The MBAs At Google, Apple & Facebook（刚发帖子的英文原版）

wangchao2008

As Wall Street hiring of MBAs has fallen in recent years, much of the slack has been taken up by the high tech firms. These days, it’s a rare business school that doesn’t ship a contingent of MBA students to Silicon Valley to both shop its graduates and learn from leading companies in the tech field.

Much of the newfound interest in tech is a function of growth: Google, Apple, Amazon and their ilk are among the fastest growing and innovative companies in the world. Their appetite for hiring young talent is immense and so are the career opportunities for freshly minted MBAs.

The attraction is mutual. As Read McNamara, managing director of the career management center at Vanderbilt University’s Owen School of Management, sees it, “A lot of interest has to do with the environment of tech firms. It’s viewed by MBAs as youthful, dynamic, high energy, and flexible. MBA students see young people rise very quickly through the ranks of these companies, and they see people being given tasks and turned loose. That’s very enticing.”

INTEREST IN TECH OFTEN HAS TO DO WITH ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTIONS LATER

Amazon, a voracious recruiter of MBA talent in recent years, is now the top employer of Owen MBAs. The commerce giant, which has a fulfillment center ten miles outside Nashville, made offers to 15 grads last year and landed 13 of them. “A lot of the internet among students headed to tech is with the eventual intention of starting their own businesses down the road,” adds McNamara, who now makes four trips to the San Francisco Bay Area to forge better relationships with tech companies for Owen’s students.

Business school employment reports clear show the trend. One school after another is reporting that an increasing percentage of their MBAs is taking jobs in the tech sector. But those one-year snapshots of the MBA job market are only somewhat helpful. It’s also interesting to see which schools have been successful with the leading tech firms over several years.

That’s one of the reasons we analyzed the member profiles on LinkedIn to come up with a list of MBAs from the top 25 U.S. business schools who are employed by nine of the world’s leading tech players, from Google, Apple and Amazon to IBM, Intel and Samsung. We’ve also looked at MBA employment at some of the super hot companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linked.

MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, GEOGRAPHY IS DESTINY

Though hardly definitive, searches of LinkedIn’s database provide a fascinating and fairly accurate glimpse at what you could call the “market penetration” of a school’s MBAs in any one firm. Sure, not everyone has a profile on LinkedIn, though people who fail to list with the world’s number one professional network are certainly in the minority at this point. It’s also possible that LinkedIn’s search algorithm could be slightly askew and count undergraduate business majors from schools such as the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School which boasts a large undergrad program. In any case, we think the results are worth a look–and we think you’ll find them quite compelling.

When it comes to MBA hiring in tech, geography is often destiny. The location of the University of Washington’s Foster School in Seattle has a lot to do with the fact that Microsoft employs more MBAs from Foster (889 by LinkedIn’s count) than any other business school. UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has 135 MBAs at Intel, outdistancing every other rival. In contrast, Dartmouth Tuck, which annually graduates about the same number of MBAs as Haas, has just a dozen MBAs at Intel.

Or take a look at how many alums work for Dell from the University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business: a whopping 528 grads. McCombs’ Austin campus is just a 21-minute drive to Round Rock, home to Dell’s corporate headquarters. With nearly identical sized classes, Tuck has 15 MBAs at Dell, according to LinkedIn. But then, Tuck is nearly 2,000 miles away from Round Rock–not 19 miles as Austin is.

It’s also no accident, however, that Duke University’s Fuqua School has 47 MBAs on the payroll at Apple, not all that far off from Stanford’s 55 MBAs, even though Stanford is in Apple’s backyard. How come?  Well, it helps that Steve Job’s successor, CEO Tim Cook, who graduated from Fuqua’s evening Executive MBA program in 1988.

And guess which school dominates the MBA crowd at Facebook, where Harvard MBA Sheryl Sandberg is chief operating officer? Harvard, of course. By LinkedIn’s count, there are 38 HBS grads at Facebook–slightly more than the 35 from Berkeley, the 32 from Stanford, or the 30 from Wharton.

ONE SURPRISE: AT GOOGLE, KELLOGG MBAs OUTNUMBER STANFORD MBAs

When it comes to the top three tech firms that MBAs most want to work for today–Google, Apple and Amazon–it pays to go with brand and geography. LinkedIn data shows that the single biggest chunk of MBAs at Google comes from UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, with 286 grads on the payroll. Surprisingly, given both its location in Philadelphia and its more primary focus on finance, Wharton is next, with 267 alums. Then comes Harvard Business School, with 226 MBAs, including Gretchen Howard, a 2002 alum who is director of global brand solutions and innovation.

Another shocker: Even Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management has more MBAs at Google than nearby Stanford: 170 to 162. At least, that’s what LinkedIn’s member profiles show.

After the University of Washington’s dominance in MBA employees at Amazon (there are 372 Foster grads), the University of Michigan’s Ross School shows up as a favorite. Some 177 Ross alums work for Amazon, followed by 124 from Kellogg, 120 from Wharton, and 104 from Harvard Business School. As for Apple, the only business school in triple digits is UC-Berkeley, with 129 MBAs. Harvard, with its substantially larger class sizes than Stanford, actually has more MBAs at Apple: 77 HBS grads vs. 55 GSB grads. In fact, even Texas’ McCombs and Kellogg has more alums at Apple than Stanford, 72 and 68, respectively.

