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What is the Value of an MBA to a Techie?
Kengineer asks: "I've heard a lot of hype about techies with MBA's being in high demand. I'm an Engineer who does validation for a Voice over IP company, and before that I coded software projects for a controls automation company. I am considering returning to school to seek an MBA, so I'd like to hear from those of you 'dotters who already have buisness degrees, and your post-MBA experiences."
(wish I had time to write a 2 page essay on this)
That depends on your view of work and organizational behaviour. If you truely believe in the creed of the Second Dilbert Era (that is, Dilberts penned after Scott Adams left his day job):
* All "managers" are idiots
* Resource allocation and setting priorities are useless functions
* All problems have one correct answers
* Per the second and third points, project management and conflict resolution are just political wastes of time
* Marketing departments are only good as sources of dating prospects
then you won't find much use in an MBA. Similarly, if it is very important to you to stay current with a detailed technical speciality (say router network design), you will have a very hard time finding a management job that lets you do that.
If you are interested in learning more about how and why organizations are structured, why people behave as they do, and how to handle resource allocation and project management, then an MBA could be useful to you. Or if you would like to catch up on some of the non-engineering techncial skills, such as financial theory.
However, based on many years of observing technical people and managers, I think there are very few techies who are really interested in, or would really like, jobs in management.
sPh
Now on to education. BA Management. BS Computer Science. And an MBA (no emphasis, but Marketing is more my focus than Finance.) I've started three businesses, have worked for three multinationals (Philips, HP, Reuters) and even worked for the United Nations for 8 years, building secure Internet infrastructure. I now own and run a small business, doing consulting and building web sites for fun and profit (http://www.lanifex.com) in Vienna, Austria.
What have I learned from my MBA? Well, lots of great stuff. Finance of course. Marketing, especially Global focus. Strategy, analysis, HR, communications, etc. And from all this stuff, I've distilled three things that matter:
- Life-long learning is an attitude.
- It's the people that matter.
- It's not all in books
Bottom line: if you're willing to put in the effort, an MBA is certainly a good thing to acquire for geeks, or even non-geeks. But remember it's the journey that matters, and what you learn and how you change along the way, and not the certificate at the end. Never, ever stop learning, until the Harrower calls time -- and even then, you might learn something new!Start learning, and never stop. It doesn't really matter whether you study for an MBA, or Origami, but keep learning. You'll improve your own life, and that of the people around you.
When you do a classroom MBA (which I did) you make a lot of great contacts. These are the people who will help you in future business. Cherish them.
You can learn some theory from the books, but the best way to learn is by trying things, and see what works for you. Leadership is innate, although you can learn a few tricks.
--
Paul Gillingwater
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
an aside: it's quite apparent that many slashdot users could really benefit from aquiring some business knowledge simply by the way marketing people are regarded by most people here. ;)
but anyhow, if you have any aspirations of getting out of a generic cubicle job, your best bet is to learn a little about business. while experience is great, ultimately you need a starting point and that's what a good MBA can provide. it'll give you the fundamental knoweldge of how finance, marketing, sales and business development work, and hopefully a base that you can apply to your learning on the job.
having a technical degree is useful, but if you can pull off both a technical degree and have an MBA you'll be absolutely golden. if you're one of those people who can be techincally-minded and yet convey your thoughts easily to others then you may really enjoy taking an MBA as well as learning a lot from the experience. engineering is great, but ultimately it takes the business infrastructure to market and sell a product. of course, to do this properly those in sales and marketing have to have a good understanding of the technology they're pushing or you get the "clueless marketroid" symptom so often discussed here slashdot. this is where techies with MBAs come in, and there's a real need for this.
from a personal perspective, if you're the type of techinical person that also love to interact with other people then ultimately you'd be very happy taking an MBA. i personally work in marketing at a semiconductor company that produces microprocessor companion chips for the embedded market. i get to work on some interesting geek projects, such as working with embedded Linux, but i also get included in the strategic product roadmap, sales, and partnership aspects of the company. personally i much prefer this to the ASIC design or coding that i was doing in previous jobs, and of course none of this would be possible without some kind of knowledge of business.
many will say that you can get into these kinds of positions without any formal business training, but i'd argue that the MBA is still extremely important. in addition to giving you basic knowledge and the piece of paper to prove it, the most important thing that many people ignore is that a lot of business is about building relationships with other people. to that end, i can't stress enough how important it is to go to a proper business school! the people you meet during your MBA may very well be some of the best business contacts you ever meet in your life.
all in all i'd say that if you think you'd enjoy the work, go get an MBA. it's an extremely useful carreer move, especially for the technically minded.
