Which graduate degree is better for management? An MBA or MS in engineering?
Engineering Management?
Are you a student or an engineer now?
Experience.
@colorado_mom I am a student.
Experience working as an engineer.
To become an engineering manager (and manage other engineers)? As the others have stated, that’s based on experience. An engineering manager is expected to be an experienced senior engineer that’s able to develop their team and manage/allocate resources.
A MS in engineering may help you progress faster (or not), and will make you be a bit more competitive for jobs.
The MBA is more about moving out of engineering and into management/senior management. Don’t expect it to help much in becoming an engineering manager, but it’s very helpful later in your career if you want to become a director, etc. MBA’s are also useful if you want to move into consulting or some other non-engineering field.
Admittedly t’s been a long time (30+ years) since I’ve been an engineering student. But hard for me to envision how a student would already know they will aspire to management. Tell us more about why that path interests you already.
@colorado_mom I am still a student, and it will be a long way to go. I’m just being curious and seeing how to go in management because I wish to do so in the future.
For increased salary potential? Dislike of your techie classes? Or other reasons?
It’s a lot of extra work, on top of being responsible for your functional duties; it’s still a salaried position in some companies. How do you already know that you wish to do this?
@colorado_mom likely for the increased salary potential.
@“aunt bea” that’s true, I’m not sure if I want to do that.
At the company i worked for they recognized a few years back that senior engineering talent was worth just as much as a senior engineering manager. The pays scales used to have managers on a higher scale but changed it such that everything below the executive salariy grades were on the same pay scale. There were more senior engineering positions than management positions. So, it was actually somewhat more beneficial to be an engineer than a manager money wise.
If you wanted to go up to the executive positions then you had to go the management route, but few actually made it that far.