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Elon Musk Talks About the Importance of Physics, Criticizes the MBA
New submitter ElSergio writes "In a two-part interview with the American Physical Society, Elon Musk, founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX, talks about how important it is to be able to think in terms of first principles, a tool learned as a physics student. Later in the interview, he recommends against obtaining an MBA, claiming, 'It teaches people all sorts of wrong things' and 'They don't teach people to think in MBA schools.' In fact. if you are in business and want to work for SpaceX, you will have a better chance getting hired if you do not have one. According to Musk, 'I hire people in spite of an MBA'. He goes on to point out that if you look at the senior managers in his companies, you will not find very many MBAs there."
Totally agree with this, Its should be same in IT companies as well
Finally, something Musk and I actually agree on.
MBA == waste of time and money.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Years ago I read a book called The 12 Hour MBA Program. I have never met an MBA who knew something important about business that wasn't in that book.
I tend to dislike the celebrity business owners, but the more I hear Musk talk the more I like him.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Most non-STEM education beyond associate-level courses is bullshit.
Troll much, bro?
Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein - Rio Reiser
As a one-time worker bee who is now a part of senior management (with an MPA and not an MBA, although they are pretty similar) I understand what he is saying but I disagree that people should have a better chance of being hired because they have the three letters next to their name.
I hire for open reqs based on the PERSON and their SKILLSET, not the degree they may or may not hold. You know, the way it should be. What Musk is promoting through another one of his ridiculous soundbites is that we should pay more attention to degrees (good or bad) than the skills someone brings along with them.
Musk can be absolutely brilliant and incredibly and insanely stupid all at the same time.
Though it wouldn't hurt many to actually have lengthy and non-propagandist History and Geography lessons.
Yeah, except this start up boss has founded 3 successful multi-billion dollar companies in 3 separate industries. I'm willing to bet he probably has a good idea on how to run things. (How to not have your cars catch on fire is another issue :P )
I have many degrees that put letters after my name, including an MBA. I still remember how one of my professors railed on the MBA because all it did was enshrine "spreadsheet thinking," ruined creative thinking, make people more susceptible to buzz-word thinking, make dumb people feel smart, make them better at smart CYAs for dumb decisions and about 5 other criticisms that currently escape me. He even called them the "Middle-manager's Business Accreditation" because people at the top cannot behave that way, or they ruin companies, so most MBAs won't make it there for long; and the people at the top love MBAs at the middle level because the top brass are not limited by the MBA's decisions and know how to control them.
...says one who has never seen or learned anything outside of STEM. The wuniverse is huge and complex, my friend, and the things you ignore go far beyond what you know. Let give you but one example: when you fall sick, the people who treat you have some background in "science, technology, engineering, and mathematics", but otherwise have studied for 10 years or so to become experts in their non-STEM field,
Maybe not in his mind, but definitely in mine. The 'thought-path' that ends up in a certification is not something I want to encourage. Perhaps if it were more like an RPG, and a certain amount of 'XP' resulted in a new certification rank.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
I think the most important thing from this interview is that Musk played D&D and is a self professed nerd.
And then the MBAs will take over, fire the physicists, hire a bunch of equally vile and sociopathic marketing types, and will find ways to cut corners, move all manufacturing to low-tax cheap-labor cess pools, hire equally vile and sociopathic IP lawyers to sue anyone who ever had an idea that even vaguely resembled the company's, rob the company of every dime it has, drive it into the ground.
Rinse and repeat.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There's a reason why the Manhattan Project needed Leslie Groves. Few people remember him today, but it's not much of an exaggeration to say that he was every bit as important to the success of that endeavor as the scientists. He was also the guy who supervised the construction of the Pentagon, completing it ahead of schedule and under budget.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. Post doctoral research in social sciences(which don't typically fall under STEM, in spite of that "science" there) tends to be informative and useful. Graduate level history has a ton still to uncover. I could see your argument applied to thinks like art of philosophy, but I don't really agree.
If anything the T part of STEM(and that's where my job is) is among the most suited areas for associates degree.
"I think X is mostly bullshit therefor X isn't really useful" isn't a good approach to academia.
According to Musk, 'I hire people in spite of an MBA'.
What's that, he doesn't like mindless groupthink, and the inability to understand the difference between a rule of thumb and actual thought, judgement and understanding of reality? No wonder the guy is a failure.
Haha, Very good point.
Are you sure that's not just happening in your head? Because, unless you're talking about Big Bang Theory, I don't see Physicists making fools of themselves.
On the other hand, I always see and hear about MBA's who jump into a business, throw out buzz words like "streamline" and "synergy", whirl around like a tornado, weak havoc on business processes they don't understand and move on to the next project to give someone else a headache while leaving all the underlings to figure out where the cow ended up and how to get back to some sense of normal back into their work.
Far too many of the self-righteous pricks already.
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
Physicists like to think they are smarter than everyone else, but they often make big fools of themselves on non-physics topics that require social intelligence.
A quick search of Amazon and eBay turns up quite a few "quick MBA" selections. Titles like:
The One-Day MBA
MBA in a Day: What You Would Learn at Top-Tier Business Schools
The Mobile MBA: 112 Skills to Take You Further, Faster 2012 -Man
The 10-Day MBA
Complete MBA For Dummies
I couldn't find anything remotely similar for a degree in physics.
What else you got?
