Elon Musk Talks About the Importance of Physics, Criticizes the MBA 343
New submitter ElSergio writes "In a two-part interview with the American Physical Society, Elon Musk, founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX, talks about how important it is to be able to think in terms of first principles, a tool learned as a physics student. Later in the interview, he recommends against obtaining an MBA, claiming, 'It teaches people all sorts of wrong things' and 'They don't teach people to think in MBA schools.' In fact. if you are in business and want to work for SpaceX, you will have a better chance getting hired if you do not have one. According to Musk, 'I hire people in spite of an MBA'. He goes on to point out that if you look at the senior managers in his companies, you will not find very many MBAs there."
couldnt agree more (Score:5, Insightful)
Totally agree with this, Its should be same in IT companies as well
Common Ground (Score:2, Insightful)
Finally, something Musk and I actually agree on.
MBA == waste of time and money.
Re:Mostly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Though it wouldn't hurt many to actually have lengthy and non-propagandist History and Geography lessons.
Re:Phases of Evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mostly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. Post doctoral research in social sciences(which don't typically fall under STEM, in spite of that "science" there) tends to be informative and useful. Graduate level history has a ton still to uncover. I could see your argument applied to thinks like art of philosophy, but I don't really agree.
If anything the T part of STEM(and that's where my job is) is among the most suited areas for associates degree.
"I think X is mostly bullshit therefor X isn't really useful" isn't a good approach to academia.
Re:Mostly... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you're talking homeopathy, I'm pretty sure medicine falls under the category "science".
Re:Common Ground (Score:4, Insightful)
News flash: highly successful engineer who did not go to business school thinks business school is a waste.
Shocking update: highly successful businessperson who went to business school thinks engineers don't know what they're talking about.
This is pretty normal... the path you took to get where you are starts to look like the best or only path. There is room for all specialties and approaches when used in the right way and mixed with other viewpoints.
Re:Mostly... (Score:4, Insightful)
It will hurt the person receiving it, who then has to watch the rest of the world re-enact history.
Being able to laugh at the average level of geography knowledge doesn't make up for it.
Re:Common Ground (Score:5, Insightful)
While this is true, I suspect that what he sees (and dislikes) about the fact is that MBAs (and especially lawyers and lobbyists) are necessary tools in much the same way that soldiers are: they fight with the other guy's MBAs, lawyers, and lobbyists, laying waste to much real value in the process; because the alternative of having the other guy's MBAs, lawyers, and lobbyists march in unopposed is even worse.
Engineers, scientists, and the like, by contrast, get sent out to prod the obnoxiously complex and notoriously noncompliant laws of nature into enough semblance of obedience that they can be put to good use.
Obviously, there is value to having a good lawyer, or a good army, at your back; because there are others out there who have the same, and don't have your best interests at heart; but there is a certain tragedy in watching men, time, and money, get thrown into the meatgrinder in order to keep two adversaries off one another's backs; while there is a certain triumph in seeing the application of human effort bring new areas of nature within the scope of human understanding and utility.
Halfway through my MBA... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the material has been common sense, in my opinion. The organizational leadership classes have been interesting. Right now I'm in a class that focuses on ethics and sustainability. Nothing to this point has been about cutting costs for temporary increase in profit. There is plenty of talk about efficiency, though.. but that is a necessity for a business to survive.
I plan to use my MBA to make a point in future job interviews - I am willing to take that step to continue learning. Regardless of the overall usefulness of the degree, it does take dedication to juggle my current job, school, and helping raise my 9 month old son.
Re:Common Ground (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell you one thing:
If a businessperson ever doubts an engineer, they are most certainly not highly successful.
Re:Common Ground (Score:4, Insightful)
Engineers make things. Businesspeople hoard money. Of course they both think they are right... but one of them is.
Re:Mostly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Troll much, bro?
Hardly.
Most is a waste of time. Academia offers little for most graduates in non-STEM courses that isn't obtained by going out and getting a damned job and learning what the real world is like 10 hours a day instead of spending 52 minutes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons 9 months a year with 10 weeks off for breaks.
Oh, you got a marketing degree? Did your study group make a presentation? We'll be sure to put it up on the refrigerator with your gold star. You can look at it every day while paying off your tuition for the next 20 years.
Are there a minority of graduate-level experts in history and art who do great things who benefited from a couple more years of schooling? Sure. ...but how much of the world needs to be made up of research historians and future art professors?
