Yeah, I suppose like the biological cancer, there's not a clear cause effect relationship between a reshaping culture, and then MBAs or "Ship-it" mentality taking over engineering oversight and scheduling. It's a runaway effect.
I tend to place more blame on a deliberate reshaping by the top individual, rather than some accidental metastasizing of the problem. I'm straining the analogy.
I've always seen the cancer as MBAs only hire MBAs, and that's how it grows. Its very difficult to get to a senior level in most organizations without an MBA.
Maybe the CEO in such cases often is an MBA and you are a bit talking about the same thing, just from different perspectives? (Looking at the one person, vs the people, at the top?)
> I have compiled the following for the 2021 Fortune 500 US companies (the last global one I've seen is from FT in 2015 https://ig.ft.com/sites/mba-to-ceo/):
> 43% of CEOs have an MBA
Anyway,what happens if the CEO is an engineer, and everyone reporting to him/her is an MBA :-)
Not arguing anything in particular, just want to point out it's not completely unusual to be both. Many of the top "Chief" positions I've worked under were former PhD engineers and researchers who went and got an MBA to move up. The legendary director of JPL, Charles Elachi, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elachi
And many of my former bosses.
Maybe that's a symptom of the same disease ("without mba you cannot rule"), but I think it doesn't necessarily mean an MBA holder is a bad candidate for leadership.
I tend to place more blame on a deliberate reshaping by the top individual, rather than some accidental metastasizing of the problem. I'm straining the analogy.