Howard_T

Jim Rogers: Lessons from a Legend

Please let this retired engineer add his thoughts to the MBA question.

It appears that several of the commenters believe the MBA is most useful as a networking tool. This is likely true when it comes to gaining initial employment or changing employers. As far as job performance goes, the MBA is no indicator of excellence. Over my last 15 years or so in the engineering profession, I was increasingly subjected to direction by finance people, many of whom had MBAs. A few of them were also equipped with eyes and ears and a brain, and thus were able to understand the solid engineering principles behind what we engineers attempted to do. These guys were gold! Some MBAs tried to cut us short on funds or manpower in an effort to hold the "bottom line". The best of these figured out that it cost more in the long run (due to lengthened schedules and unavailability of critical equipment, for example) than giving us what we needed when we needed it would have cost. I will admit that many engineers are prone to padding the requirements, but reasonable parties can find the middle ground. The final category of MBA was the type that forced his financial opinion onto the engineers, compressing schedules, cutting budget, keeping critical skill positions from being filled, and generally getting in the way. We engineers had a clever way of dealing with that. It was known as finding another project with better management, and transferring. Our higher management was astute enough to recognize what was going on when a lot of transfer requests began to come out of one program. The usual result was a finance guy and a program manager looking for another program to screw up, and the engineers getting down to what they do best.

To sum it up, the MBA is useful on the job only when it is accompanied by the ability to see the whole situation, understand what is going on, and being able to work with others toward the common end. Of course, anyone with those attributes will be successful, MBA or not; he just will have a more difficult time getting hired without the MBA.

Is Your House Worth Its Weight In Gold?

Since the Dutch bought Manhattan from the natives for some beads, blankets, and hatchets, maybe there's a chart for that. I do understand that the Native Americans have some claim to the lower tip of the island. It seems they sold it "Battery not included".