I think most criticisms I have seen of MBAs is not of the degree itself, but of the associated costs and the amount of debt the program leaves you with.
I've seems criticism of the idea that an MBA makes you ready to manage anything, without any particular domain knowledge.
The part I find unsatisfactory about MBA training is that it seems to be two degrees fused at the hip. Some people pursue one because they want to work in finance, whether as traders or analysts or some sort of deal-makers. Others pursue one because they want to be managers or executives in industry, running companies that are responsible for a wide variety of products or services. It seem like these two tracks should be disentangled.
I'm glad you brought this point up, because in both cases it comes down to having the humility to understand your general skills aren't very useful without specialized knowledge.
I think software development is less guilty of this, because the usual refrain is "if they're good, they can learn the specific stuff on the job." So the industry (generalizing here) might not always hire for expertise, but it does clearly value having it long term.
On the other hand, MBA's were invented with the idea of "general management" as a career. Sometimes it works, often it doesn't. Even in the elite business schools I've spent time around, I don't often see a culture of valuing expertise. The MBA's I've met who did have domain/discipline expertise either already had it going into their MBA program, or specifically sought out optional classes for it.
All of that said, if you pay attention, MBA usually have a lot to offer in teaching soft skills. I've seen Harvard Business School's curriculum, and I genuinely believe that classes to teach communication and negotiation should be undergraduate core requirements rather than attached to an expensive secondary degree. I wouldn't have paid HBS's asking rate for that kind of training, but if I had that in undergrad, I would have been much more effective coming out of college.
I think software development is less guilty of this, because the usual refrain is "if they're good, they can learn the specific stuff on the job." So the industry (generalizing here) might not always hire for expertise, but it does clearly value having it long term.
I think this discounts how similar most of the code written at different companies is, the nuances determined by business rules that are established elsewhere in the org chart.
I think that depends on how you're looking at the problem. College hires, for example, don't usually come into the industry having clear Frontend/Backend differentiation, but they will probably pick one path (or have it picked for them) on the job.
On the topic of business rules though: I don't think it's just business rules. As engineers, we're much better at our jobs when we can internalize the customer mindset, and that takes time. I recently switched industries, and my ability to make architectural decisions is noticeably weaker because I don't have the long view of my problem domain yet. Some PM's like to think that they have that all covered (in my experience, that happens about 50-75% of the time), but even technical PM's don't spend that much time thinking about the architecture, so in my experience it still falls on the engineer to spend some time thinking about the what/why and not just the how.
I think that applies to MBA's too. Business often look pretty similar, but technical and industry expertise makes all the difference.
So true. I'm a data engineer but I have to understand the customer's problem so I end up getting trained on the specifics of certain engineering problems related to jet engines and I have to study technical manuals so that I know what parts and sensors are producing certain data and why under an array of conditions. I could get my job done without learning all that but it would slow everything down and I would generally be a pain in everyone's ass.
> I genuinely believe that classes to teach communication and negotiation should be undergraduate core requirements
It's generally hard to absorb the full value of classes like these in undergrad without having any real life experience so to speak. That's why the top MBAs require applicants to have at least 3+ years of a solid career to help them achieve the full value of the courses they will take
I assume it is still the case that most of the top programs strongly favor candidates with full-time work experience. (Both because they have more context and can share those experiences and context.)
I've often wondered this too. how can one be a master at something they have never actually done? and running a small online or mom and pop shop doesn't really count in most cases. MBA right after a bachelors seems silly to me.
I run an MBA admissions site on the side and did some analysis on this.
tl;dr if you are confident an MBA can create a step increase in annual comp of even $10k, the cost is more than covered over the remainder of your career.
Is that really the case for people in tech though - that they could get a step increase of over 10K by pursuing an MBA instead of getting experience at $latest_tech_fad?
After staying at one job for way too long 10 years ago, I’ve hopped jobs 4 times, pursuing that strategy (and learning about modern architecture) and have seen jumps of $7K, $10K, $25K, and $20K. Unless the market sours, I should be able to put together a resume and skillset to get another $25K bump as a consultant within the next 3 years.
Anecdote: was in software, went to top-10-ish MBA school, went back to software industry with higher salary and have not done very badly since. But was it higher than I would have been making in 2 years without going to school? Impossible to know. Is my subsequent trajectory steeper enough to make up for the costs? Impossible to know.
I do feel it’s nice to have that base business, accounting, finance, general management knowledge as a foundation to use to understand things, but is it $150k + $opportunity cost of 2 years worth of education? Not sure...
If you are spending $150K on an MBA, you are spending way too much. In Louisiana, LSU's Executive MBA costs under $60K including all books and meals during the program. If you go Southeastern Louisiana University, their Executive MBA program costs around $20K with the same things included. I went to Southeastern for mine, and I found it very useful in moving into the management chain inside of IT.
Then again, as someone above pointed out, I knew why I was getting an MBA. I can teach myself tech, but some of the business aspects are a pain to teach myself so I paid someone else to teach me those.
