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A comment on Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant. Parent comment

Re:Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant by ilamont on Friday October 21, 2011 @09:52AM (#3139706)
Except it doesn't always apply.

Lou Gerstner and Meg Whitman are two examples from the technology world. Both came into their jobs at IBM and eBay with zero tech experience, but got up to speed very quickly. Of course, had they failed to do so they would have been out within a year or two.

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Re:Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant by mmahemoff on Friday October 21, 2011 @10:13AM (#3139795)
The life and times of eBay does not say good things about the IT-challenged MBA.

Speaking of Yegge and Amazon: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/ebay-patents-10-clic...

Amazon has continued to grow in simplicity and coverage, including ease of purchase with third-parties (eBay's dealer market). Meanwhile, buying on eBay is still a huge pain, with no integration between eBay and its own subsidiary.

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Re:Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant by kabdib on Friday October 21, 2011 @11:56AM (#3140333)
"Not being fired for gross incompetence" is not the same thing as success.

I /hate/ going with hires who are "good enough." The nightmare employee is someone who is not quite bad enough to get fired.

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Re:Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant by tatsuke95 on Friday October 21, 2011 @10:11AM (#3139786)
And this is the real truth of the matter. The above posters are correct, you do need knowledge of something to run it, but understand that business knowledge and experience is ALSO that "something".

Once you obtain certain scale, you can't do everything. It's equally ignorant to think an engineer can run a business top to bottom as it is to think an MBA can fully run an engineering company.

I so often read here MBA used pejoratively, but remember that most small businesses fail because they're run by people who have skills but no idea how to run a business. A major corporation needs both (and more!) skills.

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