Why Student Programmers Rant about Business Students with “Ideas”

http://drewyates.net/why-student-programmers-rant-about-business-students-with-ideas

by motoko • 18 years ago

37 39 18 years ago

systems• 18 years ago

Because implementing an Idea is most of the time harder than having an Idea

And becausing aquiring the knowledge to implement the Idea is also a lot harder than the effort needed to aquire an Idea

Finally, I think because people who do and know how to do are so preocupied with the tuff-ness of implementing the Idea they sometimes loose enthusiam and in many way this sometimes ties them down or set them back a little, and it the worry free business student just irritates them

Tichy5• 18 years ago

"Because implementing an Idea is most of the time harder than having an Idea"

I think the difficulty is not in the hacking skills, though. Therefore it seems to me the arrogance of hackers is unwarranted. While I have a science degree, I taught myself programming with a couple of books - it really is not a secret superpower that should make the rest of mankind bow down before me. It is a skill like any other.

Personally, I would be delighted to meet a business person who is dedicated to making an idea a reality.

There might be an issue of trust: typically, business people are perceived as the people who screw things up and make life bad for the programmers. Therefore, just bumping into a random business person, a hackers enthusiasm might be limited.

Another thing that sucks about hacker arrogance: most hackers really only want to work on their own ideas. That makes finding co-founders very difficult. Last year I really tried to meet eligible candidates (ie on barcamps), but even though I met a few capable people whom I also liked, finding common ideas and visions was too unlikely in the end. Of course, I myself am no exception, I would also prefer to work on my own ideas. I try to be open for other ideas, but still.

motoko7• 18 years ago

But _why_ are hackers arrogant, and how does one differentiate between "bad" arrogance (what you described) and "good" arrogance (like Steve Jobs)?

I don't have the answer to suggest for this question now, but I hope that it starts an interesting discussion. I'll try to reply tomorrow morning.

tim25• 18 years ago

Nonsense, everyone wants to work on their own ideas.

m0nty2• 18 years ago

"Further, many business students are aggressive and gregarious, many programmers are socially awkward..."

I can generally agree with the article, but the old, old stereotypes aren't really helping, are they? I see very few "socially awkward" programmers in my work. They might not be game-show hosts, but they're not Rain Man either. As the author points out in the footnote, if you can master computing arcana, you can pick up the basic ideas around business and accounting fairly quickly.

motoko7• 18 years ago

I made another note to the essay.

What I mean to say is that successful programmers will try business, but what successful business people try engineering? But "trying to" is not a sufficient condition for "succeeding at."

m0nty2• 18 years ago

Like I said, generally I agree with the article, and it makes some good points. But the button-pusher for me (and the point I'm trying to make) is that labeling the technically adept as "socially awkward" is about as acceptable as saying that black people have "soul", poor people have "dignity", women are more "empathetic", and business-people are "aggressive", as though the one naturally leads to another. I honestly don't recognise the stereotype of the "socially awkward" programmer, and feel it's unhelpful to keep recycling and perpetuating it.

marcus• 18 years ago

I actually think of requests of this type as an investment request, the product will take X days to build, I charge Y per day if I agree to build the product I have just invested X*Y dollars into the company.

Then I calculate what the other side brings into the deal (time/skills/money) and calculate the percentage for which I'd consider working on the project.

ardit33• 18 years ago

Let it die this already. I think this has been beaten to death. A businness type, with just an idea, without any hackers, or capital to implement it, is just day dreaming. And it is annoying when they think they deserve more than half of the company just b/c of that idea.... If they were providing more than that, capital, connections, userbase, community or something significant, then yes that idea is more than just an idea, but more of a practical plan.

But in all this tech parties I have been, and I keep meeting this "wantreprenours", that are just a "coder" away from getting their startup off the ground, if they only could find a coder.... good luck.

They come across with a douchebag types, with a sense of superiority as they think they know businness better than you, but yet are pretty oblivious on what it takes to get something off the ground. They learn few keywords such as Ajax, Ruby on Rails, PHP, and quite often they hugely undersestimate the effort it takes (development wise) to build something they want, which is very annoying to programmers.

Just go to any 2.0 parties, and you will meet these annoying wankers all the time, with exceptions of course, as not everybody is annoying, or oblivious, but a lot are.

Ps. In college, a lot of the businnes majors were in social frats, which tend to be disliked from academic/smart types. Plus businnes school is not a big deal. A CS major can easily go to MBA and be good at it, will the reverse is very rare. At my CS programm, during the second semester, we had a class that was kinda hard, which weeded out the people that were not capable to handle it, or were there for the wrong reasons (money, as it was the .com boom then). Ah, and a lot of these failed CS majors ended up either in businnes, or "information techonology", which was half businnes. So, there you go, more reasons not to like business types.

ssharp• 18 years ago

>>> A CS major can easily go to MBA and be good at it, will the reverse is very rare

The technical/science degree to MBA path is there for a reason and is extremely common. A lot of people work in a technical job for five years and then decide that they'd rather move on to management then spend the rest of there careers as programmers, engineers, biologists, etc.

