
Why having an MBA is a negative hiring signal for startups (2012) - jkw
http://daltoncaldwell.com/why-having-an-mba-is-a-negative-hiring-signal
======
ssharp
The author went through the trouble of saying he'd eliminate straw-man
arguments at the beginning of the piece and then spent the rest of the piece
rebuilding the straw man with gems like "MBA thinking" and "MBA's are
entitled", "MBAs think they're special snowflakes".

If you're hiring, particularly in a startup, you owe it to yourself and your
company to carefully consider qualified applicants. Yes, hiring signals exist,
but all signals are not equal. Placing too much negative value on a person
achieving a Masters degree can easily turn out to be a mistake.

I also don't buy the opportunity cost argument. Does the author examine every
line of every resume to determine what the applicant _could_ have been doing
instead and gives the best score to the applicant who left the least on the
ground? Or is this pedantic behavior executed exclusively on MBAs, because
they deserve the stereotype?

I question the value of yet another article like this. It's just amplifying
the noise in the echo chamber. The author states he knows several MBAs who
have worked at or founded successful startups. Why not write about that
instead of rehashing the same, dull, unsupported claims?

~~~
argonaut
See my reply to RyanZAG. You're misinterpreting the opportunity cost
statement. It's a statement about the competition you'll be facing as a
candidate, not the hirer's actual judgment of a candidate.

------
marcus_holmes
I am starting my own startup, am very active in my startup community, and I'm
just about to finish my MBA.

Why? none of the reasons in the article.

I'm a code monkey, I've been coding for over 30 years. But in my career in IT
I've found that the hard problems are not the tech problems. The hard problems
are the people problems, and most of them derive from communication
difficulties between the finance/biz world and the actual implementation
required.

Finance and biz types are not going to learn to code, because whatever. So if
anyone's going to solve the communication problem it's going to have to be me,
by learning finance and biz speak.

I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. But it's doing the job I intended it to
do. I find that just the knowledge that I am studying an MBA has a dramatic
effect on attitudes around me; I'm no longer just a code monkey technician
type who isn't qualified to have an opinion.

~~~
hershel
Do one have to learn a full degree to be able to speak the language ? aren't a
few books and some self learning enough ?

~~~
rgbrgb
Irony?

~~~
hershel
No. You don't have to be an expert to be able to communicate well with
experts.

------
kriro
Disclaimer: I'm just rambling but with this disclaimer it's not a rant.

MBA: bad, PhD: bad, I get it. CS-degrees are horrible because you could have
build an entire company in the time it takes to get one of those post has to
be around the corner.

Those MBA folks are too dumb to understand that startups are different than
big corporations (or in other words they can't pick up any of the lean XXX
books and read the first 10 pages). Amazing that evil Wall Street is willing
to hire such morons let alone pay them enough money to be too demanding on
average. Those snobby old MBAs and their entitled friends, those networks
could never be useful either.

Putting a disclaimer at the beginning of a post doesn't turn it into less of a
rant.

------
7Figures2Commas
Why having a CS degree is a negative hiring signal (for startups)

 _Supply and Demand_

There are some basic supply and demand issues for CS graduates. On the supply
side, a surprising number of jobs are at angel and venture-backed startups
that are burning through cash to pay "market rates" for engineering "talent"
and likely won't be around in five years. On the demand side, while there is
_currently_ significant demand for candidates with CS degrees, if you didn't
graduate from a top CS program and/or don't excel at FizzBuzz, your options
may be limited.

 _Entitlement_

CS graduates think of themselves as special snowflakes, future Mark
Zuckerbergs, worthy of extremely high compensation and authority.

 _Misguided Thinking_

"CS thinking” involves putting all of the value in technology and then, when
it doesn't sell itself, scrambling to find a "growth hacker" who can take it
to market. When that fails, "lean startup philosophy" suggests that you
pseudo-scientifically iterate over and over again until your angel investor's
money is depleted.

 _Selection Bias_

Because building functional CRUD applications that offer value doesn't require
a CS degree, it really bears examining a person's motivation for getting one.
Was it because he or she is more interested in the theoretical than the
practical? Is the individual going to make decisions based on what is best for
the business or on what technology or approach is sexiest? Will he or she be
able to compromise when business needs dictate compromise?

 _Limited usefulness_

How many startups ever need someone who can reproduce common algorithms that
every popular programming language has functions for?

