I think it’s more the opportunity cost potentially. Amount of lost income by not working for 2 years + can you get that $10k increase in salary by having 2 more years of experience
There are plenty of executive MBA and part time MBA programs from reputable schools (not just for profit and online schools) that would allow you to work and go to school. There are some that only meet on weekends.
My casual observation is that these programs are not taken as seriously (likely because the reduce time commitment is seen as less rigorous) and therefore the payback is more difficult to achieve.
> My casual observation is that these programs are not taken as seriously
In many schools there is no external difference between full time and part time (evening) MBA programs. You walk out the door of both programs with the exact same degree. Nobody outside the program will ever know which path you took to get the degree.
Even if they do notice, anybody who was ever in a school with both a full time and an evening program knows that there are tradeoffs to both. Working a real, full time day job and then taking school on nights and weekends is not easy.
I will actually give more credit to the Executive programs because they require prior work experience (normally 5 years). People are much more likely to remember and be able to use the concepts they have learned in class if they can immediately apply them to real world situations that they have been in.
Depends on the school. If it is a nationally ranked school then it is very likely that on-premise and online versions are the same. You would have to research this for each school.
The one person I know that got an EMBA from a decent respected school is a manager at a FAANG. Total comp is somewhat higher than mine, but he is also on the west coast where the cost of living negates much of the difference and if I went into consultancy, it would negate all of the difference.
I think some people will be focusing on what benefit an MBA can bring to their salary, but I think others may look at it as a way to hedge against long-term obsolescence. It's a way to make the jump to management, architecture, and consultancy - especially in the case of larger organisations.
These roles are rightly challenged by many on HN since they aren't "true" technical architecture roles, for example. Even so, they do exist to support the businesses that create them until there is rationalisation during a recession when many of these roles are jettisoned.
You can do an executive MBA and also a lot of companies will pay back your tuition when they hire you. Or you can get a company to pay for it outright.
>>[...] also a lot of companies will pay back your tuition when they hire you.
By all general measures, company sponsorship in any significant manner is shrinking[1]. I believe the US employer education assistance tax credit is limited to around $5,250[2] per individual per year. Companies that will foot the entire bill for an executive MBA program seem to be few and far between.
While having considered it, for me, unless you are planning to move to Business org, it seems an MS in something technical is more valuable, even in engineering management, or Product Management, just looking at the degrees people at my company have in those positions.
> Marketing class- 2 lessons, if you are going to put years into a project, do a marketing plan. Also, learned how incredibly important marketing is.
This was exactly why I chose to do a BBA alongside my CS degree. If I was gonna make something, I wanted to make sure it would have some impact on the real world. I tell people: CS is a tool for solving problems, but business is a tool for finding them.
I had a dream of wanting to start a company one day and was interested in a more holistic understanding of the business side of things. I thought that it would add some credibility when speaking with business types but also uncover ideas to base the company on.
Personally, for me, I found it useful but not for the reasons of knowledge. The knowledge was good but the program helped to sharpen my speaking and thinking skills. It also broadened my mind to different perspectives - that the tech world that I come from is quite different to people outside of industry.
The classes and sessions have also made me think further and deeper about business, culture and management beyond the usual.
It also made me more disciplined - focus on the business not the product and technology. Used to waste countless hours building, researching with not much to show for.
It’s also given some confidence to speak to business types and connect with them at a deeper level while introducing technology to them.
You can most definitely fallback as an engineer but why are you thinking of an MBA in the first place? What’s your goal for pursuing one?
The reason I’m considering it is because I’m trying to envision myself in 10-20 years and thinking who I would be happy to be.
Right now, I don’t believe what would make me happy is to be a principal/staff engineer somewhere necessarily.
Don’t get me wrong, I love programming, but I see it as me getting paid to solve problems, and not getting paid to write good code, and I think there are other ways to solve those problems. For example, I think the biggest problems in my organization are managerial and organizational rather than technical, and I feel like the type of training that would come with an MBA can help one solve those issues, including communication, planning, product validation, people management, etc.
That said, my entire reporting chain up to and including the CEO doesn’t have an MBA, so it’s not like it’s a prerequisite.
The other path I’m considering is an MS in CS/SE because while I’ve been an engineer for a few years, my undergrad is in Mathematics, and I’m worried it’ll be a limiter later on to not have a CS degree, but also only a BS.
First off, kudos to you for looking ahead. It’s one of the things that’s really “scared” me into action. It’s funny because I went through the same thought process as you are going through now.
I was a decent enough software engineer and while I love to build things, I felt there was more.
Almost all company problems tend to be managerial and organisational rather than technical, which is a fascinating discussion in my MBA classes. You will definitely get the space and time to think about these things and your theories on how to solve them.