If there was an good enough reason for a business undergrad to pursue a masters in CS or engineering, you'd probably see more of it. However, there really isn't. I don't know any marketing undergrads who just decided to get into quantum physics because it would help their career path either. It doesn't mean they can't, it just means there isn't a practical reason to do so.

There are MBA's who shouldn't be involved in startups just as there are PhD CS's who shouldn't either.

mattrepl• 18 years ago

>If there was an good enough reason for a business undergrad to pursue a masters in CS or engineering, you'd probably see more of it.

It's a cost-benefit tradeoff and you're only considering the benefits while treating the costs equal.

I surmise it's easier for a person without a business background to pick up an MBA than it is for a non-CS/Math/Eng person to pick up a Masters in any of those fields. The learning curves and requirements are different.

tim25• 18 years ago

Because typically the programmer will end up spending 1000x longer to complete his part. This is no exaggeration.

edu• 18 years ago

Eight times longer? This is not too much.

rgrieselhuber• 18 years ago

I'm reminded of Kawasaki's rule of thumb when it comes to valuing startups: add $250K for every full-time engineer you have and subtract $250K for every full-time MBA you have. :)

ojbyrne• 18 years ago

So if you're an engineer with an MBA, it's a wash? Little known fact is that originally the MBA program was specifically designed for engineers. It was supposed to address the needs of engineers who were rising the management ranks. I know when I did mine, I generally looked down on the people who did their undergrads in business (why exactly are you taking the same courses again?).

carpal• 18 years ago

I wouldn’t necessarily say this has anything to do with students or school. I’ve been out of school for a couple of years now and have been working as a developer for about 5 years.

One incident, in particular, drove most of the hatred for my original (and now replaced) rant. It involved an M.B.A. recruiting me to work for “his idea”, promising a bunch of money and a sizable stake in equity (~35%). However, once the boss-employee relationship set in, the money evaporated and the equity shrank to 5%. In the end, I wasted 6 weeks of incredibly hard work and came away with a chip on my shoulder.

The argument doesn’t really have much to do with Hackers and Business types. As he points out, it simply has to do with the fact that in a small group of people (2 or 3), there is no room for pure leaders. At that group size they merely become bullies, and the whole group is less powerful because of it.

icky• 18 years ago

Maybe you should write an article titled, "Get it in Writing."

jacabado• 18 years ago

"that most startup ideas are merely decisions to execute rather than ideas of intrinsic value"

Now he should start talking about giving the first step on a date with a girl ...

kansando• 18 years ago

Unfortunately all these discussions are too filled with obnoxious generalizations to be useful. In my experience good business people are rare and when you find them you should keep them. I am a science PhD with my own company and my first business development person (MBA dropout - employee number 5) is worth his weight in gold. He brought a customer focus and an outward orientation that few hackers are capable of. On the flip side, I have found some of my hackers to be prima-donnas who think they are special just because they know functional programming.

The real discussion should be about how to find the right business person for your startup. Here is what I look for: 1> outgoing but pleasant to be around, 2> good listener, 3> cares about technical details, is curious, 4> has a broad range of interests, 5> has geek/hacker friends, 6> can conceptualize a business as a systems problem.

motoko7• 18 years ago

Erik and his rant and the emotional charge that he touched is a real phenomenon about which many hackers feel strongly. I agree that a practical discussion is how to work together in a business, but dismissing or discrediting the discussion with an anecdotal counter example doesn't add or address any new ideas.

And I agree that there are many generalizations, and I purposely avoided hedging language to pad them. They do not apply to everyone in all cases, which is why they are generalizations. If you could argue that these generalizations are false or that it is false that they are widely held ---that could be interesting.

jimbokun• 18 years ago

The original rant was far more informative and interesting, swear words and all, than this verbose, psycho-babble twaddle.

This is just a long-winded exercise in stereo-typing bordering on bigotry.

nsimpson• 18 years ago

A lot of the biz types would be surprised at how truly unoriginal their "ideas" are. It takes deep technical insight to come up with something truly groundbreaking.

I would rather talk about the opposite case: i.e. A hacker has a brilliant technology idea and needs to find a business person with the connections, sales skills, finance skills, channel knowledge (and at least some technical understanding) to make it commercially viable. That seems like a harder problem... your fresh out of college MBA guy might not be the right fit.

indiejade• 18 years ago

There are hybrids. Talent at one does not imply a mutually exclusive lack of talent for the other. Perhaps we were an exception in the past, but students who are savvy at both business and technical things are becoming increasingly more common today, thanks to Universities. Technology spurs change; people who adapt survive. People who spend a bunch of time whining about change don't tend to survive. Universities teach people ways of adapting to change, and different ways of thinking.

It does take a bit of forward thinking, and that's where I think business students have a slight advantage. Writing code is great, wonderful, and something I love to do. Many business students would say that in the grand scheme of things, it's a useless talent unless it solves some kind of problem. Many techies would say that in the grand scheme of things, it's an incredibly useful talent, as it involves understanding the underlying structure or system. Although my formal education is in business, guess what? I agree 100 percent with the latter; I don't know where people get their stereotypes about MBAs, but there's really no such thing as a "typical" MBA. Most of us are, on some level or another, systems people.