 _Opportunity Cost_

The time someone spent getting a CS degree was time they could have spent
actually developing domain expertise.

~~~
kgosser
This was very South Parkian. I liked it.

------
zacinbusiness
There is a big anti-intellectualism trend happening in the US right now. It's
a lot like the sort of "hate" that the humanities gets these days as being
somehow less important than the STEM disciplines. It started with art
programs, and then philosophy, then English, then languages, and I imagine it
will spread until there are only a few, if any, majors and degrees that are
actually "valued."

This is in a country with a pitifully low literacy rate.

Both my wife and I are very luck - we both have MAs in English (she focusing
on rhetoric and I on technical communication) and we each landed great, full-
time employment in our fields.

Still, we have friends with similar degrees and focuses that work in the same
jobs they had when starting college, or worse are without employment at all.

~~~
qwerta
There are rants about PhDs and Masters in Computer Science as well. And MBA
fits more into 'Business studies' rather than humanities.

I am not going to argue about importance of each field. But computer (and
technical) illiteracy is very high as well.

~~~
zacinbusiness
Yeah my wife has students who are in college that can't sign up for a Gmail
account on their own. She actually spends a great deal of her time teaching
basic computer literacy because she doesn't think that the kids can succeed in
'real life' without those skills. And that's on top of teaching them to think
critically, to analyze sources of information, and to develop rational
arguments that are based on facts rather than "My daddy always said..." which
is an opening sentence that she gets far too often.

------
InTheSwiss
Apple's marketing has obviously worked better on me than I thought. I
instantly translated MBA to Mac Book Air! I don't even own any Apple devices!

~~~
Kequc
I've read some of the article and some of the comments, I still don't know
what an MBA is. It's really horrible practice that a writer uses an acronym
throughout an article about an acronym when the first instance of it isn't
spelled out to the reader.

That's just MOO.

~~~
seunosewa
Like a cow's opinion? :)

------
bluedevil2k
Wow, what an incredibly stereotyped article. Absurd generalizations, biased
opinion without any facts backing it up. It reads like it's written by someone
who didn't get accepted into their #1 choice of grad school.

~~~
LogicX
OT: Am I the only one who holds the opinion that stereotypes are a useful
evolutionary trait, and are not to be conflated necessarily with prejudice and
discrimination? (Sorry for Wikipedia ref:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype#Relationship_with_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype#Relationship_with_other_types_of_intergroup_attitudes)
)

As the author points out, there are exceptions to what he's saying (as with
most things), but if something is an observation (or stereotype) of a
measurable portion of a group, I find that to be of value when taking things
into consideration and 'grokking' the world. It does not mean to ignore
conflicting evidence.

How would you propose he provide 'facts' to back up what he's saying, When you
provide no facts to counter what he's said? Agree with ricricucit that his
experience in the field is sufficient facts for me (also helps I have similar
experiences in the field, and so concur with his facts)

~~~
bluedevil2k
You don't concur with his facts, you concur with his opinions.

And providing facts to back his opinions wouldn't be hard if he was serious
about making good points.

"Given that a high percentage of business school classes funnel into Wall
Street and multinational corporations, it’s also a given that any top-tier MBA
has classmates are all making ridiculously high salaries and have extremely
powerful jobs" \--> Really, what's the percentage? Do most MBA grads get
"ridiculously high salaries"? How about doing some actual research and backing
these opinions with facts.

For example - [http://poetsandquants.com/2013/08/15/mba-pay-hbs-vs-duke-
tex...](http://poetsandquants.com/2013/08/15/mba-pay-hbs-vs-duke-texas/)

Points out that the median salary for Harvard MBA grads is only $120k, hardly
what I'd call "ridiculously high". Duke and Texas are even less. You see, my
argument is now much better now that I've provided a fact, rather than
throwing around a baseless opinion.

~~~
ricricucit
1\. I can see "why" proving those opinions (to have them become "facts" for
you) publicly might not be "the best thing to do" for whoever is writing. Same
goes for anybody saying "i have had this experience before".

2."any top-tier MBA has classmates" means that _not all_ MBA grads have
ridiculously high salary.

3\. i can ensure you that 120k as an average salary, for anybody working in a
startup (the word "startup" is in the link title), might be considered "too
much" although it depends on where the startup is. Considering the fact that
he doesn't mention "USA" or "Harvard" you'll have to consider much more than
that portion (so you didn't actually provided any fact, but just learned how
difficult could be to prove it).

With this said, i personally see a "comparison"...so "ridiculously high" might
imply "compared to what an MBA grad might make per year in his
startup"...which (for a person that feels special) can result into a "probably
i don't earn enough" kind of thoughts. I think that's why, i believe, you find
that sentence inside the paragraph "Entitlement".

~~~
bluedevil2k
This response was a rambling piece of nothingness.

------
RyanZAG
_> Born in El Paso, Texas, Caldwell graduated from Stanford University in 2003
with a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and a B.A. in Psychology_

Opportunity cost...? What makes having a B.A. in Psychology not a negative
hiring signal too? He could have been getting a business degree which would
have helped him know more about accounting! Etc.

Feels like a pretty silly argument. An MBA is generally going to be more
likely to be successful than a non-MBA in running a business, startup or not.
It might not be worth the kinds of salaries an MBA would demand, but a
negative? Feels a bit anti-intellectual. More knowledge is always better.

