[sandspar]

I've lately been seeing a more frequent use of "business students" and "MBAs" as a slur. It's disappointing to see it on Hacker News as well. Slurring people with terms like "Karens" and "boomers" and "MBAs" seems better suited to low discourse places like Reddit. I had thought that Hacker News was more fair.

Also, the post itself seems born of a dark worldview. A single paragraph contains the following words: narrative, dead, scary, insecure, problematic.

It depicts an author who has a dark worldview and who uses dehumanizing slurs for other people. I find it disturbing.

[anotherhue]

You're not wrong, but I think you're not acknowledging the underlying truth to these claims.

By and large, the desire to obtain an MBA and move into a management-consultancy/thought-leadership type role is directly connected to a preference to avoid doing hard, meaningful work and preferring instead to operate one layer above a grift.

People who choose this path are explicitly saying they wish to operate as your superior, and your work product is theirs to dispense with as their vision decrees.

I doubt there's any new human behaviour at play here, but it does seem to be more encouraged/accepted to be a quasi-parasite than it used to be. On the flip side they're not wrong, hard work doesn't pay.

Hate the game?

[sandspar]

Good point, when I think of business leaders like Jack Welch, "avoidance of hard, meaningful work" is my next thought.

Different people are specialized for different things. Do you think Jack Welch would have helped the world more if he had worked as a backend developer at GE, rather than as its CEO?

Being a leader is just a role on the team, same as any other. Somebody has to play quarterback. And the guys who play quarterback are a better fit for that role than anyone else on the team.

[charleslmunger]

>Do you think Jack Welch would have helped the world more if he had worked as a backend developer at GE, rather than as its CEO?

What he did with GE's reported earnings could be considered fraud, and those cooked books are what made him famous among executives.

If you haven't read "Lights Out", I encourage you to check it out.

As it relates to the parent comment, the issue isn't Jack Welch specifically, but people trying to attain his success. The same thing could be said about Steve Jobs - his results are undeniable, but there's a group who see his success and think that it comes from what many would consider flaws rather than strengths, and emulate those. The people subjected to this type of leadership get all the negatives but without creating world changing products or enjoying unparalleled business success, and are reasonably resentful.

[mafuyu]

Jack Welch is kind of a poor example to reach for, isn’t it? In my view, his financialization of GE was very harmful, so yes, I think he would have helped the world more if he did literally anything else.

[jordanb]

Are we talking about this Jack Welch? https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Broke-Capitalism-America_and/...

[nunez]

> By and large, the desire to obtain an MBA and move into a management-consultancy/thought-leadership type role is directly connected to a preference to avoid doing hard, meaningful work and preferring instead to operate one layer above a grift.

or it's an answer to a desire for non-engineers to make more money, which these programs definitely open doors to.

[BobaFloutist]

A "Karen": A woman I don't like.

A "boomer": Someone older than me I don't like.

MBA: Management that's pissing me off.

Can you see why these aren't really equivalent?

[P_I_Staker]

boomer isn't either. there's legit critiques of that generations mindset.

even karen was supposed to mean an entitled white lady that's mean to service worker.

I don't love the broad use of the term and just using it to bully women, or calling people boomers when they don't even subscribe to "boomer thought".

[red-iron-pine]

everyone gets old. boomers didnt choose when they were born, and they can't change that. same for a lot of things like skin color.

MBAs required a lot of choices, on-going, regular choices, to get that degree. conscious choices, that cost non-trivial amounts of money. you chose to be there, and you can suck it up and take (some often deserved) flak for it.