this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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People with MBAs can't fucking help themselves. They got a goose that lays golden eggs, but it doesn't lay those golden eggs fast enough, so without even taking off their wristwatch they reach right up the poor bird's cloaca, grab the first thing that feels vaguely round and pull as hard as they can. So then they have a half inside out goose and no more golden eggs ever again.
People pay for a Master's degree to learn how to do this.
Reminds me of a passage in Ben Rich's autobiography. Ben Rich spent his career at the Lockeed Skunkworks, started off designing a heater for the relief tube of jet fighters so the pilot's penis wouldn't freeze to the side of the tube while taking a piss, ended up running the team that designed the F-117. While he was second in command, his boss sent him to Harvard's Business School, who ran a time crunched program for adults who are already in careers and "need" additional business schooling. Upon his return, his boss asked him what he learned. And he wrote on the chalkboard "2/3 HBS = BS"
It has less to to with people having MBAs and much more to do with companies having shareholders. Once you're a publicly traded company there are overwhelmingly strong external forces that compell companies to increase revenue. Even if the business model is perfectly solid and it doesn't make sense to expect rising profits the shareholders only care about growth rates. On the stock market a companies value is only dependent on its growth.
Take Netflix for example. They've had so many users some years ago when they were basically the only streaming service that one might have said they reached market saturation. That would've been a money making machine that people could be content with. But since the market always needs growth it isn't enough and netflix is always trying to "innovate" or squeezie more monthly payments from the existing customer base.
cory doctorow has coined the great word "enshittification" to describe this process. And its driven by the need to grow further even though its to the detriment of the service or the customers. In the end it's the people with the MBAs doing it. But if they're not doing it the shareholders replace them with those that do.
I mean, thats the way the capitalist, stock-return-driven economy works. The market expects a company to constantly grow to pump their stock price, so they have to find new revenue or cut costs somewhere. But they can't do that forever...
The founders build a great product to pull in users, then they go public, then the MBAs turn to enshittification to drive more revenue and get rich while they can. The rest of us then move on to the next platform, if it even exists....
top secret ball bearings rolling across pentagon desks, goddamn that's a good freakin' book :D
So HBS is Harvard Business School, BS is bullshit. What does "2/3" refer to?
Two-thirds. As in two of the three letters of HBS
Oh, gotcha.
Two thirds of HBS is BS, I guess it's saying it literally and playing that HBS has 3 letters and BS 2
Ah, thanks!
They can't even admit this mindset is stupid because after they ruin every worthwhile company they just jump to the next thing while the industry they left sinks.