~~~
argonaut
You're misinterpreting what Dalton said. An MBA is not a negative hiring
signal strictly because the hirer is thinking about opportunity costs. The
fact is that a candidate who spent two years getting an MBA is at a
disadvantage relative to people who spent those two years doing more useful
things (e.g. getting an engineering masters, or getting real world startup
experience). More knowledge is better, but the idea is that a non-technical
candidate with 2 years of operational/sales/marketing experience at a startup
will run circles around someone fresh out of an MBA program - this is the
opportunity cost Dalton talks about. The argument is that the person with
experience will indeed have more useful knowledge than the MBA.

It goes without saying that the opportunity cost of a dual major in Psychology
is extremely low (i.e. a few classes) if your primary major is already
Symbolic Systems - a degree which integrates CS and psychology.

 _> in running a business, startup or not. _

Saying that an MBA will be better at running any kind of company, implying
some sort of equality between the completely different challenges of startups
and normal large companies kind of undermines the credibility of this
argument.

~~~
Anderkent
> The fact is that a candidate who spent two years getting an MBA is at a
> disadvantage relative to people who spent those two years doing more useful
> things (e.g. getting an engineering masters, or getting real world startup
> experience).

But then the MBA is not a negative signal, it's just not as strong a positive
signal as two years of relevant experience.

The MBA is only a negative signal if between two people who are exactly the
same except for one of them getting an MBA 'on the side', you'd pick the one
without.

~~~
argonaut
I suppose Dalton could have worded it better, but technically, "lack of
positive" is just as bad as "negative." The problem with how people think of
opportunity costs is that they don't perceive them as a negative cost, when in
fact they have the same effect as negative costs.

------
jackgavigan
Disclaimer: I have an MBA.

Dalton's full of shit.

I could just as easily write a diatribe about developers who think of
themselves as special snowflakes, future unicorn founder/CEOs, worthy of
extremely high compensation and autonomy, yet have zero clue about business,
can't deliver a finished product to save their life and have no appreciation
for the importance of usability when it comes to creating a product aimed at
users who don't have a CompSci degree.

During my stint as CTO of a dot-com back in 1999/2000, I realised that there
was a lot I didn't know about running a business, strategy, marketing,
business development, finance, cash flow planning, accounting, cap tables,
negotiation and all the other little things that add up to a successful
venture. So, I decided to go to business school. But guess what? A lobotomy
wasn't on the curriculum. I can still knock together a shell script, tail -f a
logfile and pipe it through grep, get some vague clue about why something
crashed by casting my eye over a Java exception error, and make a lazy
developer deeply uncomfortable when he realises that - would you believe it! -
this particular MBA actually knows what exception handling is and wants to
know why the fuck we're not doing it.

Going to business school and getting an MBA added many new arrows to my quiver
but it didn't take any away. It didn't narrow my horizons - it broadened them.
The idea that an MBA can never be of any value to anything other than a large
corporation is as ridiculous as the idea that a coder who learnt Java and the
Waterfall method at college will never be able to learn Objective C and cope
with Agile. True, some won't be able to but that doesn't mean that all won't.

MBA curricula are often perceived as out of date because the content must be
approved as part of the academic accreditation process. As a result, they
often don't incorporate the latest business methodologies. Whether that's a
good or a bad thing depends on whether the latest business thinking is merely
a fad or something that will last as long as Clayton Christensen's theory of
disruption. But, either way, graduating from business school doesn't mark the
end of the learning process. My copy of Eric Ries' "The Lean Startup" occupies
the same shelf as "Strategic Management" by Saloner, Shepard and Padolny, "Let
Me People Go Surfing" by Yvon Chouinard, "Against The Gods: The Remarkable
Story of Risk" by Peter L Bernstein and John W Mullins' "The New Business Road
Test". My last two Kindle purchases were Brad Feld's "Startup Communities" and
"Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank.

Dalton claims that, "to an MBA Strategy > Implementation" but it's truer to
say that, to an MBA, Strategy comes before Implementation. To do the reverse,
implementing blindly and pivoting wildly, is akin to blindly throwing darts at
a dartboard - eventually one of them will end up in the bullseye but that
isn't necessarily proof that the thrower is anything other than lucky.

