that there was some way to discuss a stereotype without assuming some
responsibility for perpetuating it, but I don't know of such a way.

But stereotypes shouldn't be taboo for reasonable discussion here. That
something is uncomfortable to talk about doesn't make it false or nonsense. In
fact, I find that uncomfortable subjects are most interesting to explore
because they force you to consider what you otherwise prefer not to believe.

------
jimbokun
The original rant was far more informative and interesting, swear words and
all, than this verbose, psycho-babble twaddle.

This is just a long-winded exercise in stereo-typing bordering on bigotry.

------
marcus
I actually think of requests of this type as an investment request, the
product will take X days to build, I charge Y per day if I agree to build the
product I have just invested X*Y dollars into the company.

Then I calculate what the other side brings into the deal (time/skills/money)
and calculate the percentage for which I'd consider working on the project.

------
rgrieselhuber
I'm reminded of Kawasaki's rule of thumb when it comes to valuing startups:
add $250K for every full-time engineer you have and subtract $250K for every
full-time MBA you have. :)

~~~
ojbyrne
So if you're an engineer with an MBA, it's a wash? Little known fact is that
originally the MBA program was specifically designed for engineers. It was
supposed to address the needs of engineers who were rising the management
ranks. I know when I did mine, I generally looked down on the people who did
their undergrads in business (why exactly are you taking the same courses
again?).

------
tim2
Because typically the programmer will end up spending 1000x longer to complete
his part. This is no exaggeration.

~~~
edu
Eight times longer? This is not too much.

------
jacabado
"that most startup ideas are merely decisions to execute rather than ideas of
intrinsic value"

Now he should start talking about giving the first step on a date with a girl
...

