<p>From the CBS Business Network</p>
<p>Why</a> Startups Shouldnt Hire People With Graduate Degrees</p>
<p>That is actually a very interesting article. I can see the author’s points, but I can also see why graduate school could be useful, especially for establishing contacts.</p>
<p>I myself am looking to establish my own company, and I have $50k to dispose of. The question is, do I put that money toward grad school or do I pour it into the startup? One of my biggest concerns is exactly what the author pointed out: that most people go to business school because they lack confidence in their own ability. So instead, I’m going to just educate myself as much as possible via books and talks with experienced people, and skip the $100k+ I would have had to set aside for graduate school.</p>
<p>I mean, look. If Gates, Jobs, etc. can get to the top of the world without a college degree due to their ambition and vision, then why wouldn’t anybody be able to do exactly the same thing without a graduate degree as long as they have suitable means to educate themselves? Grad school seems to simply be a way of prolonging one’s indecision about a career path, and doesn’t actually help that much once one decides upon a career path. Ambition and vision are much more important to actual success, and a graduate degree is not a prerequisite (and actually often serves as a hindrance) to those two qualities.</p>
<p>(from the article)
Really? …</p>
<p>Compared to the number of people hired by startups and the chance they will be around in 5 years (low) most people prefer a more stable life at an established company.</p>
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It’s funny, when on click on that link in her article, it brings me to her blog, where she again quotes one columnist from this CHE place. I’d like to see what exactly he says and what he bases it on, because it doesn’t seem like much of an “analysis” to me.</p>
<p>And I’m no big fan of grad school although I attended one. I have no opinion either way.</p>
<p>I think the author seems bitter about her own grad school experience. No one I know goes to grad school because they can’t think of anything else to do, or because they’re afraid of the real world. They go because they’re passionate about their field, etc. etc. In fact, most of my friends who went to grad school were able to easily get jobs at big name companies - I was even able to get an internship at a top software company as late as the end of April when I wasn’t sure if my summer research would get funding or not.</p>
<p>Also, that analysis seems to be falsely attributed to a writer in the Chronicle for Higher Education who writes a lot about the abundance of PhDs in humanities compared to open positions. But that seems very unrelated to the egos of grad students.</p>
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<p>I tried googling the quote, and couldn’t find anything except for articles by this same author. It seems to contain a lot of typos and missing words too.</p>
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<p>Yeah, this is a silly statement.
Particularly in the technical areas which startups often hire in (biotech, software), many grad school programs don’t even have classes for the majority of the program. Whether it makes sense to have someone with a grad degree depends on the field. For software, anything beyond a master’s really isn’t very useful, unless their PhD work shows a skillset which is more appropriate than someone’s work experience. For bio or chem, you really need a PhD or you’re not getting someone who can do independent research. For a 2 year master’s in science, you have probably only been in the lab for a year at most. I noticed they completely left out technical grad school in this article–strange, considering that the most well-known startups tend to be in technical areas.</p>
<p>I really can’t speak about business or law school authoratatively. I know business school is used by engineers to transition to more business-type jobs. Sometimes these people already have some experience with startups (though had they really succeeded, they probably would have kept going); most strike me as people who expect to lead fairly normal lives where the benefit/risk ratio is high–maybe this is not great for a startup. Anyway, for technical people, I think it does afford them the chance to learn about things they haven’t thought about before. Law school provides a very specific skill set–if you need a lawyer (and startups often do,) then you hire someone who went to law school.</p>
<p>I think saying that getting a humanities PhD is equivalent to reading a book after work is ridiculous. I don’t think a bunch of humanities PhD’s are trying to go into startups, though I wouldn’t hold it against them for getting a PhD.</p>
<p>I have worked in the start-up world for the last 15 years…I also teach a class in an MBA program at a world-class university - here is what I have seen…</p>
<p>In terms of MBA programs, there are some graduate programs that prepare their students well for start-ups while others may focus their curriculum on managing large organizations. I have seen Wharton and Harvard MBAs fail in a start-up environment but do very well in other endeavors.</p>
<p>All people working in a start up need to be “hands on” - by that I mean they need to do work even if the work is “beneath” them. In a former life they could have been the CFO but in a start-up they may need to be accts payable, receivable, and the banker until the company is big enough to support those functions. The single underlyng characteristic of a person that thrives in the start-up environment is tenacity. It is the belief that they will succeed against all odds and try just about anything to “make it.” They are typically a “jack of all trades” and will say they know something even if they don’t and then they will go off and figure it out. It is making that 100th phone call on a late Friday afternoon to seal the deal. It is ignoring the naysayers and just keep on getting up to bat. It is not taking no for an answer.</p>