You must have missed the part where he got into MIT.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
MBAs on paper are supposed to teach you a lot of useful things. In practice most students walk away with one thing in their mind: how to cut costs to a minimum even if it drives the business to the ground so long as they collect their bonus before it does so.
You can read all about it from Henry Mintzberg who is a Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University, and has spent the last two decades trying to fix the present MBA mess.
His book "Managers not MBAs" is a must read for anyone thinking about hiring an MBA.
Haha, Very good point.
Not really - a car made of solid granite would be impossible to set on fire, if useless as a means of conveyance.
Yea, I know I'm being a pedant, but these days it seems like you almost have to if you don't want to end up buried under metric tons of bullshit.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Successful business leader XXX announces that his college program (or lack thereof) is better than any other....
Yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. Post doctoral research in social sciences(which don't typically fall under STEM, in spite of that "science" there) tends to be informative and useful.
I've yet to see the findings from even the most prominent and widely-known psychology/sociology studies ever used to advance the human race in any way. Can somebody enlighten me about how post doc research in these fields is changing society for the better?
Unless you're talking homeopathy, I'm pretty sure medicine falls under the category "science".
And a shit load of bad ones.
This good ones, were excellent technically then took what they learned in MBA in terms of business functions and applied them in a way the made everyone more effective and productive. The bad ones tended to be poor performers in their chosen fields who ran to an MBA as a way to avoid working on technical details that they couldn't comprehend.
The worst were smart, but evil. They took an MBA as a fast path to management, where they gulled their peers with enough technical know how to achieve their dreams of power and influence. The more power they got, the less tolerant they became of other "smart guys." They were viewed as threats that might expose potential technical short comings in the MBA's plans.
Please explain? I am legitimately interested in your reasoning.
Saying you dislike MBA's is not the same as saying you don't need managers and executives. Groves was brilliant at organizing and running major projects, but he was an army officer for the Corps of Engineers, not an MBA. The degree hadn't even been invented back then, which helps explain why we aren't speaking German or Japanese.
Solid granite, with the gravity of Jupiter...
http://www.acetonestudio.com
That's just an argument from personal incredulity, and you know it. Basic social introspection is trivially useful, and is used for more effective governance, as long as politics don't interfere. Understanding recidivism rates, for example, is an incredibly basic tool of a healthy legal system. Societies that apply data-driven understanding of how people work to their governance make for better places to live.
I'm not saying all social sciences are useful, but if that were the threshold, you'd have to prove all software is useful too.
uses bias to judge people news at 11
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Oh, okay. I'm sure your anonymous screed against non-specific individuals in a field is totally a valid criticism of the field in general.
Not really... Musk recently came out with a rebuttal to the "rampant FIRE! threat of his cars." So far nobody has been hurt, and in every case I've heard of the car warned the owner that it was in distress, and allowed/assisted time to evacuate. Plus the battery pack design itself does a good job of comparmentalizing the problem.
No doubt someday someone will take a Tesla at high speed right over the vertical support for a guard rail, and rip the battery pack the length of the vehicle. But you also have to ask how survivable that kind of accident would be in a conventional vehicle.
Don't forget, lithium batteries have almost the energy density of gasoline - but not quite. Plus gasoline is a liquid, once the tank is ruptured, you don't have a lot of control over where the gas flows. I saw one mention that statistically the Tesla, even with 3 fires on its low production quantity, is ahead of gasoline fires on conventional vehicles.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Unless you're talking homeopathy, I'm pretty sure medicine falls under the category "science".
Until the surgical robots finally take over, there is a nontrivial element of skilled craftsmanship in the messier areas of medicine. You wouldn't exactly call a surgeon 'blue collar' (or pay one accordingly); but the surgeon is doing something surprisingly similar to sculpture, just inside your torso, and with years of school to instruct him in what parts are 'patient' and what parts are 'pathology' so that he cuts the correct ones...
As usual, those who bash MBA most loudly are the ones that hire them:
Read more carefully: Musk said he hired people in spite of having MBA's, not that he wouldn't hire people with MBA's.
There is no such thing as a bad education, only bad students.
There are both.
I have an MBA, it was totally awesome to get, I did it while working full time, learned a lot, apply the knowledge often.
If you also have a serious technical degree, and think that about your MBA, you're the exception. I've known some very astute people with a serious technical education, who also got MBA's. They all say they did it for the credentials. They say that while they learned some useful basics in the MBA curricula, none of them were terribly impressed by it (including Wharton, etc.) and think they could have obtained the important knowledge with much less fanfare and expense.
Basic social introspection is trivially useful, and is used for more effective governance, as long as politics don't interfere.
When has politics not interfered with governance?
We'd be able to fly as long as gravity doesn't interfere.
Not really - a car made of solid granite would be impossible to set on fire, if useless as a means of conveyance.
Not true. It was very useful in Carmageddon.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Start brushing up your resume, and if you own stock, start looking at getting rid of it now and be prepared for the day when you and anyone else with any skills is given the boot. You really don't want to be on this airplane when it crashes. You can be sure the MBAs won't be.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Usually it's not considered STEM, which stands for Scientific, Technical, Engineering and Math. You could argue medicine is a technical field, but that's not how the term is generally used.
Great points. I admit that my remark was more an attempt at humor than criticism. Thanks for putting it in perspective.
Ask a physician if what he does is science, if (s)he is a scientist. There is a some science in medicine but mostly medicine is a field of applications.
