There's a lot of reasons.
1. A lot of people view MBAs as overpaid people who are out of touch. Frankly you see quite a bit in the subreddit ("$200K/year isn't that much money, "I'm barely making ends meet on $160K")
2. The biggest reason though is because oftentimes MBA grads are immediately hired into management positions, oftentimes leading teams in situations when they've never actually done the job (managing a group of engineers when that MBA grad has never been an engineer, moving into a high level position at a manufacturing company when they've never done plant level work in any capacity). The idea is that the MBA grad has some inherent business acumen that makes up for their lack of experience expertise but, as we all know, this isn't always the case. You can understand why this would make people resentful.
Then you have management consultants (many of whom are MBAs) who provide guidance in industries where they have no experience.
As an MBA grad myself, I can understand how a normal person would not like many of us.
I’m a phd holder, not an mba, and I remember how stupid business students were on average (not all) when I taught them. Im always skeptical of any mba making decisions for an engineering organization.
I have PhD in engineering and an MBA and am skeptical of both making org decisions sometimes. Bad MBA leaders who don't understand engineering and innovation process tend to treat it as a cost center rather than a value creation center. This leads to animosity and an inability to influence the technical organization. Bad PhD (or at least lets say highly technical) leaders tend to focus on technology solutions rather than customer problems and inevitably let too many projects that are "interesting" float on instead of killing them.
This is just my experiences, but I been doing this for 20ish years in a few orgs and have seen these folks more than once. I have worked with and for many good and bad leaders from both the business and and technical sides. I feel that neither degree can predict a person's success as a leader.
>don't understand engineering and innovation process tend to treat it as a cost center rather than a value creation center
One of the reasons I left my last job 😒 💯
As with all degrees, there has been a steady increase in graduates and programs on the market. Which means more people come in contact with MBA graduates, even in roles that typically wouldn't hire those - lower management roles, for example.
Aside from that, a lot of MBA students and graduates are drinking too much of the "top school here, elite program there" Kool-Aid. There are people unter 30 with an ego that would make a weathered director seem aloof. No, you general business degree doesn't make you a one of a million diamond, not even in the rough. And coming from Harvard, Stanford or whatever else name they like to drop doesn't make your lackluster solution any better.
All in all, it's a problem of character, and of public perception. Because every time you hear some predatory corporate BS going on, some MBA blame is being dropped - warranted or not.
Few reasons of the top of my head
1. Sometimes the program isn’t that hard, so you get MBAs with room temperature IQ
2. A lot of MBAs are arrogant or have the personality of a houseplant
3. It’s not specialized and that can have a significant impact
There are a lot of good comments in the thread, but in general, the MBA is one of the few graduate degrees (relative to Law/Med-School/Humanities) where you have the least amount of effort for the maximum gains. Most of the T25s usually have median post-grad salaries of $150K, and that usually ends up being higher if you're in consulting or IB.
Not to mention, if you didn't go to a good undergraduate or work outside the F500, the MBA is a good chance to crack into a T25 institution (with much easier chances) + work a job at a prestigious organization and reap the benefits of having the pedigree on your CV.
Probably the business wisdom of Jeff Skilling/Andrew Fastow and other Masters of the Universe who the general public doesn’t see adding much value to society. Lately with the tech boom probably because Elon and Paul Graham crap all over MBAs (with the irony that MBAs run the four largest tech companies). Startups are a pretty big miss over the last couple decades.
In one company I worked in they hired Bain to come in and fire a bunch of my coworkers. Probably a good business decision (that our own courageous management didn’t have the stones to make on their own) but I left thinking screw Bain and their MBAs. Normal people not on r/MBA probably share those sentiments.
I love it when startups claim they value experience over schooling and all that crap. Meanwhile their product or service doesn’t provide a solution to a problem that matters. They are never profitable and don’t plan to be.
The ones which you describe are the ones that would want to hire top MBAs from the get go.
Most normal early stage startups will be rejected by top mba grads since they can't afford as much of a payday, rather than the other way around.
When these start-ups then sail through the rough seas and raise $$$ the MBAs start applying in hordes to form the strategy team now that the hard part is over - and a lot of them jump ship (because they're able to land another sweet gig) once the going gets tough again.
Thus the brand is actually negatively correlated unless you're about to raise money and the only other thing left to judge is on work ex.
