HP became the company that everyone admired and played a significant role in shaping SV by hiring fresh engineering grads from around the country and then paying for them to take nights and weekends MBA classes at Stanford while they worked during the day (you can read about it in Dave Packard’s autobiography).
It was then torn apart and turned into a joke by a different set of MBAs. So… perhaps it is a little more complicated than just having an MBA
You answered your own question. HP took engineers and taught them how to be MBAs, while companies are ruined by career MBAs who were never engineers and were taught in school to see engineering as a cost center that must always be reduced to the lowest bidder.
It was then torn apart and turned into a joke by a different set of MBAs. So… perhaps it is a little more complicated than just having an MBA