engineering vs management
hypothetical question — say you want to become CEO of Amazon or Google or FB. youre given the choice of joining the firm in a lower mid level engineering role or a lower mid level program management role. which route would put you on a clearer path to making CEO and why?
Program managers are totally useless. Product manager vs engineer is an entirely different question. Most CEO's at any tech company were formerly an engineer or product manager.
Engineering. To run Google you will need to have an understanding of how products actually work and interact to properly run the company. PMs can learn, but you just won't have enough day to day exposure to keep up with the current technology.
Appreciate all the input! I ask because I have a 4 yoe in technical consulting and have hands on engineering experience as well as tech strategy/management experience and want to start focusing more on one side of the spectrum but don’t know which side. All I know is that I want to be an executive one day. Just feel like I have to carefully calculate all my moves...
The current CEOs of Amazon and FB are engineers/founders. That’s the best route. The moment an MBA takes over (no matter how good), it’s just ‘keep the lights on’, play it safe
This sounds like an overly simplistic view. It's common for engineers to dislike MBAs but I don't think they're intrinsically incapable of, or averse to, innovation.
What do MBAs have to do with the question? He’s asking about engineering vs PM