I’ve been debating on whether I should pursue an MBA at this point in my career. I’ve even gone so far as to attend an informational session at the local UC. I’d like to eventually take on the challenges and headaches of being a CIO/CTO, and obviously there is some value to having an MBA.
Some quick research pulls up the following:
About 25 percent of the members of The Working Council for CIOs have MBAs.
So apparently it’s not critical for my future statistically. Still there is the lure of academia, possibly working with a great professor on interesting research, fellow students allowing for some great networking, and forcing myself to branch out on the business side.
Still there’s a lot of other factors such as:
- My wife just finished 3 years of law school and it’s nice to have two incomes again.
- We already have school loans to pay.
- We have two small children who need a lot of attention.
- I already have one advanced degree.
The convincing factor to put it off into the future is that I’m already a software development manager and I love my job even with the headaches. So if I was a developer and I wanted to move ahead it might be a lot more compelling to take on the debt. I still need to branch out more on the business side, but I did several stints in professional services so I’ve seen quite a few industries and worked on projects in them. I’ve also done pretty much every IT role including architect, PM, business analyst, QA lead, and sysadmin.
And anyway I feel a little old for it. All my friends who’ve gotten MBAs did it a few years back generally without kids and sometimes without significant others.