The Application Process

Recently Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg made a fairly bold post on Quora saying that a business school degree does not really matter in the tech industry. "While I got great value from my experience, MBAs are not necessary at Facebook and I don't believe they are important for working in the tech industry," Sandberg wrote. She did admit that her MBA helped give her a foundational understanding of business, which might be important "for some people and in some situations," but did not think that the training would help at a company like Facebook. "I believe-and at Facebook we believe-that degrees are always secondary to skills. In hiring at Facebook we care what people can build and do," she continued.
It's certainly a valid opinion, but how accurate is it? Maybe it would be smart move to ask hiring managers in the tech industry if they agree. After all, they are very often the first line when it comes to screening candidates for their company and through years of experience, know exactly what they are looking for in candidates. Well a startup called Tapwage tried to do something similar. Tapwage is a "job discovery" startup that takes a unique approach to the classic job board of old. They analyzed "over 50,000 job listings for by major tech companies and another 50,000 listings at companies outside of tech." What they found might surprise many folks out there, including Sheryl. Facebook is not only looking to hire business school students, but they actually want to hire more than a company like Goldman Sachs! According to Tapwage, "As it turns out, Facebook looks for more MBAs than Goldman Sachs. In fact three times as many job postings by Facebook state a preference (and sometimes a "strong preference") for an MBA compared to Goldman, both in absolute number of jobs, and in the jobs as calculated as a percentage of their total job listings."
So what does this mean for current and prospective business school students? Well Sheryl's point is a valid one, if we could restate it a bit. What is more likely to be true is that a business school degree is not the "only" thing you need to find a great job and be successful in it. Tech companies (and probably all companies) value people who can execute, people with experience and smart people with passion, regardless of your graduate degree. Whether you have a degree from business school or not could just be icing on the cake for some, or depending on how much skill and experience a student had acquired before school, a prerequisite for getting that dream job. However, it is clearly not a prerequisite for each and every tech job. You will have to decide if the two year investment of time and money is a good one, or if it is a better use of your time to go out and get the kinds of experience an executive like Sheryl Sandberg believes you need for a tech company.

My suspicion is that if are fairly well connected, you graduated near the top of your class at HYP and worked at McKinsey for 2 years after undergrad then the value of an MBA is questionable at best in the tech industry.

If you're a more "average" person or are working in more traditional industries then the value is still there.