An MBAhole

Valuing and dis-valuing are two sides of the same coin! To love spicy-hot foods means, inversely, that you don't care that much for bland fare. And so, the passionate values of TheHackerCIO lead quite naturally to an equally strong distaste for some things in the technology world.

One of those distasteful subjects are the many MBAs brought in by the typical Pathological Enterprise (those bloated Behemoths of paycheck-collectors) to direct and manage technology projects. The reductio ad absurdum of this practice is bringing in the The Big 8-6-5-4, a Government Created Financial Oligopoly nominally created to put Official Blessing on company documents. But they have taken it upon themselves to cash in on their unique position by pretending to understand technology as it applies to financial systems. TheHackerCIO can count at least a dozen times where he had to suffer alongside these consultants. His very first experience with them was the waste of a year of his life and career in tending and overseeing a doomed package implementation. Here was where the familiar pattern was first revealed: 

• Deliverables that were technically in order, but didn't provide the needed functionality.  
• Dispute with the client about the contract.
• Project put on hold.
• Legal takes over.
• Project failure & cancellation.

I'm not sure if it is technically true, but rumor held that this particular consulting group used their Legal Department as a profit center. And such appeared to be the case, at least on this occasion. 

Why anyone would hire an accountant when they need a programmer is beyond me. Can you imagine a startup doing that? "Yes, Bill, I know you asked for 3 Ruby programmers, but I found these excellent recent graduates of a major, prestigious university who know all about Anthropology, Sociology, and Psychology, and are backed up by an organizational expertise in accounts-payable, accounts-receivable, and inventory-control. Plus, they've all been through a 10 week "boot camp" on how to manage your projects." Yeah, that would fly.

One of their characteristic gambits is the initial use of top-level experts who really know their stuff. But these quickly dissolve into the woodwork and are replaced by ambitious 21-year-olds whose knowledge of technology is about as deep as a kiddie scripter, but who has been trained in a boot camp that methodology can replace expertise in producing results.

The combination of youth and arrogance is typical and particularly ugly. And so, that's why I call this particular phenomenon: The MBAhole.

TheHackerCIO no longer works on projects with MBAhole defined management.

But he will offer free advice to those who chose to do so.

Instead of putting accountants in charge of your technology project management, put your legal department in charge of it. That way, they'll be ready when the project gets closed down.

I Remain,

TheHackerCIO