[freemarketteddy]

A tech-nerd becoming a good businessman is not that common but we have seen many examples and we know its not that hard to do.(Take Eric Schmidt or Bill Gates for example).

Please give me ONE (I repeat ONE!) example of an MBA becoming a rockstar programmer....The fact there is possibly no one like that should give you a teeny tiny glimpse at the future!

[jleader]

I work with a guy with an MBA in statistics and operations management. I don't know if he's "rockstar" programmer, but he writes his own Perl and shell scripts and SQL queries, I've heard he's pretty skilled in SAS programming, and I've watched him dig into some Javascript to figure out exactly why a particular A/B test was giving funny results.

Never bet against the existence of outliers!

[Shorel]

To me statistics is very biased to the nerd side of the fence.

Show me an example with a marketing guy...

[freemarketteddy]

Let me clarify what I mean by "rockstar programmer"....A rockstar programmer is someone who is orders of magnitude more productive that the average programmer of his generation....Someone who can build technologies himself that can disrupt entire industries...Some notable examples in this category are Linus Torvalds,Mark Zuckerberg,Doug Cutting,Mark Andressen etc....Now show me someone in this category from a purely business school background!

I am not talking about the business people who want to dig into Javascript (Although I have a lot of respect for the guy you are talking about).I am talking about someone who can build a technology like javascript.

[dextorious]

Mark Zuckerberg?

How the hell does Zuckenberg belong to this category, with Linus and Doug Cutting?

[freemarketteddy]

well...I think creating a site like facebook in your dorm room as a college student and scaling it is significantly challenging (you are competing against myspace!)...but thats just my opinion!

But yeah I see what you are saying...Doug and Linus are pure technical problem solvers whereas Mark solved business and technical problems.

[geebee]

I know a guy who majored in econ and attended bschool. He got into finance, and started writing code for finance. He got so into coding that he left finance, worked for various startups and big sv corps as a serious dev, and eventually got another ms in engineering. He's a very rare type though, this is a very unusual path. So overall id agree with you, though there are a few exceptions.

[freemarketteddy]

I too agree with you....Your example does prove that it is possible from a finance background!...but I would still point out that your guy had a sound mathematical mind whereas most MBA's and "idea guys" run the opposite direction when they hear any advanced math.