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Why MBA after Engineering?

Waheeb Ulla
Friday, February 27, 2015
Waheeb Ulla
If one has been scouring the net for international MBA related information, they would know that a huge number of applicants from India have B.E, B.Tech, M.Tech degrees and several years of work experience after completing their engineering course. Why is an MBA after engineering such a popular option for Indian professionals?

Many students give in to the IT wave and take up to engineering and come out as an IT graduate and get recruited in a mainstream IT organization. They work relentlessly owing to the vibe of graduating as an IT specialist. They also get promising package offers that meets all their ends. Despite being ahead of the pack in their academic life, most software professional and engineers lose their identities in the ocean of faceless people just like them. The mid-life career crisis starts its onset earlier in the career. As opposed to the earlier generation of professionals who would start hitting the glass wall after 15-20 years of working, for the current generation, the career cycles are shorter and more frequent. Within 3-4 years, all the excitement of joining a new company at a higher salary dies down. Lately, it is not uncommon to hear many engineers who have already transitioned outside their academic specialization to find a desire to get back to their original or desired domains.

An MBA degree after engineering could be a probable answer to those graduates in quest to discover a new domain or find an apt space of expressing their work culture. As opposed to the robotic routine of putting day and night together to the technical side of a current project, MBA offers a graduate the opportunity to look at the longer benefit and profit of a project.
An MBA seems like a good way to break away from the clutter and add a recognizable face back. Add to this the fact that the only way for IT engineers to rise through the ranks in the software industry is to take on managerial responsibility in the same field (as opposed to a diagonal or horizontal shift into unrelated areas).

In IT the problem of market saturation and oversupply of similar skills exists. But a bigger challenge is to deal with slower moving career paths. As opposed to software engineers who can expect to become manager in 4-5 years, the path to managerial roles in other industries is painfully slow. An indication of an MBA degree in the curriculum vitae of an engineer would propel this process on taking up managerial roles. No matter how much potential an engineer has, there is a long queue of seniors waiting in line for salvation. An MBA specialization on an engineering degree helps one to cut through the line, and reach managerial posts faster and for a sustained period with lucrative packages and sumptuous incentives that promise a stable career path.

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