So is Engineering.
Are you saying that running society by pandering to my basest prejudices and whatever 'common sense' I pulled out of my ass isn't the best of ideas?
Fucking ivory tower elitists. Always spitting on the common man.
It will hurt the person receiving it, who then has to watch the rest of the world re-enact history.
Being able to laugh at the average level of geography knowledge doesn't make up for it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Basic social introspection is trivially useful, and is used for more effective governance, as long as politics don't interfere.
It does sometimes? I'm not sure how much quantification you're wanting here. Not every job in government is inherently political.
Also: word to the wise, we can fly, in spite of gravity. Because good designs can work around known forces. You seem to be taking a very 1 dimensional perspective on this.
No, no... Hire illegal Mexican janitorial contractors to rinse, then repeat. You don't want to get your hands dirty.
"...non-propagandist History and Geography lessons."
Ah yes, classes that teach the ~real~ truth, which of course only you and a small minority of other enlightened people know of.
Gosh Oh Golly if only we all could have your in depth knowledge of the Real Truth...there would be an end to war and poverty and hunger and unicorns would carry people where ever they needed to go!
Solid granite in a 100% oxygene atmosphere burns like ... anything else.
I would wager you don't even need 100% pure oxygen, likely it burns at 60% or 75% perfectly.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
How was he allowed to bid on a second defense procurement project after bringing one in successfully, early, and under budget?
I know that fraud and felonies and stuff aren't enough to exclude you from contracting; but that's just deviant...
I do not put much value in an MBA either despite the fact I am currently pursuing one. My circumstance is that my employer partnershiped with a university to offer 1/2 off tuition and I get an additional $3k reimbursement from my employer each year. End result is I will pay about $6k out of my pocket... too good of an opportunity to pass up.
Most of the material has been common sense, in my opinion. The organizational leadership classes have been interesting. Right now I'm in a class that focuses on ethics and sustainability. Nothing to this point has been about cutting costs for temporary increase in profit. There is plenty of talk about efficiency, though.. but that is a necessity for a business to survive.
I plan to use my MBA to make a point in future job interviews - I am willing to take that step to continue learning. Regardless of the overall usefulness of the degree, it does take dedication to juggle my current job, school, and helping raise my 9 month old son.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Yeah, all the humanities and social sciences degrees contribute lots to our culture. And their graduates contribute lots of industry too.
Management degrees are mostly worthless at all levels though. Undergrad management doesn't teach anything substantive, probably only qualifies you for managing a fast food joint. An MBA doesn't actually teach anything either, but frequently folks use it to convince the management morons to give them a promotion.
There is a STEM degree called "operations research" that's basically "applications of advanced mathematics to management", but you'll need a degree in math or physics for that one. I've seen engineers go that way of course, but they struggle with the math. Comp Sci is an even worse prep for an OR degree unless you did a fairly math heavy Comp Sci degree.
Solid granite in a 100% oxygene atmosphere burns like ... anything else.
I would wager you don't even need 100% pure oxygen, likely it burns at 60% or 75% perfectly.
Sure, but in that situation it's more like ablation than burning, isn't it?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Not really - a car made of solid granite would be impossible to set on fire, if useless as a means of conveyance.
Not true. It was very useful in Carmageddon.
As a weapon more than a conveyance, though.
Damn if that's not one of the best games ever.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Competent administration is incredibly important, but I'm not seeing the connection. I don't remember anything about Groves being an MBA or studying business. He was a career military officer who spent his adult life running government engineering projects, which is pretty much exactly what you'd want in a manager who runs huge government engineering projects.
I think we all realize that MBA programs purport to teach students how to manage these types of projects. We're just qestioning whether they actually do so. I'd say that understanding basic accounting and finance are really important, but how much of the remainder of the management process is really a "science" that can be be made systematic and taught well in a classroom?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
So he founded PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX. How would he have PayPal taken seriously by the global financial industry with no expertise in the financial industry? Until then, it will just remain a bit player in online transactions. If Tesla Motors and SpaceX are to become mass-market commodities, are physicists the best people to put in charge of marketing, litigation, customer service, and financing, to name a few departments?
Everyone probably thought that it'd be statistically impossible to have two straight defense projects delivered successfully, early and under budget.
Comparing PayPal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX, to other companies in comparable fields: do we see financial firms moving en masse to "low-tax cheap-labor cess pools"? Do aerospace companies do this? Last I heard, there are not a lot of financial or aerospace jobs in low-tax cheap-labor cess pools.
It could be that the likes of Boeing, VISA, BofA, etc. are run by plenty of MBAs and they do a fine job.
Most non-STEM education beyond associate-level courses is bullshit.
I agree...mostly
It has been speculated that one reason the Dreamliner was so delayed and overbudget is because Boeing tried to outsource the design to cheaper firms and then integrate everything afterward instead of using their own designers. Even now they're fighting over where to build the next plane and are threatening to move the production overseas if the union doesn't give.
I read the internet for the articles.
While he walks through the dining room of the restaurant he realizes: "this is the profit center!" ...
Now he turns to the kitchen and realizes: "this is the cost center!"
Guess which part gets closed first and who gers fired
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Troll much, bro?
Hardly.
Most is a waste of time. Academia offers little for most graduates in non-STEM courses that isn't obtained by going out and getting a damned job and learning what the real world is like 10 hours a day instead of spending 52 minutes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons 9 months a year with 10 weeks off for breaks.
