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Engineer with MBA
4

Engineer with MBA

Engineer with MBA

(OP)
What opportunities are available for an engineer with a MBA?

RE: Engineer with MBA

You mean "Yet another engineer with an MBA", right?

RE: Engineer with MBA

Stay at home parent, burger flipper, President of the United States, and several other things that don't come to mind at the moment.

A little specificity might be called for here.

RE: Engineer with MBA

2

RE: Engineer with MBA

POW! Right in the kisser.

V

RE: Engineer with MBA

Any thing??!!

RE: Engineer with MBA

POW WOW!!
bigglasses

Fe

RE: Engineer with MBA

My answer...?  Nothing without work.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

RE: Engineer with MBA

"What opportunities are available for an engineer with a MBA?"
If you are an engineer with a MBA, your opportunities are what you make of them at your current employer.
If you are 'looking' to be an engineer, and have an MBA, the opportunities are much less.

Chris
SolidWorks 08, CATIA V5
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion

RE: Engineer with MBA

Based on the ones I have met who are under 40 years old... don't let my door hit your ass on the way out.

Real-world perspective: an MBA gained mid-career for an engineer moving in to a management role is possibly worthwhile. A junior engineer a year or two out of university with an MBA almost inevitably becomes a lousy manager and a lousy engineer. The reasons why I think that happens are that these people never really wanted to be engineers, and they haven't got enough experience of actually doing an engineering job before they are hoisted, by other MBA types, into a position of telling others how they should do it.

I can say with reasonable certainty that I have worked for no good managers under the age of 35 and for only one under the age of 50. If you want the MBA to pursue career paths into finance or business then a proper qualification in those subjects would stand you in greater stead and would be looked on more favourably by those qualified in those subjects. On the other hand if you like collecting badges and want a certificate to hang in  your hallway then go for it!
 
  

----------------------------------
  
If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
 

RE: Engineer with MBA

Like most things, it's what you make of it.  I've seen the entire spectrum:  good, bad, useful, worthless.

One guy I know with an engineering degree, but really has no interest in engaging in the "meat" of engineering (analysis, etc).  He spends his intelligence and effort trying to find ways to slide around doing work, scuffing over the details and spinning all results to look like he walks on water.  He's using a company to pay for his MBA at a prestigious school.  In fact, I've seen him spend hours of on-clock company time doing his school work.  He just wants to get a promotion and boss folks around.  Which will be the worst of everything:  barely competent technical skills, poor people skills, dishonesty, and undeserved organizational power.  I'm sure he'll cause extreme damage over the years in suffering workers, economic damage, and de-motivation.

Another guy I know (civil engineer) worked for a couple years, then did the company-paid MBA thing at at solid-but-unprestigious school.  He's been running his own VERY successful engineering business for about 25 years now, and his employees would would walk through fire for him.

Which one do YOU want to be?

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering
www.bluetechnik.com

RE: Engineer with MBA

For the past 10 years I have been an engineer and have loved it.  I work in biotech and have been a process engineer and a chemical engineer.  I am currently an engineer for a technology consulting group to the biofuel industry.  I am going part-time to the more "prestigious" of the local universities for my MBA.

A year ago, 4 months after starting the program, I was laid off from the company I worked as an engineer for then.  I applied for several jobs with the MBA on my resume and go very little responses, and the ones I did get interviews for responded with "you don't want to be an engineer."  

In the company I work for there is PE ChemE and PhD ChemE who are solid engineers.  The "head" engineer/Principal has a biology degree and 30+ years plant and engineering experience and is every bit of an engineer as the other two, and more of one than me.  The PhD is retiring but consults and PE is more of an engineer than a manager.  The other Principal is MechE with an MBA and is more of business man than an engineer, but does a lot of the pipe specs just to take the load of the rest of us.

Anyway, my role will eventually be less of an engineer and more of a manger/project manager.  A lot of engineers with MBAs are project managers or aren't involved with manufacturing/production/construction/design at all.  Thus, if you want to be an engineer do engineering, MS if you want an advance degree.  If you don't want to be an engineer the MBA will send the message loud and clear.

RE: Engineer with MBA

"Thus, if you want to be an engineer do engineering, MS if you want an advance degree.  If you don't want to be an engineer the MBA will send the message loud and clear."

Not totally correct here in my opinion and experience.  I have an MBA, and am a Civil/Structural.  The knowledge gained with the MBA helped me gain the confidence to market and start my own firm 28 years ago, and I am still going, and doing engineering, although somewhat less in volume in today's market.  Check that...  a lot less.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

RE: Engineer with MBA

tygerdawg:

Apparently you have been working around people I am working with !! I swear its exact same situation here too !!

"Does the man make the journey or does the journey make the man" - Mark Twain

RE: Engineer with MBA

(OP)
Thanks for all of the input. I have been working for an engineering consulting firm for a little over four years and plan to take the PE Exam this October. I am in my second year of a MBA program at a local college and thought that the MBA would help my carreer advancement later on.  

