MBA and income

Graduate School Business School - MBA
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<p>so i'm currently in Berkeley doing chemE and im considering MBA after about 4 yrs of work experience.
How much does MBA boost your income? I know it's stupid questions since many factors can come into play but i want to know about how much income Berkeley chemE makes and how it changes over years and how it changes once you get into an investment firm or any other place after a completion of MBA program at top schools..</p>

<p>BTW i just finished my first year and hopefully i wanna end up with 3.5 or greater when i graduate.</p>

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<p>Is it even possible/easy to move to investment management after a background in ChemE?</p>

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<p>Is it easy to move to investment management after a background in ChemE?</p>

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<p>You are correct, so it’s hard to say.</p>

<p>Don’t think about MBA now,just concentrate on your studies and get a high GPA; then you will have more options.</p>

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<p>No, investment management is a hard career path for anyone to break into if you wish to have a front office role.</p>

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<p>I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but, sure, you can do it. Especially after you obtain an MBA, for then your undergrad background will matter little.</p>

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<p>It’s possible that it won’t boost your income at all. I know chem engineering majors that have made 6 figures a year, working 6 months a year. This is not the right forum to ask how much a Berkeley chemE grad makes. My guess is that there is a large spread of incomes. </p>

<p>The one thing I can say is that the avg salary for top MBAs is much higher, and MBAs tend to have a much greater upside than chemE grads.</p>

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<p>Really? Where? Doing what?</p>

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<p>1) Depends where the MBA is from</p>

<p>2) Depends what you do with the MBA</p>

<p>Many people go from engineering into banking, especially after getting an MBA.</p>

<p>I’d say chemE people, like most engineers start at relatively high salaries right out of undergrad ($55-$75K) but hit a ceiling really fast and rarely make more than $150K.</p>

<p>In a good year you could make that your first year out of a top MBA program and the sky is the limit from there.</p>

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<p>"Really? Where? Doing what? "</p>

<p>I don’t know about the 6 months/year, but I have several engneer friends from colllege who did very well for themselves while staying in the field. One of them got stock options when he went to work for a small startup company that wound up doing spectacularly. In fact he retired before the age of 50. Another guy started his own firm. Anoher is now CEO of a technology company, I haven’t spoken to him in a while but I assume he’s doing pretty well.</p>

<p>Then there are a number of others who eventually left the field, or went on into other corporate functions, and are also doing very well. But that’s another story.</p>

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<p>I think you’ll agree, however, monydad, that that’s rare for an engineer but quite typical for people in finance. I felt old hanging in until 52.</p>

<p>But you do have a point with the stock options if we ever get back to doing lots of IPOs. Yet are chemEs as likely to work for start ups at EEs or CS folks?</p>

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<p>Well, those are rather different then. I’ve never disputed that management can make plenty of money, as can entrepreneurship - which startup equity effectively is - can make you very rich indeed. But that’s not really chemical engineering work per se. Heck, even some of Microsoft’s and Google’s secretaries got filthy rich through their equity. </p>

<p>I would still like to hear some stories of chemical engineers making 6 figures in 6 months for doing pure chemical engineering work.</p>

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<p>“Yet are chemEs as likely to work for start ups at EEs or CS folks?”
“I would still like to hear some stories of chemical engineers making 6 figures in 6 months for doing pure chemical engineering work.” </p>

<p>This guy was doing “pure” chem E work for a biotech firm. I don’t know about “as likely” but biotech firms have had their share of boutique startups, I think, and they need chemical engineers (or biochemical engineers, which is a particular subset) to make their processes commercially viable. Going on to be a manager in a tech area is still a natural outgrowth of the technical track, I consider that still in “pure” chemical engineering work. He wasn’t managing accountants, the technical aspect was still very much an integral part of the job.</p>

<p>I don’t know about relative probabilities, but I can tell you it worked for this guy.</p>

<p>I don’t know much about the field generally, because my other personal friends from back in the day are no longer doing straight engineering, they did for a while but used it as a springboard for something slighly other. Only one of my friends continues to work as a straight engineer. I don’t talk about finances, but I assume he works as a decently-paid salaryman just like most other professional employees of the big corporations. They are not starving. How well they ultimately do depends a lot on the value of the company stock options they receive along the way, not just salary.</p>

<p>But I well remember the talk we were given at the investment bank, by a partner (in preparation for yet another round of downsizings):</p>

<p>“For your age, experience and responsibility levels, you are the most highly paid employees in America”.</p>

<p>By definition no other group of people can make that claim. Certainly not engineers.</p>

<p>That doesn’t mean that any particular person would do as well in either career. Maybe somebody is good, and has a passion for, something, but is not good at something else.
This may sort itself out, in the end. Or even in short order.</p>

<p>I know of other engineers who went on to be developers of one sort or another involving technology, who I would presume are also doing quite well.
The technical path these people followed initially made it possible for them to do what they are doing now. Again, they were able to use the engineering path as a stepping stone to something more lucrative.</p>

<p>And I just now recalled another guy I know who started his own company after working at a big engineering firm. He’s doing well too.</p>

<p>Oh wait, and another. Ditto. that makes three.</p>

<p>Where you start out is not necessarily where you wind up. It was certainly not a dead end for most of the people I know personally. Maybe it would have been if they continued to do the same job they did at entry level. But their experiences gave them the knowledge to move on, and these individuals had the personal capabilities to capitalize on that. Not everyone will though, I presume. But those others are not necessarily starving either.</p>