Oh, you got a marketing degree? Did your study group make a presentation? We'll be sure to put it up on the refrigerator with your gold star. You can look at it every day while paying off your tuition for the next 20 years.
Are there a minority of graduate-level experts in history and art who do great things who benefited from a couple more years of schooling? Sure. ...but how much of the world needs to be made up of research historians and future art professors?
MOST is a colossal waste. How many non-science degree'd folk would have been better off by just getting a damned job in their profession a couple years sooner?
Also, I see that medicine is debated below as "non-STEM," but I'd call it science, for sure.
Or, you know, I'm trolling, and getting modded down by people with useless degrees that they use to impress other people with useless degrees so they all feel better about their "accomplishments."
Here's the MBA worldview:
1) If it doesn't exist on a spreadsheet, it doesn't exist.
2) You don't have to know the details of the business to run it.
3) Productivity is what we say it is.
4) Everything is measured in money. The physical world barely matters.
MBAs seem to share this worldview with those ever accurate, johny-on-the-spot folks commonly known as "economists." They know everything too.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Ask a physician if what he does is science, if (s)he is a scientist. There is a some science in medicine but mostly medicine is a field of applications.
If my doctor doesn't think what he does is science, I'm getting a new doctor...
My argument would be that medicine is a scientific field.
So if physicists start mass-producing SpaceX rockets, are you saying they will somehow behave any better?
Was that professor of yours one of your professors in your MBA program, or a professor you had while earning a different degree? Also, if you don't mind me asking, it's not definitively clear to me whether you're agreeing with that professor or not. (I think you are.) Can you state unequivocally?
Finally, if you don't mind, I'm intrigued by this quote from the article:
I don't get it. Do MBA students have this kind of smoke blown up their asses by their professors or the departments? Did you experience anything like this as an MBA student? What are some of the kinds of things that MBA students are told? Thanks.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
I have an MBA so get it right up ye!
Since it is the fuel source that burns in the car (Tesla or gasoline), is granite your fuel?
"Of necessity, physics had to develop a framework of thinking that would allow understanding counter-intuitive elements of reality. Something like quantum physics is not very intuitive, and in order to make progress, physics essentially evolved a framework of thinking that was very effective for coming to correct answers that are not obvious. And in order to do this, it requires quite a lot of mental exertion. One cannot conduct one's everyday life reasoning from first principles; it would just require too much mental energy. So I think you have to operate most of your life with reasoning by analogy or essentially copying other people with minor variations. But if you are trying to break new ground and be really innovative, that's where you have to apply first-principle thinking and try to identify the most fundamental truths in any particular arena and you reason up from there. This requires quite a bit of mental exertion and I can give you some examples of how this helps one in the rocket business."
"I had an existential crisis when I was 12 or 13, and [was] trying to figure out what does it all mean, why are we here, is it all meaningless, that sort of thing. I came to the conclusion that the best thing we can do is try to improve the scope and scale of consciousness and gain greater enlightenment which will in turn allow us to ask better and better questions, because obviously the universe is the answer, so what is the question? All questions, I suppose.""
"A lot of people in physics are concerned about expenditures on manned space flight because they are not sure what's the point. Generally I would agree: if we were just going to bounce around in low Earth orbit, it's questionable whether it's worth the expense. However, if one considers the objective to become a space-faring civilization and a multi-planet species, I think that physicists should support that because it increases the probable lifespan of humanity dramatically, and dramatically increases the scope and scale of civilization, which in turn is what will lead to greater enlightenment in physics and other arenas. "
Slashdot fortune: "Forty two."
The problem may self correct after a few more years.
I get the feeling Musk & Tesla are purposely drumming up the fire non-story as a way to draw attention away from how they missed expectations last quarter. In particular they lost 38 million last quarter, which is not as much as a year ago. However, with the heavy R&D done, since they got a good car to market, they should start actually generating revenue soon, but they also cut sales forecasts. So the stock tanked because of missing the expectations, but Musk is probably trying to get people to think the drop was due to the fires.
You know what is ironic about this comment?
It's made by people who think the only thing worth knowing is stuff that makes you money RIGHT NOW. MBAs are in the same boat.
The world needs managers, and plenty of other positions - and the free market determines what people get paid.
The value proposition of getting a non-STEM degree is pretty bad, and with only a little exception, the "knowledge" gained from it (scare quotes and all) is generally pretty useless. Go to a book store. Last year's text book is there for 25% of the price.
Maybe you should understand what science is.
You doctor does not practice science. He practice treating. This is how it must be. Or do you wan't your doctor doing experiment on you?
Science is a process.
Most Dr. don't even know how to apply scientific findings.
This is not to say they don't read about science, and they don't apply thinking to their practice. On the its a Practice and not a Lab.
I have ran it any Dr. that are great to do their job, but move outside their expertise and they can't apply new data to their narrative if it doesn't correspond with their bias.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Methinks thou misseth the point.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
We aren't talking about Doctor practice, not medicine. Medicine is far too broad.
People creating new drugs are using science, a nurse giving you a shot is not.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Reminisce
Also, it looks like it got ported to iOS and Android. I'll have to check that out the next time I have to go to the bathroom.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Argue all you want - that's not how the term is used.
Android for sure, it was part of one of the last Humble Bundles. Don't know about iOS.
