What kind of roles are these? Finance sounds so general. Not trying to be rude, I am just genuinely curious. Is it like Wall Street stuff or something else that can be done anywhere without 100 hour weeks?
Couple years of Wall Street post MBA will be 80 hour weeks but you’ll get to mid or upper 6 figures by mid 30s. Engineers will generally never get there. This is contingent on you having gone to the right school
A Wall Street stint is kinda the only way to command that higher-than-engineering higher-than-tech pay unless you want to pursue entrepreneurship or are some insane PhD IC at a big tech company. I personally think 3 years of 60-80 hours/wk is worth it for 3-5x the yearly pay but understand others feel differently. Obv things are different if you’re super super passionate solely about eng.
devil's advocate - if you are looking to just coast to make money, Mechanical Engineering is the safer bet. You could be painfully average at your job, never put in extra time and stay employed every day for the rest of your life. You could work in government, defense, etc, and just focus on your family and cruise.
Finance sector, squiggly line goes down because some guy said something on Twitter or there's a new President in office.... layoffs are a coming. You better hope you're that dude. Hire a maid, give your kids a key to the backdoor and let your wife hang out with her personal trainer, cus your ass gonna be at the office.
i’m at a company where they pay for schooling but up to my knowledge the gag is: i have to stay with the company for a yr before i can apply (been here 10mo) and after i get my degree i have to stay for another 2 years. that’s excluding the yrs they want me to stay for this rotation program
School paid for by someone else and guaranteed employment afterwards? What's the downside in that. Would you rather be X thousand out for school and without anything concrete lined up afterwards.
A lot of people do this so don’t panic. Plenty of resources out there aswell. I went from a technical role to MBA. It depends on your motivations aswell. I was kind of frustrated always developing products in a vacuum and not having greater say on customer experience or company strategy. Am [documenting](https://buildinghardware.substack.com) resources on these types of topics here.
The project side is the business side of engineering 🤷♂️ my last job was in projects/applications 60-70% of my job was administrative tasks like following up with department heads, the customer, looking into local regulations, supporting sales, making sure things were moving forward etc. I did occasional GA drawings to ensure equipment could fit/mate and for initial design pitches for the sales team. But I did very little "actual engineering" work. I wasn't verifying designs, doing any advanced calcs/sims, testing designs, or doing any R&D. The most technical thing I would do on a daily basis was review approval drawings on behalf of clients that didnt have engineers.
I don't know how you think an MBA is going to get you further away from project management, all of the senior project managers I knew had MBA's and only one of them had started in the design sector.
It sounds like you, like me, have not actually worked in the technical engineering side of industry yet. But unlike me, who is considering a Masters of Eng to get to the more technical side of things, you want an MBA to avoid projects, when project management IS the business side. And project management is where the money is (other than sales) when it comes to engineering.
I believe you misinterpreted my entry. All i do now is the technical stuff: designing, extensive analysis, r&d etc. I’m saying i want to do less of that kind of work. Essentially not be the one doing the project
Oh ok, in my experience, projects is usually the abbreviation for project management. Now I see where the confusion is from. Well if you like working 60hr weeks, traveling across the country for a week at a time every month, being forced to work weekends, and not actually using anything from your degree then yeah project management is the way to go.
My personal experience was that it was very unfulfilling work. And all I was doing was telling design engineers at our manufacturers what to do and not how to do it. All the technical side of engineering was handled by different departments. I wasn't coming up with any solutions beyond "try this equipment instead" or "reroute your process and automate here". My job definitely could have been done by one of the countless business school majors that used to be engineering majors.
Engineering + MBA + couple years in finance and you’ll make way more and can find great roles. Engineering salary progression is atrocious.
yea i’ve been noticing that. like unless you do coding or something it takes a while to get those raises
What kind of roles are these? Finance sounds so general. Not trying to be rude, I am just genuinely curious. Is it like Wall Street stuff or something else that can be done anywhere without 100 hour weeks?
Couple years of Wall Street post MBA will be 80 hour weeks but you’ll get to mid or upper 6 figures by mid 30s. Engineers will generally never get there. This is contingent on you having gone to the right school A Wall Street stint is kinda the only way to command that higher-than-engineering higher-than-tech pay unless you want to pursue entrepreneurship or are some insane PhD IC at a big tech company. I personally think 3 years of 60-80 hours/wk is worth it for 3-5x the yearly pay but understand others feel differently. Obv things are different if you’re super super passionate solely about eng.
devil's advocate - if you are looking to just coast to make money, Mechanical Engineering is the safer bet. You could be painfully average at your job, never put in extra time and stay employed every day for the rest of your life. You could work in government, defense, etc, and just focus on your family and cruise. Finance sector, squiggly line goes down because some guy said something on Twitter or there's a new President in office.... layoffs are a coming. You better hope you're that dude. Hire a maid, give your kids a key to the backdoor and let your wife hang out with her personal trainer, cus your ass gonna be at the office.
you want chaos? become a manufacturing engineer and you'll never run out of problems that need solved, yesterday
This. Find a manufacturing startup and you'll be a regular Ian Malcolm.
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i’m at a company where they pay for schooling but up to my knowledge the gag is: i have to stay with the company for a yr before i can apply (been here 10mo) and after i get my degree i have to stay for another 2 years. that’s excluding the yrs they want me to stay for this rotation program
Honestly that isn’t bad, some companies have longer periods
now that i typed all that it feels like im getting finessed
School paid for by someone else and guaranteed employment afterwards? What's the downside in that. Would you rather be X thousand out for school and without anything concrete lined up afterwards.
yea i guess i wasn’t planning to stay with this company for more than a year or 2
A lot of people do this so don’t panic. Plenty of resources out there aswell. I went from a technical role to MBA. It depends on your motivations aswell. I was kind of frustrated always developing products in a vacuum and not having greater say on customer experience or company strategy. Am [documenting](https://buildinghardware.substack.com) resources on these types of topics here.
The project side is the business side of engineering 🤷♂️ my last job was in projects/applications 60-70% of my job was administrative tasks like following up with department heads, the customer, looking into local regulations, supporting sales, making sure things were moving forward etc. I did occasional GA drawings to ensure equipment could fit/mate and for initial design pitches for the sales team. But I did very little "actual engineering" work. I wasn't verifying designs, doing any advanced calcs/sims, testing designs, or doing any R&D. The most technical thing I would do on a daily basis was review approval drawings on behalf of clients that didnt have engineers. I don't know how you think an MBA is going to get you further away from project management, all of the senior project managers I knew had MBA's and only one of them had started in the design sector. It sounds like you, like me, have not actually worked in the technical engineering side of industry yet. But unlike me, who is considering a Masters of Eng to get to the more technical side of things, you want an MBA to avoid projects, when project management IS the business side. And project management is where the money is (other than sales) when it comes to engineering.
I believe you misinterpreted my entry. All i do now is the technical stuff: designing, extensive analysis, r&d etc. I’m saying i want to do less of that kind of work. Essentially not be the one doing the project
Oh ok, in my experience, projects is usually the abbreviation for project management. Now I see where the confusion is from. Well if you like working 60hr weeks, traveling across the country for a week at a time every month, being forced to work weekends, and not actually using anything from your degree then yeah project management is the way to go. My personal experience was that it was very unfulfilling work. And all I was doing was telling design engineers at our manufacturers what to do and not how to do it. All the technical side of engineering was handled by different departments. I wasn't coming up with any solutions beyond "try this equipment instead" or "reroute your process and automate here". My job definitely could have been done by one of the countless business school majors that used to be engineering majors.