Lazy reporting.<p>The logic underpinning this article is flimsy at best. He is using the following to infer that fewer MBA's are going to SF:<p><i>About 24% of MBA graduates in the class of 2014 headed to tech jobs, down from 32% in 2013 and equal with the proportion back in 2012. Of course, those profiteering graduates are returning right back to where they belong in finance and consumer products, which each saw notable upticks in employment.</i><p>There are several things that are wrong with this. First, he is only looking at Stanford GSB and assuming because it is in the Bay area that it is a reliable representation of MBA's everywhere, because surely it's proximity to SV means it must graduate more students who are likely to be employed there than elsewhere. But Haas is in the Bay area too. He's also assuming that students who graduated in years past aren't now moving to SV in increased numbers which, if true, could more than offset a decline in graduating students. However the most glaring hole in the logic is that "tech jobs" = San Francisco. As a fairly recent MBA grad myself, I can tell you that most of the people in my class who went into tech did not go to SV. Most went to places like Intel, Amazon, and Microsoft, none of which are based in California, let alone SV.<p>If you don't have a firm understanding of a topic, why write about the topic? It just makes the author sound stupid.
From the same report. Finance has median 150k base pay, median 40k signing bonus, median 100k other guaranteed income. Tech has 125k, 20k, and 20k. Sounds less likely that they're making some informed decision on the future of Tech, and more likely that they're going where the money is at the moment. Those numbers are very different.<p>Actually, that hasn't changed in the last year. A more significant fact is that in 2012 24% of MBAs went to tech, in 2013, 32%, and now in 2014 it's back down. There weren't any huge shifts in the industry in the last two years, so the data seems inherently noisy, determined by the acts of 20 people who go either to one or the other.<p>Poor article. Looking for a story.
So the entire premise of the article is based on the recent Stanford GSB recruitment report:<p>>That’s according to newly released employment data from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, which is a particular bellwether of the state of startups given the school’s proximity to Silicon Valley. About 24% of MBA graduates in the class of 2014 headed to tech jobs, down from 32% in 2013 and equal with the proportion back in 2012. Of course, those profiteering graduates are returning right back to where they belong in finance and consumer products, which each saw notable upticks in employment.<p>Apparently we can now make statements about entire industry sub cycles from the whims of 350 students.
A dose of reality + MBA Friends making way more outside of tech = "I've made a mistake"<p>Startups are hard. Very hard. Startup life is not glamorous. And failure hurts twice as much when you've lived a cultivated, high-achievement life. Building a company may have gotten cheaper, but it hasn't gotten any easier. If you imagine your life being an uninterrupted string of success by following a relatively conservative game plan you may find it difficult to adjust. Leaving is perfectly reasonable.
Maybe they're fleeing as a consequence of culture? Virtually every story I've heard about MBAs in SF can be summed up as "we didn't hire them because of their MBA, but rather, in spite of it." I don't know how well-regarded MBAs in SF <i>actually</i> are, but the cultural grapevine suggests there isn't a very high demand for them.
So literally one school (Stanford, mind you) saw a one year shift for it's ~800 students and conclusion is "MBAs are leaving tech!". If just 8 students decide to do finance over tech, it represents a 1% shift. 80 students means 10%...
So the "Great MBA Bubble of 2013" was followed with banks offering greater compensation and possibly the opportunity to work with tech companies without the risk of belonging to one. I would imagine VC is a very attractive career for the graduates, and banks can offer a clear path to it.<p>This is, of course, pure speculation; I'm just trying to illustrate that correlation != causation. I understand everyone is concerned with the tech bubble, but this article is really stretch.
I don't understand why MBAs seem to think of developer as lowly worker bees, and developers seem to think of MBAs as overpaid snobs.<p>But two things I have noticed:
1) many of these opinions come from people who are one or the other, but not both<p>2) people who have both skills are lethal and awesome people to work with.
I wonder what the stats are regarding success stories with MBA founders vs technical founders. Perhaps SF is catching on to some as yet established reality that an MBA doesn't bring to the table what a technical founder can for an early stage startup.
So, there were lots of MBAs in 2013, but not so much in 2014? Even if you grant that MBAs are a good indicator of startup success, two data points doesn't make a trend line. And I don't think many people on here would be inclined to grant that.
Maybe the valley understand that the MBAs don't add any really value compared to programmers who can really build. As a result, recent MBA graduate can no longer command high salaries and are now looking for greener pastures