BTW, it looks and runs beautifully on a 1st gen. Nexus 7.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Well yeah, actually, in those days Jobs was known to be a poor manager. People didn't like working for him, and a lot of good engineers quit Apple in the early days. There's a reason he was looking for outside help.
Of course he learned a lot of that business management stuff, and afterwards did well. But you're kidding yourself if you think the same Steve Jobs that saved Apple in 97 was the one who brought on John Sculley in 83.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Which came first: the bad company culture or the MBA who perpetuated it?
It's pretty much a given that /. will agree with Musk's sentiment on this topic, given our engineering/technology/science-leaning tendencies. After all, it seems like it's an inevitable stage in most company's life cycles: startup -> success -> bring in business types -> slide into mediocrity -> become one of the has-beens. You might still be a very successful has-been, but you won't be the thought-leader in your field.
But, really, should we be so quick to agree? Rather than being guilty of falling prey to the very groupthink that we accuse MBAs of falling for, let me play Devil's Advocate for a bit and suggest that we focus on the chicken instead of the egg for a bit.
As companies get more successful, they tend to get larger than their founders can personally handle (we're all aware of how difficult a problem scaling can be), meaning that there's a legitimate need to impose some type of structure over the system. MBAs are very aware of what sorts of structures have been used before and what has worked in different situations, so they are called in to impose those structures over the organization. For the companies that don't bring them in at that point, they'll either have a difficult period as their leadership adjusts things through trial and error, or else they'll simply go under before they ever have a chance to slide into mediocrity.
I've seen smart MBA types who can come into a company, recognize what makes it special, and will work hard to preserve it while making the changes that are necessary for allowing the company to scale better. I've seen others in middle management who, rather than displaying sociopathic tendencies or squandering their team, challenge their team of engineers to break new ground while working cooperatively with other teams in an effort to build up the company as a whole. Sure, they may be the exception, rather than the rule, but the point is that they can bring a unique perspective to the team that many engineering types can't, which helps to shake things up.
But as companies get larger and larger, it gets easier and easier to hide negligence or disappear into the bureaucracy, and when that happens, the company starts to incentivize the sort of behavior we've all come to expect of MBAs. When Team A realizes that they can cut corners and leave the problem in Team B's hands, eventually, someone will start taking advantage of that. MBAs are trained to look for those sorts of things, so it's only natural that they will when they're put in that situation, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that they have a monopoly on that behavior. Put a manager with an engineering background in the same spot and there's a good chance they'll do the same eventually. It's an issue with the company and the way it's managed. The middle manager's abuse of the system is just a symptom.
Alternatively, put an MBA at the top and they may try to kill the golden goose (e.g. R&D, a good brand name, etc.) for a quicker payout, but who put the guy with ideas that are clearly contrary to the company's stated beliefs at the top in the first place? He might end up being the thing that everyone points at later on when they talk about when the company "died", but the fact is, it was likely rotting well before that because he wouldn't have been able to get appointed otherwise (unless he pulled the wool over everyone's eyes).
Do MBAs perpetuate bad company culture? Absolutely, but so do plenty of others from STEM fields and the like. We may argue that MBAs actively sour a culture (pun not intended) whereas the STEM folks merely respond in kind, but I think that's being a bit naive on our part. As companies grow, they have to fight to maintain their culture of excellence, and that's true regardless of whether MBAs are involved. A bad MBA can cause rot to grow around them in the company, but that's true of any employee, really. What makes MBAs stand out more, however,
and makes me think that there is still hope. MBAs destroy innovation, motivation, and productivity in the name of short term profits. MBAs represent modern scorched earth business tactics. Profit in the short term and destroy a thriving business in the long term. I run my own consulting business and an MBA is my weedout criteria - have MBA, will not travel.
Oh, that one is easy actually. You start with a spherical car in a vacuum...
You missed by far the most important one:
If you can't easily calculate a dollar value of something, it must be 0.
This rule alone is why all MBAs refuse to see any downside exists to strategies that inevitably create more rework, or piss off key customers enough to impact future sales.
http://www.eclipse.org/mylyn/
"Mylyn's task-focused interface reduces information overload and makes multitasking easy. Mylyn makes tasks a first class part of the IDE, integrates rich and offline editing for ALM tools, and monitors your programming activity to create a "task context" that focuses your workspace and automatically links all relevant artifacts to the task-at-hand. This puts the information you need at your fingertips and improves productivity by reducing information overload, facilitating multitasking and easing the sharing of expertise."
Frankly, still have not got the hang of it myself, so I turned it off..
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
After my physics degree I thought it would be a good idea to learn something about business so I got an MBA.
While at business school I couldn't believe the crap they teach there. Especially the believe in the efficient market hypothesis is a joke.
But it wasn't all a waste of money. Having to get everything done as part of a diverse team, while being swamped with work, did prepare me well for consulting, and according to my wife markedly improved my social skills :-)
You wrote: "Not a single person was laid off..."
But the unstated part is "...in your company".
