[FirmwareBurner]

>Maybe the problem is the MBAs and letting them run your company?

The vast majority of companies in the world are run by MBAs. Welcome to the club.

SV companies were an exception to this rule for a short time in history since tech moved faster than the dinosaurs in suits could comprehend or regulate, so it made sense to put engineers in charge to innovate quickly. Having zero interest rate money also helped a lot.

But now that the tech market has matured and consolidated, it's becoming like all the other "uncool" traditional industries, run by MBAs. Except unlike those old traditional industries, there's no credential barrier to entry or unions to protect them, for better and worse.

[stockresearcher]

HP became the company that everyone admired and played a significant role in shaping SV by hiring fresh engineering grads from around the country and then paying for them to take nights and weekends MBA classes at Stanford while they worked during the day (you can read about it in Dave Packard’s autobiography).

It was then torn apart and turned into a joke by a different set of MBAs. So… perhaps it is a little more complicated than just having an MBA

[FirmwareBurner]

You answered your own question. HP took engineers and taught them how to be MBAs, while companies are ruined by career MBAs who were never engineers and were taught in school to see engineering as a cost center that must always be reduced to the lowest bidder.

[stockresearcher]

Nadella was a full-time engineer at Sun while getting his part-time MBA ;)