Driven off the Road by M.B.A.s(time.com)
time.com
Driven off the Road by M.B.A.s
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2081930,00.html?xid=fblike [-]
30 comments
It never ceases to amaze me why we give power over to those who do not themselves produce, and have no experience doing so. There are some great leaders out there, but I find it hard to follow someone who has little domain experience. Actually, why do we view 'business' as its own separate field when it doesn't mean anything in a vacuum?
It never ceases to amaze me why we give power
over to those who do not themselves produce
Also, I assume you meant "those who did not themselves produce" because one of the most frustrating things about management is that you don't get to produce much. That sucks, but it's part of the job (I hate leaving work when my big accomplishment for the day was to talk to a bunch of co-workers, but it's my job...).
Actually, why do we view 'business' as its own separate
field when it doesn't mean anything in a vacuum?
Computer science doesn't mean anything in a vacuum either. What if you wrote a program and you couldn't market, sell or support it?
I respect your MBA skills, but ... back in the early 90's I did a multi-year consulting gig at Eli Lilly (pharmaceuticals, if you didn't know: Prozac, among others) and they've got the MBA disease bad.
The MBA disease - and this is what the article is about, obliquely - is thinking you don't need to know anything about the business itself to manage it, because business as a whole is a uniform set of actions. At Lilly this was endemic to the point that people were advised - I kid you not - to avoid learning any technical information or anything too specific about their areas, because it would harm their careers. Lilly people were discouraged from associating too much with contractors, because contractors were hired to do specific domain-knowledge things like, oh, develop key software that governed their manufacturing procedures, including generating all expiration dates for the company. (God forbid anybody at Lilly should sully themselves with learning how expiration dating works - I sure enjoyed it, though.)
So you're right, business administration is an essential set of skills, but the point here is that without knowledge of the business you're administrating, you can't make valid decisions - except on the basis of short-term financial goals that ultimately result in the downfall of society.
(Lilly was unreal. They don't have fountains in the courtyard, they have water features. The whole place reeks of pretentiousness. Corporate headquarters rocks, though; long, long ago, Eli Lilly himself ended up buying the whole street of old brick buildings, which are now perfectly preserved under a common roof. Architecturally fantastic! The Lilly people hate it; it's too old and has weird corners. They are all idiots.)
The MBA disease - and this is what the article is about, obliquely - is thinking you don't need to know anything about the business itself to manage it, because business as a whole is a uniform set of actions. At Lilly this was endemic to the point that people were advised - I kid you not - to avoid learning any technical information or anything too specific about their areas, because it would harm their careers. Lilly people were discouraged from associating too much with contractors, because contractors were hired to do specific domain-knowledge things like, oh, develop key software that governed their manufacturing procedures, including generating all expiration dates for the company. (God forbid anybody at Lilly should sully themselves with learning how expiration dating works - I sure enjoyed it, though.)
So you're right, business administration is an essential set of skills, but the point here is that without knowledge of the business you're administrating, you can't make valid decisions - except on the basis of short-term financial goals that ultimately result in the downfall of society.
(Lilly was unreal. They don't have fountains in the courtyard, they have water features. The whole place reeks of pretentiousness. Corporate headquarters rocks, though; long, long ago, Eli Lilly himself ended up buying the whole street of old brick buildings, which are now perfectly preserved under a common roof. Architecturally fantastic! The Lilly people hate it; it's too old and has weird corners. They are all idiots.)
Nice point. And, as you noted, I might have missed the real point of TFA, but it was so generally written it was difficult to see the point of it (wasn't the point kinda: listen to the customer ?). And I completely agree about the "MBA disease", but ...
That said, we got too damn many MBAs...
that without knowledge of the business you're [XYZing],
you can't make valid decisions
That said, we got too damn many MBAs...
Well, but the CS disease may be suffered by individuals and - occasionally, you're right - groups or even the IT department as a whole. The MBA disease is currently suffered by top management of huge multinational conglomerates, because its vector is in fact the people within companies who allocate all the money.
