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.'"
Lutz is dead wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Most engineers know next to nothing about marketing and sales... to the degree that they actually despise interacting with customers. You can have the best product in the world, but if no one knows about it, your business will fail. Consistently in this world, inferior products with better marketing win over superior products. You have to know how to get your name out there, and how to get people to buy your stuff.
Lutz is partially wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree your average engineer has zero business skills, but moving them to the back room and having MBAs run the show is still bad.
Get rid of the MBAs and let the engineers have business input, but not run front office.
Oh, and get rid of the lawyers, they are even worse than an MBA.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't read the article, but the summary sure makes it sound to me it's more of a "a guy who KNOWS cars" should be in charge of a car company (CEO, President, something along those lines) vs someone who doesn't have a clue about cars. It's not that you'd get rid of the sales, marketing, HR and other teams, just that a HR person wouldn't be cailling all the shots.. someone who knows cars would be.
And I agree 100%. I've worked in a variety of business sectors over my years (some part time fillers during int
Lawyers (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, and get rid of the lawyers, they are even worse than an MBA.
Lawyers are risk management. Getting rid of them is getting rid of insurance--opening yourself up to major downside risk in everything from employment discrimination to your lease to the agreements you make with your clients. Effectively, it's a transaction cost of doing business.
Engineers tend to intuitively dislike lawyers because they seem to make things less efficient--transaction costs do that. When everything goes well, the lawyer was basically an expensive insurance policy that you never collected on. But when things go badly, a good lawyer can make the difference between riches and insolvency. Even having good agreements drafted can discourage people from suing you. Putting together a new corporate form can easily save millions, for example.
Sometimes a lawyer does too much--they effectively purchase too much insurance, spending far more to achieve additional downside protection that is not worth the expenditure. Think of it like a corollary to Amdahl's law. In these cases, good lawyers can (Depending on a client's preference and the specific trade-off) advise you about the relative costs and downside risks, or make some of these decisions using his or her own judgment.
Granted, there are a lot of fundamental problems with the legal system--good tort reform for everyone might be a better solution than limited liability conditional on legal forms, for example--but it also greatly benefits business (e.g. agreements are enforceable), so legal expenses are a cost of doing business well.
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed.
Companies need lawyers. Companies need accountants. Companies need sales people. Companies need marketing. And, obviously, companies need people who actually make the thing they're selling.
The lawyer department should be headed by a lawyer, the accounting department should be headed by an accountant, the sale department should headed by a salesman, the marketing department should be run by a marketeer (I hope that word catches on.), the 'build the stuff' department should be run by someone who know
Re:Lutz is dead wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Most engineers know next to nothing about marketing and sales...
Conversely, most marketing types know next to nothing about proper engineering design.
And this book isn't about a 'Marketing vs. Engineering' conflict in the first place. It's about the bean counters who wedge themselves in the middle of everything.
It's about 'cost reduction engineering' which is where purchasing gets involved in product engineering. Mature products exist, but 'cost can be driven out of them' by degrading the materials used for their construction.
To an MBA, the fact that a product lasts on average 2 years beyond it's warranty period is a problem to be solved.
It's also all about Taylorism taken to it's furthest degree. In the vision of the MBA dudes, everybody within a company is an expendable plug-in component. Company policy is that Work Instructions must be written, and followed for each task. Once the complete set of work instructions has been captured, the whole 'Employee Expertise' of the company is captured into a file cabinet. They can then put the cabinet on a skid and move it anywhere in the world. That's how those people think. High performing employees with unique skills are a problem, a company liability, to that form of management.
Re:Lutz is dead wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about the bean counters who wedge themselves in the middle of everything.
The word to google for here is intermediation. The opposite, disintermediation, has a tolerable wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disintermediation [wikipedia.org]
The problem is people understand what it means WRT obscure corners of the banking industry or supply chain, but do not realize it is a general business management topic, applicable to almost all organizations and systems.
Re: (Score:3)
ah no. Its not about the 'bean counters' as they do a very good job counting beans and distributing them about - every business needs a good accounts department. There's also a lot to be said about running a business well, ensuring things like your production costs don't swamp the business and there's enough left in the pot to handle some lean years when you have the usual troughs in sales.
No, the problem is the 'management' who only count the beans they can get their hands on to the detriment of everything
Re:Lutz is dead wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
MBAs are useful, but not in leadership roles. Give the top jobs to engineers who understand what their company is building, and have competent accountants and marketers working as advisers to the engineers. (And no, I'm not an engineer looking out for number one. I'm actually an accounting student.)
Re:Lutz is dead wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Agree. Putting the engineers in charge would just lead to gold-plating, as the reward for engineers is a "job well done" rather than maximizing profits.
The problem with MBA's isn't that they maximize profits, it's that they maximize next quarter's profits. And that isn't the MBA's fault -- it's usually the fault of being a publicly traded corporation, which leads to separation of ownership and control [findlaw.com].
Just as anti-corporatists bemoan the immortality and geographical reach of corporations, to add to that it is worth considering limiting the number of owners of a corporation and perhaps also setting a minimum period of ownership.
Re: (Score:3)
the reward for engineers is a "job well done" rather than maximizing profits
It really bothers me that maximizing profits is the goal of publicly traded corporations. With privately owned companies it can be a combination of healthy profits and a job-well-done. With public companies things have become so short sighted; it's all about each shareholder "getting theirs".
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with business isn't that they try to maximize profits. After all, that's why we work. To get more out of something than we put in. Most "sick" companies' problem is that they aren't focused enough on profits, but instead on other more internal distractions. They get bogged down on feeding various systems and maintaining power-holds and on cheating the main business to extract someth
Re: (Score:3)
to add to that it is worth considering limiting the number of owners of a corporation and perhaps also setting a minimum period of ownership.
That's what I've been saying for quite some time, at least the minimum period of ownership.
I used to think the best way would be to have literally that, where you can only sell stock after six months...
Companies (usually) have quarterly reports. What should happen is that, about a week after each quarterly report, is 'stock day'.