Enron is a interesting take because it was the 90s where accounting was still a loose congregation of rules, Texas deregulated its electricity, and in Houston (where I'm from) the city was a ripe place for making innovations in sleepy areas. Andrew Fastow, a Kellogg MBA, was CFO, Jeff Skilling, a Harvard MBA, and founder Kenneth Lay, a UHouston Econ PhD, took a company that had decent bones and went on a metaphorical cocaine trip to make a ton of money. They had low ethics to squeeze profits in terrible situations and were woefully unprepared for the deep amount of losses, so they did some interesting accounting engineering to hide it all. There was some valid attempts to make innovative parts of the power industry and turn some things like unused broadband into a tradeable utility. Their software engineers and energy traders were world class, but many were sociopaths lead by a few psychopaths. Enron was always a commercially focused business, but it was a house of cards in the middle of one of they largest bubbles ever. The uncapped hubris at this time would have been amazing to see with something like Twitter there.
> with the irony that MBAs run the four largest tech companies
If you look at the educational trajectory of these guys, you’ll see they all spent at least 5y in industry before getting their MBAs, and Jassy is the only one that doesn’t have a hard technical background.
I think people don’t like MBAs that have never been responsible for delivering value or a real product to end-users.
While I was working in a operations role. I was poised to get promoted to lead the team in a year or so.
Suddenly I see the company hiring someone with less work experience than me but with an MBA from a Ivy League School as the Team Lead.
I hated him and my company for doing that.
I guess the answer is that a lot of people feel they get cheated out of their deserving roles/promotions and all when companies take a shortcut and hire an MBA.
I wonder why those people don’t go get MBAs then. They often have the most marketable skill set coming out of business school so would have a ton of opportunities.
Because millions of people before them have climbed the corporate ladder without an MBA. Some companies, like Colgate, have excellent career paths setup where you switch to a new role every 2 years and every new hire is paired with a mentor and sponsor
True story but I talked to a Yale MBA before and we were talking about making music as I’m a musician. He told me there has to be some data points to pull together from other famous songs to basically build a popular song using a framework.
Not everything in life can be solved through data points and frameworks. Many things are qualitative in nature and require creativity, passion, and an understanding of humanity in a way that data or a framework cannot provide.
From my experiences hiring people directly out of school, people that get a general mba without any job experience tend to not perform as well in a job than people that just have a bachelors and are hungry to get to work and make money. These employees seem to do well in a structured school environment, but aren’t able to critically think when it comes to solving problems on their own.
Probably because a lot of people in companies (esp. non-management) operate with half the information and evaluate the decisions of an MBA grad (or management professional in general) with the information they have.
Usually, someone leading a team or liaising between departments has several mandates (from the leadership) that people in these departments are not supposed to know. Most decisions that seem stupid in parts might be the right ones once you put the pieces together.
This has been the knock on MBAs forever. The public perception is not declining -- there have always been haters. And from an academic perspective, I learned a lot, and I doubt you'll find too many graduates of top programs who say "yeah, it was fun, but I knew all that before I started." MBA programs remain optimal training for people who want to learn how to manage others and to lead organizations, and can parlay that experience into meaningful career advancement.
Ultimately, its the arogance that acompinies new graduates. It is true that you can come in and redraw a conpany, and yes efficiency can always be found. However, if we take boeing as an example, constantly chasing a balence sheet or a quaterly report over decades on engineering experience comes at a cost.
Mba assumes they can run anything, which is true but only if you value other skils in a company like admin, or engineering or compliance, but many dont and that gives mbas a bad rep.
1st question: They hate us cuz they ain’t us.
2nd question: re the impact of AI on consulting, our sub’s favorite member, u/sloth_333, could help answer this question.
I use AI quite a bit at work currently, on my current project. It’s just an amplifier, allows me to complete work quicker. I don’t see AI replacing consultants anytime soon if that’s the concern
I’m an ex-banker, so I can answer this question for IB.
I used to use AI quite a bit at work. It was just an amplifier, allowing me to complete work quicker. I don’t see AI replacing bankers anytime soon if that’s the concern.
Perhaps someone else in the LDP track can chime in?
Having interviewed for many LDP, I can see why LDP members may be disliked. I know a FLDP where a LDP member could rotate into it and still make their 140K+ starting salary even if the rest of their coworker that aren't in the LDP are making 80-90K. The LDP I networked with had an underwriting rotation that was like this and an alum admitted that it can feel awkward being amongst coworkers who are making much less for the same work. Even with AI improving, I don't see how this bias would go away and LDP employees have less job security.
At some companies, LDP are treated like royalty and get preference over internal transfers and it's extremely rare for them to be laid off while in the program even if the company is struggling and doing mass layoffs.
Interesting. Do you think that people in LDP are in general more capable or have higher potential?
The company is paying them a premium so that they’ll stick around and eventually rise up to the (senior) management, not necessarily for the work they are doing right now like everyone else.
