Master Of Business Administration

Are there any programmers with MBA qualifications out there? Has the MBA helped and, if so, in what way?

As a DeveloperTurnedManager, I wish I had more business-school-style education. I've read a few business books myself (like The Portable MBA) after being thrust into management, and they have been very helpful in understanding what the upper-level managers are talking about. I think an MBA education would be great for someone who wants to eventually be a CEO, CFO, Director of Marketing, or high-level consultant, but is probably not so useful for someone who wants to be a software developer throughout their career. -- KrisJohnson

[A couple of years later...] I think I've decided to pursue an MBA. I can't find anything interesting to do in the techie world, so maybe learning more about business will keep me interested. I keep getting pushed into managerial roles anyway, so I'd like to know what I'm doing. -- KrisJohnson

Yes, I've got an MBA, and it's helped a lot, in almost very non-ComputerScience area of work. I'm not really a day-to-day programmer now, but I continued to do significant development for several years afterwards. It taught me more about how organizations tick, how people tick (or more, how people differ and how you need to understand and work with that), how to approach problem solving, lots about performance evaluation...

I did it because I was working for a company that I thought was badly managed, but the owner maintained it was necessarily different and needed a different organizational design and processes. I think I learned that it wasn't very different, and that the rejection of standard management practices was a big mistake (the company went bust, BTW :-)

KrisJohnson's list of eventual roles is interesting. I think there's a belief that this is what MBAs qualify you for - I think some certainly do (Harvard's certainly seems to aim at that), but they don't all do. I regard mine as making be better at working in a business in any sort of managerial role.

I did mine part-time at the OpenUniversity. That course can be your standard marketing/strategy/finance course, but it can also range more widely (I did courses on creative management, performance measurement and evaluation, and international enterprises, for example). It's also good at presenting the standard stuff, but also making it clear that there are no "right" answers - the validity of management ideas is contingent on the circumstances.

So, I think a MBA can be valuable to a programmer, especially if they want to do more than pure coding. Most people can't ignore the business and organizational environment they're working in, and an MBA can help you work effectively with that environment.

-- PaulHudson

I have a MBA as well and I consider it very valuable. I'm currently in a developer position, but when the time comes I will be able to make a much smoother transition to manager or business owner. I originally got my MBA so I could understand what my managers were up against and up to. It definitely helped in that regard, but I get the most benefit out of the general understanding of business, people and communication. I also think that having an MBA on your resume tells any potential employer that you will be a valuable liaison/translator between the technical and non-technical.

If you do happen to get one, leave your current job and find another one asap - unless your employer will pay for your increased knowledge.

Speaking of MBAs, when I landed in US, in spring 2000, someone in our management had a very prestigious MBA, and of course a very important position. He was a very cool guy, but while I was dicussing with him about Nasdaq and American economy, I suddenly got a clue he didn't understand a lot. I was telling him that the Nasdaq should have been around 1000 (it was somewhere between 4000 and 5000), and how capitalism doesn't work in America because the owners of capital had no power (they still don't have) and were constantly screwed by the upper management/enterprise bureaucracy and even by the employees (who at that time had absolutely unjustified and ridiculous salaries that were plainly and simply a direct theft from investors' pockets). He kept explaining to me how I didn't understand economy, and how Nasdaq was even undervalued. If the more than average MBA can't uderstand economy at least to the level of the average math graduate who never read an economy book from one one cover to the other, this is kind of telling something. Really, I get the impression that many MBAs don't understand the very basics about economics, ethics and values, instead they know very fancy theories on management. I feel that management people who came from a strong engineering/scientific background perform a lot better than the typical MBA with Economics background, because you really do learn a lot more in Math, Physics, CS, EE and the likes than in a comparable Economy/MBA study. -- AnonymousDonor

I disagree. I don't see why Maths, CS, etc would teach you anything much about economics, ethics and values, and some MBAs certainly do (mine had a section on ethics, for instance). -- PaulHudson (BA Maths and an MBA :-)

[Stuff about failures of economists moved to MathVsEconomics, since it's got little to do with an MBA (which is not mostly about economics).]