Re: (Score:3)
I count my own numbers, OK, here they are:
sugar [indexmundi.com] Dec 2003: 20.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 36.97 cents/pound, price up by over 81%
Beef [indexmundi.com] Dec 2003: 105.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 193.00 cents/pound, price up by over 83%
Barley [indexmundi.com] Dec 2003: 100.77 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 208.70 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 107%
Rice [indexmundi.com] Dec 2003: 197.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 500.57 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 154%
Cocoa Beans [indexmundi.com] Dec 2003: 1,646.58 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 3,113.52 USD/Metric Ton
Re:Lutz is dead wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Most engineers know next to nothing about marketing and sales... to the degree that they actually despise interacting with customers. You can have the best product in the world, but if no one knows about it, your business will fail. Consistently in this world, inferior products with better marketing win over superior products. You have to know how to get your name out there, and how to get people to buy your stuff.
You're absolutely correct. Most engineers want to focus on ... well, engineering. Once in a while, you get an engineer with good business skills, and there's your industry leader.
Stocks, politics, money, marketing, sales... those are all critical things in any business. The argument isn't that an engineer should be put in charge of all of those; it's that the priorities, direction, and approach a technical company makes should be entirely governed by a (suitable) technologist. They will obviously delegate to specialists as-needed.
Re:Lutz is dead wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I get uncomfortable when people make assertions using words like "most". I've worked with engineers (both brilliant and mediocre) who are the worst of the worst when it comes to social skills, and I've worked with some who made it through engineering school with a paltry 3.0 and are a blast as people. Some of the most well compensated engineers I know of are sales engineers working in areas like biomedical equipment and robotics (before anybody trounces out the IT stereotype). There *are* people who can do both; I know a lot of them. I know one kid in aerospace is who very gregarious, walked into a new job, solved a vibration problem on a jet engine within his first year, and ended up with his masters (aerospace engineering) paid for by the company. He worked as an engineer for five more years, they sent him back for an MBA, and now he runs a department. Bottom line is, he's geeky, smart on both interpersonal and quantitative matters, has walked the walk, and will be CEO material by the time he's 40.
In my line of work (yes, one of the legions of software drones) I'm a generalist who writes code and takes care of some other technical issues. When my organization needs to send out a technical liaison they send me, because I can grok the tech stuff (oh noes, he knows what Big-O is and can profile! LOL), but I know how to look good in a suit (not a good looking lad, but keeping yourself in shape along with a trip to a tailor makes all the difference), can speak publicly without issue, and I know how to generally not piss people off. There are scads of people here on Slashdot (and a few where I work) who can code rings around me, and that's fine. At the end of the day I can play both sides of the card.
The bottom line is: there are people with both skill sets, and it's my hypothesis that they're actively excluded by MBA types from managerial roles in many cases because they are a threat. In addition, boards want profit, so those that show quarter-to-quarter myopia get the nod.
This whole thing reminds me of a video I saw once of a smokin' hot female Phd who said "you know, I can make this widget last four times as long if they'd let me add 10% to the price".. of course that didn't happen. Said company has a mediocre reputation in its sector as a result.
Re:Lutz is dead wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
By "looking good" I meant having enough social intelligence to know how to dress and when, and maybe enough self-respect to slog out a couple of km on the treadmill whilst denying yourself Cheetohs. If you're managing people you need to have credibility on multiple fronts, and if you can't keep your own shit together then you have none. That's why I love the USMC: poseurs need not apply (wished I'd have served with them instead of the army).
If you're that disconnected with respect to professional dress, go the cheap route and run over to Brooks Brothers and find one of their people on the floor and say "Help! I'm a great engineer but walking-talking business fashion faux-pas!" and they'll generally hook you up. I know engineers who are incredibly talented but yet "can't be bothered" with tying a tie. Guess what: not all of us are geeks, and the people with the purse strings often take note.
In addition, I take it you've never been to Europe or Japan. Try not dressing the part over there as a manager and see where that gets you.
Re:Lutz is dead wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
In addition, I take it you've never been to Europe or Japan. Try not dressing the part over there as a manager and see where that gets you.
So true. An acquintance of mine went to Japan and had to get new businesscards, because even though he was very senior, it didn't show on the businesscard. He never thought his title was very important - after all, everyone knew him, right? Well, the Japanese managers were insulted that his department had chosen to send someone with apparently medior rank to meet with senior management. Until he showed his new cards and said there had been a misunderstanding, then it was fine.
In Europe, if you don't dress smartly (and that's not with a Hawaiian shirt and sneakers) you get laughed at. Mostly behind your back, but in Holland, probably right in your face. You won't get taken as serious as someone with a suit. Which is exactly the reason why as a freelancer, I make a point of wearing a nice suit and a tie. I've experimented with this a bit - going to meetings for the same company with a suit, then later without one. Makes a big difference in how people regard your opinions. Oh, and this was with technical people - with marketing/manager types the reaction is more subtle but still there.
So yes: appearances matter. An a-social geek (like I was, when younger) would say that others should adapt and gets ignored, even when what he says is the best option. A wise geek just wears a tie and gets his results he wants.
Re:Lutz is dead right (Score:4, Insightful)
Most engineers know next to nothing about marketing and sales... to the degree that they actually despise interacting with customers. You can have the best product in the world, but if no one knows about it, your business will fail.
Which is true and important and entirely beside the point. MBAs aren't about marketing. They hire people for that. MBAs are all about managing, not marketing. MBAs are the guys who export American manufacturing jobs to the Third World, the guys who cook the books to pump up their employer's apparent profitability enough to raise the stock price again this quarter, the guys who, with apologies to Oscar Wilde, "know the price of everything and the value of nothing." They're the guys who have spent the last 30 years or so systematically dismantling America's industrial base while simultaneously enriching themselves. They nearly destroyed the world's economy three years ago, and yet, mysteriously enough, they're still in charge of basically everything today.
They are the people to whom Santayana was referring, when he warned about repeating the past's mistakes. They are our leaders.
May Chthulu have mercy on our souls.
Re: (Score:3)
I has nothing to do with a degree (Score:2)
But with the person, his/her creativity, technical vision, soft skills, etc
"If you can measure you can manage" is something a geek could say. And many say it and do it (with other words, and in similar situations)
In a related note, both Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie are geeks.
