All this article is showing is that a large number of CEOs are swayed by hype and make poor decisions. What other poor decisions are they making all the time?
I am thoroughly convinced that the MBA is the most useless degree ever because when you look at how large businesses run so poorly, and are run by MBAs.
Are they? Rakuten is led by a business guru and the products are subpar unless they bought them. Also Japan has a huge deficit of native engineers, so most of the engineers at this kind of companies are Chinese and Indian.
Because the thing that makes American companies make money isn’t the production of better products its “business magic” that games stock prices. its been that way for a long time.
Look I want kids to grow up and be able to pursue any passion they want, but we have to ask serious real world questions here about Austerity and I am starting to think we should entirely cut MBA programs and in general business education.
I know that sounds extreme, but we have to focus on training kids on skills that will actually be productive, useful and lead to new breakthroughs. We clearly need to fund the hard stuff like art, music and theater or we are going to collapse as a society and continue to fall behind more competitive nations because we got distracted by fluff and empty ideologies masquerading as knowledge, MBAs being exhibit A.
The purpose of business school MBAs is nothing more than networking. These degrees cost a fortune, and that’s exactly the point: to bring opportunists together. I’m almost sure it’s next to impossible to fail this degree, because it’s not about knowledge at all, but merely about gaining entry into senior management.
Sort of, there are actually smart people who go there too. The kids with connections to the jobs pull smart kids with them and then use them as workhorses and basically claim all the glory from their work. Then you might get poached by someone willing to pay more who is less abusive.
I find it interesting how Sam Altman has the same continuous vocal fry Elizabeth Holmes used to have. It’s infuriating how well a cheap impression of gravitas performs with investors.
Its definitive proof that we live in an anti-meritocratic society, that is ruled by nepotism and violent and dangerous sociopaths.
Yes, its violence if it goes through a complex system for the violence to happen, is done indirectly.
So yeah, our lives are ruled (and ruined) by utterly incompetent dangerous sociopaths, who will gleefully destroy the entire economy because… they like buzzwords and feeling like they are smart.
We either need to kill these people, or they will kill all of us, just give it a decade.
Every CEO I’ve ever worked for except one, has been a moron. And the scary thing is that these morons, have also been criminals. They of course didn’t view themselves as criminals, because what they did was “smart”, not crime.
Meanwhile, small family-owned businesses struggle so hard financially, but make miracles to stay afloat for decades, taking the most viable long-term decisions, despite the lack of options and resource. And these people often have no formal education in the area, just the survival instinct and the pressure of a family to feed.
Any bad decision that’s made by an exec is usually just met with nods and grins by the workers while they do what’s actually necessary and try only half heartedly to follow their edicts. Execs usually have no idea what a pilot program is and every decision they make is pure gold so why not roll it out to everybody at once.
But they can be made to look good on paper. That’s where it counts. At least for the people being paid to make those bad decisions and obfuscate it with “good” numbers.
One factor here is that they are all under pressure from their boards and investors not to miss the AI wave and get left behind. All companies are doing some level of AI theater. Some actually believe it. But it’s not like hundreds of CEOs all came to this judgment purely on their own, with no outside influences. It’s a mass craze.
Broken systems elevate psychopath leaders into positions of wealth and power, and people who want those things exploit the fastest path there by getting degrees who put you on that track.
By this MBA logic, do we close CompSci for the the poor code coming out of Microsoft, close Law Schools because social rights are being lost, engineering schoolings because infrastructure doesn’t meet current needs?
My point is to blame the CEOs and their shitty behaviour, not the schools that, to my knowledge, try to educate reasonable policy, law, ethics, HR, etc.
What school encourages ethical business practices? Most schools have a 1 credit hour class on business ethics, but really teach you legalism and how to avoid breaking the law. Nowhere are they teaching actual ethics in business
The point is we don’t need more MBAs, we need people educated in useful skills. Should every MBA program be closed? No probably not, but we definitely have way more than we need. Cutting funding for things like MBA scholarships and closing down the majority of those programs will go a long way towards moving the majority of potential future MBA students into useful programs. We need less managers and more engineers, fewer CEOs and more chemists, hell fewer analysts and more plumbers.
There are many problems with modern capitalism and even if we never handed out another MBA degree again that would not even remotely solve everything, but the MBAs are making the problem worse. It’s a minor thing but it’s an easy thing to do and it would make a difference small as it is.
I think organizing labor is a useful skill. I just think doing it to the sole benefit of “shareholder value” is what’s killing us. Is that liberal of me? I can’t imagine a society where work isn’t done by people and work needs some form of organization.
Sure it’s a useful skill but not one in significant demand. We have an absolute glut of MBAs and a desperate need for anything but an MBA so why are we paying people to get more MBAs?
All this article is showing is that a large number of CEOs are swayed by hype and make poor decisions. What other poor decisions are they making all the time?
I am thoroughly convinced that the MBA is the most useless degree ever because when you look at how large businesses run so poorly, and are run by MBAs.
Especially when being one of dual training, IT and business, it’s so obvious there’s a lot of bullshit.
Not resigning.
In Japan, engineeing companies are run by the engineers which I think is the better way.
Ill never understand why American companies insist on being led by business majors who know nothing and dont care about the product being built.