If demand grows slower than supply (like due to limited money supply in the real economy, a law of diminishing returns of more consumer goods, increasing burden from negative externalities, structural unemployment, etc.) then other companies that are less productive may go out of business due to your improvements, taking jobs (and also ultimately customers) with them. We're about to see that rapidly accelerate with increasing use of robotics, AI, and other advanced automation.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/10/08/1530233/digital-revolution-will-kill-jobs-inflame-social-unrest-says-gartner?sdsrc=popbyskid
Here is a list I put together of about 50 things one can do about that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
A "basic income" (monthly social security payments for all from birth) is the simplest and probably most effective one of those for a democratic capitalistic society:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/11/17/american_basic_income_an_end_to_poverty.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/switzerlands-proposal-to-pay-people-for-being-alive.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/opinion/krugman-sympathy-for-the-luddites.html
The opposite position though:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/10/04/1222228/the-luddites-are-almost-always-wrong-why-tech-doesnt-kill-jobs
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Are you aware that German and French kids now use the same (translated) history textbooks about WW2 and a good chunk of the XXth century?
While they might not be perfect, that's a great example of unbiased.
But since you seem to be suggesting that not knowing anything would be better than a risk of someone twisting the education's content, I just hope you let your kids go to a smarter school than yours. You may now resume watching CNBC or Fox News.
Gotta call Poe's Law on this one.
At least that would give us better voters. Letting people recognize good political decisions is better than making them successful.
Consider the phrase "applied science".
If I make any suggestions here about what I think has led you to make such a major mistake they will be seen as a personal attack.
That's an interesting euphemism for getting US government agents to do a bit of industrial espionage on Airbus at taxpayers expense.
Boeing sacked the people with a clue and had to settle with bits an pieces from all over the place, including that infamous industrial espionage that came out in court. Since they can't operate well even fastened onto the government teat they are destined to become less competitive.
If you want to be honest about it you really don't need universities for STEM degrees either. Most of it was taught as a part of apprenticeship programs by companies in the old days. Some of the best engineers I knew as an intern were non degreed and learned in the job. The problem for many companies is when they get done teaching someone that person is pretty valuable and is likely to leave if given the chance.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
But then who's going to move you to open floor layouts to "improve collaboration"?
I don't understand why open-floor layouts get a bad rap. I work in one now, and it's great. I never want to see the inside of another cube.
Perhaps you need to speak to an MBA, seriously. Typically one of the first classes that a person takes in business school is some sort of organization behavior class. This class typically deals with psychology and human behavior at the individual, small team and large organization levels. In this class you will learn that different people are sometimes more efficient in different environments, that there is no such thing as the best work environment. That what is best changes from person to person.
Some people will perform better in an open floor plan and others will perform better in individual offices. That a manager who forces a person to work in the environment their personality is not wired for is sabotaging that person. That no one solution fits all people.
Really, does he believe that business is administered so flawlessly that people's earnest efforts to learn how to do it better are worthless ?
It is disrespectful of him to trash people who act sincerely to improve their skills in managing business. Even if there are plenty of cynical MBAs out there, I have met plenty of cynical engineers too; it does not make the study of engineering any less worthy a pursuit.
Nullius in verba
There's a tremendous amount of research that has been done on this very question. I refer you to Pascarella and Terinzini's 2005 book: How College Affects Students. At 848 pages, it comprehensively covers studies on every imaginable aspect of the college experience, summarizing how it affects students (it's not just a catchy title).
The short summary? College matters. And not just STEM degrees, either.
Here's a link to more information about the book. You can find it in your local library, too.
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/journal_of_college_student_development/v047/47.5davis.html
Elon is not the only genius who thinks an MBA is bogus and he's 100% correct; but we have to give FZ his due as he was way ahead of the curve on this thinking.
Actually both are wrong respect to recent MBAs, at least modern MBAs, can't speak for previous decades. However I used to share Elon's perspective, then I went to business school and learned how wrong I was.
M: ... An MBA is a bad idea.
L: Why?
M: It teaches people all sorts of wrong things. L: What do you mean? M: They don't teach people to think in MBA schools. And the top MBA schools are the worst. Because they actually teach people that you must be special, and it causes people to close down their feedback loop and not rigorously examine when they are wrong.
I went to a state university ranked top 50 in the U.S. We were taught quite differently than Elon assumes. For example we were taught that to find out what is going on you actually need to go speak to the workers on the factory floor, or the engineers in their cubicles, the people doing the actual work. That these people offer the best information on how things really are. I don't recall being taught that we were "special".
Note Elon's use of "top MBA schools are the worst". I wonder if he really means certain old Ivy League schools, which in that case being "special" is not MBA specific.
"... When all decisions are based on an MBA's concept of numerical reality, you're in deep shit, because the only thing that can be judged as real is that which can be proved by a column of figures. And when all aesthetic decisions are turned over to these kinds of people, who use these criteria to make steering decisions for a company with no regard for people and no regard for what the product really is, and the only thing that matters is maximizing your profit, you have a problem. Because you can't have quality then; you cannot have excellence. Quality's expensive. I think most of these people that come from business schools have the desire to make sure everything is cheesy. That's what happens when you do things that way." - FZ
Accounting represents only a few classes in business school. Classes in product development and strategy in fact do emphasize excellence as a means of differentiating your product. The aesthetics of your product, the usability of your product, the overall user experience. Focusing only on costs is in fact offered as an example of how to ruin a product.
People who think business schools and MBAs are all about accounting have not been to business school, at least in recent decades.