Geeks created all those mp3 players that were forgotten in favor of iPod.
Re: (Score:2)
A little secret: a lot of geeks (very talented ones at that) made the iPod.
Good managers are good managers (Score:2)
I dunno about MBAs but (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
A lot of that has to do with the quarterly reports that go to Wall Street. The stock prices of high price to earnings ratio companies are mercilessly punished on the stock market if they put out a bad quarterly report, and many types of mutual funds that actively trade stocks depend on rapid trend following so they too are punished when one of their holdings does poorly.
CEO wealth is heavily tied to their stock option values, and with the tenure of many CEOs being relatively short it makes for a very short
Have American Businesses Been Stranded By the MBAs (Score:5, Informative)
Hewlett Packard (Score:5, Informative)
HP is a great example of a company founded by engineers and later ran in to the ground by MBAs.
Re:Hewlett Packard (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. They had a great model, "The HP Way", which was based on the way the founders like to treat people and be treated. Bill and Dave were both engineers and built the company up to be a major international by encouraging everyone in the company to both co-operate and work for self-improvement - exactly as they had done themselves. They recognised the importance of their management in knowing the product field they were involved in and understanding the culture of creativity and job security needed for long term success. The company's slide began when they started to appoint to senior positions from outside the company - and outside the engineering field - resulting in the dilution of the HP ethic and outsourcing the engineering and manufacturing functions which had driven their innovation and growth historically. Sadly this has happened with so many western companies that we have a deficit of home-grown talent in anything other than managerialism (of which we have a surfeit). Sadly, "management" has been the real growth business of the last 30 years. The Chinese are welcome to all the MBA graduates they want.
Re:Hewlett Packard (Score:4, Interesting)
HP is a great example of a company founded by engineers and later ran in to the ground by MBAs.
I think IBM is another case study in the making (again).
IBM began as a marketing-focused company (very early) and as it moved into the computer age acquired a strong (as in world-leading) engineering component while maintaining the market focus. Through the 70s and 80s, with the strong leadership of the Watsons gone, the market and engineering focus was replaced by bean counter optimization because IBM owned an unshakable monopoly and it was the most effective way to exploit that monopoly. The combination of (primarily) the PC revolution and (to a lesser degree) anti-trust litigation broke that monopoly and left IBM drowning in red ink.
Louis Gerstner came in and restored IBMs customer focus, increased investment in engineering and built a capable business & engineering services business. He put the company back on track and rebuilt its brand around a services-centric model that gave customers a one-stop shop for hardware, software and the services (business and technical) to make it go. When he left and Sam Palmisano took over, IBM began a long, gradual slide towards an MBA-driven company. Though IBM does still maintain one of the largest research divisions in the world, and employs a lot of brilliant people, researchers are increasingly facing demands that their work be quickly translatable into near-term profitable products, which (perhaps surprisingly to MBA types) is killing the profitability of their work. The accountants have been focused on achieving profits through cost reductions for a decade now, starting with reducing employee expenses through a wide variety of methods that have made IBM an increasingly unpleasant place to work.
Meanwhile, IBM's approach to growing the business is increasingly one of buying successful young software companies and marketing their products hard through IBM's extensive sales network while putting minimal, if any, effort into product enhancement. What little product improvement/development effort IBM continues is increasingly being pushed offshore. As various offshore organizations gradually build up the skills to be truly competent and useful, IBM has discovered their prices also rise so the MBA response has been to push out to other, lower-cost locations. With India now "too expensive", IBM is pushing more work off to South America, Eastern Europe and lower-cost areas of Asia -- and in doing so moving right back into the the problems that early offshoring efforts into India had with the added bonus of much more significant language barriers than existed in India.
Over and over again, the pattern of business in IBM today is micro-optimization of balance sheets, extreme focus on quarterly earnings and declining focus on the actions that are productive long-term: Developing customer relationships and creating compelling products.
Much of the discussion here has been on the conflict between marketing and development, but that misses the mark entirely. MBAs are not marketers. They don't know how to sell. They're all about business process optimization and financial optimization. Those are good things, but they're good for eking out marginal improvements in business effectiveness. They're a useful adjunct to the business components that REALLY matter -- making stuff to sell, and selling it. But when they begin to dominate, it's a problem.
Is IBM's current myopia going to cause it to fail? Almost certainly not. The micro-optimization and the buy-and-harvest approaches are currently working in the sense of growing revenues and profits. But the micro-optimization is just about played out, and customers are getting wise to the buy-and-harvest approach and becoming less willing to buy IBM. So IBM is heading towards a period of stagnation, at least, and serious decline at worst. The company is too big to die, though, and employes too many smart people, so what's going to happen is that
Re: (Score:3)
if by "into the ground", you mean a $75 billion company and one of the 100 largest in the world, then yes, you are correct, deep into the ground.
The real problem with business school (Score:3)
Most of the posts will probably be "yeah MBAs don't contribute anything" versus "engineers are geeks who can't communicate". In reality MBAs working for companies usually know what the company does in detail, and there are plenty of engineers who can communicate.
It's still an issue though, because the opportunity cost of learning about "business" is less learning about something else. According to this article [chronicle.com],
The rise of MBAs is also tied to the rise of finance. Most people agree that the US funneled too many resources into the finance sector, which then just destroyed them. Instead of designing more complicated mortgage securities, those physicists could have been doing physics. Although "managing" doesn't necessarily have to be about finance, most business schools spent a lot of time teaching their students about CAPM and Black-Scholes. (If you don't know what these mean, good for you!)
But of course business schools are not a fixed target. Most have reacted to the financial crisis and are now, for instance, emphasizing globalization and how to work in multiple countries [economist.com]. Time will tell I guess if this path is any better.
Personally, I think the biggest damage is done by the outlook that most MBA programs teach. Instead of thinking that your company's goal is to build the best vacuum or whatever, you learn that the goal is to maximize shareholder value, and that gaming the system is what everyone is doing. Over the long run, countries probably don't want too many of those people in charge.
Re: (Score:3)
To have a successful start-up, you need a good product, to convince people that your product is good, and to sell it for a profit.