Dalton's entitled to his prejudice. If he wants to take the shortcomings of a
subset of MBAs and apply those as a stereotype across the entire population,
that's his prerogative. However, to make broad, sweeping generalisations about
someone based on a single fact - whether it's the fact that they have an MBA,
what school they went to or the colour of their skin - is pretty foolish
because the exceptions will bite you on the ass. For every lame MBA, there's a
Sheryl Sandberg or Alexis Maybank. For every team of MBA founders with all the
strategy and no product, there's a Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn, who
came up with the idea for CloudFlare at Harvard Business School[1], or a Neil
Blumenthal, who attributes much of Warby Parker’s success to his and his co-
founders’ experiences at business school, which Blumenthal described as "the
most helpful and useful of any of my educational background."[2]

And, for every lame MBA, there are likely dozens of developers who scoff at
the notion that building a successful company requires anything other than the
ability to code, and certainly none of that crap they teach you in business
school. Of course, if that were true, we'd have many more billion-dollar
startups and far fewer founders making schoolboy errors that could have been
easily avoided.

Maybe if Dalton had taken a few classes in strategy and marketing, Wired
wouldn't be writing about "The Great App.net Mistake".[3]

[1]: [http://www.cloudflare.com/our-story](http://www.cloudflare.com/our-
story)

[2]: [http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/29/warby-parker-the-result-
of-...](http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/29/warby-parker-the-result-of-a-
perfectly-calcuated-mba-machine/)

[3]: [http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/08/the-great-app-net-
mis...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/08/the-great-app-net-mistake/)

~~~
enraged_camel
Engineers create products. MBAs create processes.

Startups need the former. Established companies need the latter.

I personally like, and agree with, Guy Kawasaki's formula for pre-money
valuation of new companies:

pre-money valuation = ($1M * n_engineers) - ($500k * n_MBAs)

~~~
slantyyz
>> Engineers create products. MBAs create processes.

Generalize much?

Most MBAs have undergrads from a wide array of backgrounds, from liberal arts
to engineering. Most MBA programs provide some useful education in areas like
finance, business law and entrepreneurship, but you don't become a process
geek from the curriculum unless you're already a process geek and choose to
focus on process oriented courses.

The MBA is usually there to augment existing work experience and education.
Most grads just go back to whatever profession they were in armed with a
better business context for how things work in whatever industry they're in.

If your experience with MBAs is all about process creation, it says more about
the people who hired the MBAs in those companies than it does about MBAs in
general.

------
data_app
If MBA is such a negative hiring signal (for startups) - why do I see so many
MBAs in startups? The data shows that there are as many MBAs as PhDs or
Masters. (% working in startups vs total pool).

Just like a degree in computer science teaches you the inner workings of a
computer, a degree in business administration teaches you how to run a
business. How can that knowledge be invaluable in a startup?

I do believe that certain segment (including the author) of the population has
a strong negative bias against MBAs but majority aren't... Most
mature+experienced tech founders understands the value of an MBA degree and
even if they don't, they treat it as any other degree...

------
GuerraEarth
"Thus one primary motivation of an MBA is to secure their own massive salary,
stock and title… and this motivation is diametrically opposed to the
psychological makeup of a succesful startup team-member."

\--I had to re-choose my co-founder because I found this to be an exact fit of
my situation. The person with the MBA felt entitled to everything but would
not do any of the hardcore work involved. In fact, at Columbia U, I know
tonnes of MBA students and they all have the same characteristic described in
Dalton's article.

$$$ glisten in their irises whenever they talk about startups. For me, someone
who has no MBA and would not get an MBA if it were the only academic degree on
the planet, a startup is about the 24/7 work involved to create and nurture a
good, innovative, useful and interesting toy that can do big things for other
people. But that is why in the world, we need a million flowers blooming.
People are supposed to be different. Variety is good. But as an initial co-
founder, someone with an MBA--chances are--isn't the best choice, according to
my experience most humble. : )

------
ig1
The author makes the mistake of thinking "MBA" == "CEO/CFO" \- there are huge
number of MBAs working in marketing, business development, sales, etc. all of
which are skills that can be invaluable to a startup.

Ironically he recommends a Masters in CS over an MBA and then talks about lean
startup philosophy, a philosophy that places business development and product
management above development.

------
pjan
"Why having an over-simplified title/line-of-thought gets you more clicks"

An MBA doesn't invalidate their previous experience. An MBA doesn't specialise
a person or decreases his/her usefulness to only C-level positions (quite the
opposite in my opinion, as they often acquire additional skills). An MBA
doesn't make you a strategy guy/girl per se or makes you less an
implementation person.

Apart from the social pressure one -might- experience because of their
achieving peers (and maybe even the financial pressure to pay off their debt),
I only believe it increases a person's skills (be it soft, finance, ...)

