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> But the hopeless idealist in me asks if it isn't possible to get an MBA to actually try to theorize about customer behavior, economic structure, supply chains, what have you and build part of ones academic foundation around it?

Yes, an MBA will help you understand many of our societal, economic, and business constructs. I did not find an MBA to be particularly helpful in understanding customer behavior, but it's definitely valuable in understanding government and corporate behavior.

And yes, it'll help you understand supply chains/logistics, various process and people optimizations, etc. Think of it like learning algorithms and patterns for solving problems that are commonly found in large human organizations.

> Or is it truly impossible to walk into today's MBA programs wanting to study business as theoretical and societal constructs, without walking out a professional networker and middle manager?

It's a degree. Nothing more. However, I would not get an MBA with a goal of middle management as the focus of most programs is on getting you ready for upper management decision making. For middle management in a large company skills such as project management, people management, scheduling, delegation and communication are more important than high level strategic thinking.

   However, I would not get an MBA with a goal of middle
   management as the focus of most programs is on getting
   you ready for upper management decision making. For middle
   management in a large company skills 
   such as project management, people management, scheduling,
   delegation and communication are more 
   important than high level strategic thinking.

Perhaps it would be better if the training were divided into different (shorter) programs undertaken at different stages of a career. There might be a short program of basic business skills, appropriate for people just starting out and taking worker/analyst jobs; another for people stepping up into leadership positions, dealing with project and people management; and a final one for senior management, focused on strategic issues.

The military typically does it this way. What you learn in Officer Candidate School is different from what they teach you at the War College.

Even though it's just a website, I think of HN as a community that I am part of. And as such, I am always saddened to see how people in here talk about MBAs. Sure, there are those that just want to get into business to make quick bucks but there are also smart, good people who want to create a business that just happen not to be technical. But who have skills that many developers don't (and often, I think, skills that developers don't realize that they lack).

And I have to say that one of my MBA friends who frequents HN (he might be reading this but I won't name names) frequently laughs at blog posts about great insight that some developer-entrepreneur had about customers or markets etc. that is considered really basic knowledge to him.

one highly visible recent example of this is thiel's proposition that startups should try to create monopolies and avoid competition. this is taught from multiple perspectives in the core curriculum of business school. every mba (who didn't just dial it in) knows this, so it's not particularly insightful to a b-school grad.

in this instance, you could construe that what pg says is contradictory. on one hand, go to school for things that are interesting to you regardless of how they may apply to a startup. on the other hand, he says an mba is useless for startups.

but if you tease out the strands of advice, you'd see that you shouldn't do an mba if you think that will prepare you for a startup. you could (and i'm extrapolating here) do an mba if the subject matter is genuinely interesting to you (as it was for me). i learned a lot in my mba program that i was genuinely interested in learning.

and if you decide to do an mba, take all the quantitative classes you can. you want to practice and hone skills, not just be versed in theory. also, applied economics might be interesting to you.

The issue is whether the person with an MBA can apply their learning to provide value to a startup.

What's that Einstein attributed quote?

    In theory, theory and practice are the same.
    In practice, they are not.

I believe the same is true of CompSci graduates as not all are capable of taking their learning and figure out how to apply it to get things done. But for us as technical people, it's easier to spot those who cannot.

One of the things I focus on when interviewing is whether they are passionate about their craft, have an interest in their trade. There's a huge difference between the CompSci graduate who studied because of a love of computer science and programming, and the one who did it because they are motivated by an above average salary.

With MBAs, it's extremely hard to determine those who care about the theory and craft, those who will theorise and adjust the application of their knowledge and experience. If the motivation was merely "My salary will be $(n)k greater" then they are likely to apply the formula they learned without caring about how it applies in the given case.

Not all MBAs are bad, but we are poorly qualified to separate the good from the bad. And given that the bad choice could be an early employee, a bad mistake here could be the end of the company.

> Am I the only person who ever found the course list for an MBA genuinely interesting? Like, intellectually so.

This comment struck a chord for me. Me (and most of my friends) are about to transition out of the military. After 5 years of literally living a different world, but still being intellectually curious but with no (obvious) technical skills...for a lot of us getting an MBA seems to be the only option to "learn the language" and transition out, so to speak. What you're expressing has been the feeling a lot of us has gotten from friends we have in San Fran or New York or wherever - that MBAs are worthless, and that former military officers are generally risk averse and therefore not good hires in fast moving companies (I don't believe this to be the case at all, btw, but I'm obviously biased). What I'm suggesting is that getting an MBA might have more utility for certain groups of people, and less so for others. Perhaps I'm relying too much on the anecdotal evidence of my circle of friends.

Care to expand on the thought that MBAs are poor financial investments? They've seemed like a far better educational investment than law school or most PhDs. (I'm genuinely curious as a programmer at a startup who's seriously considering business school because I find it intellectually interesting. They do seem like a bad idea if you want to do startups, but otherwise a solid investment.)