To have a successful industry, you need to do that repeatedly. This means realising that you must also invent the next good product, the next-next and be ready for the next big technological shift.
This means that your engineers, are your most valuable medium-turn asset, and your research department, with engineers-scientists you most valuable long-term asset. Of course sales and
Pharmaceutical Industry Next (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Start an industry
2) Grow an industry
3) Get rich (profit)
4) Get greedy
5) Collapse
Understands the problem not the solution... (Score:3)
Fixing the problem doesn't necessarily mean putting a geek in charge but instead means altering incentives so they favor long-term profit and sustainable growth (20, 30, 50 years or more) beyond short-term stock bumps. Often engineer personalities get in the way and make them harder to incentivize than the bean counter personalities. Too often the geek only cares about the purity of a solution or the optimization of a process and that makes it difficult to incentivize him to put long-term profit first. Additionally, if the geek you select is flexible enough to not be stuck in the optimization mode then he is going to game the system just like the MBA in favor of stock indicators for his personal compensation. It's not dishonest or wrong it's human nature. You tell your manager what you care about by how you pay them. They in turn work to maximize those items to which their variable compensation is tied.
The best thing you can do is find good managers (MBAs or Geeks not withstanding) and incentivize them to run the company with the primary goal being long-term sustainable profits. I think more often than not you're going to find this is an MBA type with a compensation package not tied to stock but a smart board will look for the right personality traits, coupled with the right skills, coupled with the right compensation package. The answer is definitely not "just give it to the engineers" however.
No connection to bussiness (Score:4, Interesting)
The other is changing market conditions. In the case of ATT, consumers simply rebeled against the price they had to pay for what became a commodity. It is hard to explain to a young person how much the rate for phone service has fallen. Using a cell phone I can call from anywhere in the continental US to anywhere in the continental US basically for what my parents paid for local calls, inflation adjusted. With Skype out of country calls fell from maybe fifty cents a minute or so to a less than a dime a minute(the countries I call are not on the unlimited plan). ATT revenues has been more than decimated by market forces.
One thing that did happen in the 70s and 80s, particularly 80s, was the concept that profit was a right and that firms when they employed a certain number of people needed to ongoing bussiness, even if the management was incompentant. This, in effect, removed the incentive for compentant MBAs. As long as a manager has a piece of paper, the firm had done due diligence, and the financial sector, backed by tax payer money, would insure that funding for the incompetent and inefficient firms would be ongoing. The primary negative consequences was that compentent and creative individuals found it harder to get funding, and employess.
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.)"
Engineer + MBA combination (Score:3)
There are a lot of engineers out there who have business credentials too. At my company, a large aerospace company, "working level" engineers mostly have a BS in engineering/science & 2 advanced degrees -- a technical degree and an MBA.
Engineers still know something that is no longer taught to business majors -- that you have to make decisions for the long term. When you're building systems that cost many millions & must perform for decades you must keep this in mind at every stage of the process -- both business & engineering functions.
Decades ago this was a part of business majors' education. In management courses, accounting, every course you were taught to always make decisions assuming your firm is an on-going concern. Now business students are taught to extract as much money as possible in the least amount of time and get out. Think short term and eventually you'll destroy enough companies that that you no longer have anyplace to invest ... and the "wealth" that you have amassed is worthless. This same thinking has spread to government & investors.
The problem is shortsightedness (Score:3)
And the allmighty shareholder value.
And as long as execs only have this in their mind, companies will be bled dry and wasted. I wouldn't say that engineers should run companies. I'm an engineer and I would probably not be much more successful at running a business than the locust MBAs that run them today, just for different reasons. I would probably fail to produce a profitable product, striving for the perfect tool rather than keeping my eye on the cost.
Execs today have a different problem with the way they run a company. They don't even care what gets produced, or even whether something gets produced. Their eye is on the stock market and how to push the shareholder value up. And the perversion is that this is easiest done by doing exactly the opposite of producing: Firing people. Lay off half your staff and your SHV goes through the roof. And for good reason, it does actually push your revenue in the short term since you save on staff expenses (and for most companies this is a really big cost position). The drawback is that with fewer people you can usually also only produce less, or at least of lower quality. The times when you could save on staff by automatizing or streamlining production are past. We're automated and streamlined nearly perfectly in most areas. Firing people today means that certain work simply will not get done.
But this will not show until later, and for now it is beneficial for the shareholder value. The perversion is that it is the sensible thing to do if you want your company to survive. Because if you don't, your stock price will drop and it will become trivial for a "slimmer" company (that did fire its staff) to swallow you. This is, btw, the way a lot of these companies survived until today. They laid off their productive staff, pumped their value and swallowed up companies that actually did produce (and hence didn't lay off stafff, and hence were "cheap" to get because their stocks accordingly dropped). And that game got repeated, the productive staff was fired, the shareholder value went up, another productive company was devoured. And so on.
The problem is that today almost only the locusts are left over. And it's quite useless if they ate one another, since they're all just husks and shells, filled with administrative staff that don't really produce much anymore.
Re: (Score:3)
What we need is to get managers who are interested in the wellbeing of a company, that's already enough. Ford was allegedly not the best man to work for, but he did care about his company. Why? Because it was HIS company. He built it. It was his baby. The "pump it, dump it" management is what is driving our companies into the ground. The "founding generation" of managers cared for their companies, mostly because they themselves built it. I'm pretty sure if Ford, Siemens or Krupp could see what's done to the
If you let the engineers run the show... (Score:4, Funny)
Stupidest thing I ever read (Score:3)
I'm a computer engineer, and let me assure you, most engineers don't know dick about productization. Sadly neither do the bean counter MBAs. Perhaps people in cognitive engineering, which is a subdiscipline of industrial engineering. At least they know something about meeting needs and usability. Rely on the typical engineers for designing products and you'll end up with "clever" bullshit that useful for like three people.
THis is why I have said to break up the auto man. (Score:4, Insightful)
How Many Times Have You... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
THAT is the MBA / Bean Counter Problem.