MOST is a colossal waste. How many non-science degree'd folk would have been better off by just getting a damned job in their profession a couple years sooner?
Also, I see that medicine is debated below as "non-STEM," but I'd call it science, for sure.
Or, you know, I'm trolling, and getting modded down by people with useless degrees that they use to impress other people with useless degrees so they all feel better about their "accomplishments."
Re:Common Ground (Score:4, Insightful)
This is pretty normal... the path you took to get where you are starts to look like the best or only path. There is room for all specialties and approaches when used in the right way and mixed with other viewpoints.
I quite agree with you. However, there's a subtle irony to including "business" majors here.
A century ago, there really were no "business majors" in college. If you went to college, but you were a rich kid who hoped to work in your father's business someday or whatever, you might be a history major or an English lit major, or maybe even something that sounds more exotic today, like classics or art history. If you were inclined toward the sciences, you might even concentrate in biology or chemistry, while getting your overall "liberal arts" perspective.
Nowadays, many universities see the largest number of undergraduates majoring in "business." At some schools, nearly half or more undergraduates are primarily instructed in "business," rather than one out of many disciplines that was traditionally part of the "liberal arts" perspective in college.
I'm not arguing that we should get rid of business majors or reinstitute some old-school liberal arts curriculum. But, it's very clear that the modern "business major" has actually done more than just about any other discipline in reducing the number and variety of "specialities and approaches when used in the right way and mixed with other viewpoints" that you might encounter among college-educated people.
The sheer dominance of the business major actually has tended to reduce the very thing that the parent poster says we should value.
MBAs actually taught to think in delusional ways. (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the MBA worldview:
1) If it doesn't exist on a spreadsheet, it doesn't exist.
2) You don't have to know the details of the business to run it.
3) Productivity is what we say it is.
4) Everything is measured in money. The physical world barely matters.
MBAs seem to share this worldview with those ever accurate, johny-on-the-spot folks commonly known as "economists." They know everything too.
Re:couldnt agree more (Score:5, Insightful)
Agree 100%. An MBA is not bad. The problem with people who have MBAs is the bar is relatively low to get into an MBA program compared to say getting into a graduate Physics program. However, there are idiots in Physics just as there are idiots with MBAs, you just don't hear about the idiots with Physics degrees because they don't get very far, whereas with MBAs I think companies still don't quite understand how to gauge and apply them.
I have an MBA. I manage people too. There were a LOT of idiots in my MBA program too, and I work with several idiots with MBAs. But my MBA also taught me some useful skills. Marketing is an art and a science; things like knowing how your customers buy things, positioning your product correctly, where/how/when to communicate to your customers through advertising that your product is available and can solve their problem is not intuitive. Operations planning and Supply Chain Management are critical to every company, and yet there are many ways to do things, and often the ways that people think are the right ways are actually the most expensive ways.
I work in operations and supply chain. In my company, I have obsoleted two jobs and am working on my third, and all of them were my own. In every case we had different people in those positions, and in every case I was able to improve it so it required fewer, less educated people or was entirely automated; once complete they put me in another area. All the people around those processes had their busy-work reduced and they could focus on money-making decisions, which improves profitability. Not a single person was laid off, we just got more out of everyone. That's the value of an MBA.
Re:There is not much to an MBA (Score:4, Insightful)
You are presuming that "knowing about business" is synonymous with "having an MBA". You don't need an MBA to understand ROI. Any non-retarded engineer can understand ROI with a two minute explanation. Other business concepts can also be learned quickly by anyone trained in logical problem solving. Engineers are trained to balance energy and mass using "in - out = accumulation", and quickly "get" that the same applies to money. An astonishing number of accountants don't think that way, and just blindly apply memorized formulas where they don't apply. Companies run by CEOs with engineering degrees are more likely to be successful than companies run by CEOs with only an MBA.
This warms my heart (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:couldnt agree more (Score:5, Insightful)
*FREAKS THE FUCK OUT* OHJESUSCHRISTWHATTHEFUckman are you trying to give me a heart attack?
Awwww crap, I had 7 threads from 3 tickets, the spec, the SRD, and the SDD weaving in my head into something something that was going to go into production code. Can't remember what it was now... Whelp, that's about 2 hours lost and 2 hours I'll have to spend diving into this clusfterfuck again.
So what did you want?