I'm a developer at a financial services company. I was content to be a developer and let the "business" folks define our stories and I'd just code them. I never understood the application I was building on a deep level--it was always superficial.
A friend convinced me to take a few MBA classes at a local university. The first class was accounting. It opened my eyes to understanding what our product and business owners were saying on my projects at work. Now I could understand the "why" behind the screens I was building! I asked questions that made them re-think their screen mockups. Since then I've graduated and taken classes in Finance, Leadership, Economics, and my favorite: Strategy.
I use more knowledge from my MBA in my coding career than the stuff I learned in my undergrad in Computer Engineering.
In my experience, an MBA doesn't make me a better "coder." But it has given me confidence and competence in my interactions with customers and the leadership team. I'm very glad I took the time and effort to pursue my MBA.
Most entrepreneurs need to spend a significant amount of time thinking about non-tech related objectives (e.g. sales, pricing, marketing, etc). Sure -- there are tons of publications out there teaching a technical entrepreneur the fundamentals of marketing and sales, but it is always specific to the author's/interviewee's own experience which happens to be unlike all others. Or, and perhaps more commonly, these publications tend to gloss over a really important fact (or facts): the author/interviewee had insane connections or a very rich uncle that allowed her to achieve success as an entrepreneur/businessperson without an MBA.
For those would-be entrepreneurs without insane connections, deep pockets, or a future unicorn in the making, the MBA provides an opportunity to build skills and knowledge important to getting a business off the ground and, more generally, teaches one how to operate in a world that revolves around money, not tech. Personally, my MBA gave way to a great new career path, higher salary, great connections, and -- most importantly -- a much more holistic view of the world.
In the end, I do believe that an MBA is not required for success. However, I disagree with Thiel and Sandberg drawing such a hard line in the sand. People looking to learn is never a useless act.
For context -- I picked up an EE degree in undergrad and eventually went on to grab an MBA.
FS is a bit of a special circumstance -- you are expected to understand complex financial instruments well enough to write code around them, so a background in investment finance is almost required. There are few places to learn about investment finance outside of an MBA, so it's almost a requirement.
And I can understand what Sandberg is saying -- it's definitely not an explicit requirement; some people are great engineers and have excellent soft skills and can play that up into management. They can play the politics game well, and likely had role models who taught them the rules of the game.
But for myself, an MBA was absolutely necessary. I wasn't ignorant about how to run a business, but I was completely unprepared for how corporate politics work. There are some things you can learn by trial and error, but the complex dance between operations, product, sales, and finance is something I didn't even fully understand until I was working post-MBA.
Can I offer a different point of view? I think that the situation you were in would have benefitted from any effort to learn the other aspects of the business. Going to b-school to do so was just one path. Alternatively you could have sought out someone in the business and asked them for help on learning the other part of the business. Its not universal but I've never met someone who wouldn't help me learn the business better if it helped me to provide a better product.
I think the point that Sandberg might have been making was there are some good fundamentals learned in going to business school, however, in tech we move so fast that the education is diluted.
I'd also say that in tech we are pre-disposed to attract a lot of self-educated/self-starter types, those folks seem to take a modular approach where if they are deficient in some piece of information they go out and learn it.
There are different types of learning. It can be easily said everything a person learns in school can just be learned by reading a book outside of school. However, some people learn better by lecture and other people by simply reading on their own.
There was also a movement in the 90s with secondary education where teachers tried multidisciplinary education -- I don't follow these things so it might still be a thing now. The idea is students are more engaged and retain information when instead of being taught math and history separately, they are taught the history of Fibonacci as the same time they are taught about Western Civ and the dark ages of math in science in Europe. Another example is integrating metal shop with physics no becoming energy shop.
What OP has discovered is that what might have been boring and inconsequential to his life now has become important to the task at hand.
Absolutely true. Quoting Justine Musk (Elon's ex-wife, I think):
"...Choose one thing and become a master of it. Choose a second thing and become a master of that. When you become a master of two worlds (say, engineering and business), you can bring them together in a way that will a) introduce hot ideas to each other, so they can have idea sex and make idea babies that no one has seen before and b) create a competitive advantage because you can move between worlds, speak both languages, connect the tribes, mash the elements to spark fresh creative insight until you wake up with the epiphany that changes your life."