They don't think in terms of high customer satisfaction they think in terms of "I can shave 0.0001 dollars per unit" and "I can predict that we will only increase our returns and warranty repair by 0.0001% and we will increase profit by .5 %".
Huge pet peeve... I like gauges I like to see actual oil pressure in my car, actual engine temperature but these days those are rare things in cars. I know the cost difference might be 2 dollars per car and frankly I will happily pay 30 times that since 60 bucks on the cost of a new car is nothing.
Plastic gears in assemblies... My wife drives a Mercedes C320 and there is a plastic gear someplace under the dash that is attached to a vacuum servo of some kind that has something to do with the air handling. The damn thing has some teeth missing and it chatters now and the sound is really annoying. The replacement part costs 40.00 bucks. But it will cost close to 1000.00 bucks in labor to get at the damn thing since you have to basically dis-assemble the dash to get at it.
The above reasons are why they need to be yacked out of the chain of command.
Re: (Score:3)
"Huge pet peeve... I like gauges I like to see actual oil pressure in my car, actual engine temperature but these days those are rare things in cars. I know the cost difference might be 2 dollars per car and frankly I will happily pay 30 times that since 60 bucks on the cost of a new car is nothing."
Ah! Ford "idiot guages"! :-)
"plastic gears in assemblies"
Well, undersized or of too fine a pitch. Plastic timing chain sprockets last until the chain wears out and breaks the teeth off, demonstrating plastic CA
Re:How Many Times Have You... (Score:4, Insightful)
Pick up an android anything. Pick up an iAnything.
"Nobody will buy a $900 phone."
The irony being a lot of these MBA types wear $3000 watches. Stupid.
Re: (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.
Re: (Score:3)
It is a 2001 and at the time they were being invaded by MBA's from Chrysler!
But yes, I take your point. Older MB's were built to last. I don;t know if the MBA infection has been completely removed from MB at this point.
I don't think that one anecdote is self defeating to my argument, but thanks for the comment
The MBA killed the good geek squad, circuit city (Score:3)
The geek squad used to be good and they did a good job now it's all about how much you can sell and it you don't up sell your hours get cut and they want sales men over techs any ways. Best buy used to make a big deal about how there sales men where NON commission but now they are hidden commission where if they don't sell rip off monster cables and extended warranty they get there hours cut down. I hear that at staples the easy techs are under alot of pressure and lack of sales can make it that you get kicked out of the business machines department. Also at staples they when from on of best bonuses in retail to one of worst.
Circuit city used to have sales people who knew what they where doing and selling and then 2 times Circuit city fired the long term sales people and replaced them with new people who had no idea on what they where selling.
As an engineer turned MBA, I completely agree (Score:4, Informative)
Reading this piece, I can comfortably say that the author is right on the money with regards to how a focus on being "data driven" is actually slowly running companies into the ground.
I started off my career writing really low level network stack drivers. I got pretty familiar with the windows kernel, became a star in my office and got put on an MBA track because I had demonstrated some aptitude with customers and sales. Fast forward a few years and I've got an MBA under my belt and work for what was formerly a very large provider of consumer SaaS that is now trying to win in what can be loosely described as the call center space.
My days are now spent trying to determine strategic initiatives on the basis of consumer behaviour as represented in a slew of really badly coded Cognos reports. This wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that analytics and data driven decision making is anything but in most companies. Data is used to validate a hypothesis instead of being explored to reveal patterns, associations and trends. Every executive asking a question about customer behviour is secretly asking for validation of their own theory on the business and wants to gloat about it come performance review time. Obviously, in this kind of operating model, data is bastardized to lead to really bad decisions.
I'm all for scientific approaches to management, however they need to be undertaken following a method that is in line with the scientific method to be labelled as such. When I leave this job (which is ridiculously well paying but completely unfulfilling compared to my career in engineering) and run off to create my startup, I will probably hire an MBA at some point. However, I won't hire them to be a bean counter.
What many companies fail to realize is that the key to having a great leader is equal focus on product and market. The MBA that I would hire would be chosen because they've demonstrated an ability to be highly technically proficient but decided to expand their horizons and take on "soft-problems" as well.
It is not necessarily the MBA per se (Score:3)
It is more the fact that the corporAte environment has become very friendly for corporate psychopaths, who will do a quick buck during a 6 month/1 year stint (merger, outsourcing, unnecessary reorganization, firing of random number of employees (1000, 5000 and 10,000 are common) offshoring) and then flee to the next company and management position.
Re: (Score:3)
Problem of Secialization (Score:3)
Frequently, an MBA is obtained by an individual with a BA or BS in some other field. Engineers, for example, often go on to get an MBA to fill in the economics, budgeting and planning and resource allocation skills that they will need in addition to their basic (engineering) knowledge. In this sense, an MBA can be a useful degree.
The problem arises when companies compartmentalize their functions, making the business management side of the house responsible for one set of decisions, engineering for another and operations for something else. Each group does 'their thing' and throws it over the fence to the next one. So the end solution is suboptimal.
Anecdote: When I was at Boeing, we were developing a higher capacity electrical power generating system (EPGS) for the 747-400. One aspect of this was to spec relays and contactors to withstand the higher available short circuit current. And once the vendors had developed the 'heavy duty' components, it was my job to test them (blow them up). One special purpose relay incorporated some voltage sensing logic which would cause it to switch to an alternate source should the primary fail. It was a very low volume part. So we took a sample to the lab, hooked it to a 4 generator source and applied a short to its output. Bang! The magic smoke came out (not supposed to happen). Back to the manufacturer for a redesign. The next sample, less smoke came out. The next one, even less. After a number of iterations, the vendor had it down to the case just bulging a bit. Still not suitable.
At this point, the purchasing guy called up and asked what the hell we were doing blowing up all these $7500 relays. $7500?!! If someone had told me that's what they cost, I could have easily designed the part out of the airplane. But that wasn't my job. The guy whose job it was was still adapting a WWII era design to the system. And he had no idea of parts cost. Not his job, just build the system so it works. Cost is a different department (where all the MBAs work).
MBAs and Scandals (Score:3)
To be fair, it's not just Harvard. Rajanatnam, the Galleon hedge fund founder, went to the Warton MBA program. He was just convicted on insider trading.
