Have American Businesses Been Stranded By the MBAs? 487
theodp writes "In his new book, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business, legendary car-guy Bob Lutz says to get the U.S. economy growing again, we need to fire the MBAs and let engineers run the show. The auto industry, writes TIME's Rana Foroohar, is actually a terrific proxy for a trend toward short-term, myopically balance-sheet-driven management that has infected American business. In the first half of the 20th century, industrial giants like Ford, GE, AT&T and others used new technologies to create the best possible products and services with the idea that if you build it better, the customers will come. But by the late '70s, if-you-can-measure-it-you-can-manage-it MBAs were flourishing, and engineers were relegated to the geek back rooms. 'Shoemakers should be run by shoe guys,' argues Lutz, 'and software firms by software guys.' Learning that China plans to open 40 new graduate schools of business in the next few years, Lutz quipped, 'That's the best news I've heard in years.'"
In other words... (Score:5, Funny)
David Brin put it like this in the early '90s:
"Want to help Russia and America at the same time?
Send half our lawyers (freedom in both countries will go up.)
Send half our MBAs (both our economy and theirs will boom.)
And send half of NASA's managers (America gets a great space program and Russia some good farm labor.)"
If you let the engineers run the show... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:You need different kinds of people (Score:3, Funny)
It's been my experience that most geeks have people skills.
The only geeks I've ever run into that don't have people skills are self important idiots that consider themselves artists, rather than producers, that can't be bothered with trivial things like writing competent documentation, or tracking their time honestly. Dangerous notions like, "Good code speaks for itself, so you don't need comments" or "Would you cost estimate the Mona Lisa?" come from this camp.
Everybody else can take an abstract idea, and communicate it in a way that's appropriate for their audience, at the very least.
Geeks with talent have people skills, can tell a client what they want or need, and can communicate it all with a product that just works.
This isn't difficult stuff to understand. If any of these basic concepts are too much for you, maybe you're in the wrong business.
Several questions :
1. Do you consider yourself a geek with people skills? If you answer yes, please proceed to question 1a.
1a. Could you picture a world where your post is construed by others to be lacking in social skills? If yes, please proceed to question 1b.
1b. If you could picture a world where your post comes across as lacking social correctness, do you think that posting it with the intent to be rude is thematically irrelevant from your original answer? If yes, please proceed to question 1c.
1c. Does it really matter if I've constructed my list items with bad "naming" skills?
If you answered NO to any of these questions, don't worry about it. No one cares about your opinion.
If you answered YES to any of these questions, don't worry about that either. No one cares about your opinion in that case either.
Also speaking as an MBA (Score:4, Funny)
I seriously doubt that MBA managers make these kinds of efforts when they take charge of companies. The dominant ethos of that profession appears to be to run a company by the numbers just long enough to move on to a higher paid position.
That's pretty much it. That's how the corporate American works and we're taught accordingly.
That's not how I was taught at a public university ranked in the top 35 in the US. As matter of fact in some of our case studies the take away was that the perspective you offer was partly responsible for failure.
Engineers who want to know the business end of things this is what you study: Basic Accounting, Economics: basics of Macro and Micro, Managerial accounting (reports: balance sheet, income statement, cash flows!!! ), Finance: although the manual for the HP 12C covers it all ...
Uh, no. In my classes we were also taught to look for the financial gimmicks and tricks sometimes used to inflate financial reports. When found we were told to stay away from such companies. Well one professor actually suggested otherwise, he was of the opinion that one should wait for that company's failure, buy it cheap, discard the management and turn it around. He thought rehabilitating a mismanaged company with otherwise good products can be quite lucrative.
... Biz law - contracts. Pretty much the first semester of B school is all you really need. That's all. everything else is fluff ...
I call BS. Claiming the above is a semester demonstrates a tendency towards *extreme* exaggeration, it lowers your credibility. Also other typical classes are not fluff. Statistics: A quite different class from the one I had that was part of scientific/engineering program. Organization Behavior: While often joked about the case studies also showed company failures because management blew off the issues raised in this class, more below. Negotiations: often an elective but also considered one of the most important classes by those who take it. Global Business: Obviously critical today, and if someone thinks it is about outsourcing then that person obviously hasn't taken such a class. Marketing: As an arrogant engineer expecting this to all be snake oil I loved learning how ignorant I was. Marketing can be highly scientifically and mathematically based. Info Tech: Again, software types like myself are often terribly mistaken as to what this class is about. Stategy: Do you seriously consider this topic fluff? The case studies we read suggest otherwise. Entrepreneurship: Another elective rather than a core class but for many its a critical class, again something you would consider fluff?
And as far as the group behavior/personal dynamics class goes, we were taught that "sensitivity training" was the solution for all human resource problems - it was all basic psych and sociology and lots of buzz words. Let's put it this way, if you don't have any social skills, getting personal coaching will do much more for you than those fluff classes.
My organizational behavior class was quite different. This topic surfaced in many other classes and in various case studies neglect in the OB area was one of the factors leading to team or company failure. It also helped me to see events over my career in a different light. Teaching social skills is not what OB is about. As a matter of fact that sort of stuff was done outside of class, for example a club focused on public speaking.
There! Now you won't waste 2+ years and $40K+ on a big piece of toilet paper. Want a Masters Degree for ego, promotion, or whatever? Get it in something you'll enjoy.
I have a MS CS and an MBA. The MS CS was largely more of the same, taking many of the BS CS classes a bit further. There were some interesting electives and doing some research in one of these was fun. However unless you
Re:How Many Times Have You... (Score:3, Funny)
said, "Charge me a buck more and make this part out of metal instead of fucking plastic" or words to that effect?
Pick the product, I mean it doesn't matter what it is anything thing from your car, house, cell phone, kids bicycle, toilet paper, laptop pick the damn product.
You had me until toilet paper. Metal toilet paper -- a very bad idea.
Given the choice of metal or plastic...plastic just sounds softer.