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Comment by sergiosgc | Hacker News Reader

As an engineer with an MBA, I can tell you that an engineer breezes through the hard sciences part of management. It's all about modelling, and that's the core training of an engineer. The social sciences aspect of management is not so easy, but if there is underlying aptitude/informal training present, the jump from engineering to management is not that hard.

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"...not that hard."

For a business major to do the vice versa would be virtually impossible (programmer is possible, but not 'engineer' in the traditional sense).

Programmer seems to be the largest market for "engineering" business leads these days.

I dont think that is true at all.

I am pretty sure I could teach just about anyone who is motivated and interested enough math/chemistry/physics/computer science to get through any given engineering degree in those areas.

I think the amount of business people who are motivated to and interested in learning the engineering skills is way lower than the amount of engineering people who are motivated to and interested in learning business skills, but that isnt about ability, that is about motivation and interest.

Engineering interest maps much more directly to engineering education than business interest maps to business education.

I don't think so. Remember that if you are talking about someone with a good formal management degree, you may assume there is a solid mathematical foundation. You can't be good at university level math without good analytical reasoning. Going from good math reasoning to programming isn't any more foreign than what engineers do when learning the social aspects of management.

You don't see to many people doing that switch, but I'd attribute it to factors other than any kind of ability chasm. What we do isn't rocket science[1].

[1] Unless you are a Kerbal Space Program developer. Then it is rocket science. Of the fun kind.

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