Are MBA Grads arrogant fools? Is an MBA worth it?

For the past many months, I have been seeing this negative propaganda going on LinkedIn and other social media platforms related to MBA. Phrases like “MBA is useless”, “MBAs are incompetent and arrogant”, combined with some random Elon Musk quotes. The better way to deal with such posts is to ignore them, but then again, it can very easily misguide many young bright minds from pursuing a career simply because someone chose to mindlessly rant on LinkedIn.

First of all, people who quote Elon Musk not hiring MBAs, and thinking "Is an MBA worth it", must go and visit the careers page of Tesla, SpaceX, etc. And so, before choosing to write a long post about the tragedy of choosing to pursue a useless course, I chose to search. I thought Tesla would be too easy since it is an automobile company, with lots of heavy operations. I picked SpaceX, far more engineering-centered than Tesla, and went to its website, which is super-awesome, and selected some of the job listings apart from engineering - like Finance, Sales, Commercial Launch, etc - and in each one of those jobs, MBA was a preferred experience.

Oh, so bad for the propaganda!

Coming back to the question, Is an MBA worth it, and, what does an MBA teach you? Personally, for me, the learning has been immense – academically and personally.

1. Humility

You ask any graduate from a top B-School in the country and this would be at the top of their list, invariably. People who say that MBAs are arrogant fools are almost always making a random assumption. In fact, if in your life, you have a severe problem of ego and self-entitlement, you must join an MBA. Because this is the place where you see almost everyone is better than you at something or the other. There are better case solvers, there are better stock market investors, better marketers, better leaders, better content writers, better dancers, hell, even better comedians. And the comfort, the cushion of trust, and support that these top institutes provide will not let you lose your confidence and be lost, rather it would push you to be a better individual tomorrow than you are today.

IIFT, for me, has been a magical place, where you see 20-21-year-old kids solving cases better than you, making presentations better than you, and you get mesmerized about what in life made them so clear about their passions so early. You would see people who left their super-high paying jobs (which you would not probably get even after an MBA) to sit in those classrooms and learn. And professors, who could easily be running a multi-national firm with their multi-dimensional knowledge and making millions, and yet chose to teach at meager government salaries.

For people outside, an MBA might be sort of a trampoline that helps you make an easy jump on the corporate ladder, but for the students and teachers inside, it’s a place of sheer rigor and passion.

2. Confidence – Of failures and of self

And, more specifically, the confidence of failing.

I always considered myself a good presenter, and yet on the day of making my first club presentation in front of the whole batch after a sleepless night, I somehow couldn’t speak as well as I wanted to. And considering the supreme levels of self-criticism that I have in me, in any other place in the world, it would have come as a severe blow to my self-confidence but inside that campus, it didn’t. I received honest feedback from my close friend group that it was not at par with their expectations from me, and that was all about it. In the next competition, I was better prepared, kept control of the flow, presented better, and we won it as a team.

Before joining my MBA, I had severe health anxiety. If I didn’t get to sleep for 7-8 hours every night, I would feel dizzy the whole next day and every moment felt as if I were going to have a stroke. I worked 5 days a week developing software, talking to clients, attending meetings, and having fun with my colleagues, but deep down inside, every moment felt like the last “healthy” moment of my life. I visited multiple doctors, and none of them could fix it.

And then I joined an MBA, where 2 hours of peaceful sleep for the first 3 months was a luxury. Such was the rigor. At times, it was very irritating and would make me super angry, but somehow, I survived. In fact, I survived well. More than 2 years have passed after those 3 months. I don’t know if I am going to have a stroke while writing this blog or not, but I am sure as hell not worried about it.

3. Peers

There are some things in life that are so overwritten everywhere that you feel “Uggghhh, not again!”. Even I felt the same when I saw peer-to-peer learning as the major RoI at business schools. I thought how could anyone, of the same or younger or slightly elder age, be capable of guiding me? MBA would be a fresh slate for everybody.

And indeed, it was.

I got to understand that subtly and indirectly you will get tremendous learning from your batchmates. They will listen to your logic, question it, correct it, reject or accept it, and at the end of those seemingly casual discussions, you will emerge a little more informed, a little more learned. There is never a win or lose in it. There is always a little learning. You can name all the liberal institutions in the country who beat drums every evening for meager political attention, but the acceptance of views and ideas inside an MBA college is second to none.

4. Shifts Focus from Designation to Competence

I remember when I used to work at Capgemini, there used to be special days, when some Vice President or CIO of a division would come to give a speech inside our Offshore Development Centre. Special days, I tell you. Award distribution, some event, or something of the same sort. As freshers, we used to be overwhelmed just looking at a man standing and talking about business and being there to support us.

MBA normalizes this for you. Every next day you get to hear the top executives of multinational multibillion firms, ask questions, get your doubts clarified about business and industry. (If you are in IIFT, well then sometimes, the Commerce Minister himself will teach you about the trade policies.)

But the point of importance here is, that it shifts your focus from the shining titles and designations to competence. You start to respect a person for the way he has demonstrated leadership in actual times of hardships, handled a particular business, overcame his failures, and still stood strong. That sheer competence becomes the basis of your respect, not the fact that he is four levels above you

5. Alumni Network

The alumni network of a prestigious MBA college is always the most important part of it if you are willing to give up your ego and reach out to them for their mentorship. Not everyone will have the time to do so, and you have to be accepting of that. Because they would be, most generally, be leading departments, or country businesses, etc. Even if they want to, they probably won’t have the time to mentor you. But there would be many who would accept your request, and again they would be Directors, VPs, Head of departments in multinationals, people you use to see once a year while working during award distribution. They would mentor you personally, and ready you for the industry. All you got to do is ASK and respect their time. It has been immensely helpful for me, it can be for you as well.

There are many more things that some other B-schooler would write down while writing on the same subject. This is my version. This is my story of opting for an MBA and life afterward.

Will I ever regret my decision basis some LinkedIn posts from some “Leaders”? Hell, no.

Will I choose the same path if given a chance again? Sure.

Because this is my path, and it has worked pretty well for me so far.

My advice to all the young minds getting influenced by the posts from "Leaders":

Find your own path, and don’t find it in LinkedIn stories!

My advice to all those "Leaders":

“Maybe you chose a path that was good or rather better than the MBA path, maybe you got immense success walking on that path. But that doesn’t, in any way, mean that your path is the only path to success. That doesn’t make the MBA or Engineering or Law worse. We are all walking on our own paths in this world and there is no point questioning or criticizing a path we have never walked upon.”

Peace.

The information shared in this article are personal views of the author, and does not substitute for personal counsel or professional advice from Dare2Compete.

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Shashank Thakur

Product Management | MBA - IIFT

Shashank graduated from IIFT in 2021, specializing in International Business. An avid reader of non-fiction, he likes uncovering underlying insights behind events and newer business models. He has been sharing his thoughts and learnings extensively on his blog. When bored with business, he likes writing poetry and seeking science behind ancient rituals.