<p>I'm going to be a freshman in college next year as an undecided engineering major. At this point I'm leaning towards mechanical, but I'm not 100% positive.</p>
<p>My question is: what degree, or combination of degrees, will set me up with the potential to be a manager in the future? </p>
<p>I obviously plan to co-op in college, and I understand that it will take some years of experience before moving into management, but I don't want to still be a typical desk engineer when I'm 30-40 years old. I love working with people, and I'm a very personable person, so I feel that the right combination of collegiate study will set me up for management one day. I just don't know what that combination is....</p>
<p>(PS- by management I'm referring to anything from IT mgt, to Operations mgt, to Supply Chain mgt, to Engineering mgt)</p>
<p>If you wanted to go the strategic management route, then an MBA down the road will suit you well. Otherwise there are usually two paths to management as an engineer (and aren’t mutually exclusive).
Technical people tend to get promoted to management if they’re really good at their technical job.
An engineering management graduate degree would fit what I think you’re looking for, but think of it as a career enhancer, not a career initialization (same goes with the MBA).</p>
<p>Regardless of the path you end up taking, leadership within any group, unit, company, tends to come about from proving to people over a period of time that you’re competent and successful, and no college degree will earn you that trust right out of school.</p>
<p>Why would you want that? From what I’ve heard, once you go the management route, you stop “engineering”. You just deal with people all day. Why even go into engineering if that’s your goal?</p>
<p>An MBA, definitely, after years of experience as an engineer, of course!
It is not the key to management but ratehr an enhancment of your career and helps you get promoted faster !
I am thinking the same as you.
And I am thinking of starting with MEch Eng or Elec Eng, too.</p>
<p>Because I enjoy engineering, and would like to do it for ~10 years out of college, but not my whole life. As I said earlier, I am a people person, and I feel as though that would help me stick out from your typical engineer as result in a management position (as long as I have the right credentials) resulting in an interesting change in career, working a job geared towards my skills, and better pay.</p>
<p>Any degree along with the following attributes: demonstrated leadership qualities, hard work, being team-oriented, good interpersonal skills, prior leadership experience, networking, communication skills, public speaking ability, writing skills, …</p>
<p>A specific degree might help in learning the lingo of an industry & get your foot in the door, but the above attributes are the factors that will get you into management. Too many people are looking for some black and white answer to this question. Such an answer doesn’t exist, although universities are trying to create an answer in the form of various management degrees. Unfortunately, you don’t properly learn how to be a leader in a classroom, and companies recognize that.</p>
<p>If you want a guaranteed, black and white trick to becoming a manager: start your own company.</p>
<p>If you want to be a manager in an engineering organization, an engineering degree and experience as an engineer are important to have, since they will give you the knowledge about what you are managing. However, they are not the only things needed, in that various management and business skills are also needed.</p>
<p>This question gets asked a lot, but the reality is that there are only two ways to get into management - start your own company or rise through the ranks of someone else’s company. If you are interested in the first, check out entrepreneurship programs and boards. If you are interested in the latter, it will be determined entirely by your performance in the company - by the time you have the experience that they look for in management jobs, your college days will be several years back and almost completely irrelevant.</p>
<p>My advice: Concentrate on becoming an excellent engineer, but keep active in engineering and non-engineering groups where you can hone your social and leadership skills. The first part is important because many companies (nearly all the good ones) require that you demonstrate a certain degree of professional competence before they will take you into management. The second is important because it is very possible to focus so much on the engineering that you lose the interpersonal skills that you will someday need to work in and eventually lead a team.</p>
<p>All of the other posts pretty much summed it up. Actually, being a very good engineer over some year will give you the “option” of being a manager. You can be a technical “line” manager where your job is make sure that the engineers under you get the proper direction and proper career path or project manager where you will manager the project and manpower “borrowed” from technical line managers.</p>
<p>Just throwing this out here…</p>
<p>More and more companies have career paths for senior engineers who want to stay in engineering and giving them the added pay also…to the point that many of us (me being one of them) can ignore management and still get the same pay. Only the CIO’s, CTO’s and their Vices or Deputys (sp) are getting big money for managing.</p>
<p>Being a good engineer might actually prevent you from getting into management at some companies; they’ll want to keep you where you are most valued.</p>
<p>My advice would be to focus on your technical discipline, do it well. Get a BS or a MS in it, dependent on the field and industry you are going to focus. Work for a large company for 2 years or so and then jump to a start-up where you can apply your skills and “wear many hats”. This will give you the option to get your feet wet in management areas while still being valued for your technical know how, having learned from a large company with a good reputation for doing that technical thing well… this may get you into managment alone. If not, then:</p>
<p>Maybe about 6months into your job at the startup start sending smoke signals to your boss that you are interested in going into management, title and all, and ask (literally) what you need to do to get there. See what opportunities arise, work your butt off for 2 years, then apply for MBA with a 700+ on the GMAT. Get into a top 10 business school, graduate with a greater than 3.8, get a job a top management consultant company, BS about business to fortune 500s for a couple years, then fall into a VP spot at one of the ones you actually managed to baffle with said BS… tada, management.</p>
<p>Although I’m not really in a position to give career advice (I’m just starting college in the fall), I had your questions a while ago. I’ve found that industrial engineering (some call it imaginary engineering, since they see it as less “real” than other engineering majors) is not only most interesting, but also most likely to lead to that kind of position.</p>
<p>Of course, you can get into management with almost any engineering major (I’ve read of many working as consultants, analysts, and various types of managers with EE, ME, CE, etc. degrees), but industrial might teach you the kinds of skills that will most easily translate to management roles.</p>
<p>Also, as others have indicated, MBAs are very important for that transition to be possible. These are usually best attained after a few years, and may even be (partially) covered by an employer who has a vested interest in seeing you have increased responsibility. But this means that you’ve proven that you’re a valuable employee with the right skills for management.</p>
<p>Again, I know I’m talking like I know what I’m talking about (when you might be inclined to say I don’t), but I’ve been reading a lot about the kinds of things people do with industrial engineering, and it seems like what I (and probably you) want to do.</p>
<p>I second besjbo’s post, and while I am not even an engineering student yet I cam tell you that my dad took the industrial engineering route and ended up starting his own company so that’s a good degree to look into</p>
<p>I also agree that getting an MBA is important. While you can work your way into management, I think having the educational background is important in dealing with the issues of management. It can be miserable for one who has lots of work experience, but no management training.</p>
<p>He spent a couple of years doing engineering jobs and then started a trading and delivery company (basically a company that trades and delivers cattle food) and while it’s not an engineering company, he managed to make it a successful one using the skills he acquired during his IE study and thats why I would recommend that degree to someone intrested in managment, the skills could be translated to different working areas not only engineering.</p>