Eventually, it always boils down to peoples motivations to join X or Y. An MBA
should at most encourage you (the recruiter/hiring person/... to ask some
other questions during the hiring process.

Next in the series I expect:

"Why having worked for McK/BCG/Bain is a negative hiring signal (for
startups)"

"Why having investment banking experience is a negative hiring signal (for
startups)"

"Why having studied law is a negative hiring signal (for startups)" ...

~~~
argonaut
Well, in fact, the answer to your first question seems to be yes, according to
a lot of people with more credibility than you or me.

[http://www.quora.com/Management-Consulting-and-Management-
Co...](http://www.quora.com/Management-Consulting-and-Management-Consulting-
Firms/Are-top-tier-management-consultants-looked-down-upon-in-Silicon-Valley-
If-so-why)

~~~
pjan
Same thing here: it's used as a negative hiring signal by some, but that
doesn't validate their thinking. These generalisations are a huge risk for
loosing out on potential talent...

------
Zak
First off, I'd like to get a few straw-man argumetns out of the way. I'm not
saying MBAs are bad. I'm not saying startups should not hire people with MBAs.
I'm not saying there are not numerous counter-examples to the points I make
below. In fact, I personally know several people with MBAs that work at or
have founded fantastic startups. I have hired & worked closely with
individuals with an MBA several times, and will continue to do so if I think
the individual is a good fit. Remember, a hiring signal is just that: a
signal. Other examples of negative hiring signals are: “earned CS degree from
school that advertises on late-night television”, “worked at 4 companies in 3
years” or “2 year gap on the resume with no explanation”. Any positive or
negative hiring signal is WAY less important than specific information about a
specific candidate.

Now that that is out of the way, let’s get to the point: If a person has a
particular skill-set, experience, personality & undergraduate education, that
person choosing to buy an MBA has the net effect of the startup market valuing
that person as being worth less, not more.

Why?

 _Supply and Demand_

There are some basic supply and demand issues for MBAs. On the supply side,
there is a surprising abundance of people with MBAs who want to work at
startups. On the demand side, a candidate with those three little letters on
their laptop will need to be vetted more closely and will be automatically
isolated into a small number of highly-specialized potential roles.

 _Entitlement_

Apple trains people to think of themselves as special snowflakes, future
masters of business, worthy of extremely high compensation and authority. Thus
one primary motivation of an MBA owner is to secure their own massive salary,
stock and title… and this motivation is diametrically opposed to the
psychological makeup of a successful startup team-member. Given the social
pressure MBA owners must feel from their coffee shop friends, we can’t really
blame them; it’s human nature 101.

 _Misguided Thinking_

In my opinion, the lean startup movement, startup genome project, etc have
roared into existence as an antidote to "MBA thinking." "MBA thinking"
involves putting all of the value in high level design, which is then rolled
out to underlings who are responsible for actual implementation. In other
words to an MBA owner Design > Implementation.

Lean startup philosophy suggests all of this design stuff is misguided
bullshit, and rather you should personally build things as quickly and as
cheaply as possible then scientifically iterate over and over again. To an
early stage startup Implementation > Design.

 _Selection Bias_

It really bears examining a persons motivation for getting an MBA. Was it so
they could skip ahead to get rich? Because they wanted to be powerful? Because
they hated their job and showing off in coffee shops was a good way out?
Because they originally wanted to work at 37 Signals but are only now
considering your startup because they heard that your're building the
successor to Ruby on Rails?

 _Limited usefulness_

If someone is on a startup career track that is in design or high-level
architecture, an MBA makes a lot of sense. For instance, a smart startup
founder might want their lead designer to have an MBA. But how many startups
ever get big enough to need a lead designer? How many high-level design gigs
are actually out there? This is a very shallow pool to swim in.

 _Opportunity cost_

The time someone spent getting an MBA was time they could have spent
installing Linux on a Thinkpad. Losing two inches of screen real estate puts
you at a clear disadvantage vs someone with the same CPU who can actually see
a decent amount of code at once.

 _A thought experiment_

Imagine that if instead of getting an MBA, ambitious young over-achievers
spend two days upgrading and configuring their hardware and software. Or two
days building a desktop. Or two days shopping around to see what else they
could get for the same price.

Who would be worth more in the open market when all is said and done? Who
would have a better chance of building their own great company?

~~~
sokoloff
I see what you did there; I suspect it will fly past most people. <Posted via
my 14-hour old MBA.>

------
dmk23
I am the last person to defend the idea of hiring MBAs for sake of hiring
MBAs, but the author really loses me with the last two paragraphs.

    
    
       Imagine that if instead of getting an MBA, ambitious young over-achievers spent
       two years in design school. Or spent two years getting a masters in computer
       science. Or two years getting into Y-Combinator and doing their own startup.
    
       Who would be worth more in the open market when all is said and done? Who
       would have a better chance of building their own great company?
    

The problem with MBAs is that they are oftentimes too expensive / not the
right fit for startup roles / environment, not that they have limited career
prospects.

