A good CEO needs to know how to make the right decision and delegate effectively. In this case he has proven that he is unable to make the right decision about his writing skills and delegate that task to someone with the appropiate skills.
> Everyone talks like 'Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction'?
Its a way of softening the blow for the people being laid off. I mean, sure, you are losing your job, on the other hand, do you really want to work for someone whose brain works in a way that would let them write "Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction"?
It's funny, I'm doing my MBA right now and many of our profs specifically warn us against using "MBA speak" or "MBA jargon" in presentations and assignments.
It's much easier to retreat behind MBA speak, especially when you don't have a clear grasp of what you're trying to communicate or are saying things you don't want to be heard saying. "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit".
It CAN be a useful tool to deflect and confuse, but sadly I think 99% of the time it's not used intentionally. It's simply much, much harder to communicate complex ideas in a simple and clear way - it takes a lot more effort and deeper understanding, and many people are simply incapable.
You should write a post on this, I'd be interested to hear the MBA's perspective. Like the OP, I'm jaded towards MBAs due to my personal experience, but I recognize that's limited experience. I'm genuinely interested in the benefits a company gets from hiring an MBA, especially an early to mid-stage start-up company.
Choosing among various projects to pursue at a large company requires understanding of market trends, financial projections and assumptions behind them, as well as various human resource management issues. Clearly, a very smart person could pick that up on their own - but you can also study from a body of knowledge of how to do this effectively. In some ways, picking up CS is much easier on your own than knowledge you get from getting an MBA
I don't have an MBA. I've just worked with people who were both gifted and in possession of an MBA. The presumption that people won't 'get it' because they have an MBA is laughable.
It's a social indicator, not a definitive attribute. I've known several MBAs personally and only one was legitimately intelligent -- the rest were sales guys who thought their MBA entitled them to make big decisions with perilously little background or knowledge of much of anything related to the situation.
I know an MBA right now who is pursuing a business wherein he offers wifi hotspots to small businesses. His literature claims that renting one of his hotspots will make the business "PCI compliant". I've personally advised him on multiple occasions (gently at first, growing more stern over time) that this claim is patently ridiculous and only displays his incompetence to anyone knowledgeable in IT, but he refuses to amend his materials or statements. Just the tip of the iceberg with him.
Granted these are anecdotes, but I think they embody the anti-MBA ethos. Qualified persons strongly dislike MBAs because MBAs often feel their MBA grants them immunity from doing things incorrectly, and that they are instantly authorities on everything without requiring any experience or research.
I swear they have to explicitly teach that in business school, like: "Now, this degree grants you the magic power of never needing advice, information, or training, and you will always be right, and normal people won't understand that because they didn't go to business school... but remember, business school is the only school that matters. No one would have money without us! Just tell the nerds to shove it if they try to tell you anything else." It's far too universal a feeling among MBAs to be coincidental.
I know a guy with an MBA who runs a successful interactive agency thats had 100% revenue growth year over year. His MBA has better trained him to handle the operations, accounting and marketing side of his business, since up to the point of starting his company he'd only worked as a software engineer.
Indeed -- as I conceded in my original comment, some MBAs are smart and my experiences are anecdotes. Conflicting anecdotes certainly exist. However, the person I replied to stated that he/she did not understand why it was common to dislike MBAs, and I shared what I think is the primary reason.
Fully agree that YMMV, but generalizations are useful tools as long as we don't take them as absolutes.
> The presumption that people won't 'get it' because they have an MBA is laughable.
Uhh... who said that MBAs didn't "get it"? The original accusation was that MBAs sometimes employed a particularly objectionable type of vapid and duplicitous speech, not that MBAs were lacking in any particular mental department.
I see several people trying to extend an olive branch ("my personal experience coincides with the stereotype BUT I know my experience is limited, please fill in the gaps"). Instead of filling in the gaps, which you are presumably able to do
> I've just worked with people who were both gifted and in possession of an MBA.
, you insult the people asking you for information and you ignore their polite request. WTF, mate?
The culture of a place like Hacker News is diametrically opposed to the type of people who would seek out and get an MBA. We're all supposed to be start-up focused entrepreneurs who are waiting for our exit by a corporation, only to also leave and start over. It's a common perception (even if it's wrong) that one of the tenants of an MBA is a communication style like the one used in Nadella's letter.
You basically just said "this perception might be wrong but it's one we criticise anyway", which... yeah.
In any case, MBAs can help start-up focused entrepreneurs. They can be start-up focused entrepreneurs. Your perception that it can't be so is exactly what I'm talking about.
I was intentionally ambiguous. Of course an MBA can do those things, but MBAs don't start in their parents' garage. Steve Jobs didn't have an MBA. Larry Page and Sergey Brin only have honoraries. David Karp of Tumblr didn't get an MBA. The ideas just conflict, so it makes us dismissive for no good reason.
It's not MBAs per se that get negative attention. It's MBAs with no technical background in the companies they manage, who sound (and act) hopelessly inept(ly), all the while ignoring advice from the technical people inside the business.
One of the most obvious indicators of this is people who retreat behind the bulshit bingo, which is why it is so rightfully disparaged. Seriously, 'synthesized'?? That word doesn't mean what he thinks it does, unless he literally made up their strategic direction on the spot, in that email.
CEOs and other leaders need to consider their audience. Anyone who casts a company-wide memo to a technical audience in such terms comes off as hopelessly out-of-touch, and deserving of scorn.
> Can HN lay off the MBA hate? It's getting really old.
As soon as the majority of MBAs start displaying a moderate amount of domain specific knowledge that makes them look less like complete fools to the petty peasants that work for them, I'm sure the hate will fade.
Well unfortunately given his background not surprising shows a cultural cringe and poor leadership by using long 10dollar words where simpler less waffly words would be better.
I could see him being Graded cat 4 "in need of improvement" and put on a PIP in one company for that less than stellar performance.
Does anybody really believe that's going to be the result of this? This is just laying off the people they acquired from that $7.2 billion Nokia acquisition.
All of these brilliant people have driven their institutions into the ground chasing rankings and fads like diversity and prestige buildings. Universities have taken on mountains of debt, and just like the portfolios of those university trained traders on Wall Street that destroyed the world a few years ago, they are very susceptible to unthinkable events like young people no longer finding college worth the money. It will only take a small decrease in enrollment rates for the wheels to come off. Bankruptcy is all but guaranteed.