This is nothing new (Score:3)
I took a LEAN class from a professor who had been a management accountant for a good part of his life. He wrote a few books about how companies are often driven into inefficiency and/or ruin by allowing the accounting and finance arms of the companies to be the dominant decision makers. This one, Relevance Lost is from 1991:
http://www.amazon.com/Relevance-Lost-Rise-Management-Accounting/dp/0875842542 [amazon.com]
Focusing on the gnats in the forest. (Score:3)
I've long said that's what was killing Ford when I was there. There was no thought about what was happening next quarter, let alone 5 years down the line. It was all about making the numbers this week. That's what lead them to cede the small cars to the foreign companies, and concentrate solely on SUVs, which pretty much tanked the company when the SUV market fell over (that and the bad press about the Explorer, but that's another story).
Re:You need different kinds of people (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem appears when the managers don't understand what the geeks are doing and give orders based on unrealistic (or completely wrong) understanding of what's happening downstairs.
A percentage of geeks have people skills, they should be the ones in charge.
Re:You need different kinds of people (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem are pure business guys who understand everything the MBA tought them, but don't have a true appreciation for the type if business they are running.
Re:You need different kinds of people (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:You need different kinds of people (Score:5, Insightful)
My father was a management accountant, and worked in a fairly diverse set of businesses. While his job was more or less the same one in each business, he always made an effort to understand the rudiments and fundamentals of the business in his spare time. For example when working for glass company, he familiarised himself with how glass was made, the major companies in the industry, and the types and uses of glass. He would never have as much expertise as someone who worked in that industry their whole lives, but he would have enough understanding to acknowledge and even foresee problems when they came to his attention.
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. Most that I have met have little to no underlying understanding of the businesses they are being paid handsomely to operate.
So we have a situation where NASA managers literally do not know how rockets work, and yet will pride themselves on that fact, even as their shuttles and rockets explode after take-off. Our banks are being run by "fairly dim former [sports] players", who couldn't even perform a compound interest calculation without assistance. And above all the senior decision making levels of government, the civil service, and private industry are saturated with people who are literally incapable of understanding even why they are making their decisions, let alone which they should make.
The quintessential manifestation of this pervasive dysfunction in western management was the US President George W. Bush. The man ran everything he ever managed into the ground, and stayed true to form while in office. People may moan about old families, money, and influence, but a large portion of the blame lies in a culture which sees fit to appoint unqualified, unknowledgeable, sweet talkers to positions of responsibility, and moreover to even deny those positions to competent candidates.
This isn't about choosing between inarticulate geek savants and networkers. This is about choosing between experienced professionals who can communicate effectively if dryly, and people with the training, mentality, and ethics of used car salesmen. The analogy is exact.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's precisely what the problem is.
Engineering firms should be run by someone with engineering experience who then gets an MBA or similar training.
Software firms, likewise - take a coder and give them MBA or equivalent training.
Don't do it that way? You get what we have today. Everyone* with an MBA is a fucking PHB moron.
*By "Everyone" I mean "with 99.9% certainty
Speaking as an MBA (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Engineers who want to know the business end of things this is what you study:
Pretty much the first semester of B school is all you really need. That's all. everything else is 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.
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.
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:You need different kinds of people (Score:5, Insightful)
And at every opportunity, he boasted of being a "C" student, rubbing his "greater position" in the faces of those who'd spent their lives hitting the books.
Re:You need different kinds of people (Score:4, Insightful)
Fact is he got reelected, so he "passed". If Obama doesn't get reelected then Obama fails.
If the person that gets reelected was doing a bad job, then the voters and/or the voting system fails.
Re: (Score:3)
Fact is he got reelected, so he "passed". If Obama doesn't get reelected then Obama fails.
I know you're pointing out political calculus, but this is the entire reason that the US political system is so badly fucked right now. Nothing matters other than getting elected.
I'd *love* to see a politician get up and start actually telling the truth to America
Way too broad a brush (Score:3, Insightful)
I seriously doubt that MBA managers make these kinds of efforts when they take charge of companies.
That's an AWFULLY broad brush you are painting with there. A MBA is a college degree. Nothing more. People with MBAs go into finance, accounting, marketing, sales, engineering (yes, engineering), and of course management. Having a MBA is not an automatic ticket to management either. At best it might get you some interviews you might not get without the degree much like an engineering degree can open a few doors. After that it is up to the talent of the individual. Futhermore, lots of people get MBA d
Re: (Score:3)
What else did he manage or "run into the ground?" Texas Rangers? I thought he was supposed to have done a pretty good job there but can't say I really know.
He was allowed to purchase a part for a discount in order to be named an owner to help push through the stadium replacement from Arlington Stadium to The Ballpark at Arlington. He had no managerial duties, other than to run around and announce his ownership while begging for government handouts.
Isn't it interesting that someone against Affirmative Action (someone getting something based on who their daddy is, rather than who they are) got into colleges based on his father? Or that someone who claims he i
Re: (Score:3)
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
Re: (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
Re: (Score:3)
The problem appears when the managers don't understand what the geeks are doing and give orders based on unrealistic (or completely wrong) understanding of what's happening downstairs.
A percentage of geeks have people skills, they should be the ones in charge.
Exactly, bean counters count beans. Their grasp of the everyday operations, the people involved and the dynamics between them is truly lost. The bean counter adds a number here and subtracts a number there and they improve the bottom line, however, the number added may mean that the employee will be required to work 10 hour days, 7 days a week and the subtracted number may mean the employer will have to reduce the workforce, compounding an already difficult problem. Add in the fact that every time the bean
Re:You need different kinds of people (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been thinking along these lines for years. One of the original catalysts of this was reading a book called Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West [amazon.com], by John Ralston Saul, an historian. It isn't a perfect book, but it is definitely thought provoking. It is difficult to summarize, but I'll give it a shot. He argues that our modern management class is obsessed with a somewhat myopic version of reason concerned mainly with measurement. This management class lacks a sense of imagination, of history, and of human nature, preferring to retreat to a world of graphs, tables, and equations.