A modern MBA program is NOT about accounting. Its NOT about becoming an expert in any particular field, its quite different from other graduate degrees in this respect. An MBA program is an OVERVIEW of the entire organization. Leadership, law, economics, strategy, product development, operations, information technology, accounting, marketing, etc. An MBA teaches you enough about the various parts of an organization so that you can see things from their perspective. So that you can better represent your actual area of expertise and experience when communicating with others coming from different areas, to better communicate, to be more persuasive, to better understand what they are asking you for, etc. 1/3 of my MBA class came from scientific and engineering backgrounds. They didn't stop being scientists and engineers, they just became scientists and engineers with some more tools in the toolbox.
I am an MBA and I agree with him comments to a degree. A lot of my classmates did not think. As a graduate myself I question how anyone thinks they can run a company entirely with numbers and figures - it just doesn't work. There is a personal aspect to things since humans are not machines (at least not yet ;). I am of the belief that it is my job to manage people, and by that I mean shield them from the crap above so that they can do their job. Then again I am humble enough to know when I am over my head and ask the people that actually know their shit or have to deal with it on the daily basis.
And this is the sort of perspective I was taught to have in my MBA program. Focusing too much on the numbers is a bad idea. Not understanding or accommodating human behavior is a common cause in product or business failure. That treating your employees and business partners well is often important for success. That the people doing the actual work on the line often have the best information. Or to use a military analogy if you want to know what is going on in a unit you ask a sergeant not a captain.
Here is my perspective. MBAs are like Computer Science students. They are taught to do the right thing, its just that some take shortcuts once they enter the real world and create crap.
Worked for 10 years in IT support for a top-10 MBA school (thus posting anonymously). Can attest, in spite of my school's technical cred, that the MBA is mostly worthless. Two years (four semesters) is not enough time to truly learn anything. But the biggest problem is the idea that both students and employers buy into: that those four little semesters make one skilled to make executive decisions in any business, regardless of what it is.
You don't seem to really understand what an MBA is. A modern MBA program is NOT about becoming an expert in any particular field, its quite different from other graduate degrees in this respect. An MBA program is an OVERVIEW of the entire organization. Leadership, law, economics, strategy, product development, operations, information technology, accounting, marketing, etc. An MBA teaches you enough about the various parts of an organization so that you can see things from their perspective. So that you can better represent your actual area of expertise and experience when communicating with others coming from different areas, to better communicate, to be more persuasive, to better understand what they are asking you for, etc. 1/3 of my MBA class came from scientific and engineering backgrounds. They didn't stop being scientists and engineers, they just became scientists and engineers with some more tools in the toolbox.
The MBA does not qualify you to make executive decisions. However to make executive decisions you need to be able to see things from different perspectives, not simply the single perspective that your expertise and experience is based upon. That is the advantage of an MBA.
Furthermore, we were explicitly taught that a manager/executive must understand the product. This idea that a professional manager can manage any company regardless of product is a false meme. **If** ever widely believed that would have been long ago.
This boils down to accounting and finance, which is the only thing common to all businesses (except for contracts, but that's law - go back to school). Like a hammer to a nail, the MBA learns to address everything from the point of view of costs and profits
Seriously, that is so mistaken. We were taught exactly the opposite. That focusing exclusively on the numbers often dooms a company. At least at the school I went to, public university - ranked in top 50, and at the schools where other students I've interacted with were going.
But MBA schools pump out way too many graduates every year, including those who just coast through classes and expect that their degree will catapult them to a high salary.
Such ticket punchers exist in most degree programs. Its no different in computer science, even at the graduate level.
Plus there is another common problem. People are often taught how to do the right thing in school, both MBA and Computer Science, however when they get into the real world they do things differently. I think you are letting these people who take the shortcuts and do the wrong things mislead you as to what they were actually taught.
Treating a disease is a practice, but diagnosing it is science.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The answer is most definitely the bad culture. Boom times due to external factors coincided with a series of fads and the shining examples of the time had inherited success instead of built it.
To simplify, a lot the MBA culture was inspired far more by Edsel Ford than Henry. A lot of it is pretending that the pinnacle of business practise is what the complacent US car industry was doing while the Japanese were building up to take over the market with something other than repackaged 1960s shit.
The premise is really that any "chosen one" can run a successful business in a static situation no matter what fads they follow. There may be some truth in that but why bother even getting an MBA in such a situation? Both when times get tough or when opportunities arise you want somebody with enough domain knowlege of what the organisation actually does to be able to even know who to ask about the details. Without that you may as well have a playboy prince tossing money around at random instead of someone with a cut down business degree. There's nothing magic about half an accountant that makes them fit to rule anything.
To be fair, not many companies give employees much reason to be loyal these days.
Play Command HQ online
It's even stranger. They ordered him to do it.
Play Command HQ online
It's even stranger. They ordered him to do it.
Wow, good thing we've learned so much about how to run a country like a business(tm) since those dark days!
(How to not have your cars catch on fire is another issue :P )
It's an unsolved problem, but Tesla does a lot better at keeping the people in the car alive than other cars do.
I think they're drumming up the fire story because it shows how safe the car is. It looks superficially like bad PR, but it is actually very good PR, once you look at the data.
I doubt Musk cares much about expectations. Releasing a totally new product in inherently unpredictable. But showing people how good their car really is, that is a lot more interesting.
I've tried explaining this to so many people and failed. Just because a job requires an understanding of science (primarily biology and chemistry in the case of medicine) does not make that job scientific in any way.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Feel free to subscribe to a few journals and do the research yourself.