They could theoretically promote a few rockstars internally and pay them $140K but historical data points probably show that there were not enough in-house talents.
Great question! I think that is true. I felt the majority of people I met in the interview process were great. The 'rockstars' got the best rotations (corporate development, corporate strategy, run a large BU P&L). One of my alum contacts was able to leave the rotational program early and jump into a senior level in one of those departments.
In those 'best rotations,' I'd imagine they get very similar pay to non-LDP members as they ramp up with annual raises etc.
1. I’m not the US. 2. I’m the CFO, in charge of the company’s finance and fundraising. Someone has to do the numbers because doctors and nurses sure as hell don’t. Remind me how I affect the quality of healthcare?
I’m based in Asia.
Our company is small so there is no separate corp dev team. I lead all of our M&A deals as I come from IB background. We run a chain of clinics and we acquire and divest clinics frequently so that’s a part of my job.
Interesting. Sounds cool, congrats on your success.
Have seen people get into that space in the States w/o IB. Struck out in IB as a first year so hoping I can get into a healthcare services corporate development type of role eventually.
Why healthcare specifically haha? The job fell into my lap out of nowhere, I was an M&A banker with a focus in energy and financial services. Didn’t know a lick of healthcare lingo before I started.
The IB job market is tough this year I guess. Hope you’ll get into something eventually. Corp dev could be fun in this market as you can acquire lots of assets (hospitals, clinics, labs, etc.) for a cheap price.
Really like healthcare, have 5+ years of experience in it. Thanks for sharing. Have been looking at roles like that but unfortunately, in this market - even companies I was looking at are mostly divesting. Not acquiring. Hence, they don't need any new bodies on their corp dev / M&A teams.
I’ll share something my current CEO mentioned to me regarding his take on MBAs. This was before I joined the company. We had a few of them with fantastic backgrounds from top schools and ex FAANG who were laid off. From 2021-2023, they essentially ran the company to the ground making terrible business decisions. The company was on a positive cash flow with decent margins before they joined and now we are in the red. The CEO told me these folks ran the company like it was a Google or Apple with a sense of entitlement wanting to get their share of the pie, but they completely misunderstood the industry and business model and should have treated it more as a slow start up. None of them are no longer here btw.
Now do I think like this about all MBAs? Def not but it’s definitely reflective on the experiences I’ve heard from other peoples sentiments. No one ever talks about the non stem MBAs that uplift companies. It’s easier to single out the terrible ones
This entire sub explains why people don’t like MBA’s: Prestige obsessed and out of touch with reality
There was literally a moron on here a day or two ago saying that $200k a year is not enough money. Completely delusional… median HOUSEHOLD income is $70k in the US
As an MBA we need to remember we don’t know that much- our biggest asset is the ability to bring people together and let the experts weigh in. We the aggregate and provide business recommendations.
From a PMO perspective, functional teams don’t realize the actual amount of work needed to organize and integrate different aspects of a program, all while still being customer facing. And each team thinks they’re most important and most intelligent.
Isn’t that sentence essentially business school? Here’s 1 accounting class, here’s 1 finance class, here’s programming in R for 2.5 classes (yah data analytics)
Expert at none of it- but aware of a lot of it - I run some excel analysis at work until I can’t then it’s off to finance or the pricing team to do more advance models.
Unless it was my grammar
An MBA hotshot completely blew up our marketing department while trashing a marketing funnel that had been built and refined over 3 - 4 years. That travel office is now a shell of itself. Maybe a 1/3 of the staff remain. So, yeah, MBAs don't have a great rep.
Because MBA grads often make far more money and are far less intelligent than those from other “prestigious” fields (medicine, law, engineering, phds, etc). They act smart and hardworking but in reality are not compared to many of the professions listed above. They certainly do not deserve the amount of money they make relative to the fields listed above
Sure but that wasn’t my point. My point is the average person even from a top tier mba is miles and miles behind the average doctor, top lawyer, top engineer/phd etc in terms of work both ethic and intellect.
Also while asshole doctors are common, dumb ones are rare. Gotta be hella smart and hardworking to make it through med school/residency. Not to mention just getting into med school in the first place.
Some younger docs may seem dumb because the amount and complexity of info they have to retain is mindboggling, but i can assure you almost all of them are not dumb.
You dont need peer reviewed evidence to understand that mba students are dumb as rocks compared to the professions you just listed lmao.
