"When I began my career in the late 80s and early 90s, MBAs ran most of the best new technology companies."

Not exactly. By 1993, MBAs were already starting to turn AOL into the "how much can we milk you before you'll walk away?" behemoth it became. They'd tried to weasel out of our promise of a "lifetime 20% discount" for charter members, they'd rounded up in some directions and down in others, and they'd literally removed the "Sign Off" button from the toolbar because we billed by the hour, and --

Well, I'll let the MBA tell you.

"We needed to drop one icon because of space/look and feel and it made sense to us out of all the other functionality to drop exit. In addition, some folks were uncomfortable with how visible the ability to get out of the service was--all in keeping with our philosophy to keep them online for that one additional minute :)"