I feel like MBAs are one of the worst things to happen to industry in general. I know one that is a chore to work with, even though I’d definitely consider him one of the better ones in terms of aiming for quality and long-term stability – he’s just super difficult when it comes to technical understanding and thinks he can tell me what I need for my job.
Me: “I need to document exactly what my users want this thing to do, so here’s a form we can fill out to make my life easier.”
MBA: “Make a spreadsheet with a table, one column per thing it can possibly do, and have people mark what they need. Trust me, that way they’ll do your work for you! You’ll make things so much easier for yourself!”
User: proceeds to fill out the table with garbage that would be useless if I didn’t already have the prototype we’re using as example
He also sent me a wonderful visual metaphor for my job, where the components I build from are different lego bricks and the end result is a lego house. No shit, sherlock, but I don’t need people to tell me what bricks they want the house to be built from. I need to know what the house is supposed to look like.
He’s also trying to have AI do part of my job. Not that I’m concerned – it could do half my job and I’d still have too much to do, and I’m pretty sure it can’t even do a tenth as it is. I’m more worried about the AI spitting unexplained garbo and making more work for me when I need to explain why its output is different.
It’s sobering working in engineering and seeing the MBA bros take over.
No long term planning, no pride in the work, and no care about quality, safety or utility.
Just corporate slogans and bullshit.
I feel like MBAs are one of the worst things to happen to industry in general. I know one that is a chore to work with, even though I’d definitely consider him one of the better ones in terms of aiming for quality and long-term stability – he’s just super difficult when it comes to technical understanding and thinks he can tell me what I need for my job.
Me: “I need to document exactly what my users want this thing to do, so here’s a form we can fill out to make my life easier.”
MBA: “Make a spreadsheet with a table, one column per thing it can possibly do, and have people mark what they need. Trust me, that way they’ll do your work for you! You’ll make things so much easier for yourself!”
User: proceeds to fill out the table with garbage that would be useless if I didn’t already have the prototype we’re using as example
He also sent me a wonderful visual metaphor for my job, where the components I build from are different lego bricks and the end result is a lego house. No shit, sherlock, but I don’t need people to tell me what bricks they want the house to be built from. I need to know what the house is supposed to look like.
He’s also trying to have AI do part of my job. Not that I’m concerned – it could do half my job and I’d still have too much to do, and I’m pretty sure it can’t even do a tenth as it is. I’m more worried about the AI spitting unexplained garbo and making more work for me when I need to explain why its output is different.