<p>As a high school senior, I'm faced with a daunting task of sorting through countless tempting universities. I've been struggling between Engineering and Business. I have heard that a blend of the two is often better than one over the other. A knowledge of the product is a necessity after all. Yet I am uncertain of how to go about choosing a school and a major to blend the two. In short, my question is:
How would one go about selecting a major or majors in order to find themselves at the top of the corporate ladder?</p>
<p>When you say "top of the corporate ladder", do you mean CEO-level only or do CTO (Chief Technology Officer), CIO (Chief Information Officer), etc. count? CTOs and CIOs tend to come from some sort of technology background whether that is engineering or IT. </p>
<p>In my experience, CEOs generally come from a business background and do not necessarily have much technical expertise. There will always be examples like Bill Gates who started out writing software, but he is the exception that proves the rule. CEOs are responsible for running the business-side of the company and are expected to have business experience.</p>
<p>I would suggest finding a college that is strong in both engineering and business and trying both out. Then choose the major that best fits your interests.</p>
<p>Also remember that either route will require paying your dues at the bottom of the corporate ladder unless you start your own company. The startup route has its own challenges, but you are more likely to jump to a senior role faster there than you are at say IBM or Microsoft.</p>
<p>Firstly, I thank you for your response. Secondly, I had heard that businesses want their executive members to know their product. I was curious as to the experience and education preferred by businesses for their executives, whether they're CFOs, CEOs, or any other high-standing acronym,</p>
<p>Yes, the CEO should know the product, but people at the executive level are also somewhat specialized. The CEO should be able to explain who needs the product and the problem it solves. He doesn't necessarily need to know how to design the chip or build the airplane.</p>
<p>So, again, it all depends on what interests you and what you want to do. If you see yourself as an engineer with an eye toward business, you may want to aim for the CTO route and major in engineering with a business minor. If you are more interested in the finance aspect, you may want to major in business with an engineering minor.</p>
<p>If you aren't sure the direction you want to go in, you should look at colleges that have good programs in both areas and that will allow you to sample from both before committing to one. You can then use the classes to determine what your main area of expertise will be and which will be your side interest.</p>
<p>Majoring in one area and minoring in the other will give you a broad enough education that you should be able to start down one path or another after graduation.</p>
<p>Thank you very much. The problem now is, in the Northeast, the only schools good in both are really good in both. No happy medium really. So it's all or nothing. Harvard or MIT. Top ones like that. So the next hurdle is: how heavily does the college name weigh on job opportunities?</p>
<p>becoming a CEO, CFO, etc.. isn't really going to depend on the number of degrees you obtain. to obtain these level of positions really depend on how well you can play job politics and how talented you are in terms of bringing money to company. you dont need an engineering degree to become a CEO of an engineering company (any company)</p>
<p>I agree with hdotchar, it's not really about the degrees you have. The fact is, all degrees have a short shelf-life in the sense that after you've been working for a few years, nobody cares about where you went to school or what you majored in, or what grades you got. The only thing that will matter is what job you have and how well you're doing that job. A specific degree from a specific school may help you to get a good job, but after that, it's all you.</p>
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I've been struggling between Engineering and Business....The problem now is, in the Northeast, the only schools good in both are really good in both. No happy medium really. So it's all or nothing. Harvard or MIT
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<p>Uh, last time I checked, Harvard wasn't that all that great in engineering. It's not bad, but I would hesitate to call it great, and certainly not the equal of MIT engineering. </p>
<p>From what I've seen, CEO's, and in fact, most top management people don't really need to know the product. Obviously it doesn't hurt to know the product, but it's not all that necessary. The CEO's job is basically threefold - to set corporate strategy, to find good people that he trusts to manage the various division, and to make the company look good to the press and to the investing community (in other words, public relations). Knowing the product is not all that necessary.</p>
<p>In fact, I would argue that sometimes good CEO's are people who DON'T know the product. One of the greatest corporate turnaround jobs in modern history was the rescue of IBM by Lou Gerstner. In the early 90's, IBM was in such trouble that it looked like the company might actually go bankrupt. The Board of Directors brought in Lou Gerstner, formerly the CEO of RJR Nabisco, to run the company. Gerstner freely admitted that he knew nothing about computers. In fact, one of the biggest reasons why he was hired by the Board was precisely because he knew nothing about computers. Because he knew nothing about computers, he was able to bring an outsider's perspective. Sometimes knowing about your product and your industry is a bad thing because it prevents you from looking at things in a different way. Gerstner knew nothing about computers or the computer industry so he was able to envision changes, rather than accept procedures as simply being "the way we've always done it". </p>
<p>I would also point to the management rotation program at General Electric. GE is not just a company that makes light bulbs, but is really a conglomerate of many different divisions making many different products - plastics, aircraft engines, turbines, financial services, the NBC television network, and so on. Managers of the various lines are rotated around, so if you do well as a manager in the GE plastics division, then your next assignment may be to manage the aircraft engine division, something which you know nothing about. The idea is that GE wants to train you to manage a wide disparate group of divisions. Plastics and aircraft engines obviously share little in common technologically, but many of the management principles required to run the two divisions are the same. Furthermore, GE is trying to assess who might be the next CEO of GE. Those who prove that they can successfully manage many different divisions of GE have proven that they are highly flexible and are quick studies, and are therefore candidates to ultimately become a future CEO of GE. This system of management grooming has worked so well that other companies regularly raid GE to stock their top management positions. Other companies figure that a person who does well in the GE management rotation system will almost certainly be a good fit for us. </p>
<p>The point is that the knowledge of specific products is often times overrated when you're talking about management. What is more important than knowing your specific product is knowing how to manage. Management is a specific skill unto itself. You don't have to know a product well in order to know how to manage a company producing that product.</p>