You don't need an MBA to become a product manager

Related Note: Personal MBA by Josh Kaufmann a helpful read. Here's his presentation @Google > https://youtu.be/fp8H8EMm464

You don't need an MBA to become anything. In fact, it often makes it harder.

Very true. People forget that the MBA was invented back in the early post war era when large corporations identified a need to train new managers. It would allow a broad range of skills to be quickly picked up by a specialist moving to a general management role. You can learn the same information nowadays using books and online resources in a way that was harder to do back in the day. Doing an MBA before you have worked in actual junior management for a few years has always struck me as kind of odd. Doing an MBA straight after your first degree is strange because how can you actually relate the issues of people management when you have never managed a single person? Bizarre.

Definitely agree that you don't need an MBA to become a Product Manager - the training for Product Management can be quite different to most of what you learn in more traditional Business Administration courses.

That said, I do feel that one can benefit the other - MBA's teach a lot about practically running a business, background learning that can really assist when running a product development and management cycle or team, even if only for the fact that it gives you a better ability to understand and build relationships with other areas of the business.