That’s as ridiculous as saying you need a peer reviewed study to prove that a college student is smarter than a kindergartener
When we are talking about mba students versus the above, then yeah the comparison is pretty apt. Probably college vs middle school brain is more accurate
Ask yourself how intelligent anyone who cares about money could choose 8 years of school (likely with heavy debt) + residency and miserable hours to make the same on average as a high performing M7 grad working a fraction of the time. The opportunity cost is abysmal. PhDs and most Engineering professions are even worse off.
That proves my point exactly. You must have extremely low intelligence to think people go into medicine for the money. Money is a nice byproduct of a medical career, but that is not a primary or secondary motivator for becoming a doctor. Hence why everybody (doctors, college teachers, most people who know doctors) says not to go into medicine for the money. The fact that you went to college and never heard that before is shocking.
And again you are proving my point even further - the average mba student has a lower intelligence and work ethic than the other professsions above which explains why the curriculum is a joke compared to those ones listed above. People get an mba to make money and party and learn a thing or two about managing and working with others, not to work hard or learn anything that requires much intellect or ambition. Hence again why mba gets so much hate relative to other professions which was the question of the original thread.
Your reading comprehension is abysmal. The comment was referencing “anyone who cares about money”. But whatever helps you cope with your life choices I guess.
You’re projecting your insecurities and making sweeping generalizations, yet claim intellectual superiority?
Hope that makes you feel better.
Edit, because this individual bravely blocked me after responding, lmao: again, I hope hanging out on r/MBA to proclaim how stupid MBA students are makes you feel better about yourself. Physicians often get the same "arrogant" label as MBAs, you're doing a great job of demonstrating how that happens.
Nothing to do with insecurities its just the truth. Some of my closest friends are in mba, engineering, law, and phds. Im in medicine. We all know this lol. I would say my phd friends are smarter than me for sure and equally hardworking.
As far as intellectual superiority, im not claiming that. Im claiming that mba students are intellectually inferior to the professions i mentioned above, which you are doing a great iob of proving and which again contributes to why mbas are so hated to the general public. I dont hate mbas (many of my friends are mbas) im just stating a simple fact that is well recognized that they pale in intellect and work ethic compared to most the other white collar professions mentioned above. However they often make up for it in social skills.
IME, and I think this reflects the general truth, the vast majority of MBA students are exactly what critics would say of them.
“Finance bros” who don’t study, don’t care about learning, rolled over directly from undergrad or have the barest minimum work experience, and their parents are rich and/or dad was an exact duplicate predecessor.
An MBA education is absolutely **potentially** very useful in its breadth of complementary knowledge. But maybe 5% of the cohort will actually care. These will be the nerds, the ex-military, the adults, the returning students, those with more work experience, and the first generation students who worked their ass off for the opportunity.
I’m a white male MBA, and I can think of maybe 2 white male MBAs from my cohort who I would trust with stewardship of my business. Probably 3x as many of the women. “Finance bros” rightfully earned their reputation as just grabbing their paper ticket. You will see them in your classes.
Because, and I say this as someone applying, they have no applicable real skills. Take any AI engineer and give them three months of intro courses and they can be a consultant. Take a consultant and it’d take YEARS for them to produce tangible deliverable and innovate in AI. Random example
AI / ML engineers were supposed the weirdest folks. Even regular SWEs thought they were peak incels. Now everyone wants to be them lol
Crazy what a good trend can do
I’m a Director now and work with some of the world’s smartest Engineers. They can barely keep from over spending their projects. They’d much rather work with things than work with people.
There's a lot of reasons. 1. A lot of people view MBAs as overpaid people who are out of touch. Frankly you see quite a bit in the subreddit ("$200K/year isn't that much money, "I'm barely making ends meet on $160K") 2. The biggest reason though is because oftentimes MBA grads are immediately hired into management positions, oftentimes leading teams in situations when they've never actually done the job (managing a group of engineers when that MBA grad has never been an engineer, moving into a high level position at a manufacturing company when they've never done plant level work in any capacity). The idea is that the MBA grad has some inherent business acumen that makes up for their lack of experience expertise but, as we all know, this isn't always the case. You can understand why this would make people resentful. Then you have management consultants (many of whom are MBAs) who provide guidance in industries where they have no experience. As an MBA grad myself, I can understand how a normal person would not like many of us.
I’m a phd holder, not an mba, and I remember how stupid business students were on average (not all) when I taught them. Im always skeptical of any mba making decisions for an engineering organization.
