My first year out of high school I took a ton of philosophy. It's forever changed the way I view the world, other people and how I solve problems; it's been valuable for my CS and math education. Philosophy taught me to explore problems from varying perspectives and to play my own devil's advocate. There's been nothing like it in any of my other classes or life experience. It wasn't a productive year in itself, but it's a year I wouldn't do any other way.
That being said, I found the title a bit misleading, or not fully informative. I thought this was an article on how engineers ought to be running companies!