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<p>Again, I do not consider becoming rich from startup equity to be actual chemical engineering work, as that wealth is really being gained by your startup equity, not by your engineering work per se. It’s no different from a chemical engineer who becomes rich by taking his income to buy a cheap house, ride a housing boom and sell at the peak. This can happen unwittingly. For example, I know one former chemical engineer who sold his house in California at the crest of the boom, not because he knew the market was going to crash, but simply because he was moving to the East Coast to attend an MBA program. {He also rented while obtaining his MBA, as it’s not advisable to buy if you might only stay for 2 years.) By the time he graduated and moved back West, the market had crashed, and so he was able to buy a new house for dirt cheap. He made out like an absolute bandit. He freely admits that he made money from that one lucky turn of events than he ever did in all his years as a chemical engineer combined. </p>

<p>Nor do I consider management to be chemical engineering work either. After all, not every chemical engineer will become a manager, not can they all expect to. Management skills are not taught in the vast majority of chemical engineering programs. Managing by definition involves supervising people, which is an entirely different skill set from engineering. I therefore do not consider management to be ‘pure’ chemical engineering in any shape.</p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong. I don’t see any reason why ChemE’s shouldn’t have the opportunity to make over $200k+ a year for pure chemical engineering work, if he can produce commensurate profits for the company. I’ve also never understood why chemical engineers have to rise to the level of management in order to be paid huge sums. Why can’t they be paid that while remaining as engineers? Furthermore, some forms of engineering - notably certain highly topical forms of software engineering - can be paid over $200k per annum. For example, if you have deep knowledge and experience with J2EE, EJB, Oracle, SAP, and you know how to engineer and mine high-end data warehouses, you probably can be paid well over $200k a year without ever needing to ever be promoted to management or joining/founding a startup. </p>

<p>But pure chemical engineers can’t get that, and I’ve often wondered why.</p>

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<p>There are very few industries where white collar “corporate drone” salaryman workers toiling in big corporations, not working on commission, are going to get rich by simply staying at their entry level positions, if you are going to ignore stock options and any promotion possibilities and other opportunities that may open up for these people subsequently, by virtue of their initial employment.</p>

<p>This applies to engineers working in these places no differently than accountants working at these same firms. Or even finance people there, for that matter.</p>

<p>Many of these people can have perfectly satisfactory careers, however.</p>

<p>When you get down to it, many investment bankers are not really salaryman workers, they are indirectly paid on commission. And if their personal revenue goals are not met they will not be staying there to reap these rewards. Commision workers at corporations can do well also (though usually not as well), but staff engineers, accountants, etc are not on commission.</p>

<p>Staying as an entry-level staff salaryman at a big corporation, in virtually any capacity not just engineering, is simply not a fast track for getting really rich.</p>

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<p>Nice strawman. Not once had I ever talked about anybody remaining as an “entry-level staff salaryman”. What’s wrong with rising to becoming a senior engineer - and being the best engineer in the company - but not actually having to ever enter management, yet still having the opportunities to be paid as a top manager? Management skills are an entirely different skillset from technical skills, and it is not entirely clear that management skills are automatically more valuable to companies than are technical skills. A brilliant engineer can potentially produce just as much value for an employer as can a brilliant manager. The difference is that that brilliant engineer won’t capture much of that value for himself. </p>

<p>Every engineer is inevitably faced with the career decision about whether to remain technical as a senior engineer who, while respected, will have no salary headroom remaining with which to grow his career, or moving to management and learning an entirely different skillset. My question is - why is that choice necessary? What’s wrong with somebody who just wants to continue building technical knowledge? It is that choice that undermines the value that is placed on deep technical knowledge in this country.</p>

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<p>And the same can be said for senior salaried accountants, corporate staff finance people, HR people and other non-management corporate people who are not on commission.</p>

<p>Go get your PhD in labor economics and then report back.</p>

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<p>I’m afraid I have to strongly disagree: star corporate finance and accounting employees have a clear path to riches by working at a financial services firm. Many American students know this, which is why they’d rather study finance than engineering. Heck, even many American engineering students know this. I know several star MIT grad engineering students who took jobs at hedge funds or private equity firms. They know nothing about accounting or finance, and they won’t be managing anybody, but they’ll be making far more money than they would have made as engineers.</p>

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<p>only a minority of senior , non-management corporate people in any of these fields, working in the bowls of a major corporation, have realistic access to transition into a financial service firm, mostly they are stuck in the corporate bowls. These 'stars" that get enough exposure to make such transitions are all typically promoted into management positions at their corporations by the time they get exposure to people at these other industries, hence should be excluded by your prior standards.</p>

<p>Those who make such transition are usually very senior, management people at corporations. The ones I worked with had been CEOs actually.</p>

<p>Then we can add the chemists at pharmaceutical firms, all the IT people at every corporation. It’s not just engineers. It’s the preponderance of white collar workers who work for big corporations.</p>

<p>Some people in other areas can transition (but then typically they are doing different jobs too). Some engineers can transition too, but you just excluded all of them.</p>

<p>It’s true there are a few exorbitantly-high paying industries which most people can’t get hired into. If someone can get hired into such firms they will make more money than they otherwise could. whether they would otherwise be engineers, or corporate accountants, or corporate HR people, or corporate chemists. Or bookshop clerks, or librarians, or professors. All of them would make more if they could but get hired at a financial services firm, in the right capacity. And wind up being good at it.</p>

<p>And true enough, some of them, do just that. There were a number of ex-professors working at my financial sevrices firm. The commodities firm I worked at, my group had 2 physics Phds and one food science PhD. They all made more in financial services (or related) than they otherwise could, and none of them were engineers. But most food scientists can’t get those jobs or dont want them. Even star food scientists.</p>

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<p>hmom5 - u felt old retiring at 52 in finance!? please, elaborate!!</p>