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Another Thing Amazon Is Disrupting: Business-School Recruiting (foxbusiness.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the growing-pattern dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon, disrupter of industries from book selling to grocery shopping, has found its latest sector to upend -- recruiting at the nation's elite business schools. The Seattle-based retail giant is now the top recruiter at the business schools of Carnegie Mellon University, Duke University and University of California, Berkeley. It is the biggest internship destination for first-year M.B.A.s at the University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dartmouth College and Duke. Amazon took in more interns from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business than either Bain & Co. or McKinsey & Co., which were until recently among the school's top hirers of interns, according to Madhav Rajan, Booth's dean. All told, Amazon has hired some 1,000 M.B.A.s in the past year, according to Miriam Park, Amazon's director of university programs -- a drop in the bucket for a company that plans to add 50,000 software developers in the next year. But Amazon's flood-the-zone approach to recruiting and hiring future M.B.A.s -- in some cases before they have taken a single business-school course -- is feeding the career frenzy on campus and rankling some rival recruiters. The talent wars begin even before classes do. This past June, Amazon sponsored an event at its Seattle headquarters for 650 soon-to-be first-year and returning women M.B.A. students, some of whom left the event with internship offers for summer 2018.

42 comments

  1. Amazon is Dangerous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Amazon is destroying you America. They have too much power and not enough accountability.

  2. Wow... by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

    So... 50k developers sounded like an awful lot, according to Wikipedia that is more than currently work at Microsoft headquarters. And that'd be on top of whatever they already have... big plans from Amazon I guess?

    1. Re: Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      50k to take the 250k jobs they kill sounds about right.

    2. Re:Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Amazon tries to recruit me all the time so I guess their standards aren't so high.

    3. Re:Wow... by computational+super · · Score: 2

      They never try to recruit me ;'( so their standards are at least a little high.

      --
      Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
    4. Re:Wow... by Anubis+IV · · Score: 2

      Not sure what they're hoping for. They've become a running gag around my workplace, what with us each getting contacted by Amazon recruiters every few weeks. The requests get trashed without further consideration by the vast majority of us, since none of us have heard good things about working at Amazon. After hearing about an MBA hiring spree, I suspect that even fewer of us would be inclined to join their ranks.

    5. Re:Wow... by avandesande · · Score: 1

      Couldn't they have 50k people take orders on the phone and write down the orders on paper pads? Why the website?

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    6. Re:Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I used to joke about Amazon too until they doubled my salary at what I thought was the peak of my career. Now I cry under my desk and wipe the tears away with hundred dollar bills. Come join the dark side!

    7. Re:Wow... by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      Yeah that's why I was so surprised... I can't fathom what they're going to put all that labor towards.

    8. Re:Wow... by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      I've read articles about how bad the warehouses are, not seen anything about the white collar jobs. I guess if you want in management it would take less backstabbing than usual to climb the ladder with such rapid growth.

    9. Re:Wow... by pnutjam · · Score: 1

      He's crying because his salary doubled but his housing eats up 110% of that increase.

      --
      Cheap storage VM.
    10. Re:Wow... by Anubis+IV · · Score: 1

      There were several horror stories in the last year or two from folks in white collar positions.

      I remember hearing one in particular about the working conditions surrounding the team that developed the Amazon Fire Phone and how they were grossly mistreated by their management and the executives. And at the end of it all, a lot of them were simply laid off after putting in crazy hours and sacrificing a lot to make that product happen, because the product failed to take off in the market for reasons out of their control and the company didn’t want to have to bother trying to relocate that many devs internally all at once. But even prior to the layoffs, it sounded like a miserable place to be.

      I’ve heard similar stories from a number of their other product lines and divisions. More or less, it sounds like unless you’re on one of their core infrastructure teams with AWS, expect to get treated as a second-class citizen, work long hours, get paid about the same as you can get anywhere else, have a manager who doesn’t understand or respect you, and be treated as a disposal cog in a massive machine.

  3. Sell Your Stock by Thelasko · · Score: 5, Informative

    All of those MBA's are going to destroy the company with their "case studies" (i.e. anecdotes), buzzwords, and group-think.

    --
    One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    1. Re:Sell Your Stock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what kind of a person becomes MBA?

    2. Re:Sell Your Stock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My very first thought when seeing how many MBAs they are dragging in. Go MBA heavy and see how long you can keep ANY business running. Those fuckers could destroy god with ninny-brained schemes.

    3. Re:Sell Your Stock by Thelasko · · Score: 1

      What are they even going to do with all of those MBA's? A large company has use for maybe two dozen. They are all management, so they aren't producing product. By definition they will be overhead, which is bad for the bottom line. In theory, the return on investment for MBA's is improved efficiency. However, the diminishing return curve is very steep.

      Unless, Amazon is starting a business consulting division...

      --
      One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    4. Re:Sell Your Stock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They are all management, so they aren't producing product. By definition they will be overhead, which is bad for the bottom line.

      Haven't you noticed? Management is utterly incapable of determining that there's too much management, that management is inefficient, or that management have been making stupid fucking decisions.

      Management will cut the production workers until there's literally nobody left. Management will not cut management, not will it be capable of identifying that they are in the mess they made because of management.

      I wish I was joking, but in my experience management can be stupid, incompetent, and tone deaf ... and they'll continue to follow the same idiotic course.