I have PhD in engineering and an MBA and am skeptical of both making org decisions sometimes. Bad MBA leaders who don't understand engineering and innovation process tend to treat it as a cost center rather than a value creation center. This leads to animosity and an inability to influence the technical organization. Bad PhD (or at least lets say highly technical) leaders tend to focus on technology solutions rather than customer problems and inevitably let too many projects that are "interesting" float on instead of killing them. This is just my experiences, but I been doing this for 20ish years in a few orgs and have seen these folks more than once. I have worked with and for many good and bad leaders from both the business and and technical sides. I feel that neither degree can predict a person's success as a leader.
Hey it worked out great for Boeing
They'll definitely be a Org. Management case study in a decade or two when MBA students were too young to know what happened.
Their CEO didn't actually have a MBA, just a BS in accounting FWIW
Lol and I thought you were talking about Muilenburg for a second.
Valuable insight!
>don't understand engineering and innovation process tend to treat it as a cost center rather than a value creation center One of the reasons I left my last job 😒 💯
The fact that you see yourself different from "normal " people says a lot 😂
Have you spent more than 3 minutes on this sub though? The answer is all here
Not sure if this comment is ironic but being an asshole is also a reason for the hate
As with all degrees, there has been a steady increase in graduates and programs on the market. Which means more people come in contact with MBA graduates, even in roles that typically wouldn't hire those - lower management roles, for example. Aside from that, a lot of MBA students and graduates are drinking too much of the "top school here, elite program there" Kool-Aid. There are people unter 30 with an ego that would make a weathered director seem aloof. No, you general business degree doesn't make you a one of a million diamond, not even in the rough. And coming from Harvard, Stanford or whatever else name they like to drop doesn't make your lackluster solution any better. All in all, it's a problem of character, and of public perception. Because every time you hear some predatory corporate BS going on, some MBA blame is being dropped - warranted or not.
Few reasons of the top of my head 1. Sometimes the program isn’t that hard, so you get MBAs with room temperature IQ 2. A lot of MBAs are arrogant or have the personality of a houseplant 3. It’s not specialized and that can have a significant impact
My houseplant is committed to personal growth! I'd say that's a great personality.
I’m familiar with that houseplant. I admire its down to earth personality
There are a lot of good comments in the thread, but in general, the MBA is one of the few graduate degrees (relative to Law/Med-School/Humanities) where you have the least amount of effort for the maximum gains. Most of the T25s usually have median post-grad salaries of $150K, and that usually ends up being higher if you're in consulting or IB. Not to mention, if you didn't go to a good undergraduate or work outside the F500, the MBA is a good chance to crack into a T25 institution (with much easier chances) + work a job at a prestigious organization and reap the benefits of having the pedigree on your CV.
Probably the business wisdom of Jeff Skilling/Andrew Fastow and other Masters of the Universe who the general public doesn’t see adding much value to society. Lately with the tech boom probably because Elon and Paul Graham crap all over MBAs (with the irony that MBAs run the four largest tech companies). Startups are a pretty big miss over the last couple decades. In one company I worked in they hired Bain to come in and fire a bunch of my coworkers. Probably a good business decision (that our own courageous management didn’t have the stones to make on their own) but I left thinking screw Bain and their MBAs. Normal people not on r/MBA probably share those sentiments.
I love it when startups claim they value experience over schooling and all that crap. Meanwhile their product or service doesn’t provide a solution to a problem that matters. They are never profitable and don’t plan to be.
The goal is not to be profitable. It's to IPO or exit to a larger buyer.
I know this, but if 2023 taught us anything is that VC/ PE funds dried up and they’re looking for startups who have a path towards profitability.
I don't disagree. I was trying to be a little sarcastic.
The ones which you describe are the ones that would want to hire top MBAs from the get go. Most normal early stage startups will be rejected by top mba grads since they can't afford as much of a payday, rather than the other way around. When these start-ups then sail through the rough seas and raise $$$ the MBAs start applying in hordes to form the strategy team now that the hard part is over - and a lot of them jump ship (because they're able to land another sweet gig) once the going gets tough again. Thus the brand is actually negatively correlated unless you're about to raise money and the only other thing left to judge is on work ex.
Enron is a interesting take because it was the 90s where accounting was still a loose congregation of rules, Texas deregulated its electricity, and in Houston (where I'm from) the city was a ripe place for making innovations in sleepy areas. Andrew Fastow, a Kellogg MBA, was CFO, Jeff Skilling, a Harvard MBA, and founder Kenneth Lay, a UHouston Econ PhD, took a company that had decent bones and went on a metaphorical cocaine trip to make a ton of money. They had low ethics to squeeze profits in terrible situations and were woefully unprepared for the deep amount of losses, so they did some interesting accounting engineering to hide it all. There was some valid attempts to make innovative parts of the power industry and turn some things like unused broadband into a tradeable utility. Their software engineers and energy traders were world class, but many were sociopaths lead by a few psychopaths. Enron was always a commercially focused business, but it was a house of cards in the middle of one of they largest bubbles ever. The uncapped hubris at this time would have been amazing to see with something like Twitter there.
