Engineers vs MBAs
[Full disclosure: I am one already, and in two years, I’ll be both]
I am always a fan of someone who says an MBA is a waste of time. Largely because, I believe that a large chunk of MBAs get the degree for the heck of it. In the process, a small fraction of MBAs who really benefit from the degree and create lasting impact are lost in oblivion.
I did come across this article quoting Robert Lutz, an alumnus of the school I’m headed to:
Lutz ultimately believes that the U.S. needs more engineering talent. There are just too few engineers and too many MBAs, he says. “We need more nerds! And we need to stop thinking of our nerds as nerds. We need to think of them instead as an endangered population—like gazelles, maybe…More of our universities need to offer programs in manufacturing and industrial management,” he maintains. “We need to put engineers on a pedestal. And your young people need to be taught that there’s something noble about engaging in value-creating activity. Twenty or thirty years from now, when their grandchildren ask them, ‘what did you do in the great economic war?’ they shouldn’t have to answer, ‘I was a bond trader.’”
I agree. The same holds true in India too. I have personally seen a few of my friends who were exceptionally gifted in engineering, abandon it to pursue a management degree while short-selling themselves. What one really needs to understand is that a good engineer is as accomplished as (or better than) an I-Banker. At the same time, there are many folks, like me, who have an engineer’s approach/mindset, but do not have raw engineering talent and begin to explore an alternative career in business and commerce. As a society, we need to create incentives to equate these two and not put one above the other.
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