RE: Engineer with MBA

mike, in what ways did the MBA help you start your company?  i'm thinking about going this route and would like to know if it's recommended.   

RE: Engineer with MBA

Marketing techniques, writing and communication skills, accounting, and self confidence, primarily.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

RE: Engineer with MBA

I'll concur with msquared48, and add a little to it.  It puts a polish on what you already have, assuming you've been in the field awhile.  It won't make you into anything if you don't already possess some of the underlying traits, eg: people skills and some inherant "business smarts".  There are an awful lot of slack-jawed blank expression MBA's out there, no offense to anyone in particular, or anyone, for that matter :>)

RE: Engineer with MBA

Quote:

It puts a polish on what you already have, assuming you've been in the field awhile.  It won't make you into anything if you don't already possess some of the underlying traits, eg: people skills and some inherant "business smarts".  There are an awful lot of slack-jawed blank expression MBA's out there, no offense to anyone in particular, or anyone, for that matter

That's the truth.  There are some in my class that I can't imagine managing anyone nevertheless manage themselves.  They are very smart, book-wise, but their personalities grate and/or their ignorance is stunning.

Perhaps the Civ world is different.  Starting your own company will definitely find a use for the MBA.  However, there aren't many managers who want to hire an engineer with an MBA, are they threatened?  I dunno know.

RE: Engineer with MBA

Doesn't have anything to do with threats, just simply common sense.  An engineer with an MBA obviously intended to be more than an engineer later on, which means that I, as a manager, am looking at a short-timer, so why would I waste my energy hiring this person for a permanent engineering position?

TTFN

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RE: Engineer with MBA

I agree with IRstuff if the position is a purely engineering positon, but how much engineering do many senior engineers? Many of them spend their time managing projects and teams, interacting with clients, contractors, subcontractors or suppliers, ensuring budgets and schedules are met, dealing with claims and other commercial matters,bidding work, marketing the company to propsective clients,...

In that case the skills and knowledge that (hopefully) an MBA helps to develop would be very useful.

An MBA also shows that the person has drive and can see beyond the working stresses of a beam. How many capable engineers out there suck once they are promoted and have to deal with other issues?

RE: Engineer with MBA

Quote:

How many capable engineers out there suck once they are promoted and have to deal with other issues?

Plenty. They suck when they have an MBA too. The qualities which make them very good engineers all to often are the exact qualities which make them awful managers. That's why good engineering managers are so damned rare.

Engineer + MBA ≠ Manager
  

----------------------------------
  
If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
 

RE: Engineer with MBA

what makes a good engineering department manager?   

RE: Engineer with MBA

As little engineering experience as possible.

V

RE: Engineer with MBA

I agree that an MBA does not make you necessarily a good manager, as I said in my post, managers need skills and knowledge that an MBA can (hopefully) help to develop. If they are not there to start with, it will not help much.

I also agree that some of the qualities that make a good engineer also make a bad manager. But there are other qualities which are common to both, like the ability to look at problems, analize them, propose alternative courses of action, choose a solution, test it implement it and follow it up.

I understand many of you snuf at MBAs, probably due to bad experiences with people who have one, I have had my share of them.

On the other hand, MBA is a tool. It theaches very useful skills, the financial and managerial knowledge is great and it gives a different and richer perspective at work. It will not make you better than anybody else and it is not a ticket to instant CEO, but it is certainly worth the money, time and effort. At least it was for me, and I would like to think I am not a bigger ass than before I did it.

RE: Engineer with MBA

Quote (kelowna):

On the other hand, MBA is a tool.

So is my manager.

BAAAZZZZIINNNGGGG

V

RE: Engineer with MBA

FFS, I just spilled my cup of tea laughing... rofl2
  

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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
 

RE: Engineer with MBA

As an engineering degree is to being a good engineer so an MBA is to running a buisness well.  Neither of these things really focuses on what it means to be a good manager, i.e. good at managing people.  I've had good managers and bad.  I've been a manager (well a supervisor) and was not great.  There a lot of skills that go into being a good manager and those skill are not connected to being good at either engineering or at buisness administration.

The one common factor they all have is that if you are dedicated to your job, you will always question your methods and the results from those methods and work at improving those methods.  For an engineer that may be refining how you analyze a problem.  For an MBA that may be improving your marketing or accounting techniques.  For a manager, that could be learning to interact, diffuse tense situations, build a team, or provide better performance feedback.  

Simply said being a good manager is a skill set that is taught neither in engineering nor Buisness school.  Some people make the mistake of thinking that if you are qualifed to manage a buisness you are qualified to manage people, since to do one you are required to do the other.

Personally I would like to focus on improving my engineering skill set.  But with 4 years of engineering experience a PE and an MBA you are in a very good position.  The question is:  What do you want to do?  

I would suggest checking out Stephen Covey's book 'First Things First', and perhaps 'What color is your parachute' (can't remember the author).  Make sure you know what ladder you want to be climbing before you get to the top.

-Kirby

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