tl;dr: If there's no reason to get an MBA as a promotion-track engineer, then not only will none of your promoted engineers will have MBAs, none of your promoted MBAs will have practical experience being a great engineer.

They wouldn't, of course. And that's really the problem.

If you don't have mid-level technical managers with MBAs, you don't get to promote/hire VP-level technical MBAs.

An MBA does teach a lot of valuable skills. As many smart technical founders/leaders have crashed up against the corporate rocks of running a major division/initiative as business leaders failed due to distance from execution.

Right now though there's no role, and no opportunity, for a mid-tier (post-MBA) capital-E engineer. So there will be no MBA-toting, engineering-aware VPs.

Without business-fluent engineers (or engineering-fluent business folks) companies are deprived of interdisciplinary innovation. You get financial programs which ignore technical needs, and great inventions which don't have a market. Promotion which doesn't represent reality and deals which can't be executed.

Most of the frustration engineers have with business people is not that business folks can't do business well, but that they don't do so understanding the underlying technology.

And until there's a reason to want a techie MBA (or business-y Eng) at a sub-VP level, this isn't going to get better.

So why don't we, as an industry, talk to the Universities, and say that we really need a new program, let's say a TechMBA? (Or for marketing purposes, call it a TeMBA - that really rolls off the tongue :)

I'd think that there would be some interest around this from the universities, and business is really crying out for this too.

From the Uni viewpoint, it is another product they can leverage, whilst still using there in house competencies and also creating cross university synergies (HBS-MIT TeMBA)

For businesses, they get exactly the top management they need - even for non-tech companies - a CIO/CTO with solid tech skills and business skills is a sure winner.

P.S. Please forgive me for slipping in the word synergy. I truly believe it's a great word, with a great meaning, but has been flogged to death by the consulting industry.

{Edit} Actually, I like the idea of a TeMBA, I am going to start a AskHN: What would the syllabus be for a TeMBA?

{Edit 2} Here's the link:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11894955

This needs to be solved demand-side, not supply-side. If you graduated a class of TechMBAs right now they wouldn't have any jobs to use their new skills.

Flip it around: if Google opened up a new role for "Active engineers with MBAs", and presumably a few others followed suit, a top school or two (GSB/HBS/CBS/etc) would create the curriculum & recruiting plan to fill it. (Most likely Google could do this together with a school, they tend to have very close relationships.)

This is basically the APM program in Google. Google stopped hiring PMs without a technical background (either CS coursework, or professional experience as an engineer) in 2008, because they found that the PMs they did hire with no technical experience universally sucked.

They also have (had? it's been 2 years since I was there) an active rotation program between eng and PM roles, with the opportunity to transition permanently. A number of my friends did it; I'd seriously considered it, but my manager was willing to let me do PM-type roles without formally switching job titles.

Is this not a classic chicken-egg scenario?

I think if you graduated a class of TeMBAs right now, they would have jobs just because of the MBA side of the equation.

And, I think they would kick-ass in what ever job they take because of their tech skills. Even stooping as low as to say that their Excel skills would rock because they know how to masterfully program macros.

But WOW, yes, if someone like Google got behind a program like this, it would take off like nobodies business.

But I think we really need to get regular businesses (Davids, not Goliaths) behind this. And somehow, show them the benefits of a well rounded TeMBA graduate.

An MBA doesn't really confer any skills that couldn't be acquired from 6 months of actually working/managing at your target company - it's seen as more of a networking tool, and a way for someone to hit the reset button and shift into a different field, or to get a raise within a traditional consulting/corporate migration path.

So I have to agree with DelaneyM that the crux of the issue is demand-side: where is the need for specific managerial jobs that require a baseline technical understanding (to estimate timelines, speak intelligently about the product with clients, etc.) as well as basic business skills (negotiation, project management, strong network for potential clients) that is worth the salary that an individual who just invested $200k and 2 years worth of time will be asking?

This already exists: http://www.ntnu.edu/studies/mtiot . It probably exists in the US too.

The demand for them is crazy-high. Leadership roles in Norway are very rarely filled by hiring fresh graduates, but the consultancies lap them up.

It's an integrated 5-year master. They do engineering stuff the first three years, specializing in the third, and then they do two years of economics/business/leadership. It's very specialized, and to me it looks like they are OK at their chosen engineering discipline and OK at their chosen business discipline but not very well rounded. That's the sacrifices you have to make when you make a business/engineering combination but try to avoid making master-of-nones, I guess.

Their choices are (in each stage they can only chose one. 3. year available choices depends on 1/2. year choices):

1/2. year: CompSci/high-voltage/machine/marine

3. year: AI/digital economics/software/el. energy/heat & energy processes/production/marine projects and logistics/marine technical operations

4/5. year: economic optimization/project leadership/purchasing and supply/reorganization/investment and finance/innovation and entrepreneurship/HSE/strategy and business development

There is something similar in the US at Dartmouth (yes it has a slightly goofy name): http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/academics/graduate/innovati...

Basically they let you cross register with some Tuck Classes while doing research that is more self-directed than normal.

Source: I am in the program

Cornell has launched a program[1] that aims to be what you're describing here. There's also a Technology Management MBA from the University of Washington's Foster School[2], although it's more of a technology-oriented part-time MBA than a traditional MBA targeted at engineers.

[1] Cornell Tech MBA: http://tech.cornell.edu/programs/masters-programs/johnson-co...

[2] UW Foster Technology Management MBA: http://foster.uw.edu/academics/degree-programs/technology-ma...

> So why don't we, as an industry, talk to the Universities, and say that we really need a new program, let's say a TechMBA?

Its already been done, and there are a wide-number of tech-specialized MBA programs.

Lots of university have MBA-MEng joint program that will award 2 degrees upon completion. MIT's LGO program is such a program.

You might be right about the startup world, but there is a massive demand for techie MBA/business-y Eng at the sub-VP level in big tech companies with tiered management. That sounds like exactly the skill set you would need to manage a division or org of one of the big 5.

Demand & applicability != opportunity.

Maybe it's chicken & egg, maybe it's a Unix philosophy applied to organizational design (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Do_One_Thing_a...), but there is virtually no true demand for an engineering MBA.

I'm happy to be proven wrong with a counter-example of a posted job description. Try to find one example of a hybrid position with more potential and better pay than a corresponding pure engineering role.