HACKER Q&A
📣 notmindthegap

What is your view on MBA product managers?


I have found by-and-large they have relatively little interest in tech & design, and treat product-building more as a game to be played, particularly within the boundaries of BigTech. This makes it difficult to really deliver the “user value” they hammer on about as conflicts of interest tend to compromise the quality of decisions and, subsequently, the product.

And yet, both early- and late-stage tech companies are hiring them in droves.

  👤 opyate Accepted Answer ✓
I've been thinking about this a lot recently: how the "business mind" works.

The notions of:

- "maximising shareholder value"

- wanting forever-growth

- laying off 10K of your staff because you got a slightly smaller 11-digit number profit that your "projected" 11-digit number profit [0] while the CEO made $55m

...just seems to me like... corporate greed?

I'm a big proponent of the worker collective [1], and wanting everyone to share in the spoils, everyone having a vote. I've seen examples of collectives being very successful.

Why doesn't everyone do it, though? Is it because worker collectives can't reach that critical mass of money to branch out into new products and ventures? That begs another question: does every company need to be an Acme corp? Does every company need to be a virus that takes over the world, then lay off staff and build inferior products for even more profit once they've cornered a market?

I don't know - I'm sure I'll never be a "good businessman", but something about the way corporations are set up today is very off.

So, to get back to your point: yes, probably - "they have no interest in tech & design", and fuck art and user value if it gets in the way of some KPI, right?

EDIT: formatting

0. https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/01/18/subject-focusing...

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

👤 throwawaysalome
Code doesn't cause money to change hands. Promises do. Customer-facing MBAs keep that gravy train chugging until an exit event when code might begin to matter.
👤 tacosbane
the point of an mba is to be able to insert yourself between the money and the work and take a cut