Indeed, one of the more valuable lessons I gained from mine was to stop seeing "problems" and start seeing "opportunities". There have been so many times I've used a search engine to look for something, not found it, and thought 'now _that_ would be a great idea for a business'.

So yeah, it's very true that in business school, we're taught to seek out competitors' weaknesses, and "exploit" those weaknesses. But as every hacker knows, just because you _can_ do something doesn't mean you _should_. And then are there those (the majority) who just don't care: what I find quite humorous is how some people consider themselves "programmers" if they know how to set the TiVo to record 'American Idol.' A little bit funny, b/c the original rant reminds me a lot of a high-school cliche about cliques. Nonetheless, cheers to Mr. Yates for his frank opinions. :)

SwellJoe4• 18 years ago

The funny thing about all of these rants is that they reflect an outmoded understanding of the engineer/MBA dynamic in the tech business.

Since the first boom, the number of wildly successful tech companies started solely by engineers far outnumbers those started by business guys, backed up by some engineers. The smart money has followed along, such that the "business" requirements a VC looks for are pretty slim. They no longer care if you have an MBA on the team. Not even a little bit. I know this to be true, because I've talked to a half dozen VCs and a few angels. They don't care that our company is two hackers working out of our houses. They care that we've built something that millions of people use daily.

You need a business plan, sure, but it can be eight pages and mostly charts. Any hacker with a couple hours to kill and a word processor and spreadsheet, a deep understanding of their business and their market, and a couple of example business plans, can make that happen. You need a monetization strategy that makes sense, but business guys are no better equipped to come up with this than the hackers who spend half their time researching the competition and other businesses that work in similar fields (hackers are obsessive compulsive about research, so it comes very naturally). The most successful monetization strategy of the last ten years (context sensitive ads) was created by a nerd.

The stereotypical nerd no longer matches the stereotype. I've seen it at several companies where I've contracted over the years. Older developers (say, 40+) are nerdy in the traditional sense. A little overweight, a little socially inept, a little insecure in meetings except when discussing their particular interests, etc. The younger ones are generally healthier than average, more likely to have hot girlfriends/boyfriends, aggressive enough in meetings to handle even the most boisterous business guy, and full of the confidence that comes only from having a really firm grasp on your subject. It's not always true, but true enough that I feel confident saying it about the majority of great engineers. And, good engineers are no longer broke...they make a lot of money when they want to work for another company. Not MBA money, but they aren't desperate for any crumbs you want to throw their way. If the engineer you're talking to is desperate, he's not a good engineer, or at least, hasn't had the time in the market to establish that he's a good engineer. A BS in computer science has recently become the highest paying four year degree for first-time job seekers.

Business guys can certainly bring things to the table--but a hacker no longer needs one in the roster to raise money or build a successful company. They may hire one later, when the business side of the business is a full-time job.

So, I can understand business guys feeling a bit upset by this turn of events...and they can certainly point to lots of hacker-founded failures that made major business mistakes. But the road of MBA-founded tech startups is also littered with innumerable failures, for many of the same reasons (and a few additional ones, like: failure to deal with technology appropriately).

MBAs are certainly useful. They make a lot of money in established companies for a reason--starting salary for MBAs at Google is higher than for a fresh-out-of school engineer. But a tech startup doesn't NEED an MBA to reach a reasonable level of success. Accept it and move on. Sure, you can still start a tech startup, if you're a "business guy"...but you need a hacker, so you'd better get used to treating them as a partner rather than an employee and someone you can look down on as socially inferior. We've got hotter girlfriends than you, now, you know?

menloparkbum• 18 years ago

"The stereotypical nerd no longer matches the stereotype. "

A quick flickr search for "ycombinator" suggests the opposite...

SwellJoe4• 18 years ago

Really? I thought the folks in WFP07 were almost universally pretty good looking, healthy, skinny folks. Some were better looking and skinnier than others (Heysan, for example). And the software dev shop I worked for in Austin, Texas was chock full of good looking dudes with good looking wives/girlfriends (and it had double nerd power--they developed scientific computing applications and had geologists and mathematicians who were also software developers).

Perhaps you haven't looked at the average American lately...

motoko7• 18 years ago

Maybe a technical identity required to start a web software startup peak in one's late 20's because good technology perpetually abstracts itself irrelevant, but an interpersonal business skills continue to improve as one builds a professional network and earns experience.

Given this hypothesis, it would be best to be an engineer in one's 20's and then transition to a more strategic business identity in one's 30's and beyond.

This fits your new YC founder profile.

SwellJoe4• 18 years ago

I'm not sure I buy this. I think the best hackers (perhaps not the same as engineers) have a certain mindset that doesn't go away. The oldest working developer I've ever worked with also happens to be the fellow that turned me on to Ruby AND Lua, when nobody on Reddit was talking about them (actually before reddit existed) and nobody else in the office was tinkering with them. He just had a roving interest in technology and loved to play with new stuff. But certainly even the nerdiest of sorts learns that there are some problems that can't be solved with code--and that does make a big difference in how one approaches running a business.

Why Student Programmers Rant about Business Students with “Ideas”

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