That's also what Steve Jobs said in his commencement speech. He talked about the DTP industry not existing before the Mac, but by adding greatly designed fonts to the system a whole new market was created. And Steve got the fonts idea back from his college years, when he followed a calligraphy class at Reed college [0].
Yes, I do...but I haven't only worked in the financial industry. I still think an understanding of how business leaders think is helpful in any industry.
"Tech Industry" is pretty broad...Facebook does advertising, marketing, and communication....all areas that benefit from an MBA.
I'm from South America, have a b.s. in computer science and worked in management consulting before going to business school. For the past few years, I've been working in tech and living with my family in the Bay area solely because of my MBA.
I'm not referring to the academic knowledge I gained, or the global mindset I now have, nor the network I built, which are all valuable. For internationals like myself, the MBA is a great opportunity to make a radical change in your career, as well as your personal life.
This has been my experience as well - getting a deeper, business insight into the applications that I was building for my customers.
It has also helped me in one more way - getting a feel and helping me understand why my own company behaved the way it did - including business strategy, sales dynamics as well as HR policies and practices.
Moi aussi. My original impetus for going to business school was the realisation that there was a lot I didn't know about running a business, strategy, marketing, business development, finance, cash flow planning, accounting, cap tables, negotiation and all the other little things that add up to a successful venture. I was a CTO at the time, and I was exposed to all this sort of stuff during interactions with the CEO, COO and other board members.
What I didn't realise until after I'd graduated was that having a better understanding of business would effectively make me a better product manager/designer. When you can combine an understanding of business with an understanding of technology, the whole is greater than the simple sum of its parts.
IMO, you can go a long way by picking up a few basic textbooks for whatever your coding. A basic understanding of terminology is really useful and takes far less time than going to class.
PS: If you have never looked into the topic an MBA has plenty of useful ideas. But, I find the cost / benefit of getting an MBA is a negative indicator.
For me, a lot of the learning came from interactions with my classmates. Instead of just reading (or being taught) the theory, you can discuss most of the subjects with someone who works in that field.
I would be interested to hear from you, and anybody else with similar experience, what were some of the most valuable courses you took. That is, for someone with no interest in pursuing an MBA but with the opportunity to take a course or two, what are the must-haves?
Finance, basic accounting, economics, and strategy. A lot of it boils down to thinking about cost/benefits all the time. A lot of these concepts are common on this HN board because it is entrepreneurship themed. Examples:
"Is it okay to build a cheap thing today, knowing the engineering sucks and it will be expensive to fix later?"
"Technology X is cool, what is the cost to switch? Short term, long term? Support costs? People costs? Are there savings? Are there strategic advantages?"
Core marketing, accounting, finance, and microeconomics. In more or less that order. Others include behavioral economics/decision theory--or at least read Ariely or Thaler's book. Other possibilities include organizational behavior, negotiation, pricing, business strategy. One general comment is that, if you're just looking at a few courses, you'll probably get more out of in-person courses that have case studies and/or group discussions, role playing, etc. and just read a book to cover more lecture-oriented material (like microeconomics usually is).
Understanding the fundamental concepts of, for instance, CAPM and free cash flow have been useful in my career. You also pick up some useful personal investing lessons.
In general, this class gives you insights into the decisions a CFO (and supporting team) is faced with -- e.g. is it better to invest in tech A or tech B or neither?
In my own personal career, I've had to make a case to Finance in order to build out a program and being able to talk-the-talk was helpful.
1. Accounting - It's the language of business. Like learning English before you become a pilot. This class helped me start asking deeper questions when meeting with business people.
2. Finance - Holy cow, the ability to put a value on cashflows and understand the cost of capital really opened my eyes to the big picture. I also use my Finance classes to help when deciding to take Job X or Job Y...
3. Strategy - My FAVORITE class of my MBA. It's helped me when a complex situation arises--I can objectively measure the different components of the problem and look for solutions.
4. Economics - Really impacted me to ignore the hype of the news. "CHINA WILL OVERTAKE THE US ECONOMY IN X YEARS" So what, it isn't a zero-sum game.
Accounting is really important, but if you have the basics getting to the point you can see though accounting tricks has limited value and takes a lot of work.