In fact, it would make an excellent thesis to study the long-term effects of post-doc research on society.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
An MBA is an MBA, but it's the psychopaths that are the culprit.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Have you considered the possibility that MBA teaching programs are like Computer Science students? Some teach the right things. And, some just take shortcuts, and once their students enter the real world, they arrange for businesses to create crap.
I don't think he was suggesting that. I think he was suggesting that most History and Geography lessons are already non-propagandist, and by suggesting otherwise (though the choice to include the phrase "non-propagandist") you were setting yourself up as the one who knows definitively what is and is not a propagandist viewpoint, and he doesn't concur. I'm not saying that I think it was your intent to give that impression. You could have been about to type just plain "History and Geography" and then thought, "Well, not if it's propaganda, I guess, so I better cover my ass and prefix it with 'non-propagandist.'" Or, maybe you just finished reading an article called _Propaganda in Our Schools_. But, I don't think that's the impression you gave in that particular case.
Have you considered the possibility that MBA teaching programs are like Computer Science students? Some teach the right things. And, some just take shortcuts, and once their students enter the real world, they arrange for businesses to create crap.
The problem with that theory is that I've experienced multiple CS and MBA programs teaching the right things, other CS and MBA students/grads I know had similar experiences. I don't know of any school promoting the crap that goes on in the real world. What I and others have witnessed is someone who was taught how to design and write maintainable and reliable code in school slap together some crap in order to move a 3x5 task card from the in-progress column to the implemented column. Sometimes doing so because their manager evaluates developers based on how fast those 3x5 task cards move, which is precisely the sort of thing you are taught *not* to do in business school. Dilbert is as popular with business school professors and students as it is with their computer science counterparts.
I used to know a guy with a BSc in Medical Science. Know what that is? It's what you get if you complete the theoretical part of training to be a doctor but drop out without doing the practical bit. He worked as a science teacher.
Do you know what the entry requirements are to study medicine? High grades in at least three of maths, physics, chemistry, biology.
Just because you aren't fucking around with test tubes all day doesn't mean your job isn't scientific.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Being jobless, and consequently moneyless, in todays world basically makes person isolated from society - one becomes like Robinson on deserted island, only surrounded by hostile creatures threatening his life, health, freedom and personal possessions. One has to work directly on own life support, instead of working for exchange - which doesn't take place, because none would hire him. However, when joblessness becomes common, there is possibility of division of society and economy - those who work for satisfying their own needs can among themselves reinvent specialization, exchange, market and even money, and form separate society, akin to remote native communities. If they can do without non-free products of society (using only trash and rejects from it) they are completely removed from great economy, shrinking both labor and goods' markets. "Invisible hand" with technological advances is systematically pushing more and more people out of economy and it can continue until production of goods is no longer profitable for the lack of demand. However, invisible hand can never reintroduce those rejected people back in, because it doesn't work that way, it only runs one way - to the bottom. So, in the end, high technology will just grind to a halt leaving behind its demise a new primitive society of slum dwellers."
Thanks for the great reply, AC. I like the Robinson Crusoe analogy amidsts modern society (like for squatters) and hostile beasts analogy (like for those who claim to be property "owners"). Yes indeed, the market only hears the needs of those with money. That is why people can starve next to grain elevators bursting full of grain, and people can go shoeless near stores full to the bursting of unsold shoes, and people can go homeless next to vacant houses foreclosed by banks. If your pessimistic conclusion at the end is true (just for the sake of argument), I wonder how many times it has happened before os Earth or in the Universe? Perhaps mainstream economics if what really killed the dinosaurs? :-) Could US-style capitalism explain the Fermi paradox? :-)
See also my writings on five interwoven economies: subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft -- and how all real societies have some balance between all five types of transactions.. On my site or here as a not-very-flashy video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
What you describe is a reversion to a subsistence livelihood (hunter/gatherer, but amidst the trash piles), and then it growing into alternative types of exchange (some people do that now with LETS systems and alternative currencies like the Ithaca HOUR), But other possibilities include growth of a gift economy and also better democratic planning. To put a positive spin on your words, in an age of nanotech replicators and cheap robotics and free software, what you describe may be a simple withering away of money-based transactions until mainstream economics really doesn't matter in practice much anymore for almost anyone.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I've experienced multiple instances of the crap that goes on in the real world, and they're too similar for this not to be a systematic problem. If what these schools teaching isn't promoting this crap, it isn't giving people adequate tools and motivation to determine and eliminate the sources of it either.
Building stuff (engineers) and Selling stuff (MBA) need mutually exclusive skills.
Casteism
no... we just think that we know more about things like science, technology, engineering and software development than slimy MBA types. And in 35 years of work I've hardly ever seen that actually proved wrong.
I've experienced multiple instances of the crap that goes on in the real world, and they're too similar for this not to be a systematic problem. If what these schools teaching isn't promoting this crap, it isn't giving people adequate tools and motivation to determine and eliminate the sources of it either.
Schools can give you tools but they can't make you use them once you graduate. Nor can schools give you motivation.
Let me try to summarize things in a completely different way. The popular perception of business school is about as accurate as the popular perception of software development. I'm guilty too, for years I had the typical engineer's attitude towards anything business and marketing related, and I had these thoughts reinforced by events at some jobs. However once I went to business school one of the things that made it so much fun was learning how wrong I was.
I believe that you personally are glad you went to business school. I believe that it's possible to learn useful things from one. It will take better behavior from the business school graduate laden corporate entities around me before I'll believe they're a net plus for society.