JustJ

MBA or Non MBA PM

Hi Folks, I am trying to understand how relevant it is for a PM, say after 6 years of experience, to have an MBA. (By this I mean an executive MBA)

While I would like to understand pros and cons, what I also wanted to ask this group we have here is, if there are alternate resources or curriculum resources available anywhere so anyone can get that education without spending a fortune. Not everyone can spend 30L for an education, also not everyone can afford to miss getting paid, due to commitments or debts or medical expenses to near and dear.

I would like to know your honest thoughts on how MBA has helped you with your thinking and hence working and if you could share some resources, followed by say Top Tier colleges, to aid anyone who is following this thread.

15mo ago
ElonMast
ElonMast
Amazon15mo

I will try to answer your question as I took a similar leap.

Firstly, relevancy is subjective. You can still survive in PM world without an MBA. Some people face friction while job switches. If you aren’t, you know it’s not a blocker for you. Having said all this, 6 yrs is not at all late for an MBA. International MBAs usually consider 4-6 yoe as sweet spot.

Second, yea you can learn many things taught in MBA from external resources. The unfortunate part is - How will that be reflected in your profile? One of our MBA profs used to use “MBA as a peacock feathers” analogy. In real world, projection helps, don’t we all gets biased with polished marketing, value addition campaigns.

To me, yes, MBA changed lots of thought process for me. I used to think vertically in my engineering domain, now I can think horizontally (and vertically) across domains which is a super power in functional domains like Product, Consulting.

For financial aid - Internet is filled with this information. To start with, try looking for Insead scholarships, IIMA offers some schols in 1-yr MBA, ISB also offers partial scholarships.

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