Why Engineering Undergrads Shouldn’t go Straight into an MBA

I hear a lot of college engineering seniors talking about staying in school for their MBAs.  Every time I hear an undergraduate talk about getting an MBA I advise against it. 

Most people should not get an MBA, and those that should, should not do it right after they finish their undergraduate degrees.  Why shouldn’t they get an MBA?  Who should get an MBA?

Good questions!

Why shouldn’t undergraduate STEM students immediately get an MBA?

Most undergraduate STEM students want to use their degree for its intended purpose.  A lot want to be engineers and work on vehicles or buildings.  Others are looking to go into research.  Some want to go into industries loosely related to their major.

All of those options evaporate once you graduate with your MBA.

A STEM degree with an MBA means you will be managing engineers and other STEM majors and smoothing things over with sales teams and stakeholders.  You will never again use your undergraduate degree for its intended purpose again.

There is a glut of MBAs out there, but very few MBAs also have STEM degrees.  Managers and marketing team members are hard-pressed to find people who understand other STEM majors.  If you have both, you will be more useful to any company in marketing or management.  

Okay, but what if I want to go into engineering management or marketing?

Fair enough. 

Here’s the thing though: right out of college you don’t have the experience to be in management or marketing for an engineering firm.  Without logging a few years in industry first, your engineering counterparts will see how green you are and will not respect you.

Before you can be an effective manager, you have to experience:

• A bad boss/ manager
• A fantastic boss/ manager
• Getting laid off/ fired
• Working with someone who can’t keep a deadline
• Working with someone who takes on too much
• Working with someone who gets everything done and people ask too much of
• Work in at least 2-3 different types of jobs in your industry (ie- mechanical engineering, systems engineering, integration testing)

Without these experiences, you are not going to be able to help the person on your team who can’t keep on deadline.  You won’t know how to divide the workload so the person who is tempted to take on too much won’t burn out.  You will struggle with planning deadlines, may have trouble believing or listening to your team, and may develop difficulty delegating. 

Experiencing all of these things takes time, around 10 years of it.  You won’t get that time if you get your MBA right now.  

When should engineers get an MBA?

Consider getting an MBA if:

• You have been in the industry you want to be a leader in for around 10 years
• You know how you would manage a team
• Coworkers look to you for leadership and they like your managerial style
• You know enough about your industry to be able to work with multifaceted teams and create accurate time estimates for most jobs
• You are considering starting your own business
• You do not want to be a CTO (Chief Technical Officer)
• Your company has offered to pay for your MBA (optional)
• You have a good reputation in your field
• You want one

When all of these things are true, it is time to consider an MBA. The MBA at this point in your career will push you into management.  You won’t do much technical work anymore, but you will facilitate multiple teams working together to achieve a big goal, which is rewarding in its own right.

Why shouldn’t I get an MBA if I want to be CTO?

Chief Technical Officers are often responsible for the end product.  They are the ones that sign off on designs and help engineering teams solve big problems that have them stuck.  

Many of them do have higher degrees, but they are all in line with the technical side of the equation.  I have seen CTOs with undergraduate degrees in Engineering and PhDs in Math or Physics.  I have yet to see one with an MBA.

CTOs are not really managers like an MBA would create.  They are managers of STEM people only.  They don’t need to be able to sweet-talk marketing teams, they need to make sure whatever is being built is safe and ready for production.  MBAs are a distraction to this goal.

If you want to be a CTO, go back to school for a higher degree that would benefit the technical understanding of your industry.  Consider going more empirical.  If your undergraduate degree is in Chemical Engineering, maybe pick up a Masters in Chemistry.  

To be CTO you need to follow the technical path and do what you can to become one of the best in your industry.

It is okay to go back to school later. 

It isn’t necessary to finish all your education in one go.  You should expect to invest time learning new skills for the rest of your life.  Many of us should expect to pick up another degree in our late 30s to mid-40s to launch our careers to the next level.

School today isn’t about getting one job and staying with it for the rest of our lives.  It is about giving us options for as many careers as we can get to help build job security.  Getting an MBA right after completing undergraduate work will make you less versatile.  

Save the time and money and get your MBA later when you are ready to jump into management if you need it.