However, I will say that to solve those problems, you have everything you need today. Your knowledge, wisdom and experience can help guide you but fundamentally, these problems touch the aspect of humans behaviour. A great book is “How to win friends and influence people” - I’m recommending it not to influence anyone but it’s a good eye opener to human behaviour. The MBA will help with theories but it’s not fact of course.
I’ve also thought about an MS in CS for fears of being limited in the future as well but will respond back when I have more time. Or if you’d like we can have a chat over Skype or email.
Besides knowledge, I gained a lot of insight about myself, and also learned quite a bit about entrepreneurship (more in terms of state of mind than actual knowledge). And made a lot of connections and friends in a lot of different fields (e.g. a vet, an airline pilot, a board member in a very large corporation, a few startup founders, a tax attorney...).
Ironically, the EMBA also convinced me that I'm much happier in technical roles, and gave me the confidence to go for it. I'm currently the CTO of a startup and most of what I learned during the EMBA is of marginal usefulness to me, except the stuff about entrepreneurship. But I wouldn't be in my current job without the EMBA.
Agreed - I wouldn't be where I am today without it either.
I think the biggest misconception about an MBA is the actual textbook education but I've heard many CEO/CTOs make the same statement - helped them decide their career path and boost their confidence plus made a lot of friends across many different industries.
EMBAs are usually part-time over 18 to 24 months, MBAs are full time over 12 to 24 months.
So an MBA naturally has a bigger (as in more in-depth) curriculum than an EMBA. It is also a significantly higher investment in terms of time and opportunity cost, since you're not getting paid during the program.
EMBAs compensate with 1) more experienced participants (so in theory you don't need the introductory classes) and 2) a lot of pre- or post-readings (e.g. my corporate law module was 12 hours in the classroom, but you were expected to have read the 400-page book, and the numerous case studies).
But the bottom line is that you don't go into as much detail as you would during a full-time program. OTOH, since EMBAs are attended by "senior" employees (managers / VPs / directors / etc), and because they're part-time, what you learn is usually directly relevant and applicable in everyday work - and you usually get to work on real-life problems (yours or your teammates) during classes.
I'm not the best placed to say whether an EMBA is considered a "lesser" MBA. They don't really fill the same niche. An EMBA is a career booster if you're say a technical manager and want to move into business or senior management. An MBA is when you haven't started working (or are still junior) and are looking for a fast track to C-level, or to work in a specific area (e.g. consulting, finance, etc.). So basically MBA vs EMBA is mainly a function of your current experience level.
Engineer > 1 - 4 years experience in IT/Engineering etc > 2 Year MBA from a reputed college > Management role in related or a completely different field.
There is a general consensus in India that engineers can be groomed to be good managers. No idea why.
One more aspect to consider is that qualifying exams for top-tier MBA colleges in India (IIM's, etc) are somehow cracked more easily by engineers. Of course there are students from commerce / arts / etc that also crack and top these exams, but the trend till date is it's mostly engineers.
Also most of the top Indian guys in Silicon Valley (Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, etc) have are engineers from some of the top engineering colleges in India.
I grew up programming and always assumed I'd be a software engineer, without really considering other career paths. After six years of of software engineering (mainly operating systems and cloud infra), I thought it might be valuable to do a breadth-first search for a short period of time, and an MBA seemed a decent route to do that search. In retrospect, I use some of what I learned in bschool in my current job, but largely, the mind expansion was worth it. There are many perspectives and b-school exposed me to a lot more points of view than I had before.
Our ability to generalize is one of the key traits that makes us the dominant species on this planet. Describing that particular commenter's path is not nearly as informationally useful as describing the most common path.
MBA is the business equivalent of "<technology name> Specialist Certification" in engineering. It's for the second-rate.
I hold an MBA from one of the top schools in my country. It was a waste of time.
MBA is highly dogmatic and highly prescriptive. It does not delve into the why. I can't draw a better analogy than the worthless certification courses that you'll find on the CVs of second-rate engineers.
If you want someone who is leading their field in some technology, you look for researchers, people with significant on the ground experience, people who understand the first principles, limitations, and capabilities of that technology. If you just want to fill the job slot with some rando, you'll settle for someone who has some stupid certification in said technology and thinks there's only one right way to use it because that's all they've been taught. MBA is the same thing but with a lot more self-congratulatory jerkoff. If you're in the right industry, it becomes easy to spot recent MBA grads. The way they talk to their subordinates, the way they talk to their superiors, even the way they act during downtime around coworkers - it's all part of the cookie cutter recipe they were fed and blindly follow. It's nauseating.
