[amateurpolymath]

I've taught many MBAs and I can attest to their disappointing analytical skills. However, a company like Amazon already has plenty of analytically skilled employees. What they need from the MBAs are their management skills. I suspect Amazon is particularly targeting those MBAs who have experience with operations and supply chain management experience. At Amazon's scale, even a small reduction in costs is worth the cost of hiring all these MBAs.

[mathattack]

I would take the other side of this. Not all MBAs have good analytical skills, but I have seen almost no non-technical non-MBAs have good analytical skills. They come with many other things, but if they lack a technical or business background, the odds that they could product a business model is very tiny.

I'd say that the MBA is a good predictor in the absence of a technical degree, but you still have to do a lot of screening post-MBA.