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?
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
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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
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.
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.
![[rofl2]](/data/assets/smilies/rofl2.gif "[rofl2] [rofl2]")