~~~
kamaal
>>The problem with MBAs is that they are often too expensive / not the right
fit for startups, not that they have limited career prospects.

MBA's are best suited at places where you need things to be generalized and
managed even if it is at the expense of efficiency.

If you are looking at hard focus based work which requires a lot of
application of specialized knowledge and effort. MBA's not just make a bad
match for those jobs, but will likely mess it up.

You need MBA's when you need some super abstracted generalized knowledge
applied to non critical tasks. You can hire an MBA to run a hospital's billing
unit, but not to treat patients. Same with software and start up's. You can
use them to do some work on stuff like market research, setting up the pay
roll unit, attendance systems etc.

~~~
walshemj
That's explicitly what an MBA was for - the fast track managers with several
years real world experience at say age 28-32 at global companies like IBM.

Now a lot of people do an MBA directly after doing a first degree some of this
is to game the immigration system as a masters qualification is seen as better
than a BSC.

~~~
kamaal
A lot of women in my family have an MBA, you can do an MBA in India though
distance education. Which is basically reading a few books and appearing for
exams. A lot of women see this as a good way to keep themselves busy while
their parents look boys for them.

Exams are super easy(by any measure) and those three letters in the degree
give an impression you are well read and educated.

For this reason alone. I've lost trust in M.S(MTech too). A friend of my mine
has MS from BITS Pilani(Distance education program) and can't write a 100 line
program. Masters degree programs, especially evening college and distance
education ones are a joke. These are degrees only for namesake, and generally
done for extra titles and because the person has nothing better to do.

------
fizx
Group cohesion often benefits from choosing a nemesis and creating a straw
boogeyman--a rallying cry for the group to fight against.

Rubyists hate Java with all of its J2EE and XML configuration (never mind that
Rails is at least as complicated, and Java moved on a long time ago). Certain
religious groups hate gay people, with their immoral acts in the streets and
the corrupting of the young (I hope I don't have to explain why this is BS).

And startup people have their boogeyman: the clueless MBA asshole stereotype.

Learn to see beyond this. There is always some fragment of truth in
stereotypes, but it's more useful to understand why these articles are
written.

------
erikb
There should be an article "Why it is a negative application signal if the HR
worries about MBAs (in startups)". Seriously, there are so many articles out
there about this topic. But I don't think there is any good startup team that
worries about any of the certificates you can provide. Startup is a game of
street smarts. So street cred should count. Having done something cool should
count. Having worked with someone cool should count. Being resilient should
count. But definitely not having one or another paper.

------
qwerta
Perhaps MBAs require higher compensation without delivering higher value.

------
bigchewy
One of the nice things about having an MBA is that you learn to construct an
argument based on facts, not conjecture. OP would likely be much more
persuasive if he had gone to B School.

As a result of B School, I am not nearly as opinionated as I once was, until I
can cite data to support my conclusions.

~~~
rgbrgb
As opposed to science/engineering?

~~~
bigchewy
great point. If OP has a science / engineering background he should be using
that education to form a reasoned argument with data rather than amplifying
the echo chamber with more conjecture

------
mattty
A useful counterpoint from Ben Horowitz: [http://bhorowitz.com/2012/05/18/is-
now-the-time-to-hire-mbas...](http://bhorowitz.com/2012/05/18/is-now-the-time-
to-hire-mbas/)

------
noonespecial
Using "signals" is always a risk because you might very well be cutting
yourself off from a talented pool of people that _will_ be available to your
competitors who aren't so choosy. This is exactly why BigCo's that use resume
buzzword bingo to do all their hiring are so tragically bad at finding
anything better than mediocre talent.

The question is whether a particular signal, on the balance, produces better
results for less effort than simply vetting the candidates the old-fashioned
way.

------
melindajb
I'd argue that this post in itself violates the "shallow" prohibition on
Hacker News. It's like a religious or political debate.

But for the record, once one starts generalizing an entire class of people,
it's a slippery slope: I hate MBAS -> I hate Marketers --> I hate women.

see: [https://medium.com/about-work/aa49dffc975d](https://medium.com/about-
work/aa49dffc975d)

There are shitty devs just like there are shitty MBAs. And that's where I'll
leave it.

------
chatman
Yeah, MacBook Air owners shouldn't be hired as well. :-P

~~~
graeme
Oddly, that's how I read it too. I seem to be very far removed from circles
where an MBA would be necessary.