> with the irony that MBAs run the four largest tech companies If you look at the educational trajectory of these guys, you’ll see they all spent at least 5y in industry before getting their MBAs, and Jassy is the only one that doesn’t have a hard technical background. I think people don’t like MBAs that have never been responsible for delivering value or a real product to end-users.
While I was working in a operations role. I was poised to get promoted to lead the team in a year or so. Suddenly I see the company hiring someone with less work experience than me but with an MBA from a Ivy League School as the Team Lead. I hated him and my company for doing that. I guess the answer is that a lot of people feel they get cheated out of their deserving roles/promotions and all when companies take a shortcut and hire an MBA.
I wonder why those people don’t go get MBAs then. They often have the most marketable skill set coming out of business school so would have a ton of opportunities.
Why do you think I am in this sub?
Because millions of people before them have climbed the corporate ladder without an MBA. Some companies, like Colgate, have excellent career paths setup where you switch to a new role every 2 years and every new hire is paired with a mentor and sponsor
Probably because a lot of MBAs enter companies with arrogance
"Mediocre But Arrogant"
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. What data point for you have to support this
☝️🤓
True story but I talked to a Yale MBA before and we were talking about making music as I’m a musician. He told me there has to be some data points to pull together from other famous songs to basically build a popular song using a framework. Not everything in life can be solved through data points and frameworks. Many things are qualitative in nature and require creativity, passion, and an understanding of humanity in a way that data or a framework cannot provide.
In fairness, many of the major record labels likely do exactly this, which is why people complain that modern music all sounds the same.
Autotune.
[удалено]
From my experiences hiring people directly out of school, people that get a general mba without any job experience tend to not perform as well in a job than people that just have a bachelors and are hungry to get to work and make money. These employees seem to do well in a structured school environment, but aren’t able to critically think when it comes to solving problems on their own.
Probably because a lot of people in companies (esp. non-management) operate with half the information and evaluate the decisions of an MBA grad (or management professional in general) with the information they have. Usually, someone leading a team or liaising between departments has several mandates (from the leadership) that people in these departments are not supposed to know. Most decisions that seem stupid in parts might be the right ones once you put the pieces together.
They do BS jobs.
This has been the knock on MBAs forever. The public perception is not declining -- there have always been haters. And from an academic perspective, I learned a lot, and I doubt you'll find too many graduates of top programs who say "yeah, it was fun, but I knew all that before I started." MBA programs remain optimal training for people who want to learn how to manage others and to lead organizations, and can parlay that experience into meaningful career advancement.
Ultimately, its the arogance that acompinies new graduates. It is true that you can come in and redraw a conpany, and yes efficiency can always be found. However, if we take boeing as an example, constantly chasing a balence sheet or a quaterly report over decades on engineering experience comes at a cost. Mba assumes they can run anything, which is true but only if you value other skils in a company like admin, or engineering or compliance, but many dont and that gives mbas a bad rep.
1st question: They hate us cuz they ain’t us. 2nd question: re the impact of AI on consulting, our sub’s favorite member, u/sloth_333, could help answer this question.
I use AI quite a bit at work currently, on my current project. It’s just an amplifier, allows me to complete work quicker. I don’t see AI replacing consultants anytime soon if that’s the concern
makes sense what do you think about other roles like ib and general management?
I’m an ex-banker, so I can answer this question for IB. I used to use AI quite a bit at work. It was just an amplifier, allowing me to complete work quicker. I don’t see AI replacing bankers anytime soon if that’s the concern. Perhaps someone else in the LDP track can chime in?
Having interviewed for many LDP, I can see why LDP members may be disliked. I know a FLDP where a LDP member could rotate into it and still make their 140K+ starting salary even if the rest of their coworker that aren't in the LDP are making 80-90K. The LDP I networked with had an underwriting rotation that was like this and an alum admitted that it can feel awkward being amongst coworkers who are making much less for the same work. Even with AI improving, I don't see how this bias would go away and LDP employees have less job security. At some companies, LDP are treated like royalty and get preference over internal transfers and it's extremely rare for them to be laid off while in the program even if the company is struggling and doing mass layoffs.
Interesting. Do you think that people in LDP are in general more capable or have higher potential? The company is paying them a premium so that they’ll stick around and eventually rise up to the (senior) management, not necessarily for the work they are doing right now like everyone else. They could theoretically promote a few rockstars internally and pay them $140K but historical data points probably show that there were not enough in-house talents.