It's like the difference between the flu and AIDS - if the disease targets the immune system you're dead.
Regarding discovering it, though, speak for yourself about the just-nowness. When the corporate raider became front magazine cover hero in the 80's, that's when it became endemic. Since then, America has been eating its seed corn.
I was in high school and college at the time, so I didn't know what was going on, but looking back, it should have been obvious. And like I say, I figured it out in the early 90's. I've been self-employed since that job and never regretted it.
It's like the difference between the flu and AIDS - if the disease targets the immune system you're dead.
Regarding discovering it, though, speak for yourself about the just-nowness. When the corporate raider became front magazine cover hero in the 80's, that's when it became endemic. Since then, America has been eating its seed corn.
I was in high school and college at the time, so I didn't know what was going on, but looking back, it should have been obvious. And like I say, I figured it out in the early 90's. I've been self-employed since that job and never regretted it.
What if you wrote a program and you couldn't market, sell or support it?
Note: I use and support open-source software.
You've also dismissed all of the activities of Business because they're done in Business, but some activities are done in almost all groups-of-people.
People do this all the time, it's called open-source software
and people come upon it by merit of the quality of the code.
You've also dismissed all of the activities of Business because they're done in Business, but some activities are done in almost all groups-of-people.
It doesn't need buzzwords, jargon, sales, and demographics numbers.
You are really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Instructions on how to use something, i.e. README, don't really qualify as marketing. Since it is not what is doing the marketing and it is part of the product. Word of mouth and a site announcing the product would be marketing. You do have to let somebody know about your product of course if you want them to use it but you can hardly call that marketing.
Well businesses have to do something with people that are too incompetent to trust with doing actual work; making them managers at least limits how much they can screw up. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_principle).
I hope it stays a joke. Thats like putting a blind and deaf sailor to the rudder because you can't order him around the boat to manipulate the sails. Either position has screwage potential. Put him into some cmmi
compliance group instead.
Because those of us who hack code tend to be abysmal at managing business and other people. So it's a specialization thing.
Musicians are legendary for having this problem.
Musicians are legendary for having this problem.
MBAs are misunderstood. These are business hackers. They may hack the signals that are being sent to the market quarterly, but they are also capable of hacking other parts of the business for better long term outcomes if the market lets them. The problem is market analysts are like news reporters, always chasing after the next car crashes.
[deleted]
Interesting, can you elaborate more?
The basic thesis is this: What ever we can measure and whatever we pay attention to, we improve. It's just like Hacker News karma.
A management that forms a tight feedback loop with market watchers and stock prices tend to learn very quickly what pleases the market, and optimize for it. MBAs learn about how to hack the balance sheet so that earnings per dollar capital rise, and the stats look good.
However, there are alternative management score cards being developed to measure businesses better. Measuring willingness of customers to refer friends is one. Mining companies for example measure near misses and lost time injuries as a priority because the publicity of one bad accident can jeopardize new investments.
A management that forms a tight feedback loop with market watchers and stock prices tend to learn very quickly what pleases the market, and optimize for it. MBAs learn about how to hack the balance sheet so that earnings per dollar capital rise, and the stats look good.
However, there are alternative management score cards being developed to measure businesses better. Measuring willingness of customers to refer friends is one. Mining companies for example measure near misses and lost time injuries as a priority because the publicity of one bad accident can jeopardize new investments.
I think it comes down to the old adage "everything in moderation". When the balance of power in the auto industry shifted to numbers over products, quality began to decline. However, the value of skilled business leadership shouldn't be discounted. All large businesses need strong finance and marketing people to ensure products have relevant markets and are profitable (Apple is a great example of this). However, in the end, it's the products and services that define a company and the engineers, inventors, developers and designers should have equal influence in decision making and company strategy.
