Engineering to 1-year MBA

<p>The school I will be attending in the fall (UofA) offers a STEMMBA program where, if I understood correctly, you must take business classes each year for four years (in addition to other classes) and at the 5th year, you take a whole load of classes then get the MBA. How do I know if the MBA is right for me? </p>

<p>Background: For sure I'm gonna do engineering. Good at math; like science; I like the job prospects. Maybe mechanical, maybe electrical. I have to decide now because although they do accept upperclassmen, it would be more difficult and less likely that I would get in.</p>

<p>First, saying U of A means nothing to us. Alaska, Arkansas, Alabama, Arizona, Alberta…</p>

<p>Second, an MBA would be rather worthless to you without several years work experience.</p>

<p>U of A = University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa. </p>

<p>Any kind of work experience or work experience in a certain industry?</p>

<p>Forgot to mention I’m an incoming freshman…</p>

<p>You would preferably want experience in the field you wish to pursue as a career. Basically, no company is going to hire a new hire with zero experience into a management position. If that person has an MBA with zero job experience, it may in some instances actually hurt since it signals they don’t want to be doing the technical side of things and are shooting for management even though they’ve done nothing to earn it.</p>

<p>I really can’t see a 5-year BS/MBA helping you except maybe if yor plan is to start your own business. Otherwise it seems like it would be neutral at best.</p>

<p>Thank you. I was leaning away from the MBA anyway , so now I am more confident I made the right decision.</p>

<p>When I was hiring college applicants for an engineering position, I would not consider someone with a combined engineering/MBA degree. I wasn’t hiring someone to do business, I was hiring to fill an engineering position. Given college only provides you with the fundamentals of engineering and the rest is on the job training, I wanted someone who was into engineering for the long haul to make it worth my while to hire them. </p>

<p>I did once hire someone with a combined BS/BA in engineering and business. Regretted it almost right away. Never did that again.</p>

<p>Thanks , now I’m sure I made the right decision. I kindly ask if you can explain what you regretted about the graduate. </p>

<p>Even though you already made your decision at this point, one more point is worth considering. Money. You will spend one more year on tuition, and also miss the opportunity for one year of income. That is a huge swing. Also, many companies will pay for a master’s degree. </p>

<p>I heartily agree that you should not get the MBA yet, unless your sole interest is to go into something like corporate finance AND are attending a powerhouse MBA program… otherwise it can be a career killer.</p>

<p>But I wanted to clear up something else as well:</p>

<p>

While many-to-most engineering employers will pay for a technical masters or one in certain management areas, the MBA itself is often explicitly NOT covered by employers because new graduates often change employers and no company wants to pay for the degree that makes you leave in search of greener pastures! Getting your employer to pay for your MBA usually requires transitioning into one of the handful of positions that is open to engineers but is enhanced by the MBA - usually program management or upper-middle management. If you are working as an engineer, then you forget about them paying for you to get a business management degree.</p>

<p>So if someone likes engineering, but is also interested in the business side of things, what would you suggest they study?</p>

<p>If someone likes engineering but is interested in the business side of things, you study engineering, go out and get experience in engineering so you know how it is all actually applied in an industrial setting, then come back and study business with that experience under your belt that will put all of your studies in context.</p>

<p>

I think that depends a lot on their specific ambitions - there are a ton of ways to combine or switch between business and engineering, but the best route really depends on what you want to do. Going from design engineer to CPA is a very different route than driving some middle road like program management. But here are a few general points:</p>

<p>You can do a career change at some point, if that is what you want. Indeed, many mid-career MBA’s are doing precisely that.</p>

<p>It is almost always easier to start in engineering and move into the business side than the other way around. Especially if you need a new degree.</p>

<p>Most jobs, especially starting jobs, are going to be business OR engineering, and a split focus going in is not appealing to most employers.</p>

<p>In general, I would recommend starting in engineering with no more than a minor in business - no double major, no advanced/grad degree in business. Work as an engineer for a few years, learn your industry. At that point, if you want to move towards business you will have the knowledge and resources to do so.</p>

<p>OP; you asked what I regretted about the business/engineering grad I hired. He stated in the interview that he was really interested in doing engineering work. Well, that interest didn’t last too long before he keep asking to do “management” tasks because, after all, he had a business degree. I hired him to do engineering work and not “management” tasks. I put management in quotes because an engineering manager’s role is to manage the development of the staff, ensure that tasks are completed in a timely manner (i.e. within budget) and done correctly and plan and budget future work (which requires a detailed and extensive knowledge of the work the group did, not something a new hire could do). There are no “management” tasks as one would typically learn in business school. No market studies; no product placement studies; etc. HIs attitude and insistence on “management” tasks strongly interfered with his on the job training and he was not progressing toward becoming a functional engineer (college only teaches the basics, most of what you need to do, you will learn on the job). He saved me the trouble of laying him off by leaving on his own. I wasted a fair amount of other engineer’s time trying to teach him engineering when that was his career goal after all.</p>