The example he gave that sticks with me concerns the Mad Cow Disease crisis in the UK a while ago. Mad Cow Disease is a strange phenomenon, where protein structures called prions propagate when animals eat other animals that have the prions in their flesh. The prions eventually result in brain disintegration. They cannot be destroyed by cooking and processing. Managers in the beef industry knew that Mad Cow Disease existed, knew that it was growing, but they did not take it seriously. They likely tried to measure it in terms of number of cows infected, number of people infected by its human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, and concluded that its rarity made it a negligible risk. They could have wiped it out by quick action, but they did not. What they didn't seem able to imagine was that this disease and the fear surrounding it would eventually result in the destruction of the entire British beef industry. Almost all of the stock of British cows was destroyed. Britain was banned from exporting beef to most of the rest of the world. The financial losses were huge for the industry. Saul argues that these losses were due in very large part to the lack of imagination of MBA type managers.
I also have first hand with these issues. A friend worked for a food manufacturer that hired as plant manager an MBA graduate whose only previous experience was in a machinery assembly plant. Predictably, food safety practices and quality control went out the window, as these things were seen as negative items on a balance sheet. Lab testing and random bacterial swabbing budgets were reduced, until predictably there was a food recall that cost the company prestige, customers and a lot of money. He managed the plant primarily from his upstairs office, and he spent most of his time staring at graphs. He would seldom come down to the plant floor, and he had little comprehension of the processes and details of the plant he was managing. In the end, he left in disgrace, after transforming a plant that had formerly been extremely profitable and efficient into a money losing albatross.
Re: (Score:3)
"Since it is generally impossible to measure what is important, bureaucrats instead turn their energies toward making important what is measurable."
--- J.M.W. Slack, Egg and Ego
Re: (Score:3)
"Since it is generally impossible to measure what is important, bureaucrats instead turn their energies toward making important what is measurable."
--- J.M.W. Slack, Egg and Ego
Nice. I hadn't heard that one before. Here is a quote from Einstein:
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
Different skills are needed. MBAs have no skills. (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, people with different beneficial skills are essential in any organization. The key idea there isn't "different", however; it's "beneficial skills".
MBAs typically have absolutely no helpful skills or abilities. They are often people who tried engineering, but couldn't cut it. They are people who tried accounting or finance, but couldn't cut it. They are people who tried marketing, but couldn't cut it. They are, in essence, the rejects of the business world.
For many of them, their only "skill" (if we
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
And if the purpose of this discussion was to make all the MBAs burst into tears and run home to their mommas, you'd probably have a telling point. But I don't think that's the object of the exerci
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes geeks often lack people skills, but MBAs aren't the fix.
I've always done well because I have a geek streak (but not truly geeky, relative to the geeks that work for me) and people skills. Without my geeks, however, I am nothing. I'd probably be in sales.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it takes all types. Good people and evil people. Wait, on second thought, let's do without the evil people.
Re: (Score:3)
So now we also need to worry about the MBAs killing and eating all the technical people?!?
Huh? It is the evil people who develop the technology and science that has advanced human civilization?
Re: (Score:3)
Thankfully we have engineers to develop more efficient ways of harvesting meat. The MBAs just take the credit.
Re:You need different kinds of people (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly (Score:4, Interesting)
Company problems are like people problems, sometimes there's a systematic reason, other times it's completely down to the individual and the circumstance.
While you've focused more on the personal skills that many geeks lack, you're also missing that many geeks don't seem to understand how difficult running a business, really is. Even small businesses. There's so many things going on, so many things out of your control, so many people you rely on, and so many unintuitive "systems", which are really hard to get a grasp on.
The worst companies I personally know of, that I have worked for, or with, are run by engineers/scientists.
While there is something to be said for the executives having been in that industry, there's also a lot to be said for people with outside perspective, and a fuck load to be said for people who understand how businesses run. The article has said MBA's, but I take that more to mean accounting/management/finance/economics professionals, so MBA's/CA/CPA/CFA/* all in one bag. It's condescending to suggest that this is due to "MBA's", and the real discussion seems to be one of "short-term balance sheet driven management" versus "long-term" and or "non-balance sheet driven management".
Well, short-term versus long-term versus some mix of both, has and continues to be, one of the most debated topics amogst "MBA's". To suggest that somehow they don't understand this, is absurd. Hell, the very fact that Bob Lutz is writing about it, shows this is absurd, since he is in fact one of those "MBA" people.
Oh well, for those who haven't read the the Business Week [businessweek.com] article, I recommend it. It really gets to the heart of his story. The TIME one, not so much.
Re:Exactly (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it actually is about MBAs. Accounting professionals for example bring a useful skill: accounting.
MBAs are the people who are good at nothing in particular and generally exist to get in the way of the people who actually produce.
Re:Exactly (Score:4, Interesting)
A good manager trusts those to whom he gives responsibility, and is willing to discuss ways of achieving the common goal. Once the degree was awarded, neither one was ever again approachable on matters that at times included legal responsibilities the government licensing agencies assigned to my job title.
IMO we either need to change the MBA curriculum, or just declare a bounty on MBA's.
Cheers, Gene
No, MBAs means MBAs, not CPA, CFA, etc. (Score:4, Interesting)
Business PhDs argue about all manor of interesting stuff. Business BA and MBA programs are just degree mills operated by business academics so their salaries can be even vaguely competitive with the business world.
MBAs are soft degrees for people who want money but lack direction, drive, and guts, i.e. they're risk-averse personally. You don't really want that sort of person running your company.
You might view an MBA as a qualification to manage someone significantly less educated and less intelligent than yourself. I'd hire an MBA from a tier n school for managing engineers from say tier n+2 schools.. or tier n school engineers if the MBA's undergrad was a STEM degree. I'd usually hire a business BA from a lower tier school only for managing people who held no collage degree.
You also shouldn't make managers from the engineers who cannot manage. duh! Yet, there are actually enough engineers and scientists who can handled the organizational load & inter-personal factors.
I'd imagine the "scientists" you mentioned were academics who started a company. Imho, anyone fresh out of academia should not be running a company, this even covers business PhDs. Instead, they should take a couple years acclimating to the real business world.
