Company I work for tried to solve it using this rule -- don't hire any MBAs. Every manager, product manager, and even salesperson is (or at least was at some point) an engineer.
This works in our context (and has worked for many decades apparently). But I doubt this scales to a large size.
IIRC Palantir subscribes at least nominally to this philosophy, too. And they're trying to scale it, so we'll get to see how that works out in the near-ish future.
(Unless you work at Palantir, in which case I feel silly).
That sounds like a very silly policy. Would your mind be blown to learn out there exist many MBAs with engineering backgrounds, and that they're actually not idiots?
It's more appropriate to take a "no MBAs" rule as "no one who self identifies primarily as having an MBA". In my experience, an engineer with an MBA who neglects to even mention their engineering schooling/experience in favor of the MBA is a rare animal.
Self-identifies primarily as having an MBA? I don't even know what that means. If I interview with your company, should I not mention the MBA and instead say that during my 15 years of writing software, I took two years off to go wind surfing? Really? That's considered better?
Re:I quit the tech industry
by eastbayjake on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @02:33PM
(#9694343)
I think the parent comment meant "self-identifies" as "your only qualification for this job is an MBA", not that you would hide having an MBA. If you wrote software for 15 years and applied for a job in tech, I would imagine the software experience was on your resume alongside the MBA -- you're not just an MBA who wants to get into tech because tech is hot but with no prior industry exposure, someone who could equally likely go be a VP of Paper Product Distribution at a Midwest conglomerate.
I think its the ones who do a BSC and immediately do a MBA without the required 10 years so or so in a real job - that they don't want to hire.
It is silly I agree but it worked for many decades, in the sense the customers are happy and engineers here seem to be happy. One can also say it didn't work because the company hasn't turned into Google or "existed" with a huge cash windfall for founders.
Of course that was just one variable and it wasn't isolated. There could have been other factors and reasons for the said result and it might not have had anything to do with "no MBAs" rules.
I just presented it as a reference or what others do as a "solution".
I am probably naive, but I think if we say: the situation is now X and I want to be Y, we can find a way to get there.