    5. Re:Sell Your Stock by blindseer · · Score: 1

      what kind of a person becomes MBA?

      People that want to become managers. Most companies want to see managers that can demonstrate an ability to manage before getting promoted to management. This can be done with years in the business as a "non-management manager", such as a team leader, or with the MBA degree, usually both.

      The Master of Business Administration degree is a graduate program, so people will have a degree in something before they apply. There's the pure business types that give MBAs a bad name that know nothing but what they learned in business school, they know "business" but nothing of how the business they are in works. It seems to me that a large number of MBA graduates have degrees in engineering, sciences, medicine, law, and such that go to get an MBA to learn how to run a business on top of what they know of the industry that they are in. This trend, or perhaps need, for people that have technical knowledge and business knowledge is high enough that many schools offer programs that allow for people to get their MBA and other degree concurrently.

      The people studying for their MBA tend to be people that want to run their own business or wish to be managers in whatever company that hires them. There are many companies that simply will not hire someone into management unless they have that MBA on their CV. Even if not required for the position it can show management knowledge to get to a management position.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    6. Re:Sell Your Stock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most have a BA in Business, or in some liberal arts, i.e. they know nothing.
      Those that get a BA or BS in something practical might be better.... or worse if they have no actual experience using that BA/BS.
      Many of the MBAs that I have met are arrogant and worse than useless, they cause damage.

  4. MBA will hurt them and drive 100 hour work weeks by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    MBA will hurt them and drive 100 hour work weeks out of the tech team for 70K/year jobs bay area and 50-60K in the HQ 2 in a cheap to live area.

  5. Re:8==N=I=G==C=O=C=K==D ~~-_. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Make Balls Asinine"??

    What the hell is MBA

  6. Re:MBA will hurt them and drive 100 hour work week by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sentence much? wtf...

  7. What? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    They're recruiting a lot of people. Is that really disruption? I thought that meant doing something radically different and new.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re:What? by swb · · Score: 1

      Maybe it's their methods -- throw a ton of money at the top 25% of MBA candidates for internships and see what sticks. You gain a database of these people and presumably a fair percentage actually take the internship, so you get to test drive them, too.

      Do this for 5 years and you have a pretty good idea of who's worth a damn in senior leadership positions for the next 20 years.

    2. Re:What? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      I thought the big banks and management consultancies already did that for years.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    3. Re:What? by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      They're recruiting a lot of people. Is that really disruption? I thought that meant doing something radically different and new.

      The article uses disruption in an inaccurate, buzzwordy way, perhaps it's some sort of subtle dig at MBA-speak?

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    4. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you're vastly overestimating the writer of TFA, to be honest. If he was going for laughs there should have been at least three jokes.

    5. Re:What? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      The submitter, or maybe the editors.

      The word doesn't appear in the linked foxbusiness.com article.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  8. Ray Kroc on MBAs by bangular · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I just watched The Founder a few weeks back. FWIW, Ray Kroc didn't have a fondness for MBAs and for awhile refused to hire them. I suppose this all depends on your opinion of Ray Kroc, but it's hard to deny his business successes he was able to obtain without them. Jeff Bezos himself graduated with EE and CS degrees.

    1. Re:Ray Kroc on MBAs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about Guy Kawasaki?

      https://guykawasaki.com/mba-in-a-page/

    2. Re:Ray Kroc on MBAs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But those aren't mutually exclusive. About half the MBA graduates at decent schools have STEM degrees (and usually the cream of STEM degrees).

    3. Re:Ray Kroc on MBAs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, this is my experience. I have an MBA from a very well regarded European school and a Master's Degree in a hard, numeric discipline. By far the most common degree type among my classmates was engineering. Many of them had degrees from other very well-regarded universities.

  9. Re:8==N=I=G==C=O=C=K==D ~~-_. by megamind · · Score: 1

    Why is it called "disrupting" when Amazon does it, but when I do something it is called "trolling"?

  10. Holy crap, are they screwed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    All told, Amazon has hired some 1,000 M.B.A.s

    Wow, all that managerial incompetence in one place should bring anything good at Amazon to a screeching halt.

    Just think, thousands of idiots straight out of school with no proven ability, no experience in any actual field of work, and all making the same moronic assumptions they all learned in school but otherwise know nothing about.

    Christ, send a fucking 1000 MBAs to China and you could probably cripple their entire economy. Because nobody know less about running a fucking business than some asshole with an MBA who has never had a real job or demonstrated any actual knowledge and skillset, but thinks he knows the solution to all of the problems.

    1. Re: Holy crap, are they screwed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      God has an MBA. Misplaced my citation source...

  11. Does nothing for state schools by edgedmurasame · · Score: 1

    Would be nice if this happened at less selective schools, versus the near-Ivy ones.

    --
    "Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
  12. Re:MBA will hurt them and drive 100 hour work week by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Poor Joe, he was too busy managing to learn how to form a coherent sentence.

  13. Plz to be better by Mystic+Pixel · · Score: 1

    I've been from coast to coast in search of a reasonable businessman, but they've all had condition MBA and are suffering for it.

    If you can cure that, I'm sure a cure for many other conditions can't be far behind. If you unleash all that monkey power onto all those keyboards, we'll surely have enough employment candidates to spice up all the markets - after all, I can count on one hand the number of MBAs I've met who can read an email, much less respond to it. A cure for that can only be to the benefit of society.