[bullrunbear]

Killer post - I think this message really needs to reach the abundance of business students today. It's tough as nails to get something non-technical when you're fresh out of college and want to work in a startup. Everyone, often even the founder, is an engineer. You can teach an engineer business, but you can't teach a businessman engineering.

[ABrandt]

You can teach an engineer business, but you can't teach a businessman engineering.

I know what you're trying to say here, but it sounds slightly condescending to me. First, I firmly believe that picking up "business" isn't as easy as many make it out to be. Second, if a given businessman had chosen to pursue engineering I'm sure--all other considerations being equal--they would do just fine.

These are two distinct disciplines that require two distinct ways of thinking. Until you acknowledge this fact I really don't think you can successfully make either a secondary skill set.

[jordanb]

How about this:

Business isn't easy. But it's learned through experience. A bright engineer with a few years of business experience is going to run rings around a B-school graduate with no practical experience.

[lsc]

Speaking as an Engineer (well, if you call a computer janitor an Engineer; most non-technicals do.) who is just now becoming as successful as a businessperson as an Engineer, there are several facets to "business" - if you mean face to face sales (as are required when dealing with investors, etc...) you have a point. Dealing with rich, non-technical people like that is a skill that requires quite a lot of training, as far as I can tell, either that or it requires some innate qualities that I appear to lack.

However, if you run your business as if you were producing commodities, charging slightly more than the cost of production, it's quite easy for an Engineer to handle 'business' as it's all about efficiency. I mean, obviously, you still need a specialist for accounting, but most business people are not accountants. Hell, even some of the higher-margin businesses can be handled by Engineers if you use web sales, A/B testing and the like. (I know some Engineers who handle face to face interaction much like A/B testing a webpage, but that's damn hard to pull off while looking natural.)

Now, obviously, I'm not a really awesome business guy. I mean, I'm still eating ramen so I can buy servers. I'm just saying... there is a part of business that seems pretty easy and clear to me (which is to say, efficiently managing the production of product, acquiring raw material, recruiting technical people, etc...) and another part that I understand so poorly that it looks like magic or fraud. I mean, why do customers tolerate sales teams charging different prices to different companies based on negotiation? I mean, obviously, if I'm, say, buying servers (something I know a thing or two about, both for myself, and for larger clients) I don't understand why many companies will give you a lower rate if you waste a bunch of their salesguys time. I mean, sales people don't work for free, right?

So yeah, clearly there are some parts of "Business" that as one mentor once said: "same planet, different universe"

[sigstoat]

i knew a lot of folks in engineering school who couldn't hack it and went one building over to business. never met anyone who made the opposite move, for any reason.

maybe they all liked the b-school's swanky decor.

[dpritchett]

I switched to and finished a BS in MIS from a business school because I wasn't enjoying my CS major. MIS offered me more project work, team building, and business skills. I followed it up with an MS in CS from the eng school at the same university.

Now you know of one person!