I’m not against MBA’s (I have one myself from University of Chicago and my lovely wife was graduated from Wharton – she loves to remind me that they usually score higher in the rankings than we do). Many of my best friends have MBAs. But as someone who is in charge of recruiting, I feel like it adds a ton to the expectations of compensation without adding any additional value to me as an employer. I say this as somebody who recruited several Harvard, Wharton and similar MBAs at my first company (the one where I acknowledge that I made every mistake in the book). I paid up for the diploma but can’t say that I saw better results.
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Are MBAs Necessary for Start-ups or VC? (via mikehudack)
I’d like to write a lot more about this, but I need to study for my accounting midterm. Ain’t that ironic. I can’t help but say a few words about the experience and what I think the benefits are so far:
I’ll readily admit an MBA isn’t everything. Two months into mine, I’d offer that what it does is enhance my understanding of the real-world experiences I’ve had and provide new perspectives for the experiences I’m having. I love that, and I think it will be valuable to my future employers and colleagues.
Specifically, to date it’s also taught me regression analysis, some Excel ninja skills — Excel should be mandatory for everyone in undergrad, seriously — and offered an easy way to meet a ton of incredibly talented, motivated people. (This includes my awesome Stats professor, who gave out some trenchant life advice on our last day of class.)
To my professor’s point, it’s easy to get bogged down in marginal cost and the next deliverable and the next three month plan. My MBA has been an opportunity to step back, learn new skills, and think about new ways to look at the world around us, big-picture style. I know that’s vague and I’ll try to express it more clearly sometime soon because I think this conversation about skills, real world experience and education is an important one.