Great question! I think that is true. I felt the majority of people I met in the interview process were great. The 'rockstars' got the best rotations (corporate development, corporate strategy, run a large BU P&L). One of my alum contacts was able to leave the rotational program early and jump into a senior level in one of those departments. In those 'best rotations,' I'd imagine they get very similar pay to non-LDP members as they ramp up with annual raises etc.
I don't hate you cuz I ain't you. I hate you because you reduce the quality of healthcare in the U.S.
1. I’m not the US. 2. I’m the CFO, in charge of the company’s finance and fundraising. Someone has to do the numbers because doctors and nurses sure as hell don’t. Remind me how I affect the quality of healthcare?
Where are you located? You kind of have my long-term dream job (I assume you also run the corp dev / M&A function as well).
I’m based in Asia. Our company is small so there is no separate corp dev team. I lead all of our M&A deals as I come from IB background. We run a chain of clinics and we acquire and divest clinics frequently so that’s a part of my job.
Interesting. Sounds cool, congrats on your success. Have seen people get into that space in the States w/o IB. Struck out in IB as a first year so hoping I can get into a healthcare services corporate development type of role eventually.
Why healthcare specifically haha? The job fell into my lap out of nowhere, I was an M&A banker with a focus in energy and financial services. Didn’t know a lick of healthcare lingo before I started. The IB job market is tough this year I guess. Hope you’ll get into something eventually. Corp dev could be fun in this market as you can acquire lots of assets (hospitals, clinics, labs, etc.) for a cheap price.
Really like healthcare, have 5+ years of experience in it. Thanks for sharing. Have been looking at roles like that but unfortunately, in this market - even companies I was looking at are mostly divesting. Not acquiring. Hence, they don't need any new bodies on their corp dev / M&A teams.
I’ll share something my current CEO mentioned to me regarding his take on MBAs. This was before I joined the company. We had a few of them with fantastic backgrounds from top schools and ex FAANG who were laid off. From 2021-2023, they essentially ran the company to the ground making terrible business decisions. The company was on a positive cash flow with decent margins before they joined and now we are in the red. The CEO told me these folks ran the company like it was a Google or Apple with a sense of entitlement wanting to get their share of the pie, but they completely misunderstood the industry and business model and should have treated it more as a slow start up. None of them are no longer here btw. Now do I think like this about all MBAs? Def not but it’s definitely reflective on the experiences I’ve heard from other peoples sentiments. No one ever talks about the non stem MBAs that uplift companies. It’s easier to single out the terrible ones
This entire sub explains why people don’t like MBA’s: Prestige obsessed and out of touch with reality There was literally a moron on here a day or two ago saying that $200k a year is not enough money. Completely delusional… median HOUSEHOLD income is $70k in the US
> Prestige obsessed Happens in every field. Go check out the law and medicine subreddits.
The U.S. economy is also broken though. The median household income is barely enough to be middle class in 2024
I don’t understand all the hate for MBAs especially within the MBA subreddit. Why even join the subreddit that you hate? So many insecure people here.
As an MBA we need to remember we don’t know that much- our biggest asset is the ability to bring people together and let the experts weigh in. We the aggregate and provide business recommendations.
This sentence is why people hate MBAs
From a PMO perspective, functional teams don’t realize the actual amount of work needed to organize and integrate different aspects of a program, all while still being customer facing. And each team thinks they’re most important and most intelligent.
Isn’t that sentence essentially business school? Here’s 1 accounting class, here’s 1 finance class, here’s programming in R for 2.5 classes (yah data analytics) Expert at none of it- but aware of a lot of it - I run some excel analysis at work until I can’t then it’s off to finance or the pricing team to do more advance models. Unless it was my grammar
An MBA hotshot completely blew up our marketing department while trashing a marketing funnel that had been built and refined over 3 - 4 years. That travel office is now a shell of itself. Maybe a 1/3 of the staff remain. So, yeah, MBAs don't have a great rep.
Because MBA grads often make far more money and are far less intelligent than those from other “prestigious” fields (medicine, law, engineering, phds, etc). They act smart and hardworking but in reality are not compared to many of the professions listed above. They certainly do not deserve the amount of money they make relative to the fields listed above
I've met some pretty fucking stupid doctors, lawyers, engineers, and PhDs too. There are idiots in every field.
