I am about to be in college at Texas A&M and I am wondering what opportunities can be achieved with a B.S. in Industrial engineering about 3-4 yrs of experience then getting an MBA.
Also, is it worth it? More lucrative? I’d really be interested in the business.
Well, that depends on where you get your MBA and what you want to do. If you go to a top MBA program then you can use that as a springboard into finance, investment banking, and other financial sectors. With a “lesser” MBA you could go into program management or some other business areas in an engineering firm. 3-4 years is not really enough experience (in most companies) to go directly into an engineering management position, so you would need to move into a lesser business position for a number of years if that is your goal, and an MBA is not strictly needed for such anyway.
Bear in mind that once you got your MBA you would likely have a lot of trouble getting more engineering work, so bear that in mind as you plan your career - it becomes an almost-permanent transfer from engineering to business, and you want to make sure that it positions you correctly before you take that leap!
As to how lucrative it is, MBA’s see more variability than engineers - you could definitely step into a much more lucrative career path with an MBA, or it could just move you into a lower-paid business position. It is hard to make any better estimate without knowing more about your circumstances at the time you make the switch.
The reason why I ask about the MBA with engineering, is because I want to be at an advantage to get into a management position and some higher up job in business. I didn’t just want to be a regular engineer working for someone. So cosmicfish, could you tell me the circumstances to put myself in a good position?
Your help is very appreciated.
An MBA isn’t a killer for getting more technical work assuming you never lost those technical skills. My dad, who works at a competing firm to cosmicfish, got his MBA as a sort of backup plan during one of the industry’s notorious downturns some 12 or so years ago. He never ended up moving into a more business-oriented position and so still does technical work. If he had moved toward the business side, that’s when you risk closing some more technical doors, not simply by having the degree.
Well, that depends on the type of management position you want! Technical management, program management, engineering management, and business management are all different jobs with different functions and therefore different requirements. I would recommend that you plan on spending 4-5 years as an engineer (working hard, because your reputation will matter!) and use that time to investigate the options and see what you like. Many companies have programs that allow you to investigate those roles, and there are courses that will help introduce you to them without the time and expense of a full degree. You can then take a masters appropriate to your preferred path and leave it with both the education and experience that they are looking for in those entry-level management positions.
By the way, if you are so eager to get out of engineering, why are you going into engineering in the first place? There are business majors that might be more appropriate to you.
This does happen, but in my experience it is anomalous. The engineering managers I know (including a few on here) have said that they don’t like to hire engineers with MBA’s because the manager is looking for someone who is going to rock at being an engineer and someone with an MBA has made a pretty substantial statement that they are interested in leaving engineering basically as soon as possible. They would prefer to hire someone whose primary goal is to be an amazing engineer, and since those people are almost always available that is who they hire. Why hire someone who is advertising that they are searching for a management job and will leave the second one becomes available?
Note that you can sidestep this by getting the MBA and staying in your current position for at least a few more years - they won’t fire you for getting the degree, and if you demonstrate a dedication to engineering prior to applying for a different engineering job then it may be viewed as a “tried it, didn’t like it” sort of thing. I would suspect that this is what boneh3ad’s father did.