Being a guy that holds both an engineering degree and an MBA (along with a master of divinity, but that's a different story) and worked as a bench engineer, company executive and technology investor I can only say that assuming that "psychopathic MBAs" that don't understand what they do completely ignores the two central problems of modern corporate capitalism.
Thank you. Your sobering position is well made and gives a much needed depth to the picture of my annoyance.
I would want to elaborate, viz;
- The desire to end up in the management sphere is, I speculate, measurably correlated to a increased frequency of desire to manipulate the people around you, which is in essence the hierarchy component in management. Regardless of why.
- That something is rational to do for a small, strong subset of the population, is not in and of itself sufficient to make it the right thing to do, not for them, not for someone else.
As to the benefits of being a major asshole and getting away with it once you're rich enough, I think we agree.
In short, I'm angry, and you point out that it is not as simple as that. Thanks.
Why wouldn't you be angry? It can be a shitty world if you aren't in the Master of the Universe category and a really shitty one if you are also some combination of young, poor, a person of color, female, queer, etc. Not to sound too much like one of our compadres here but the economic game, at least in the United States, is pretty much rigged so that it can seem like there's only two choices: exploiter and exploited. Given that, it is easy to believe that people aiming for management jobs are exploitation oriented. The reality is much more mundane: with a title like
director or
VP or
partner comes a bit of control over one's future and the chance to make more than a bare living. Such things aren't much available otherwise anymore without an MBA or connections and a certain willingness to rank yourself more worthy than your fellows.
Are there cynical, grasping, greedy, evil people in management positions? You betcha. Lots of them, all doing whatever they can to claw their way up. But there are also many that do what they can for their employees and customers in a system that's designed to thwart altruism and enslave all but the guy (and yeah, it is almost always a guy) sitting in the corner office. Along with a fair share of cynical greedy grasping types, I was lucky enough to work for, and with, some of the good ones along the way.
And that will be my last bit of soapboxing, promise. I know I can be a bore when this particular topic comes up.
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