IBM REMAINS A MASSIVE EMPLOYER OF MBA TALENT

Size matters–so does longevity. The single biggest tech employer of MBAs is good, old IBM in Armonk, N.Y. The company has been recruiting MBAs for so long in so many disciplines that it has thousands on the payroll. According to LinkedIn, some 361 MBAs from Harvard work for Big Blue, more than any other single tech company. IBM also has more than 200 MBAs on its payroll from each of the following schools: Wharton, Kellogg, Fuqua, Stern, Kenan-Flagler, and McCombs. It has more than 100 MBAs each from Booth, Sloan, Columbia, Johnson, Ross, Anderson, Tepper, and Goizueta.

Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems are also big MBA employers. HP boasts 114 Harvard Business School MBAs, including CEO Meg Whitman, a 1979 alumnus, and Executive Vice President for Human Resources Tracy Keough, a 1994 HBS alum. But there are also more than 100 MBAs from Wharton, Kellogg, and Haas at Hewlett-Packard. And at Cisco, where CEO John Chambers has an MBA from Indiana University, there’s more than 100 MBAs from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, and Haas (see table below).

MBAs From Top 25 Schools Who WorkFor The Leading Tech Companies

School	Google	Apple	Amazon	Microsoft	IBM	H-P	Cisco	Oracle
Harvard	226	77	104	186	361	114	111	74
Stanford	162	55	32	80	47	97	126	48
Chicago	72	54	76	133	149	63	73	61
Wharton	267	53	120	218	257	118	118	91
Northwestern	170	68	124	378	232	146	107	75
MIT	104	48	99	95	131	57	59	61
Columbia	98	29	68	65	188	42	37	26
Dartmouth	40	6	38	34	48	29	13	10
Duke	42	47	62	101	240	49	95	43
UC-Berkeley	286	129	73	88	72	118	242	130
Cornell	15	14	34	50	102	58	22	23
Michigan	108	42	177	165	126	99	79	40
Virginia	19	6	31	61	75	29	16	14
UCLA	112	27	56	70	116	67	77	48
New York	125	24	42	76	336	30	54	45
Carnegie	34	21	77	47	106	37	44	18
Yale	35	8	18	28	56	12	7	9
UNC	32	13	19	37	213	36	95	27
Texas	53	72	45	95	202	157	78	47
Indiana	28	35	70	75	89	53	38	45
Emory	37	10	22	25	102	20	28	18
Georgetown	27	10	13	22	85	11	12	18
Wash U	14	6	12	20	42	17	11	13
U Wash	43	18	372	889	35	54	20	29
Vanderbilt	5	11	15	16	24	22	8	3

Source: LinkedIn member profiles as of Jan. 24, 2014

MBAs From Top 25 Schools Who WorkFor The Leading Tech Companies

School	Facebook	LinkedIn	Twitter	eBay	Intel	Yahoo	Dell	Samsung
Harvard	38	40	10	50	45	18	53	31
Stanford	32	31	8	33	51	19	19	14
Chicago	1	8	3	14	36	15	38	12
Wharton	30	31	12	32	56	26	53	43
Northwestern	29	31	7	31	70	21	73	33
MIT	19	7	6	11	75	10	45	32
Columbia	14	12	4	9	21	11	17	20
Dartmouth	3	7	2	6	12	0	15	6
Duke	5	4	3	10	46	5	52	28
UC-Berkeley	35	39	20	76	135	47	18	22
Cornell	0	6	0	14	37	9	16	15
Michigan	14	8	5	25	92	9	93	18
Virginia	3	4	1	6	24	1	23	14
UCLA	9	6	10	29	67	49	24	20
New York	15	13	5	7	20	28	24	20
Carnegie	1	0	1	3	34	9	20	8
Yale	1	0	1	4	5	3	1	4
UNC	3	1	0	3	31	5	46	7
Texas	14	6	1	11	78	5	528	10
Indiana	10	4	0	10	87	7	26	35
Emory	3	2	0	5	5	2	15	11
Georgetown	3	2	1	7	18	5	8	7
Wash U	2	1	1	4	7	1	9	5
U Wash	7	1	3	13	104	5	12	6
Vanderbilt	0	0	1	2	5	0	21	7

Source: LinkedIn member profiles as of Jan. 24, 2014

rachel4890

good post! hope they have such research on other industries. Definitely would help select the program

Pythagoras

这数据有问题的，Cornell Johnson有好几个校友在Facebook工作的……

我无责任猜想一下应该是用linkedin.com/alumni来收集了一下数据，大方向应该不会错，但很多人不怎么更新linkedin的，lol

premierx

thanks for sharing

bigjoe

就我个人的体验，这个数据是不怎么准的。

johnnymu123

bigjoe, 你有最新的数据统计么？是不是西海岸的学校去高科技公司比例大？？

bigjoe

我仔细看了一下作者的方法，他是在Linkedin上用关键词搜索的，那有可能会把part time MBA，EMBA和本科在这个学校的人也算进去，那难怪了。就像UW在微软这889个人，PartTime的应该占一大堆。

wangchao2008

bigjoe 发表于 2014-1-27 10:37
我仔细看了一下作者的方法，他是在Linkedin上用关键词搜索的，那有可能会把part time MBA，EMBA和本科在这 ...

BIGJOE，我也去用LINKEDIN查了查，确实有PART TIME，但是没有多少。

坞城路少年

我觉着各楼神仙的回复比贴子更有营养，持续关注，求真相。

wangchao2008

Pythagoras 发表于 2014-1-27 02:56
这数据有问题的，Cornell Johnson有好几个校友在Facebook工作的……

我无责任猜想一下应该是用linkedin.co ...

统计问题，看个趋势而已，数字就别纠结了