It's like an extreme version of the 80:20 rule. You can get some basic c functions to compile in a few hours, but seeing though the winner of an obfuscated c contest on your own might take years.
Just remember, your not a specialist and becoming one takes a lot more effort than a few MBA classes.
That all sounds good. But why not just grab a book and read. I recently read "Crossing the Chasm," and it was completely eye opening as I was able to reflect on mistakes I made in terms of early market development when I "started out."
To each his own, I guess. Perhaps I just don't like to glorify schools of any sort.
Grabbing a book and reading also works. The thing that a school gives is a standard curriculum so that a student doesn't miss concepts they may simply not know about.
I did things a bit opposite of who you are responding to though. In undergrad when I did my CS degree, I also did business classes on the side (economics is simply interesting to me). I ended up only a few classes away from an undergrad business degree when I graduated. Later I went back and got my MSc in CS.
The business knowledge I gained from those few classes early on has helped more than anything else in my career.
That's really interesting. I am like you were. I am a developer but all the decisions are done above my head. I don't feel like I don't understand the whys and I do have my own questions to why things were done the way they were and I have opinions on improvements. The problem is that that is not my job. The company wants business people to plan and developers to create - because that makes sense. Everyone's time is used for their strengths.
After you did your MBA, did you take up new responsibilities in work? Did you get compensated for being a more valuable member of the team?
Do you think it would be worthwhile for someone in my position to do an MBA considering I don't feel like you did?
> The problem is that that is not my job. The company wants business people to plan and developers to create - because that makes sense. Everyone's time is used for their strengths.
Why isn't it your job to ask questions and suggest better ways to do things? I'm not saying you should be contrarian, but in my experience the business owner welcomes suggestions for app improvements if done respectfully.
I had the illusion that I understood the business reasons, just because I was familiar with the terminology...but really, I didn't quite have the full picture.
> After you did your MBA, did you take up new responsibilities in work?
Actually, yes. Due to the confidence in my Accounting and Finance classes, I really started to stand out among my peers. It led to a promotion to a lead developer and then I was nominated for my company's "Emerging Leader" program (open to less than 2% of employees).
I have since parlayed it into a director of software development job at a small tech company. When I met with the founder and the management my MBA was a key reason why they offered me the salary I wanted. I get to sit in the management meetings and talk about marketing, pricing, hiring and team size. My Strategy class has given me a framework for focusing on our strengths. My Finance classes have given me an understanding of how to value different projects and their resulting cashflows. My Accounting classes have given me the ability to speak the language of business. My marketing classes have allowed me to talk about market segments and understand why the Marketing team is so insistent that we keep a brand message consistent throughout our products.
> Do you think it would be worthwhile for someone in my position to do an MBA considering I don't feel like you did?
I think I'd approach I'd ask myself the following questions:
* Do I keep quiet in meetings because I lack certainty or confidence about what the business people are saying?
* Do I have 4-6 hours a week for the next 2-3 years I can spend on class and coursework?
* Do I anticipate leading a software team someday or founding a company?
* Do I struggle to gain credibility with influential people?
* Do I think I'd like to teach at a community college or higher?
* Do I lack the motivation to read intentionally, forcing myself to really understand and absorb the information?
If you answer yes to 4 or more of these I think you could benefit from an MBA. I think you could get a lot of the knowledge by reading books from Drucker, Levinson, Carnegie, and Collins. I read a lot of these books too, before I started taking MBA classes. I had knowledge, but didn't have confidence (or a fuller understanding).
Sorry for the long-winded reply...hopefully it's helpful.
A friend convinced me to take a few MBA classes at a local university. The first class was accounting. It opened my eyes to understanding what our product and business owners were saying on my projects at work. Now I could understand the "why" behind the screens I was building! I asked questions that made them re-think their screen mockups. Since then I've graduated and taken classes in Finance, Leadership, Economics, and my favorite: Strategy.
I use more knowledge from my MBA in my coding career than the stuff I learned in my undergrad in Computer Engineering.
In my experience, an MBA doesn't make me a better "coder." But it has given me confidence and competence in my interactions with customers and the leadership team. I'm very glad I took the time and effort to pursue my MBA.