Is an MBA worth it

Definitely Yes.

Whenever you read a book or learn a new skill, it changes you. It lets you look at the world and life differently. Similarly, a degree, any degree. Even if you don’t see tangible benefits immediately.

For me, MBA was a significant, challenging (I wanted to quit a couple of times) period of my life. I never understood why they don’t teach all of these things in high school. I think it was not a course on how to manage a business but how to manage your life.

I’ve learned that to solve complicated problems, we have to build frameworks, and we can choose some of the already existing ones. We can blend and customize them to be more adequate to our current problem. MBA allowed me to see that with experience, we aim to think in frameworks.

As a software developer, I re-discovered the part of the business that was always hidden and ignored, which changed my whole approach to leading teams, making decisions, prioritization and marketing within a company.

A lot of people say that practice is more important than a degree. I agree. Without practice, it is too shallow. It is similar to the how-to-invest-your-money guides. You read about it, and then the reality checks come when you try applying the basic theory in practice. Nevertheless, practice without learning will force you to reinvent the wheel, which, with bad practices in some businesses, can make you very ineffective.

Even though there were inevitable benefits I noticed in my life during and just after the MBA, it is not vital to estimate the exact value coming from this course vs coming from whatever else I could do. Most importantly, if you feel it is something for you, you checked the syllabus and liked it. Don’t hesitate, do it. It also applies to other parts of your education, not only the MBA. There is not much to add. It was said in the past before:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” - Steve Jobs