path to an engineering manager?

Question

i heard an engineering manager makes more than 100k a year....what exactly is a path to becoming one?like what kind of college degree would be required and how many years would it take?

Answer 1

UB (and I'm assuming other universities as well) offers a 5-year combined degree program where you can get a BS/MBA in engineering that could well lead to an engineering manager position.

Answer 2

I'm not an engineering manager... but I work for one.



Obviously you are going to need an engineering degree to get started, and that will take you 4 or 5 years. After that, you may want to consider getting a masters in engineering, but it isn't really required. (if you do it part time I think it would take 3 or 4 years). After you have become a solid engineer you will probably start thinking about weather or not you want to become a manager or an expert in your field. If you want to go the manager rout, you will start thinking about a Master's in engineering management, or an MBA.



Where I work the ladder goes Engineer, Team Leader, and then Engineering Manager. The team leaders could have up to 7 or 8 engineers working for them, and the Managers could have up to 8 teams reporting to them. (I'm pretty sure the Team Leaders are making over 100K, and if not, they should be). I know some team leaders who don't have anything above a Bachelor's degree and a bunch of experience however my team leader has a MS:SE and a Master's of Engineering Management. The one piece of advice he gave me is that an MBA is worth a lot more than MS: Engineering Management in the long run. It's much more prestigious, gets you a better salary, and you can work at other places that don't do engineering work.

Answer 3

I have 8 years of Electrical Engineering experience working for both large and start-up companies in Silicon Valley. It's generally true that an engineering manager is making more than an engineer in base salary and stock options (which can be more than a salary in a successful company). But it's also true that a good EE engineer is easily making more than 100k a year of base salary, if you're interested in raw numbers.

In companies I worked for, most of the management positions, from project managers to marketing manager to CEO were held by people with EE/CS engineering degrees and a lot of experience. I'd say that MBA is unnecessary unless you want to become a non-technical manager.

Answer 4

Although my title is not "Engineering Manager", the salary range is about right for me with 15 years of experience. And, I call myself an engineering manager.



My education path:

BS Industrial engineering & Management (1988)

MS Engineering with Management concentration (1997)

PhD Engineering Systems (expected about August 2008)



There are some challenges with starting out as an engineering manager. If you don't have enough technical depth, you don't know when your engineers are telling the truth or not. I think the best route might be to establish yourself technically in a field and then become an engineering manager.



I started as a project manager where I led small teams of people performing studies. Next, I was given the project of integrating avionics systems into aircraft. I spent some time as a test program manager and then as a supervisor in line operations. That's when I first became what I would call an engineering manager. I supervised folks who developed, installed and performed tests on aircraft.



After that, I became the lead of about 28 engineers. Some of them had their own projects they were managing. Others were the technical engineers who supported project managers in my section and other sections.



My primary responsibilities were to develop young project managers and manage a couple more complex programs myself. The developing employees aspect is one that I really enjoy. I like watching people mature in their thinking and watching them learn. The engineering manger gets to design their training, make assignments and guide them through their processes.



The ugly stuff is that sometimes you have to fire people. But, sometimes it is for the good of the organization AND the individual. If the organizational and personal goals are too far apart, that's when it can be time to encourage them to look in other places or cordially oblige them to leave (fire).



While an engineering manager may make $100K, I know very well that I had people working for me who were technical experts in their engineering fields that were making more than twice my salary. The engineering manager is more of a generalist...the technical specialists always got the big bucks in my organization.



Don't reach for the brass ring called the salary. Life is too short to be driven by the dollar amount in the paycheck. Make sure you are doing something you love to do. If you don't like what you're doing, it gets very hard to get out of bed each morning because the work is not meaningful enough for you....even at twice the salary. If you are doing what you love, the money will be more than adequate.



Best of everything in your endeavors...

Answer 5

Well, there's a ton of different kinds of engineering you could go into. I know, I want to be an architect, so I'm planning on going to Kansas University. There's mechanical, civil, and many others. Architects make about 50thousand, so an upgrade would be nice! Try http://www.engineergirl.org/Karim/different.html Hope it works out for you. Texas A&M is a good school, too. I've also heard Virginia Tech has good engineering programs.