6 ms·

I had a lawn mowing business when I was 16. I had marketing, a service and collected payments. What's the point of business school?

jmduke 13y ago
I made five-page web sites when I was 15. I had published code, marketing (business cards!), customers, and more money than I would have gotten had I worked the help desk. What's the point of engineering school?
- danielna 13y ago
  I was being sarcastic, which admittedly is lost on the web. Software dev is reduced as easily to an overly simplistic implementation as business savvy is. I think we're making the same point.
  - jmduke 13y ago
    Well, now I feel like a jerk. Yeah, I couldn't tell that you were being sarcastic (which I guess is a point in of itself) -- my bad.
slantyyz 13y ago
The point of business school, for the most part, is for people who work in large bureaucratic organizations to get a pay bump at the middle management level. But contrary to the MBA's are idiots stereotype, most MBAs don't flaunt their education or turn into "House of Lies"-style management consulting idiots after getting their degrees either.
- yuhong 13y ago
  I wonder what positions the good MBAs tend to work in vs the bad, for example which kind are more likely to be big company CxOs.
Dewie 13y ago
I'm glad someone brought this up. Someone might be able to start a successful solo business venture without any formal training. But that is very different from being an executive or having some administrative job in a medium or larger-sized company (I am assuming). The guy that started the solo business has that experience, great - but he's only got that perspective of being a business administrator. Do you need formal training to do most of the jobs that MBA's do? Maybe not - but the person who has only done that one solo business probably does not have enough perspective on that either. In this case, I don't know if the author is only talking about building that one first app, apps in general or programming in general (probably just apps, I reckon). But if the audience is non-programmers who gets the impression that programming is just about "winging it" and that formal education is totally optional#, then it only offers a perspective from a very limited vantage point. #this could be a valid opinion, but only really interesting to me if it came from an experienced programmer.
- blindhippo 13y ago
  Making your own app where you are the only coder - there is no need for "formal training". You can slap together a glob of code, make it good enough to work and deploy without issue. "Even an MBA can do it" apparently. The need for formal training in software development comes when you need to work with other people on a project far bigger then your tiny piece of it. If everyone on a development team does their own thing, the result is a mess. Although, even if everyone is standardized and follows the plan, most software still results in a mess given enough time. Not sure what I'm concluding here. :/
- ValentineC 13y ago
  blindhippo: I thought I should mention that your posts are appearing dead to me.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
nilkn 13y ago
Uhh, people get an MBA to be something like a vice president at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street, or a consultant at McKinsey, or maybe even eventually a CEO of a major corporation with hundreds of millions in revenue, not to run a lawn mowing business. Edit: I see now that you were being sarcastic.

jmduke 13y ago

I made five-page web sites when I was 15. I had published code, marketing (business cards!), customers, and more money than I would have gotten had I worked the help desk. What's the point of engineering school?

danielna 13y ago
I was being sarcastic, which admittedly is lost on the web. Software dev is reduced as easily to an overly simplistic implementation as business savvy is. I think we're making the same point.
- jmduke 13y ago
  Well, now I feel like a jerk. Yeah, I couldn't tell that you were being sarcastic (which I guess is a point in of itself) -- my bad.

slantyyz 13y ago

The point of business school, for the most part, is for people who work in large bureaucratic organizations to get a pay bump at the middle management level. But contrary to the MBA's are idiots stereotype, most MBAs don't flaunt their education or turn into "House of Lies"-style management consulting idiots after getting their degrees either.

yuhong 13y ago
I wonder what positions the good MBAs tend to work in vs the bad, for example which kind are more likely to be big company CxOs.

Dewie 13y ago

I'm glad someone brought this up. Someone might be able to start a successful solo business venture without any formal training. But that is very different from being an executive or having some administrative job in a medium or larger-sized company (I am assuming). The guy that started the solo business has that experience, great - but he's only got that perspective of being a business administrator. Do you need formal training to do most of the jobs that MBA's do? Maybe not - but the person who has only done that one solo business probably does not have enough perspective on that either. In this case, I don't know if the author is only talking about building that one first app, apps in general or programming in general (probably just apps, I reckon). But if the audience is non-programmers who gets the impression that programming is just about "winging it" and that formal education is totally optional#, then it only offers a perspective from a very limited vantage point. #this could be a valid opinion, but only really interesting to me if it came from an experienced programmer.

blindhippo 13y ago
Making your own app where you are the only coder - there is no need for "formal training". You can slap together a glob of code, make it good enough to work and deploy without issue. "Even an MBA can do it" apparently. The need for formal training in software development comes when you need to work with other people on a project far bigger then your tiny piece of it. If everyone on a development team does their own thing, the result is a mess. Although, even if everyone is standardized and follows the plan, most software still results in a mess given enough time. Not sure what I'm concluding here. :/
ValentineC 13y ago
blindhippo: I thought I should mention that your posts are appearing dead to me.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

nilkn 13y ago

Uhh, people get an MBA to be something like a vice president at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street, or a consultant at McKinsey, or maybe even eventually a CEO of a major corporation with hundreds of millions in revenue, not to run a lawn mowing business. Edit: I see now that you were being sarcastic.