Do Techies Need an M.B.A?
I was just reading a question from one of my colleague (who is a software engineer) about Joining MBA. Its a question every techie wants to know the answer.Now what after 2-3 year of service? where he stands? still he is just a coder or he needs to grow and wants to be a Manager. If he will do the MBA, his career will take a turn? he may grow to Managerial position? how beneficial is doing MBA in making the Pay Lucrative, all this question started haunting you.
I am posting one of the Article appeared in “the smarttechie magazine in May 2006 issue, which was well researched and try to give answers of some of your questions:
There are still a few things left that Google can’t search, software can’t solve and mortals don’t understand. One such mystical thing is the perfect career. When it comes to something as important as your career, there is plenty of advice on offer and yet, there really is no sure shot at success. We at The SmartTechie have often wondered if management training was one way to ensure a good career?
Do techies need a Master in Business Administration (M.B.A) degree? Who better to answer that question than the gurus themselves…the people who have done the same thing you did, a little ahead of your time and went on to do wonders in the IT industry—the same industry that you probably work for.
Our findings were stunning: More than 80 percent of the bigwig techies or the gurus managing Indian and multinational IT companies do not have an M.B.A. Just one percent of the total IT jobs for engineers require M.B.A. And finally yet futuristically, with IT companies starting to offer product to Indian market, the MBA trend will snowball.
However objective and eye-rolling the data is, there is truly a sense of subjectivity lost in the entire process. And that’s exactly what Jack Welch of GE and Louis Gerstner of IBM called the Getting Executed (GE) factor. When it comes to success in business, an M.B.A degree might be optional. But a GE attitude is mandatory. Any successful techie, or for that matter a successful human being, is not without it. So, there we go picking thoughts on how much of an M.B.A is optional and, how much is real or GE based.
It is clear that an M.B.A is not a requirement for engineering roles. Often engineers at the developer roles do not involve themselves in understanding and enhancing the business needs of an organization. “If an engineer has an intense desire to learn more about business side of the organization, then perhaps he should move on to do an M.B.A,” says Himanshu Singh, Executive Director, India & SAARC, Cadence Design Systems, who attended a four-month certificate program in management from Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur. He feels it gives a comprehensive understanding of businesses.
It is necessary to understand that a mid-rung position within an IT organization is often the forte of technology managers. These technology managers who handle responsibilities of project management and team leads need to have a strong footing on program and project management techniques. So, often a project management course is of greater use than an M.B.A.
Employees at the technology management level most often need great people management skills, which does not really need an M.B.A. Obviously implying that for the role of a project manager or operational manager, and people management skills can be acquired on the job too. Managers who go out to do an M.B.A at this juncture, come back to add value to their companies. Although the value is immense, they often lose out on the other aspects of a management degree like finance, business law—eventually forgetting due to non-usage. If they learn immediately after B.E.
Killing your technical instincts just for some buzz surrounding managerial roles is often the biggest mistakes techies do. Avoiding herd-mentality and deciding whether you are fit for the technical track or management track is the call techies need to take. And this call, techies should understand, is based on ones aptitude and more importantly attitude.
Simple test for techies to follow - Are you in love with the technology you work with? Are you inspired by the Bill Joys of Sun, Jerry Yangs of Yahoo, Sergey Brins and Larry Pages of Google? Do you love being part of the international techie community where you stand for something and love being recognized? If a techie nods the head in affirmation, then the candidate should continue doing what he’s doing and look for advanced technical degrees, especially in a particular technical domain and be the worldwide expert in that domain.