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steambender · 09-25-2007, 10:28 PM

I am, and always will be a engineer (geek) of the inventive type. I got culled from the herd early in my career and sent to MBA boot camp as a future technical manager and business leader. It was a very exclusive opportunity and turning it down would have been career limiting...so I went.

And came back, and said thanks for the fascinating insight into the (corporate) ruling class, I want to stay a geek, and I'm too good at it for you to turn me down. And they turned me into a (geek) leader anyway. bastards.

Fresh, biz makes the world go round. you can ignore it, and limit your potential, or you can surf it and get some, most or maybe all that you want. There are many days (just read the old farts postings) when you wish you were doing anything else. price you pay.

The most valuable biz school courses for me:

Organizational behavior. People are a pain in the ass, and a joy, and much harder to manage and work with than inanimate objects. Most of what they do and how they behave in groups is not new, and coping mechanisms are available.

Economics. The understanding of investment and return, and markets. How to figure cost, value, payoff, and other criteria for making decisions that involve tradeoffs on managing and investing resources (time, money, people, what's left of your stash, things like that)

Finance. How to figure the value of money, rate of return, time value, etc. How money moves around organizations and banks. This is very important, cause just about anything you want to accomplish working for a bizness requires either temporary or long term use of their money, and they'll want to know how much more they get back before they let you use it. It's good to know how they keep track of it, and how much it costs them to borrow it, or "loan" it you as opposed to renovating the CEO's private bathroom, stuff like that.

A specialty...you'll start at or near the bottom in the organization, in other words, smack dab in the middle of whatever it is they do to make money, you won't get to the level where it's abstract for a while. Be knowledgeable, or better, a bit experienced, at what is important to them. the biz courses will help you make sense of the strange terrain faster, and help you anticipate what they might be interested in you doing.

this is a long winded way of saying, you might not be interested in it, but you can exploit it to help you get what you want, and most of the knowledge you gain is very useful in your personal life, unless you can avoid the economy entirely, like with a life prison sentence.

how'd I get up on this soapbox?

09-25-2007, 10:28 PM	#28
steambender It just needs a minor tweak...here... Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: kitty corner from where I grew up Posts: 48	Biz, the necessary evil I am, and always will be a engineer (geek) of the inventive type. I got culled from the herd early in my career and sent to MBA boot camp as a future technical manager and business leader. It was a very exclusive opportunity and turning it down would have been career limiting...so I went. And came back, and said thanks for the fascinating insight into the (corporate) ruling class, I want to stay a geek, and I'm too good at it for you to turn me down. And they turned me into a (geek) leader anyway. bastards. Fresh, biz makes the world go round. you can ignore it, and limit your potential, or you can surf it and get some, most or maybe all that you want. There are many days (just read the old farts postings) when you wish you were doing anything else. price you pay. The most valuable biz school courses for me: Organizational behavior. People are a pain in the ass, and a joy, and much harder to manage and work with than inanimate objects. Most of what they do and how they behave in groups is not new, and coping mechanisms are available. Economics. The understanding of investment and return, and markets. How to figure cost, value, payoff, and other criteria for making decisions that involve tradeoffs on managing and investing resources (time, money, people, what's left of your stash, things like that) Finance. How to figure the value of money, rate of return, time value, etc. How money moves around organizations and banks. This is very important, cause just about anything you want to accomplish working for a bizness requires either temporary or long term use of their money, and they'll want to know how much more they get back before they let you use it. It's good to know how they keep track of it, and how much it costs them to borrow it, or "loan" it you as opposed to renovating the CEO's private bathroom, stuff like that. A specialty...you'll start at or near the bottom in the organization, in other words, smack dab in the middle of whatever it is they do to make money, you won't get to the level where it's abstract for a while. Be knowledgeable, or better, a bit experienced, at what is important to them. the biz courses will help you make sense of the strange terrain faster, and help you anticipate what they might be interested in you doing. this is a long winded way of saying, you might not be interested in it, but you can exploit it to help you get what you want, and most of the knowledge you gain is very useful in your personal life, unless you can avoid the economy entirely, like with a life prison sentence. how'd I get up on this soapbox?