~~~
rsynnott
I did the same, and was confused for a second. It wouldn't have occurred to me
that startups would be interested in an MBA one way or another, really; the
laptop seemed to make more sense in context (though still very little sense).

------
nl
_I already talked about combining an undergrad engineering degree with an MBA.
I 'll hire as many of those people as I possibly can._

Marc Andreessen

[http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_career_planning_part2.html](http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_career_planning_part2.html)

------
drp4929
In 90s, technical founders were able to launch startups successfully if they
were technically strong. Getting designer was not top priority at the time. So
everyone focused on having strong technical teams.

Eventually, people figured out that having someone with design skills early on
your team can provide huge competitive advantage to your startup against tech
only competitors. And today designer's role is very prominent in startup
world.

Now all startups have technical and designing strengths on their team from day
one, what do you need to stay one step ahead of the crowd ?

I have a feeling that code-wizard + design-guru team won't be good enough in
near future.

------
mlchild
I am, to some degree, running the concluding thought experiment in real life—I
dropped out of business school to try to build my own company. (Left after one
year, at least partial credit?)

Some thoughts:

—I can't speak to how widespread the entitled-MBAs-in-startup-roles (no direct
experience) problem is, but MBAs definitely have good job prospects (in the
traditional sense), which has made it much harder for me to convince former
classmates to "take the leap" and try to start companies instead.

—At least on the West Coast, the startup classes treat leanness as a central
principle. I didn't meet many MBAs (especially ones who took those classes)
who believed strategy could be laid out and then executed by underlings. Your
mileage may vary.

—I went to business school because I wanted to get out of the consulting job I
didn't like, and loved technology and wanted to move to the Bay Area. That
said, it didn't sit well with me that I didn't pursue my dream and try to
start a company instead of going, which made me unhappy all year. The question
of what motivated someone to go to b-school is generally a good one, though,
as most MBAs will gleefully admit that their goal was to spend two years
kicking back at "summer camp for adults."

—The limits to the degree's usefulness, in my opinion, come from the fact that
much of the good learning is in the hard-won experience of visiting founders
and leaders (a la Startup School speakers). Unfortunately, to quote Clayton
Christensen: “Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you
haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go...You have to ask the
question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the
answer to fit.”[1] I often felt like visiting speakers were giving good
advice, but that I didn't have the place in my mind for the answer to fit yet.
Another reason to try to start something and accumulate better questions.

The opportunity cost was the strongest motivator for me. As a twenty-something
tech nerd, another year felt like an eternity. And I'm already five months
better at programming and building a product than I would have been. Which
feels like a win vs. another piece of paper.

I deeply believe my cofounder and I have a better chance of success because we
took this path instead (he quit his job). I guess we'll be one more piece of
data for the experiment in a few years.

P.S. We joke around about our travails once a week at
[http://uncannyvolley.com/why-not-combinator-
podcast/](http://uncannyvolley.com/why-not-combinator-podcast/) if you're
bored.

[1] [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3225-what-are-
questions](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3225-what-are-questions)

------
jroseattle
I disagree with the generalization of this post.

If there is anything I've learned in my career at multiple startups, it's
this: credentials have little-to-zero effect on success.

The fact that a person might have an MBA, or a PhD, or a commercial driver's
license (I hired an awesome dev who had one of these), has zero correlation to
success or failure.

In my experience, what matters is the person, not the label.

------
Keyframe
BS article. Early startup needs dedicated people that can bring both product
and strategy to life, doesn't matter if they are MBAs, MBPs, McRibs, whatever.

------
plg
Duh I thought from the title MBA == MacBook Air

------
austinhutch
Breaking news: HN hates MBAs.

------
rjohnk
What, are we supposed to use Dells or something? Ha! Get it? :/

------
janogonzalez
Then it's time to switch to MacBook Pro?

------
jonnathanson
I have an MBA, fwiw.

Dalton leaves off what I'd consider to be the biggest red flag: risk aversion.
Many MBAs are risk averse. They are career-track professionals. They are box
checkers. They are bullet-point collectors. A lot of them are extremely smart,
and the ones from the top-tier programs are among the hardest working sons of
bitches you'll ever meet. These were the kids who ground their asses off in
high school and undergrad, and who will (generally) land lucrative, but safe
careers continuing to apply the same grind-and-optimize strategies that got
them through school. They do well in regimented, structured environments where
there are frameworks, processes, known inputs, etc. They flourish in career
tracks that resemble academic environments: where there are "grades," tracks,
clear progression, etc.

A lot of engineers are the exact same way, for what it's worth. They don't
have a monopoly on risk-taking any more than MBAs have a monopoly on risk
aversion. Nevertheless, as a general rule, an MBA is not a degree one pursues
if one is seeking risk or adventure (and I'd argue that the same could be said
of _any_ master's degree).

