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Comment by ThomPete | Hacker News Reader

There is a very big difference between engineering and business and I am kind of surprised that you would make an argument to the contrary.

Your engineering degree help you become better at engineering because you can more or less predict the outcome of how things behave. The theories are seldomly proven wrong.

If the matter you control in engineering were made of "business matter" life would be much more dangerous than it already is. Humans don't follow the laws of physics the same way.

You seem to be confusing doing good inside larger organizations with being good at business. There is little to no correlation.

Being good at business is more like being good at music. Education is no guarantee for success. Feel free to prove me wrong.

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I only have my own experience. And the MBA was as valuable to me, if not more valuable, than my engineering degree. I'm not saying you need an MBA (or that I need one). I am saying that there is value in an MBA, and it goes beyond a rubber stamp demanded by big business.

There is real, honest value in bringing a bunch of smart people from a wide range of backgrounds together for two years to study the way people behave while engaging in commerce. That the nature of business is poorly described by physical laws makes it no less worthy of study. There are good and bad ways to do accounting, finance, operations - even marketing. Why not learn about it? And if you do learn about it, how can that be a bad thing?

Education is about learning how to think. My engineering profs and peers taught me a lot about one way to approach problems. My business school professors and peers taught me an equally useful, and almost completely orthogonal outlook on life.

Accounting, finance and operations have nothing to do with "doing business" in any meaningful way.

They are necessary yes, so is cleaning, your systemadministration etc.

You are not learning how to run a business successfully by learning that.

But the big difference is that to be good at business you have to do business. You can't look it up in a book. With engineering your more or less can.

So unless you are a hired gun working inside a proven industry for a company the MBA is pretty much worthless. The engineer on the other hand seldom is.

I'll agree to disagree. I don't believe engineering is any more easily learned from a book than business is. Different skills, for sure. But you won't find the hard part of either in a book. That doesn't make formal study of either subject "worthless".

I didn't say it was more easily learned. What I said was that what you learn in engineering you can apply in one to one relationship and it will work.

When you deal with business you deal with humans not immaterial matter.

That's thee difference here. And for that no amount of education is going to make you more successful. Again feel free to prove me wrong.

In my 10 person company, stuff like finance / cash management, distribution, statistics, operations, marketing, and sales are pretty crucial.

Probably more so than the cleaning of the office (which is handled by the building).

Maybe we are an outlier though.

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