- j
The "skills" from an MBA are pretty trivial. You could pick them up from about two dozen books in less than the two years for an MBA program. A non top-tier MBA program will also teach these. You can go to the local university and learn these skills. If you want to go into business for yourself, learning accounting, etc., will be helpful.
Now, an MBA from a top program is a different animal. At those programs, you will be in the program with career executives needing the MBA for the next level, people changing careers after a reasonable degree of success, and people coming from well-known companies out of a pre-MBA job (the grunts in consulting firms, investment banking, etc).
Can you learn this all from business by paying attention? Probably not. Say you spend 5 years in business, you have your experiences. At an MBA program, you are involved with other people with DIFFERENT experiences. You exchange knowledge and learn as a result.
MBA programs aren't like engineering schools. Sleeping through classes and reading the book (my approach, sadly, as an undergrad) won't help you get anything out of the program. If you want the "degree" this may be all you need, but you won't have benefited from it.
These programs focus on networking and shared experiences. When you go out for drinks with your classmates at HBS (Harvard Business School), Sloan (MIT's b-school), Wharton (Penn's), etc., you are also meeting people with a wide range of connections. If you do a good job of keeping in touch (which is a prerequisite for business in general) you have a varied group of people to contact.
Someone that codes all day in the company they joined at 15 and dropped out of high school for won't have these advantages. I know plenty of people that can code circles around MIT CS grads that don't have a high school degree. However, if they need to find someone that knows about the steel industry for a proposal for a contract job, they don't have their friend in Pittsburgh that is a VP at a large Steel company to pick their brains.
An MBA is very different from more traditional educational experiences. If you want it, you should know what you are investing time in. If you want to take accounting and finance classes, go take four classes locally and save a fortune.
Regards,
Alex
I think anybody who goes into something like this specifically trying to be a "more desireable" employee is going to be disappointed.
There is a guy here at work who wants to get his MBA. He's not the most technical person, although he thinks differently (don't they always) and he feels that getting an MBA will make him a more sought after person. What he doesn't realize is that he could get all the degrees in the world, pass all the certifications, etc...as long as he's a dumbass, it doesn't change the fact that he's going to get passed up for better jobs.
I rank people who goto get MBAs just so they can put it on their resume at about the same level as the MCSE people who never touch NT, etc...
Of course, i may be biased, i've seen "high and mighty" certified MBA-having techies come in and not know shit. And then i've seen people come in without a college diploma and blow those people away.
I guess what it comes down to is that if you're using the MBA to complement an already kickass skill-set, then more power to you. If you're using the MBA as a cover-up of piss-poor technical skills, then i suggest finding another area to work in.
Yes, my girlfriend is a BitchX
I graduated from a top notch college with a degree in business, and I was going to worka few years, then go get my MBA from Harvard, but when I found what pay and work conditions were like for developers, I scuttled my plans to get my MBA. The non-IT degree is very useful though, because I think I have a much more well-rounded background than most strict techie geeks. An MBA, though, is probably overkill, unless you want to be a top-level exec. But if you don't mind cranking out code, or doing project management, or being freelance, an MBA is not really helpful.
I started out writing code with a four year degree, and while it was a good living, I had one problem with that career path: lack of control. My projects could be scrapped without warning, or sent in directions by Marketing that were totally without technological merit. That's why I went back to school - I got my MBA from Johns Hopkins through their three-year night school program. I was able to work my way through the experience, and I feel that it was totally the right way to go for me personally.
It's not the right path for everyone. If you have bad social skills, don't like to make command decisions, or don't feel that you're a pro-active person, you should probably just keep on writing code. But if you feel that you can combine your technical expertise with leadership abilites, an MBA is a great stepping stone.
Managing a technical project is very stressful work (I've heard the task of managing developers compared to "herding cats") but it can be very rewarding. Last year I finally had the opportunity to fire the office "Open Source Zealot" - the guy who wasted everyone's time complaining how "Outlook is insecure" and "I only use Linux on my notebook computer". The things you can do as a good manager:
- Refining your working unit only to productive, focused people,
- Refining your product definition to a technologically innovative, easy-to-use product
- Keeping your team in touch with the latest advancements in the marketplace
... can be part of the most rewarding career experience you will ever undergo.
For more information, Sharon is the man (so to speak).
Good luck!
The best part about an MBA is that you'll learn about how to do cost/benefit analysis and evaluate good business plans.
Umm, Nico, all the busted dot-coms with poor business plans were lead by legions of MBA's. And ironically, the most successful computer businesses are being run by those who never even received their undergraduate degree.
Oh, umm, nevermind.