<p>And that can’t be taught in any school. So if you are that person, you will probably succeed and it doesn’t matter what degree you have.</p>
<p>My H has been working in start-ups for the past 10 years. His title is usually engineering manager or director, but he does anything that needs to be done. He has worked for a couple of successful start-ups and benefited when they were bought out or had an IPO and he has worked for a few that went under. H feels that the best part about the experience is that even now that he has reached 50 he is still a very cutting edge, hands on engineer because of the work he has done with start-ups.</p>
<p>H is currently working as the engineering director for a large company and finds the work extremely boring. He is waiting to jump back in to the right start-up now that a few he is interested in are getting venture capital money.</p>
<p>Er… I think the author of the article is showing her own lack of imagination based on her own misguided grad school experience. But I think many and perhaps most students who go to grad school do so AFTER having gained real-world experience in their field (such as getting an MBA after having worked in business); or because they have a very clear idea of what they want to do; or because the degree or credential is essential in their field. The author’s views about law school are particularly ridiculous – you can’t practice law without a law degree. Same is true in many other fields – for example, try getting a job as a teacher without a credential.</p>
<p>I went to grad school because that was the only way to be an architect. I certainly didn’t go for the grades, it was pass/fail!</p>
<p>I totally agree with the author. I don’t see any reason why the PhD students in my lab whose work is going into a new startup company should be hired by the company when they graduate. I mean, it’s not like they’re the only people in the world who know how that technology works. Oh. Wait.</p>
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<p>Just “anybody” isn’t able to do that becasue the vast majority of the people in the world, both with and without graduate degrees, are not the kind of visionary geniuses that Gates and Jobs are. If they were then the business analysts and Apple share holders wouldn’t be fretting over how in the world they are going to find anyone to replace Steve Jobs now that he is retiring due to ill health. Just “anybody” would do in his place.</p>
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<p>Also, it’s not possible to do what Gates did in many other technical fields outside of computers/software.</p>
<p>MicroSoft is famous for hiring PhDs. If having that advance degree really made them deficient as employees Bill Gates would have figured that out early on and stopped hiring them.</p>
<p>Of course, overgeneralizing to “startups” seems to miss the fact that a startup may hire someone with a graduate degree in the specific area of what it is doing.</p>
<p>For example, a computer company startup may hire someone with a graduate degree in computer science or a related subject, even if it has no interest currently in those with graduate degrees in humanities, business, or law, as the article uses as examples.</p>
<p>I always laugh when people bring up Bill Gates as an example because Pea is right, Microsoft hires lots of PhD’s. </p>
<p>Credentials are important there. As is the school one attended, with MIT, Cornell, Case Western, Stanford and a few others being particular favorites.</p>
<p>Of course Microsoft certainly isn’t a start-up anymore!</p>
<p>This nonsense comes from Penelope Trunk. Whoever? She just makes stuff up as she goes, sitting on her farm with her laptop and an internet connection. One of those blogger-want-to-be-famous people who hopes to say something sufficiently outlandish that she’ll get more news coverage. If you just say it with authority or find some very bogus ‘evidence’ to back it up along with some easily refutable arguments that sound good to people that don’t know better, AND it stirs the pot. Viola! </p>
<p>It’s her whole schtick, but it’s not even original. Dime a dozen in internet and consulting land. The world of Form over Content. So her blog has entries like “Don’t do what you love” and “Don’t report sexual harassment” and “Choose sex over money” and “Why an MBA is a waste of time”. And on anything she writes that I know a lot about, she knows almost nothing about what she’s writing, her arguments are nonsensical and based on very faulty evidence. </p>
<p>According to her bio, she did graduate work in English but obviously didn’t finish since she only lists a BA in History from Brandeis on her Linked In profile. </p>
<p>Then she went into industry and must just assume everyone else will have a terrible transition time like she did (regardless of what they did their graduate work in or why).</p>
<p>Okay now we can’t post to our blogs but I’m pretty positive the whole source of this article goes to this woman. If you find her blog, she also writes about being an imposter, and a very long painful essay about how she was abused as a child, her parents had her tested at NU for being a possible psychopath, how her current farmer husband physically abuses her. </p>
<p>I already felt almost all she has to say with such expertise is just made up nonsense…and after reading this I realize she may not even be stable enough to be writing life advice for anyone. That her earlier comments about having a breakdown after transitioning to parenthood probably wasn’t a joke. Just very sad actually. </p>
<p>I clearly have way too much time on my hands.</p>