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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Successful business leader XXX announces that his college program (or lack thereof) is better than any other....
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.
News flash: highly successful engineer who did not go to business school thinks business school is a waste.
Shocking update: highly successful businessperson who went to business school thinks engineers don't know what they're talking about.
This is pretty normal... the path you took to get where you are starts to look like the best or only path. There is room for all specialties and approaches when used in the right way and mixed with other viewpoints.
"95% of all Slashdot
But, if Tesla fails and SpaceX succeeds, I think that will be a solid proof that MBA challenges are actually more significant than "rocket science" physics.
Even without the success/failure results of either company, the challenges Elon has faced in Tesla are a clear demonstration of what MBAs (and Lawyers and Lobbyists) are good for - success in the real world.
OTOH, we need a Lawyer / Lobbyist / Broker tax now, and we need it badly. There are too damn many parasites in this world, and precious few of us actually sitting on /. posting all day, er, I mean creating things!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
" the challenges Elon has faced in Tesla are a clear demonstration of what MBAs (and Lawyers and Lobbyists) are good for - success in the real world."
While this is true, I suspect that what he sees (and dislikes) about the fact is that MBAs (and especially lawyers and lobbyists) are necessary tools in much the same way that soldiers are: they fight with the other guy's MBAs, lawyers, and lobbyists, laying waste to much real value in the process; because the alternative of having the other guy's MBAs, lawyers, and lobbyists march in unopposed is even worse.
Engineers, scientists, and the like, by contrast, get sent out to prod the obnoxiously complex and notoriously noncompliant laws of nature into enough semblance of obedience that they can be put to good use.
Obviously, there is value to having a good lawyer, or a good army, at your back; because there are others out there who have the same, and don't have your best interests at heart; but there is a certain tragedy in watching men, time, and money, get thrown into the meatgrinder in order to keep two adversaries off one another's backs; while there is a certain triumph in seeing the application of human effort bring new areas of nature within the scope of human understanding and utility.
No, no... Hire illegal Mexican janitorial contractors to rinse, then repeat. You don't want to get your hands dirty.
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."
I can tell you one thing:
If a businessperson ever doubts an engineer, they are most certainly not highly successful.
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"
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.
Engineers make things. Businesspeople hoard money. Of course they both think they are right... but one of them is.
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."
This is pretty normal... the path you took to get where you are starts to look like the best or only path. There is room for all specialties and approaches when used in the right way and mixed with other viewpoints.
I quite agree with you. However, there's a subtle irony to including "business" majors here.
A century ago, there really were no "business majors" in college. If you went to college, but you were a rich kid who hoped to work in your father's business someday or whatever, you might be a history major or an English lit major, or maybe even something that sounds more exotic today, like classics or art history. If you were inclined toward the sciences, you might even concentrate in biology or chemistry, while getting your overall "liberal arts" perspective.
Nowadays, many universities see the largest number of undergraduates majoring in "business." At some schools, nearly half or more undergraduates are primarily instructed in "business," rather than one out of many disciplines that was traditionally part of the "liberal arts" perspective in college.
I'm not arguing that we should get rid of business majors or reinstitute some old-school liberal arts curriculum. But, it's very clear that the modern "business major" has actually done more than just about any other discipline in reducing the number and variety of "specialities and approaches when used in the right way and mixed with other viewpoints" that you might encounter among college-educated people.
The sheer dominance of the business major actually has tended to reduce the very thing that the parent poster says we should value.
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...
"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."
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.
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
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."
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.
It was a professor for my (AACSB, in case you are wondering) MBA. He was an adjunct professor and he was a business professional. Incidentally, he didn't have an MBA but rather a degree in finance or accounting (something involving money).
As to your second question, it is really three fold. The first is because most places tout up their degree as the equivalent of a Ph.D. or M.D. or D.O. The second is that many people who go for the MBA already have high feelings already and the constant positive feedback does that. The third is that, in the classroom, no one gives bad answers because the bad answers are so obviously bad no one would pick them, are evident from the reading (after reading about the fallacy of sunk costs all the right answers will obviously ignore them) or you are redirected to another answer.
For example, you read a problem that mentions a failing business with 5 employees that are all essential. You say, "cut costs by firing someone," instructor says "all employees are essential," so you respond with, "increase revenues by hiring salesmen," they respond with, "interesting choice, let's talk about the pros and cons of hiring when losing money." All the person called on hears is "interesting answer" and he associated dopamine rush of being able to relax now that the professor is back on lecture mode, instead of examine mode.
Now that I think about it, the way class is conducted requires quick gut responses. True, exams require more nuance, but you don't live exams everyday.
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.
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.
At least that would give us better voters. Letting people recognize good political decisions is better than making them successful.
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.
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.