GUEST COMMENT: I can think of nothing more nauseating than doing an MBA

15 February 2011

3 minute read

GUEST COMMENT: I can think of nothing more nauseating than doing an MBA

During my banking career I perceived undertaking an MBA as marginally less desirable than running naked through Battersea Dogs Home with Pedigree Chum smeared on my gonads. An MBA seemed to entail a lot of tedious work surrounded by dreadfully dull pinheads that ultimately resulted in very little benefit for your career.

There were two basic options - the two year part-time course that you pursued whilst still working and the full-time course that you had to take ten months off to complete.

Just thinking about the part-time MBA used to make me break out in hives taking into account the hideous eleven hour days I was already being forced to endure whilst the full-time course seemed like a perfect opportunity to lose all your client contacts and get totally out of touch with the market. Neither of these two outcomes struck me as being especially beneficial.

And what exactly would one gain to compensate for these risks?

The MBA would not help me with my very specific role as an equity analyst as the courses were invariably general in content. It might have provided a half-decent networking opportunity but I always suspected I'd meet people more likely to further my career down at Spearmint Rhino. No, the only benefit it might provide would be if, for some sick and twisted reason, I decided to become part of my bank's management team.

But why on God's clean earth would anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together ever contemplate such a move?

You'd have to be smoking crack to even consider managing the Machiavellian, money-grabbing egotists that populate the average investment bank's trading floor.

All these buffoons ever do is clumsily kiss your bony arse whilst coating you off to each other behind your back. What's worse is that their gargantuan egos mean that they never listen to your advice, which is why my former head of sales referred to his job as 'herding cats'. Your utterances are routinely ignored and within weeks it becomes clear that you're about as useful as a condom vending machine at the Vatican.

Furthermore, every December you have to endure your workers' feigned outrage as you hand them millions in bonuses despite the fact that you're often not paid half as much as the feckless degenerates you're managing.

To add insult to injury, everyone knows administrative heads are universally regarded as failed brokers who couldn't cut it on the trading floor.

In fact, every banking manager has to accept he's being dismissed by the treacherous, disloyal toads beneath him as a 'cost-base' and not a 'revenue generator' - surely, the worst insult for anyone at a bank.

An MBA is just a gateway to a whole world of pain; I would not wish it on my worst enemy.

Geraint Anderson is author of 'Cityboy - Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile'

AUTHORGeraint Anderson

Insider Comment

Wa
WayneRooney
21 February 2011
By taking this fatuous (sp?) article so seriously we're guaranteeing that G continues to be paid money for old rope. Just like buying a season ticket and a Sky Sports subscription ensures premier league players get paid ten times what they're worth. Just ignore him and eventually he will go away.
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Sh
Shaz
17 February 2011
*yawn*
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Gr
Grossbe
17 February 2011
Come on, this cannot be serious - it has to be just plain humour. If it were serious, it would mean that this guy has just dismissed what thousands of young people do around the world, enrol in an MBA to further their prospects, purse a dream, or change their career path. About the comments on senior managers, they are correct, investment bankers are terrible managers at every level, and for this exact reasons they should take a crash MBA course with a focus on soft subjects - Leadership skills, Motivational, Marketing, Communication, Organisation of workforce etc...
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Mu
Mum
17 February 2011
Geraint, We all know that The City and Wall Street are run by an old boys network of gents who were educated the expensive way and read PPE at Oxbridge. Thus, for those that went to state schools and couldn't get into a snotty university, one of the ways to impress these people is to follow suit and get a top 10 MBA. You wouldn't be able to appreciate this because you went to Oxbridge and thus never had to scrap your way to the front of the queue to get into banking in the first place. Your work experience in equity research is also more suited to CFA and accounting qualifications.
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be
betaadjusted
16 February 2011
An amusing article but unoriginal. An MBA is useful for BS but BS makes much of the world go around. As a Physics grad vs arts grad, my ability to synthesize a logical argument was disadvantagous vs an arts grads ability to present an extremely biased, unobjective viewpoint in a confident fashion. I remember feeling extremely agrieved as a GS intern to see the MBA interns getting special treatment despite the fact that I had done a proper Masters degree. The top hedge fund I worked for had no respect for them as they add no value to the investment process/decision making process; the CFA is perhaps better than that, but I'd like to see a chart of CFA member's investment performance vs non-CFA; I suspect we'd find that the CFA is broadly worthless.
But the reality is that in many ways an MBA would have been a good thing for me to do early in my career. The network from a top school is extremely valuable. However, as a state comp grad, I felt both that I didn't want to be saddled with 40-50k of debt, and that buying contacts for my career would undermine my personal achievements, and was at odds with my meritocratic beliefs. The cost represents a class barrier.
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