Yes, but from what others have said, if you are getting an MBA for the salary increase and not just to learn, getting an MBA from a non top tier school isn't really worth it if you are already in a high paying field.
In the parent's case, it probably made sense though. He was looking to get into management with an eMBA program with (I'm assuming) a school in the state that's probably well-represented at the company. A degree from a regional school is probably going to be less useful in another part of the country and/or for a less well-defined purpose.
I posted previously that I took all of the classes to get an MBA but ended up with slightly less than 3.0. I looked at the salary projections of just staying in tech and keeping my skills relevant and worrying about an MBA from a non top 25 school and it wasn’t worth worrying about the degree.
As I said in another post, I was an MBA dropout but I did learn a lot. I’m not sure how much that knowledge has helped me in my career, but it has helped me communicate with CxOs during the second part of my career without looking like a deer in headlights when they started talking about the business end of things.
Will you be building “business software” for enough of your career to make it worthwhile? I’ve had to learn enough about plenty of verticals over the years to build software. We hire/contract the experts if they don’t already work for us.
I think it’s more the opportunity cost potentially. Amount of lost income by not working for 2 years + can you get that $10k increase in salary by having 2 more years of experience
There are plenty of executive MBA and part time MBA programs from reputable schools (not just for profit and online schools) that would allow you to work and go to school. There are some that only meet on weekends.
My casual observation is that these programs are not taken as seriously (likely because the reduce time commitment is seen as less rigorous) and therefore the payback is more difficult to achieve.
> My casual observation is that these programs are not taken as seriously
In many schools there is no external difference between full time and part time (evening) MBA programs. You walk out the door of both programs with the exact same degree. Nobody outside the program will ever know which path you took to get the degree.
I will actually give more credit to the Executive programs because they require prior work experience (normally 5 years). People are much more likely to remember and be able to use the concepts they have learned in class if they can immediately apply them to real world situations that they have been in.
Depends on the school. If it is a nationally ranked school then it is very likely that on-premise and online versions are the same. You would have to research this for each school.
The one person I know that got an EMBA from a decent respected school is a manager at a FAANG. Total comp is somewhat higher than mine, but he is also on the west coast where the cost of living negates much of the difference and if I went into consultancy, it would negate all of the difference.
I think some people will be focusing on what benefit an MBA can bring to their salary, but I think others may look at it as a way to hedge against long-term obsolescence. It's a way to make the jump to management, architecture, and consultancy - especially in the case of larger organisations.
These roles are rightly challenged by many on HN since they aren't "true" technical architecture roles, for example. Even so, they do exist to support the businesses that create them until there is rationalisation during a recession when many of these roles are jettisoned.
You can do an executive MBA and also a lot of companies will pay back your tuition when they hire you. Or you can get a company to pay for it outright.
>>[...] also a lot of companies will pay back your tuition when they hire you.
By all general measures, company sponsorship in any significant manner is shrinking[1]. I believe the US employer education assistance tax credit is limited to around $5,250[2] per individual per year. Companies that will foot the entire bill for an executive MBA program seem to be few and far between.
This should be tempered with the (surely unquantifiable) negatives that come with continued employment at places that value credentials in this way. Often I've seen, though not in every case, that "step increase for MBA" type employers rarely sustain the type of merit-based increases that occur at places where merit is the only reason for the increases.
Is this from a fancy school? Most MBAs I know are working jobs that have nothing to do with their MBA, making less than $50,000. The only people who benefited from it are guys who did engineering + MBA.
You can say that about most degrees, though. I know plenty of advertising degrees who are waiting tables. I know plenty of CS grads who are stocking shelves. I know mechanical engineers who deliver pizza. I know people with just high school diplomas who make six figures in the Midwest (a lot of money for a cheap area of the country).
No degree guarantees you a job, there's always work and ambition and a lot of luck and timing that factor into anyone's career success.
I'm not sure if it's to the same degree as law degrees, but there's definitely a strong element of credential value from top schools. The conventional wisdom for law degrees is that, if you can't get into a top school, most people shouldn't bother. That's probably at least somewhat true with MBAs as well.
Many people go to law school for reasons other than working in BigLaw wasting their lives away in an office. For example, a great number of lawyers (and budding law school students) work for (or want to work for) for smaller firms, or in-house at companies, or at non-profits, and go home in the evenings to their friends and families.
But yes, if you plan to go to law school solely because you want to make money, it's not worth it unless you go to a top school or graduate at the literal top of your class.
People making crazy 20+ million a year salaries boosts the average quite a bit. But, yea the median change in salary is much worse than the average change in salary.
This analysis overlooks what losing financial freedom for 5-10 years in the most productive part of your life does to you. Ie even if you make the money back later, if there are 5-10 years where your decisions are constrained then you never really make that back.
The part I find unsatisfactory about MBA training is that it seems to be two degrees fused at the hip. Some people pursue one because they want to work in finance, whether as traders or analysts or some sort of deal-makers. Others pursue one because they want to be managers or executives in industry, running companies that are responsible for a wide variety of products or services. It seem like these two tracks should be disentangled.