<p>I worked for a large aerospace company and my group did nothing but analysis. There were separate marketing groups, etc. but they all wanted people who had had a number of years with the company and were very familiar with the products we sold. We had very knowledgeable customers and that product knowledge was critical, so he was far from the person that our marketing group wanted.</p>

<p>I wanted to hire people who were dedicated to doing engineering. Engineering management is a path that one enters after a number of years on the job. The skill set to be an engineering manager is different than that taught in the MBA programs that I have seen. An MBA after doing engineering work is focusing on a different career than doing engineering, you are making the transition to the business side of things. An MBA / engineer can be a good combination but one would typically want to learn the details of engineering first. That path is different than what I would term “engineering management” which is more people skills. </p>

<p>The National Management Association offers a series of classes to become a certified manager. Those classes are more in tune with the skill set to become an engineering manager. My company now requires one to get that certificate before one is typically considered for engineering management.</p>

<p>I really appreciate your response. I have no questions but I permalinked this so I can show it to others who might be in the same place as me. </p>

<p>

I’m attending one of these MBA powerhouses part time (on employer’s dime) and it is hard to change career. Not because I’m not getting interviews, but more because you need to invest in the time, which I PT students don’t have to begin with (eg you need to learn cases or valuation/modeling so you don’t bomb the interviews). </p>

<p>

I should have been clear - full-time MBA programs can be a mechanism for career change. Part-time programs are generally designed for and around people trying to advance in their current industry, and can be a difficult springboard to another career.</p>

<p>If you are interested in the business side of engineering, I would suggest supplementing your engineering degree with some electives that are more business oriented:</p>

<p>Engineering Economics (fantastic course)
Operations Research
Industrial Accounting</p>

<p>(etc.)</p>

<p>

Just want to emphasize, the keyword here is difficult. Perhaps very difficult, but it’s not impossible.</p>

<p>Mid-career changes are always somewhat difficult. In your current career path, you have acquired a certain amount of expertise and your salary history reflects that. </p>

<p>Changing careers can mean going back to square one as far as expertise goes. Are you willing to take a huge pay cut that reflects your now lack of expertise? If you have a wife, kids and a house, that can be quite a deal breaker. </p>

<p>Or, can you find a company that is willing to pay you more than you are really worth, expecting (hoping?) that you will gain that expertise fast because of your prior work experience?</p>

<p>The best career changes I’ve seen are ones in which the change was more of a change in focus rather than a wholesale change. One person moved from engineering to marketing after getting his MBA. Our customers are very knowledgeable and that background in engineering was key to doing well in the marketing group.</p>

<p>Another person wanted to move from an structural analysis group to doing computer programing. He was able to convince the manager (me) that rather than having several people or the IT group each spend part of their time maintaining the code they were responsible for, that one person maintaining all the codes was better. I agreed with his approach and it worked out very well for everyone. He was able to use his analysis experience to quickly understand what each code did (which we did have issues with when we did use a strictly IT person to (re)write some sections of the codes) and make the changes more effectively and with less guidance. He was also better able to test the changes to the codes as he understood what they were doing better than the IT group.</p>

<p>I have both an engineering degree and an MBA, the latter of which I got part time; I got the latter mid-career, as I wanted to move beyond doing pure technical engineering work, and instead be more involved in marketing and strategic planning roles. I was able to do that. Could I have done that without my MBA? Possibly, but it would have been a lot more challenging, as the MBA did teach me the perspective that folks in other functional teams have and their role in the larger organization, something I did not appreciate beforehand. For some folks, the MBA is superfluous, as they already have that knowledge in their DNA. But the 3-letter credential can still help get your resume higher up the pile in some cases. </p>

<p>Could I have moved into my current role without my engineering degree? Absolutely not. </p>

<p>Could I have done it 1 year out of college with a dual engineering/MBA? Again, absolutely not. There’s just too much to know, even if I’m not doing deep technical dives every day. </p>

<p>As for career changes, the typical model for a career changing MBA is the full time MBA at a top-tier program. That’s a degree that can get you into Wall St.; management consulting, or high level marketing/management jobs in industry. And an engineering degree can be valuable background for that. However, to make that move, you need to (a) gain a few years, or more, of actual work experience; and (b) go full time to a top-tier program. Without (a), you will not get to step (b). </p>

<p>My suggestion is to take a couple of economics and business courses in your spare cycles, and defer the MBA until you’ve been working for a few years. </p>