Are they? Rakuten is led by a business guru and the products are subpar unless they bought them. Also Japan has a huge deficit of native engineers, so most of the engineers at this kind of companies are Chinese and Indian.
i always thought the car makers and other manufacturers were engineed led. I admit i am no expert in modern Japanese business.
Line go up
Making money by shuffling money around.
Because the thing that makes American companies make money isn’t the production of better products its “business magic” that games stock prices. its been that way for a long time.
As I’ve always said, defund MBAs
Look I want kids to grow up and be able to pursue any passion they want, but we have to ask serious real world questions here about Austerity and I am starting to think we should entirely cut MBA programs and in general business education.
I know that sounds extreme, but we have to focus on training kids on skills that will actually be productive, useful and lead to new breakthroughs. We clearly need to fund the hard stuff like art, music and theater or we are going to collapse as a society and continue to fall behind more competitive nations because we got distracted by fluff and empty ideologies masquerading as knowledge, MBAs being exhibit A.
defund it in the universities and turn that resource to STEM which always anemic, unaccrediate them.
they run it like a PE firm.
The purpose of business school MBAs is nothing more than networking. These degrees cost a fortune, and that’s exactly the point: to bring opportunists together. I’m almost sure it’s next to impossible to fail this degree, because it’s not about knowledge at all, but merely about gaining entry into senior management.
Sort of, there are actually smart people who go there too. The kids with connections to the jobs pull smart kids with them and then use them as workhorses and basically claim all the glory from their work. Then you might get poached by someone willing to pay more who is less abusive.
See also: investment in Theranos.
These people are so easy to fucking scam with buzzwords and the right “look.”
I find it interesting how Sam Altman has the same continuous vocal fry Elizabeth Holmes used to have. It’s infuriating how well a cheap impression of gravitas performs with investors.
Ha, exactly, just like how Holmes dressed like Steve Jobs.
I mean… its worse than that.
Its definitive proof that we live in an anti-meritocratic society, that is ruled by nepotism and violent and dangerous sociopaths.
Yes, its violence if it goes through a complex system for the violence to happen, is done indirectly.
So yeah, our lives are ruled (and ruined) by utterly incompetent dangerous sociopaths, who will gleefully destroy the entire economy because… they like buzzwords and feeling like they are smart.
We either need to kill these people, or they will kill all of us, just give it a decade.
AI is the new “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”.
You’re either following the crowd or getting replaced by someone who will. Its insane
Every CEO I’ve ever worked for except one, has been a moron. And the scary thing is that these morons, have also been criminals. They of course didn’t view themselves as criminals, because what they did was “smart”, not crime.
Meanwhile, small family-owned businesses struggle so hard financially, but make miracles to stay afloat for decades, taking the most viable long-term decisions, despite the lack of options and resource. And these people often have no formal education in the area, just the survival instinct and the pressure of a family to feed.
Welcome to short term shareholder value economy. They will fuck the planet and the working class so that line go up 📈
Any bad decision that’s made by an exec is usually just met with nods and grins by the workers while they do what’s actually necessary and try only half heartedly to follow their edicts. Execs usually have no idea what a pilot program is and every decision they make is pure gold so why not roll it out to everybody at once.
But they can be made to look good on paper. That’s where it counts. At least for the people being paid to make those bad decisions and obfuscate it with “good” numbers.
deleted by creator
One factor here is that they are all under pressure from their boards and investors not to miss the AI wave and get left behind. All companies are doing some level of AI theater. Some actually believe it. But it’s not like hundreds of CEOs all came to this judgment purely on their own, with no outside influences. It’s a mass craze.
Broken systems elevate psychopath leaders into positions of wealth and power, and people who want those things exploit the fastest path there by getting degrees who put you on that track.
By this MBA logic, do we close CompSci for the the poor code coming out of Microsoft, close Law Schools because social rights are being lost, engineering schoolings because infrastructure doesn’t meet current needs?
My point is to blame the CEOs and their shitty behaviour, not the schools that, to my knowledge, try to educate reasonable policy, law, ethics, HR, etc.
Disclaimer: not an MBA
What school encourages ethical business practices? Most schools have a 1 credit hour class on business ethics, but really teach you legalism and how to avoid breaking the law. Nowhere are they teaching actual ethics in business
Here are some of the schools I know set the pace for Business education in the US. Feels like social responsibility is more than an afterthought.
Again, not defeding, “the MBAs” running companies. I’m defending the schools
https://www.hbs.edu/mba/academic-experience/curriculum
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/mba/why-stanford-mba
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/values/our-values
The point is we don’t need more MBAs, we need people educated in useful skills. Should every MBA program be closed? No probably not, but we definitely have way more than we need. Cutting funding for things like MBA scholarships and closing down the majority of those programs will go a long way towards moving the majority of potential future MBA students into useful programs. We need less managers and more engineers, fewer CEOs and more chemists, hell fewer analysts and more plumbers.
There are many problems with modern capitalism and even if we never handed out another MBA degree again that would not even remotely solve everything, but the MBAs are making the problem worse. It’s a minor thing but it’s an easy thing to do and it would make a difference small as it is.
I think organizing labor is a useful skill. I just think doing it to the sole benefit of “shareholder value” is what’s killing us. Is that liberal of me? I can’t imagine a society where work isn’t done by people and work needs some form of organization.
Sure it’s a useful skill but not one in significant demand. We have an absolute glut of MBAs and a desperate need for anything but an MBA so why are we paying people to get more MBAs?