A "management" job: Is it worth it?

One dilemma that graduate engineers often face when they think of higher education is whether they should go for a post-graduation in management (Master of Business Administration: "MBA") or technology (Master of Technology: "MTech", as it is called in India, or Master of Science: "MS").

I have seen many of my friends go through this "trauma". Although I feel this decision is a matter of each one's personal preferences, I would like to share my thoughts, something which has been going on in my mind for quite a long time now.

In India, traditionally, "white-collar" jobs have always been seen with a sense of respect not normally associated with "blue-collar" people (who, needless to say, were always the "butt of ridicule"). This has not changed much in recent times. Even today, people generally tend to view managers as mystic beings who possess divine powers...

Given the industry scenario in India, it is a well-known fact that management jobs pay you much more than technical jobs. What seems to attract young people to management is primarily these lucrative offers. And then there is always that dream of making it big one day, and management jobs, with their fat salaries, give you the chance of doing that early on in life (as in "I'm just 23 and I already own a Honda City!"). This goes down well with today's youth, who are forever in search of that perfect recipe for "instant success".

The thing that bothers me is that technically brilliant people, who have a great chance of contributing to technology, opt for a career in administration and management, because their parents want them to "rule", or simply because all they care for is money. This step is simply not right, and moreover, it does not do any justice to their technical skill-sets.

If we are to transform India into a technological hub, what we require is technically focused people, who are passionate to work in the field of research and development, who desire to work on cutting-edge technologies... Getting into high-end management jobs and "brain-drain"ing your skills isn't going to help much.

Of course, one may argue that India is already making a mark in the global IT industry; the likes of TCS, Infosys and Wipro are already rubbing shoulders with IT giants like IBM and Accenture. But what we need to understand is that all these Indian companies are into services. A service-based business model ensures steady revenue flows and industry sustenance, but it does little in terms of value addition in the long term.

Coming back to the main topic, nevertheless, a skilled management workforce is necessary for large organizations, who have to maintain high standards of efficiency and see to it that resources are being properly utilized. In that sense, administration and management can be considered to be quite a challenging job... And moreover, if you start off with a non-management job, in the long term, there is always a push towards management; you are expected to don managerial responsibilities as you progress upwards in the organizational hierarchy.

However, for a techie like me, the more away I am from management tasks, the better...