Slashdot Mirror
Advanced Business Education for Developers?
DreamTheater asks: "With what I consider a battery of solid technical skills, I find myself increasingly interested in business skills to match. I am looking at MBA programs in either Technology Management or Operations Management. Has anyone pursued an MBA to enhance their career as a developer? If so, how has it affected you?"
I did it the other way around, kind of. First I got an MBA, then an MSCS. I don't do much development work. I've got the stamp of a bean counter (I'm also a CPA), so they don't want to let me out of my position as accounting troll.
Using the Freedom of Speech while I still have it.
Wasn't sure whether to mod parent as funny or flamebait, so am responding instead.
I have an BS in management; during my undergrad days I took a couple microcomputer classes, because I saw what my father was doing with computers to run his business better. I fell into a tech job through the back door & have been doing it for 12 years now. One thing I've learned is I have no interest in running a company or being a manager (other than doing my own one-man-show thing).
That first company that gave me employment & tech training had a policy that if you wanted post-graduate education, it couldn't be in the same field as your bachelors degree. At the time I thought it was stupid, as I wanted nothing to do with a masters in technology, but now see the value; particularly if someone's career path is like yours: moving from tech to business.
The difficult part will be in determining where to focus your energy. In my experience, managers with MBAs - but with little experience in the field - are idiots. My last manager (before returning to independant consulting) was one of these. He'd been through a reasonably well-respected graduate program, had studied all the latest methodologies & thought he was hot shit. The problem was he had no experience managing a largely self-motivated team & had no real-world experience with making methodology theory work with the reality of a start-up business & pretty bright/independant development team. Most masters curriculums don't address such issues. Theory & case studies in books only go a small way. Try to find a program that has a bunch of part time professors that have 'been there, done that'. I don't know how many schools employ part-time professors for post-graduate programs, but if you can find some they'll help you the most in terms of applying the latest management theory to the real world. Book theory & years in academia are no substitute for real experience.
If you're already solid in technical skills, you might want to looks at an MBA in general Management or some non-technical concentration. With concentrations like Technology Management, you'll have to take some dumbed-down technical survey courses that will offer absolutely nothing new to you. You're better off spending that time pursuing the business skills you're looking for, be that accounting, people management, project management, marketing, etc.
If you're not up for a full-blown MBA program, you might consider a graduate certificate. For example, Penn State offers non-credit certificate programs in very specific areas like HR Management, Project Management, Leadership Development, Supply Management, etc. Your local university might have something similar.
Frankly, I'm probably too old to keep my edge as a C++ programmer (and the older I get, the better I was), but this way I can use my technical experience for something useful. Of course I now have to rely more on other people's technical judgement and sometimes they'll get it wrong where I'd get it right - that can be a bit frustrating.
The course itself can be a lot of fun. There's a lot more analytical work than you might expert. I found the most interesting bit to be the strategy case studies. Sometimes it's possible to come up with a solution which is demonstrably better than the "standard" one.
(*) "programme" in the sense of a group of related projects
Not that MBAs wouldn't get offshored, but if you have some business education, it ought to help you start your own business, from which you can't be offshored. It also might help you make connections that would help find business partners or investors.
Hopefully, if you go in with a technical, cynical, skeptical background, you can be exposed to the MBA-think and come out unscathed, having rejected the more moronic theories and concepts.
If you're already solid in technical skills, you might want to looks at an MBA in general Management or some non-technical concentration.
This is a good point -- and actually, you should definitely spend some time thinking about what *kind* of business skills you want.
I've been thinking of going for an MBA myself -- not because I want to get into project management, HR, etc., *myself*, but because my software designs would be better if I knew more about how the business works, and *could* work. I've learned tons of accounting and business practice details while writing custom software, report generators, etc.. I think an MBA could help me figure out new businesses and business models (as I work for other clients), by teaching me the general principals (whereas now I just know the specifics of one business, really)... plus I might even be able to offer software changes to help them *upgrade* their business processes, instead of just automating what they've had for years.
I still want to spend the majority of my time designing and implementing software... but the more I know about how business works, the better I'll be able to advice fitting new technologies into it (which means more value to the client, and often more interesting projects for me!)