There’s been an interesting conversation happening in the world of blogs I read over the last week or so about the role and value of MBAs in startups. It started with this post by Charlie O’Donnell. This post was tweeted around the HBS community with some fervor last weekend and I read it and this reply by Rob Go shortly before embarking on an errand expedition (and ultimately a debate about these posts) with Rafael Corrales last Sunday night. Rafael wrote a great response to them, which I mostly agree with, and Kyle Doherty then added his two cents here.
I really have no desire to engage in a debate about MBAs’ approach to recruiting here (at startups or elsewhere) because I think most of the issues have been covered by Rob and Rafael and Charlie (particularly in the comments on Rafael’s post). I do, however, want to say one thing. And I should caveat that this is general commentary inspired by the above conversation and my experiences over the past year and a half, not a response directed at Rob, Charlie, or anyone else.
It frustrates me to no end when people bucket MBAs. An MBA is not a race or a religion. It is a graduate degree. That’s it. There is almost nothing I can generalize about any of the people I’ve ever met in this MBA program (or from any other MBA program for that matter) except to say that they either have or have had an interest in studying business administration.
People who make the assumption that MBAs are X, Y, or Z, simply because they have an MBA are as guilty of lunacy as the MBAs who throw themselves at startups with the expectations of red-carpet-rollouts simply because they have an MBA.
Contrary to popular belief, not all MBAs are flocking to finance and/or consulting. Further, not all MBAs *come* from finance or consulting. There are a ton of people here who come from interesting operational and functional backgrounds and have every intention of returning to operational and functional positions. These are the same types of positions that any startup seeks to fill.
So, what’s my point?
When Kyle said:
While it seems unfair to bucket a whole group based on the actions of a few, it’s human nature to do so. Those who are really dedicated will figure it out, the perception doesn’t matter. So I guess my approach is to think: who cares?
My answer to this?
I do.
I care a lot. I don’t want a few people who lack a social compass representing me in the world. I don’t want anybody to assume anything about me when they see MBA on my resume except for that at one point in my life I had an interest in studying business administration. And I want to fight those generalizations that get made (and the people who cause them to be made) for the sake of the rest of us who don’t behave like this. Then maybe the people who use criticism of MBAs and B-schools as a way to sell newspapers and display ads will have to find another way to write about us.
I’m writing to share an initiative I’ve been working on at school and ask for your help.
DARPA, the government agency, is sponsoring a challenge on Saturday to test the ability of social networks to mobilize toward a common task. They are placing ten giant red weather balloons (tethered near the ground) around the US for 8 hours on Saturday. The first person/team to correctly submit the locations of the ten balloons wins $40,000.
We will be donating the money to The Global Fund’s AIDS research/awareness initiative.
I’m working on this initiative with several classmates and a few profs from Harvard Business School, and we’re looking at this as a test of the HBS network. Hopefully we win, but I’m confident we’ll learn something in the process!
details: www.projectredballoon.com
twitter: www.twitter.com/helpredballoon
Please help us spread the word by forwarding to your friends, blogging, retweeting, facebooking, etc.
We need your SUPPORT and it’s for a GREAT CAUSE!
I have a lot of opinions about culture. They’ll come out here over time. In the meantime, here is something my friend
Rafael blogged about.
Some people in the first year of school seemed inclined to dismiss issues of culture as “fluff” or “kumbaya.”
I have three words to say to them:
You are wrong.
This is a must read presentation from Netflix on issues of culture. Worth the time….
As I was packing up to leave school in late May, I had a weird experience on campus. I had crossed the river from home to school to pick a few things up from my various lockers, closets, etc. It was about 10 days after school had let out for summer. Most people had already left campus for travel before starting summer internships.
Being on campus, a place where I had had a million intense memories accumulate during the year, I had a rather vacant feeling. The type of vacancy you’d encounter coming to a place you’d never been before.
In my mind I started to feel nostalgic – remembering all the great things that had happened that year.
It occurred to me then that the place would never be the same. Granted, I still have a whole year to go at HBS, and many many more memories yet to create. But the notion that what had happened during the year – the experience – was more closely tied to the people and the circumstance than the physical place, made me realize how much I will need to capture every opportunity in the coming year.
Because once the moment passes: the people, the place, the circumstance – everything that happened there becomes a nice (but unrepeatable) memory.
I wonder what psychologists would say about memories – and the strength of them – relative to people or place.
(I wrote this on the train on Friday)
Last night I was in a taxi in New York City headed to a bar when I heard on the radio that there had been bombings at western hotels in Jakarta Indonesia. Prior to school this would have been just another sad headline. Now, though, I have a sectionmate who is working in Jakarta this summer and my stomach jumped when I heard the news.
Fortunately I was able to get in touch with him in minutes (modern communications FTW) and learned he was safe. He had been scheduled to be at one of the targeted hotels for breakfast the morning the bombs went off, but fortunately his plans changed last minute and he was not there.
Phew.
An indicator, perhaps, of the way life will be post-school with friends and classmates scattered around the globe.
When we started the school year, our Section Chair, Professor Frances Frei mentioned it was common for students to earn between 6 and 12 visas travelling during their time at HBS. I’m not sure I believed it at the time, but I’m on the way to that now.
Over spring break in March, a great friend of mine from section, Vicente, lead a few dozen of us on a trek to his home country, Colombia. We spent a few days in Bogota, then a few days in Cartagena, a night on a remote island, before circling back and returning to Boston.
I could bore you with the details, but suffice it to say it was far and away the most memorable trips I’ve been on and I wanted to point to the flickr set from the trip from the blog… so here you are:
colorful colombian crafts