Reading Joel’s blog, I picked up on something he said that got me thinking: “Watching non-programmers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn’t know how to surf trying to surf [...] The cult of the MBA likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don’t understand.”
Through my own working experience, I find this statement to be absolutely true. A lot of MBA types go in to great MBA schools, get their praised degrees, and come out thinking: “Ok, now on to conquer the world… Which company should I be running?” When in fact they should be thinking something like: “What can I really do to manage a company and not sink it down?” There are tons of examples in the world of this kind of “executives as a life style” type of people who believe just because they’ve got an MBA they can understand anything that is put on their desk. Well, they can’t.
I have witnessed how MBAs on a software firm came in, signing down their Senior Manager or Director of Corporate whatever on every paper, while they couldn’t even understand how to bold a phrase using Microsoft Word. Don’t even talk about launching Microsoft Outlook to read their emails. The only thing most of them seemed to know how to do with the computer was turning it on, off, and occasionally beating the monitor down. I mean, come on, how can you tell me you’ve got an MBA from a top business school but still can’t seem to set up a Power Point presentation? And you honestly believe you have what it takes to run a software company?
Joel rants about a lot of things, but he certainly hit the nail on that one. He said, while talking about a meeting he had with Bill Gates when he was working at Microsoft back in 1992 or something, “Bill Gates was amazingly technical. He understood Variants, and COM objects, and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables and why this might lead to dual interfaces [...] He didn’t meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn’t bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual, programmer.”
Also, for whatever reason (I should go to an MBA school to understand what it’s all about), the MBA types seem to have a passion for meetings. I mean, they do meeting after meeting after meeting to the point where it’s exhausting, and you lost the whole meaning of it. It kind of makes me remember that “American Psycho” movie, where they flash their business cards as it was a matter of who was better. It’s amazing.
When you are on a software firm you need to make quick decisions. You go to meetings to discuss something, and come out with a decision 20, or even 30 minutes later. Not to start talking about the actual problem only after 50 minutes of rambling about anything but what got you there. This trully gets me on my nerves. I remember having all this code in my head that I had to solve that day, but then being asked to go on countless meetings to discuss things that weren’t even relevant, and that took far more time than they should have.
I was actually more productive on the coding after 6 pm, simply because there were no more meetings to attend and I had all the time I needed to do the coding. Which, I’m sorry to say, on a software firm is what LETS YOU have those meetings. The only reason you are sitting down on a conference room is because the money that came out of the software that was developed ALLOWED YOU to buy that conference room. Give me a break.
I do think, however, that generalization is not a good thing, so I don’t believe every MBA behaves like this. To tell you the truth, I even know MBAs and MBA students that have these things clear, but they are just a few. I’d like to give them my sincerest congratulations for knowing what it takes. And to the other bunch of clueless MBAs, the “this MBA degree gives me the chance to conquer the universe without knowing what a universe really is” thinking fellows, my request to start thinking, and stop talking about things that make no real sense.
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A Momentary Lapse of Reason [Member] wrote:
I think the problem with the MBA types we have met in the past (I know by heart the names of these people you were referring to when you sat down and wrote this piece) is that they had the following (and wrong in so many ways) equation in their heads:
MBA degree = CEO position
which is completely untrue. Don’t get me wrong: MBA schools are useful just as any other educational course. They give you tools and information so you can start dwelling in a new domain of knowledge without getting lost. But like in any other area, the degree by itself IS NOT ENOUGH. Gosh, what would I do if I only kept what I have learned in University? Nothing!
On the other hand, being a CEO of a software company is definitely a lot more than knowing about software. Many software related folks have no clue about management, about finances, about terms such as liquidity or profitability and obviously an enterprise needs a lot more than lines of good code to survive.
But it is a fact that is impossible to engage in a new software related venture with a CEO that never fully grasped the concepts of proper software requirements management, software documentation, versioning and such.
Let’s not even talk about the fact that managers who have never been in touch with software have no idea about what it takes to build it in terms of time, resources, complexity and all.
So they usually set up projects that end up being useless because they are oblivious of all these industry related factors.
We had a partner on a software venture, running the company as a CEO, who stated repeteadly that since they have been a manager for so long in a worldwide company, they could pull this one off as if being a successful manager in an industry qualifies you to repeat the experience everywhere.
To make a long story short: they knew a lot about specifics but nothing about software and that eventually damaged the company.
Not only they believed documenting was a waste of time in a team of 10 developers -with the nasty consequences that brought upon us- but also thought that changing the functionality of the core product of the company was a matter of simply picking up the phone and requesting so for the next day -because there was an important meeting coming up-. But hey, that person was the first one to yell to the programmers when a new bug showed up. When we tried to make that person understand that a buggy system was only the natural result of going back and forth with tons of requests without a proper change management approach, that person felt offended. Gee, how could an MBA be wrong?
Probably I encountered the wrong MBA folks in my life. The ones that pressure you as an employer to give them better insurance plans or better salaries than any one else just because of the degree they hold.
The ones that feel the need to bundle all these MBA terms like “competitive advantage”, “lock in the market”, “strategic management” in every phrase that comes out of their tongues.
The ones that love to arrange meetings all day instead of doing actual work.
The ones that look over their shoulder with disrespect to all the other ones who do not have those three precious letters before their names and get angry when you simply call them up by the names their parents gave them.
The ones that pull rank with their degrees but need a user manual to navigate a web page.
I used to want an MBA degree but I am so traumatized with my experience with these people that I have changed my mind about it. In fact, everytime I hear someone is an MBA, a negative association comes up in my mind and I start looking them funny.
Yes, I probably encountered the wrong folks…and wish with all my heart that I never ever have to deal with people like that again.
Never ever try to start a software company with people who happens to know nothing about it, especially if they are the ones who have the upper hand regarding the decision making process, because these type of companies can only go downwards.
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Don't Be Confused [Visitor] wrote:
In business school you are taught over and over again that your goal is to become the CEO. People who hire MBA’s often comment that they think they deserve to be much higher in the organization than they deserve to be given their normally limited real world experience.
This is because the education of the MBA program, while useful in itself (particularly finance, etc.) is completely focused on driving program participants to want to be at the head of any organization. If people don’t enter an MBA program having that desire, most certainly leave with it.
An MBA is critical, if not a requirement, in particular industries. It’s a way to be recognized. The education itself is immensely valuable – everyone who is going to be in business or operating a business should know basic finance, accounting, economics, and human resource skills. But the real education is polish, drive, and networking.
An MBA is not just an education, it is an entire program designed to instill the utmost confidence and desire to succeed in its participants.
“All college and no knowledge” is not a recipe for success. The best MBA’s don’t confuse academic learning with real world experience; they value both.
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