Best Companies in Indianapolis for MBA Graduates
Indianapolis is a great place to live in the U.S. It frequently appears on “Best Places to Live” lists, ranking 38th according to the U.S. News & World Report. Forbes ranks Indianapolis 30th on its “Best Places for Business and Careers” list and 80th in “Job Growth.”
Continue reading…Top MBA Recruiters: Royal Bank of Canada
Founded in Halifax in 1864, The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) serves 16 million clients and has over 80,000 employees worldwide. Which means there is a lot of room for a potential RBC career among business school grads.
Continue reading…Where Should I Work? Bain or Boston Consulting Group
When it comes to the consulting industry, there are three top dogs: McKinsey, Bain, and Boston Consulting Group (BCG). These three elite firms offer a unique blend of prestige, expertise, and history, which make them highly sought-after employers, particularly for MBA grads. But since they’re all part of the same exclusive club, how do you know where to accept a job offer: Bain or BCG or McKinsey?
Continue reading…MBA Job Profile: Technical Program Manager
Most successful businesses involve many moving parts. To coordinate personnel and logistics in a rapidly evolving technological landscape requires large teams of individuals and a solid technical background. This is precisely where technical program managers come in handy: they steward all aspects of a program from initiation to implementation.
What is a Technical Program Manager?
Technical program managers handle company technical needs, leading teams in product development and software implementation. They ensure that deadlines are met, and any technical issues are swiftly resolved. This requires the marriage of two traditionally unrelated skill sets—personnel management and technical proficiency.
Since every business has unique technical needs, the specific skills required may vary from company to company. However, there are certain elements that hold true regardless of a company’s specific focus. The most important attributes of an aspiring technical program manager are an acute intuition for leadership, the ability to adapt, and a keen sense of the inherent logistical needs that arise from the combination of these two areas.
Technical program managers aren’t just required to oversee projects; they must also be diligent in tracking issues within the programs they manage and successfully troubleshooting them. They are also required to utilize their expertise to assess the large-scale technical needs of a company and initiate programs accordingly. This requires the identification of all action items necessary for a program’s success as well as schedule and budget development.
Technical Program Manager Salary Expectations
According to Payscale, the median income for technical program managers is $121,627, while Glassdoor cites the average salary at $125,219. Generally speaking, experience affects pay. Technical program managers with less than one year experience earn around $90,000. Those who have been working for over 20 years earn approximately $132,000.
Infosec, an institution that offers educational resources focused on cybersecurity, offers different statistics that are less optimistic. It quotes the national average salary for technical program managers as $89,000 a year. Less experience managed often make $71,000. Senior-level managers typically see around $99,000 per year. Those in urban areas are likely to receive a higher salary than those in less densely populated areas.
However, Infosec is quite optimistic about the future for aspiring technical program managers. It estimates that number of positions will grow by roughly 15-20 percent over the next eight years.
Getting Started
Becoming a technical program manager means having at least a bachelor’s degree in fields like management, business administration, or computer science. Some businesses might hire someone who does not have a bachelor’s degree if they do have prior experience working in a related field. Naturally, if you have both experience and a relevant bachelor’s degree, or an advanced degree, you will stand out to potential employers.
Typically, this means earning an education in an engineering school, rather than a business school. However, business schools offering dual degrees can help provide a path for future technical program managers.
For instance, Harvard Business School offers a MS/MBA option. Earning an MS/MBA from the world’s most well-known academic institution means having world-class career preparation, leading to a similarly world-class career. Harvard MBA graduates, in general, can expect an average annual salary of around $140,000—and that’s before one takes signing bonuses and other benefits into account.
Many of the world’s best business schools, like HBS, offer special dual degree MBA programs for hopeful technical program managers.
Top MBA Recruiters: Bowery Capital
Founded in 2013, NYC-based Bowery Capital is an early-stage venture capital investor that primarily backs SaaS (software-as-a-service) B2B (business-to-business) startups that develop innovative software that allows companies to optimize the role of a continually changing technological landscape.
Bowery Capital is a relatively small firm with less than 50 employees and it has three groups of four individuals at the center of its operations. These groups are the Core Team, the Venture Partners, and the Revenue Council.
Bowery Capital doesn’t just invest in companies—it also provides them the right tools to succeed. It helps these companies build a customer base, provides them with a “robust software infrastructure” to enable growth, and offers crucial support in finding the right talent. This support coupled with the expertise of a combined 50 years of collective experience is what makes Bowery Capital stand out to young companies on the hunt for potential investors.
Landing a Bowery Capital Career
Considering the kinds of startups in which Bowery Capital specializes, any experience that a job applicant might have in software, digital marketing, digital media, online advertising, product management, or social media would give said applicant an edge in the hiring process. Another valuable asset is a keen sense for possible areas of growth within the tech industry.
It should be noted that at the time this article was written, there are no job openings at Bowery Capital. While the company does offer internships for MBA and undergraduate students, there appear to be no openings for those positions.
Working at Bowery Capital
Since the firm is relatively young and small, it is difficult to say much about Bowery Capital’s workplace culture. Its website lists a 12-member team and Glassdoor reviews from former employees suggest that Bowery Capital has a regular stream of interns working there on a part-time, short-term basis.
According to Paysa, Bowery Capital employees make an average annual salary of $146,819, with $97,852 marking the 25th percentile and $179,767 at the 75th percentile. However, this data does not indicate the average salaries by position, so it is unclear how much an employee who recently graduated with an MBA would make.
Life at Bowery Capital
Bowery Capital has not published any employee demographics or statements about their workplace culture, but all reviews from former employees on Glassdoor are overwhelmingly positive. In particular, they are nearly unanimous in their praise for a positive atmosphere and the expertise of their supervisors. The only con was from a former summer intern who mentioned that they had not been paid for their work at the firm.
Paysa also offers some helpful statistics on workplace demographics. Fifty-six percent of Bowery Capital’s employees are white, while the rest declined to offer this information. About 89 percent are male with the remaining 11 percent declining to disclose their gender. However, of the 12 team members listed on the company’s website, 5 are women. Additionally, the Paysa information is based on fewer than 20 users, so both of these data sets are in all likelihood only a small portion of Bowery Capital’s workforce.
Bowery Capital only has one office in New York City, but they invest in companies all over the country, especially on the West Coast, which as you may have heard has a thriving community of technological innovators.
While half of the Bowery Capital team is based in New York City, four are based in San Francisco and two are based in Boston. With this in mind, it seems likely that a Bowery Capital career would likely be based in New York City with potential opportunities for travel.
These Tech Companies Are Looking Out for More MBA Talent
LinkedIn may be one of the go-to places to grow a professional network and find job listings, but it’s also an MBA recruiter. Check out this list of exciting new MBA jobs at LinkedIn, as well as a handful of other tech companies, and see how well your resume lines up with these job descriptions. Continue reading…