BTW: It's funny that the decline in the auto industry seems to coincide with the rise of the consumer advertising industry :)
BTW: It's funny that the decline in the auto industry seems to coincide with the rise of the consumer advertising industry :)
Discussion on the same article from a couple of days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2746481
This article seems to make a lot of sweeping negative generalizations about MBA students. I agree with the author's obvious argument that people who lack domain experience and who focus on short-term outcomes should not be in-charge of the mentioned businesses. But what about MBAs who do have domain experience? Or MBAs with backgrounds in engineering? I'm sorry, but a handful of anecdotes is not enough to support the author's argument here.
I think the biggest difference between an engineer/scientist and someone with an MBA is primary focus. I (being a scientist myself) feel like MBAs often try to make a product cheaper where as I am trying to make it better. We both add value, but we do it in different ways. If there is one thing that bothers me about folks who work on the business side, it's this. MBAs need to understand that a larger profit margin (while diminishing a dimension of the product) does not necessarily equate to success.
In South Africa I've seen quite a few complaints about our equivalent cult. But it's for Chartered Accountants, rather than MBAs. I haven't seen any analysis of the effects of this, but I doubt it's good.
http://www.businesslive.co.za/incoming/2011/04/15/a-third-of...
http://www.businesslive.co.za/incoming/2011/04/15/a-third-of...
"Getting things done by others" is the mantra of MBAs, my Harvard friend says that often. That is one of the reason they suck.
There's nothing in an engineering program that teaches one about sales, marketing, accounting, inventory management, etc.
Agreed, but an engineering degree does give you a stronger framework for noticing, observing, planning, building and acting than most other non-scientific degrees. (That said, as I noted elsewhere, I do have an MBA and appreciate the knowledge.)
And, as luck would have it, there's nothing an MBA teaches you about that stuff either.
when displayed to me, that page on time.com contained the ad for their another article - "Top 10 spells from Gary Potter". I think the ad network algorithm got it right - both articles' subjects are of the same plausibility and practical effectiveness.
Scott Adams has made a fortune for decades documenting this development. I've never seen an MBA who comprehended or laughed or groaned with Dilbert.
The skills necessary to engineer and build effectively usually require a certain patience and humble appreciation. Unfortunately, this allows clueless MBAs and psychotics to run business in self destructive methods.
The skills necessary to engineer and build effectively usually require a certain patience and humble appreciation. Unfortunately, this allows clueless MBAs and psychotics to run business in self destructive methods.
With a B.S. in Computer Science, a few years of professional programming experience, and a decade of "playing" with programming, I went and got my MBA with the hope that I would "advance" in my career.
What I got was a very frustrating look into the attempt at logic used as the foundation for the stupid decisions that business people make. People who major in business (with exceptions of course) are focused on making money today at any cost. There is no concern for business longevity or taking care of employees. They actually teach short-term gains over long-term growth, tax evasion, and employees as replaceable cogs.
I'm happy for having the degree because like so many other experiences in life, I learned more of "what not to do." And FWIW, the school is top 100 for MBA.
What I got was a very frustrating look into the attempt at logic used as the foundation for the stupid decisions that business people make. People who major in business (with exceptions of course) are focused on making money today at any cost. There is no concern for business longevity or taking care of employees. They actually teach short-term gains over long-term growth, tax evasion, and employees as replaceable cogs.
I'm happy for having the degree because like so many other experiences in life, I learned more of "what not to do." And FWIW, the school is top 100 for MBA.
Top 100? I didn't know there were 100 MBA programs in the entire world.
The problem is the focus on short term Shareholder Value and quarterly profits. It destroys the companies in the long term. Worse, it undermines the trust employees in their companies, because they know that they can get fired anytime for the sake of short term profits. They know that investors make big money, while they earn less and less each year (after inflation).
The Western economic system (that developed in northern Europe from the 1500s on and then went to North America, Australia, etc with the English colonization) is build on mutual trusting relationships (a high degree of Social Capital, see eg books F. Fukuyama, "Trust" or R. Putnam, "Bowling Alone"). That is what made the West economically so successful.
But to maintain our high degree of Social Capital, people need to feel that what is happening in society and in companies is mostly fair. Its doesn't really matter who is running the show. The problem with current MBAs is, that they are trained on short term Shareholder Value instead of long term stability.