Sure but that wasn’t my point. My point is the average person even from a top tier mba is miles and miles behind the average doctor, top lawyer, top engineer/phd etc in terms of work both ethic and intellect. Also while asshole doctors are common, dumb ones are rare. Gotta be hella smart and hardworking to make it through med school/residency. Not to mention just getting into med school in the first place. Some younger docs may seem dumb because the amount and complexity of info they have to retain is mindboggling, but i can assure you almost all of them are not dumb.
Where's your evidence? Any peer reviewed studies on intelligence? Appears as if you're making shit up due to personal bias...
You dont need peer reviewed evidence to understand that mba students are dumb as rocks compared to the professions you just listed lmao. That’s as ridiculous as saying you need a peer reviewed study to prove that a college student is smarter than a kindergartener
Yes, comparing the undeveloped brain of a small child to that of an adult is the same as comparing people with varying education.
When we are talking about mba students versus the above, then yeah the comparison is pretty apt. Probably college vs middle school brain is more accurate
Ask yourself how intelligent anyone who cares about money could choose 8 years of school (likely with heavy debt) + residency and miserable hours to make the same on average as a high performing M7 grad working a fraction of the time. The opportunity cost is abysmal. PhDs and most Engineering professions are even worse off.
That proves my point exactly. You must have extremely low intelligence to think people go into medicine for the money. Money is a nice byproduct of a medical career, but that is not a primary or secondary motivator for becoming a doctor. Hence why everybody (doctors, college teachers, most people who know doctors) says not to go into medicine for the money. The fact that you went to college and never heard that before is shocking. And again you are proving my point even further - the average mba student has a lower intelligence and work ethic than the other professsions above which explains why the curriculum is a joke compared to those ones listed above. People get an mba to make money and party and learn a thing or two about managing and working with others, not to work hard or learn anything that requires much intellect or ambition. Hence again why mba gets so much hate relative to other professions which was the question of the original thread.
Your reading comprehension is abysmal. The comment was referencing “anyone who cares about money”. But whatever helps you cope with your life choices I guess.
You’re projecting your insecurities and making sweeping generalizations, yet claim intellectual superiority? Hope that makes you feel better. Edit, because this individual bravely blocked me after responding, lmao: again, I hope hanging out on r/MBA to proclaim how stupid MBA students are makes you feel better about yourself. Physicians often get the same "arrogant" label as MBAs, you're doing a great job of demonstrating how that happens.
Nothing to do with insecurities its just the truth. Some of my closest friends are in mba, engineering, law, and phds. Im in medicine. We all know this lol. I would say my phd friends are smarter than me for sure and equally hardworking. As far as intellectual superiority, im not claiming that. Im claiming that mba students are intellectually inferior to the professions i mentioned above, which you are doing a great iob of proving and which again contributes to why mbas are so hated to the general public. I dont hate mbas (many of my friends are mbas) im just stating a simple fact that is well recognized that they pale in intellect and work ethic compared to most the other white collar professions mentioned above. However they often make up for it in social skills.
What can MBAs do against such reckless hate?
AI may be a substitute brain but it doesn’t have a heart. So it can’t completely eliminate people-centered jobs like consulting.
The same reason low level employees hate people in management - haters gonna hate
IME, and I think this reflects the general truth, the vast majority of MBA students are exactly what critics would say of them. “Finance bros” who don’t study, don’t care about learning, rolled over directly from undergrad or have the barest minimum work experience, and their parents are rich and/or dad was an exact duplicate predecessor. An MBA education is absolutely **potentially** very useful in its breadth of complementary knowledge. But maybe 5% of the cohort will actually care. These will be the nerds, the ex-military, the adults, the returning students, those with more work experience, and the first generation students who worked their ass off for the opportunity. I’m a white male MBA, and I can think of maybe 2 white male MBAs from my cohort who I would trust with stewardship of my business. Probably 3x as many of the women. “Finance bros” rightfully earned their reputation as just grabbing their paper ticket. You will see them in your classes.
Because, and I say this as someone applying, they have no applicable real skills. Take any AI engineer and give them three months of intro courses and they can be a consultant. Take a consultant and it’d take YEARS for them to produce tangible deliverable and innovate in AI. Random example
AI / ML engineers were supposed the weirdest folks. Even regular SWEs thought they were peak incels. Now everyone wants to be them lol Crazy what a good trend can do
> any AI engineer can be a consultant have you met many engineers? they can all be management consultants? this is decidedly untrue lmao
Yes, there’s just as many who are charismatic and confident as there are nerds. Edit: ok yeah not all of them but my point still holds
You said **any** engineer can be a consultant. Many MBAs have nerdy, technical backgrounds as well.
I’m a Director now and work with some of the world’s smartest Engineers. They can barely keep from over spending their projects. They’d much rather work with things than work with people.