"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.
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!
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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
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
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.
"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.
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.
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 :>)
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.
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?
![[bigglasses]](/data/assets/smilies/bigglasses.gif "[bigglasses] [bigglasses]")