I'd almost require an MBA of a CFO, COO, or CEO that I'm bringing on board to
scale up a business or take the helm of a mature business. But I would be a
little uneasy about an MBA's founding a tech startup from the ground up.
That's not to say that MBAs can't do the latter, or are necessarily good at
the former. But there's a correlation. (MBAs are perfectly capable of starting
non-tech businesses, however, and often do. But to found a tech startup, the
MBA would really need to be technical to a high degree.)

A startup founder needs to be risk-seeking, and to whatever extent he or she
has collected a bunch of degrees, that's a pattern of risk-averse behavior.
It's an indicator. I still think such a person could make a great fit working
_at_ a startup, provided the entitlement issue isn't there (which it really is
for a lot of folks, owing in large part to the expense of the degree). But as
a founder? I'd be a little leery.

MBA programs are changing these days, and it needs to be said. A lot of them
are adopting Lean Startup methodologies, or refocusing on innovation, or
encouraging and teaching entrepreneurship (to whatever extent the latter can
be taught, which I'd guesstimate to be maybe 50-60%). Today's MBAs are not
your grandfather's MBAs. They're not the 1990s tech-bubble MBAs, either.
Nevertheless, a lot of them are not risk takers.

The ones who are? Give them a fair shot. You'd be surprised. They are
incredibly smart, well trained, quantitatively analytical, and make great
marketers, biz dev & corp dev types, CFOs, and operations managers. Few of
them walk into startups expecting $200k + signing bonus + equity the way they
might have 20 years ago. That stereotype is out of date. But if a well-
qualified candidate shows up at your door with realistic expectations about
the job, the title, the compensation, and so forth: I see nothing wrong there.
He or she has self-selected out of entitlement issues. (On the flip side,
spotting the entitled ones -- MBAs or otherwise -- is fairly easy.)

------
michaelochurch
The major point here is the selection bias. What does it say if someone has a
Stanford MBA and is applying for a subordinate role (with sub-5% equity) at
your startup, instead of private equity jobs? If you aren't making $500k per
year (including bonus, and with carried interest) two years after graduating
from Harvard or Stanford business school, you're considered a failure-- unless
you're founding a wildly successful startup. In the MBA crowd, startups
attract people who failed to get a toehold in the more traditional business
world, and are looking for second chances. Yes, you'll have to fly commercial
for a few years, but you might become a billionaire.

The Columbia MBA who becomes the VP/Finance of your dopey startup (instead of
going _directly_ into the smoke-filled rooms and half-million salaries) is
going to have a gigantic chip on her shoulder, guaranteed, because she had to
be in the bottom 5% of her class to be there.

If you want to be an attractive candidate for startups, and you have an MBA,
first you need to succeed on the MBA track for a good 5-10 years, then you
need to make a credible case that you've genuinely decided (after a few wins)
that you want to take your life -- and that you're not just some carpetbagger
who failed out of "real business" and is using the startup world to get a
second chance.

Also, I have to agree that business people in startupland massively overvalue
themselves. I'm a Tech 8, which means that if I'm looking for a CEO co-
founder, I'm looking for a Business 8 (or 9; but since they generally have
better negotiation skills, that match is almost impossible for now). I'm not
going to take a subordinate role (and 2% equity) to a Business 6. If you're
not coming to me with the resources in hand (funding and first clients already
lined up) and you're not on a first-name basis with the top names of Sand Hill
Road, you're not a Business 8. A Biz 7 comes with resources in hand and can
get any article put into credible press; a Biz 8 can make any introduction in
the world happen.

To tell the truth, though, Business 8 startup founders are exceedingly rare.
They're usually venture capitalists.

~~~
kenster07
So if they aren't apparently trying to maximize their personal profits as
measured in dollars, then they are failures. That's quite a harsh
generalization.

~~~
michaelochurch
Not necessarily. There are some who go into non-profits or governments, and
others who take even more nonconventional paths (additional degrees). They
aren't losers. That's hard to pull off given MBA debt, though.

The ones who end up at typical startup management jobs are the bottom of the
class, though. They weren't good enough for stat-arb hedge funds or billion-
dollar deals, so they got stuck managing nerds.

If someone 10 years out of an MBA program with some success to his name said
that he wanted to run a tech startup, I'd be inclined to support him. On the
other hand, if he was a fresh Stanford grad and couldn't do better than a VP-
level position at a Series A or B startup, I'd be inclined to think he was a
third-stringer.

------
gaius
Having a blog on "svbtle" is a negative signal for being worth reading. The
"OMG slavery!!!" guy was from there too.

~~~
001sky
_Having a blog on "svbtle" is a negative signal for being worth reading._

And Medium too !

