<p>I was wondering if you can go to college and get a degree in engineering management and go right to managing engineers or is it more like you become an engineer and then maybe later on if you get good enough and have the right qualities that you can become one</p>
<p>It varies from job to job, industry to industry.
But most people who are engineering managers work as engineers for some years, then get an MBA.</p>
<p>As a general rule, management of any kind requires at least a little experience. At my company, you have to reach a particular level as an engineer (corresponding to roughly 8+ years of experience) before you can apply for ANY management position, and while graduate degrees reduce this time a little, they cannot eliminate it. Please note that not all managers have MBA’s - the MBA is a solid business degree, and covers things that most managers do not need. Many managers have a Technical Management M.S., or perhaps no management degree at all.</p>
<p>Engineering management (and to a certain extent Systems Engineering) are majors that should be taken at the masters level. Those degrees are usually for folks who have prior engineering experience. I really do not know why some schools offer a B.S. in engineering management. Just about every company will have an experienced engineer managing other engineers from a “career” perspective. Now I can see engineering management grads getting project management positions, but in that position, you are not really managing engineers. You are managing their time on your project only and really are not their supervisor because you will have engineers on your team with more experience and political power than yourself. The only real reason why there are more young project managers is because us older engineers (like myself) don’t want the job because of the longer hours, meetings and headaches. As far as MANAGING engineers for their career and guidance…you need to have some years of experience…probably 8 to 10 years.</p>
<p>An MBA or a Masters isn’t a pre-requisite to be an engineering manager. A lot of Engr. Mangers just have a B.S. The #1 most important skill: you need to have an ability to communicate well, and deal with people. Some engineers are introverts, and have a hard time with this.</p>
<p>A Masters certaily helps get to managment a little faster, but isn’t a gurantee. You have to have experience doing the job. You’ll have no credibility with the people you manage, or peers, if you haven’t walked in their shoes. How can you provide guidance and make decisions if you’ve never done the job youself?</p>
<p>I’ve never worked at a company with a mandatory number of years work experience in order to be allowed to apply for management. But you have to have the maturity and experience to be able to effectively do the job. 8 years is probably about right, could be less if you are mature and know how to deal well with people. How to navigate office politics, manage your time, how to deal with people’s ego’s, how to motivate and persuade, how to guide your employees to be effective. It’s not just technology you are dealing with, in fact that’s a very small portion of it. Dealing with people is 80% of the job of an Engineering Manager. No school can teach you that, you have to live it.</p>