Conversely, you'll actually find good manages much more frequently among some non-academic science degrees, although not computer science. Bowing has been considered the best run large aerospace company for decades. Bowing traditionally prefers hiring physics majors for their management positions. I'd imagine that mathematics majors make fairly good managers for software developers too, google certainly does that occasionally.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
You mean, the Windows Snipping Tool?
I'd never heard of it before, but now that you have informed me... Google's page 1 of "snipping tool javascript" doesn't seem to suggest it can be used from Javascript at all. It's a user program. It's not even included in XP, it has to be downloaded along with several other tablet PC prerequisites. And Linux/Mac are obviously not supported.
Is that some kind of joke?
Re:You need different kinds of people (Score:4, Insightful)
ask what the manager *really* wanted
you dont have a lot of experience dealing with business/management requirements, do you?
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, as a self employed consultant, this is the most important part of my work - filtering out what the client says they want and figuring out what they *really* want... and then implementing it.
That post was no troll. Programming is not an assembly line, it's customer service. You have to take the time to understand what the business needs are, and that requires communication skills.
Re: (Score:3)
Wasted a lot of time trying to come up with a screenshot solution in browser
Or the programmer could *communicate* and ask what the manager *really* wanted, rather than blindly following the instructions...
And THIS is the real reason China hasn't caught up in innovation; working in China 6-7 months a year, it's always astounding how engineers, workers, and mid-level people just blindly follow instructions without stopping and thinking about what they are actually doing.
Re:You need different kinds of people (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem has very little to do with people skills. As a manager at a larger company, you don't need people skills. You aren't doing most of the negotiating etc yourself, you're just steering the company.
In order to STEER you need to know where you are and where you're going. This is the problem with MBAs. They generally have zero skills related to the field they are managing and end up not knowing where there are and then with a flawed understanding of where they are they can't possibly know where they are going.
MBAs are for sales managers and marketing. The problem is they've made it into the real management branches as well.
Re: (Score:3)
These kind of stereotypes are not helpful and not particularly apt.
For every one of the introverted, insular "ivory tower" type geeks you are talking about I can point to a Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg, Andy Grove, Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Eric Schmidt, etc. You may not LIKE any of these people and you may find their geek cred lacking, but they all started in the trenches and all have been heavily involved in the day-to-day works of their companies. They are all geeks and business pe
Re: (Score:3)
I think that this is a self-fulfilling (and self-limiting) prophecy. People skills are a skill and can be learned, when necessary and important, just like any other. The idea that geeks need to be locked in a back room is a mythology that serves certain people, but certainly not the geeks themselves.
I had a software engineering job once -- one-year review comes up and my manager tells me, "Your problem is that like any engineer you can't communicate with others. You need to read such-and-such book on commun
Re: (Score:3)
People work best together. You mix the best attributes from several different kinds of people. Hell, if you want a good geeky example look at different classes in multiplayer games. No one can do or master everything. That's why it's best to do what you know yourself and let other people handle the other parts.
Actually, using WoW to demonstrate a real-life point would be the sign of a true geek. One that doesn't really get the world out there.
The reason MBAs come in and slash and crash businesses, it's because they get HUGE bonuses for short term profitability.
It isn't an MBA problem. It's a shareholders-demanding-immediate-profits-problem.
Re:You need different kinds of people (Score:5, Interesting)
One word, Android.
You are wrongly accusing weaknesses in linux desktop GUI functionality with the difficulty of penetrating an entrenched market. I have used Windows, OSX, OS/2, Irix, linux (gnome, KDE, XFCE) extensively and the Windows and OSX GUIs have their failings the biggest failing being the retarded "it wasn't developed here" brick wall. A good example, multiple desktops, they have been available in the linux GUI for ages but blind stubbornness kept them from being a standard part of other GUIs.
And some people just don't play well with others.
True story: While working full time as an engineer I went back to school and was taking some courses that were a mix of information technology and business management so many of the fellow students were business types coming from the other end of the spectrum. This was during the late 90s when the economy was booming and technical skills were in demand and good wages were required to retain talent. During a break a CIO employed at one company was conversing with a middle manager of software development from another company. They knew in common various talented people who had worked for both of them at one time or another but had moved around to gain better wages and benefits. The CIO made a telling comment, "when this boom economy ends we are going to get back at them", them being the technical people who did not stick around for the lower wages and benefits.
True story: Working with a group of engineers an equipment upgrade plan was developed that would reduce chemical usage costs and reduce hazardous waste disposal costs. Our calculations showed a 1 year payback due to reduced costs alone with the currently intangible benefit of advancing process performance for future product needs that the product designers and process engineers predicted. In presenting the project to the division VP in front of factory management I was laughed at and told "if engineers were putting your own money into these projects you would put more realistic cost savings numbers" which was followed by a round of laughter from management. My response was that I would put up my own cash to fund the project but I expected to collect any measured profitable gains as my return on investment. The laughing stopped and everyone had a poker face. The project was not approved and two years later when the latest product design was released for full production the equipment that was the target of the engineering upgrade was causing huge yield losses due to ineffective performance on the new product design.
We need the talent of MBAs, they learn valuable business skills and techniques in school, but they are currently overrated and overreaching in their decisions and control. When you extend this to the MBAs who climb the corporate ladder to the board level they are corrosive not only to their own work force but to the entire economy and future of the nation.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, I've seen worse in other operating systems.
Not any modern mainstream OS's.
Windows ME, Vista's UAC. Bad UI design happens and it happens mainstream.
Re: (Score:3)
Hey, I'm glad engineers exist, because without their inability to convey complex concepts to average people, tech writers and trainers wouldn't be needed. I rose through the ranks very quickly because I could translate Engineereze to Usereze on the fly.
Re: (Score:3)
While I was attending University of Missouri, Columbia we had to take accessment exams and every year the engineering department would stomp on everyone else in EVERY catagory including the ones they were supposed to be good at.
And yes it drives me nuts to watch movies. Almost to the point where to enjoy a movie, with a lot of technical elements I need to have a beer or five so I don't nit pick.
The only things smarter than an engineer is a technician (