I started as a programmer and got an MBA from an ok school (top 20). The combination is very valuable (at least to me) for exactly the reason you cite: the best decisions require wading around in the mucky details.
The MBA gives you a few tools that are helpful, but mainly it's a way to brand yourself and have people give you the benefit of the doubt that you can do things other than strictly build stuff.
I personally think the anti-patterns you describe-- the "do whatever it takes" without having the first idea what that is-- are intellectually dishonest and a sort of management-by-roulette. Sometimes you get lucky and it works out, but I don't know how you'd sleep running things that way.
I also got my MBA after getting my BS in Computer Science and while I think I could have learned most everything we talked about by reading books, I did learn:
- public speaking because we had to do a presentation just about every other week
- how business people with little or no technology experience think and their perceptions about technology
- how to talk to the people in the above bullet about technology
- firing people because one of my groups had a member that was not pulling her own weight, and we were told to fire her from the group
I also agree that the branding aspect is also (somehow) helpful. I recently moved from Florida to SF and when I was looking for jobs you wouldn't believe how many people were really excited/impressed/whatever that I had an MBA in addition to being able to answer the tough software questions.
If I had a choice to go back and either spend $50k on an MBA or spend it traveling the world, I would definitely choose the latter, though.
I almost got an MBA in my twenties but decided to start a company instead. My reasoning was that it would cost me $40-50k to acquire, at which point I would need to take a job for 3-4 years to pay it off. I always knew I wanted to start a company so I figured I'd use those 5-6 years educating myself.
I don't regret the choice, but I think an MBA from a top school can expose you to more complex and big $$$ business environments than you're likely to discover on your own as an outsider without much experience.
- accounting and financial statement analysis (useful in pricing and fundraising)
- quantitative marketing models (useful in forecasting + modeling)
- market research techniques (probably the most valuable skill to building products)
- VC from two internships @ early stage funds (useful in understanding how VC's think)
- negotiations
- entrepreneurship classes on opportunity analysis, fundraising, and valuation (useful in helping to avoid solving the wrong problems; articulating the business to investors; building with the end/exit in mind)
The MBA gives you a few tools that are helpful, but mainly it's a way to brand yourself and have people give you the benefit of the doubt that you can do things other than strictly build stuff.
I personally think the anti-patterns you describe-- the "do whatever it takes" without having the first idea what that is-- are intellectually dishonest and a sort of management-by-roulette. Sometimes you get lucky and it works out, but I don't know how you'd sleep running things that way.