Hi everyone,

I'm 30 year old Japanese. I have 8 years of broad experiences in ecommerce industry. (e.g. product owner/project manager/optimization/CRM)

I'm planning to start MBA or MS course in UK next year. My goal is to get a product owner/manager job after graduation and immigrate. In order to achieve this goal, I'd like to ask which is better choice, getting MBA or specialized MS degrees such as MSc in CS and MSc in digital business.

I've got bachelor of arts so I assume I will apply to conversion courses if I choose CS.

Thank you in advance.

MS is American terminology: it will be easier to call them MSc. 

I think the specific degree matters less than the school you get the degree from. Use LinkedIn to see where product owners/managers (I guess in the IT sector in the UK) have done their masters, and which master they took. I would also consider Dublin. 

There have been a lot of threads on this board recently asking the same two questions.  

1) What's the best MBA to enter Product Management?

2) Should I do a general MBA , a 'specialised' MBA with digital business or an MSc in digital business?

Have a search on the forum, most of the answers given are broadly the same.

[Edited by aslamo on Feb 17, 2021]

StuartHE, aslamo,


Thank you for your reply. I looked over Linkedin and this forum and I got the impression that I should aim for MSc from top ranking universities in UK or Ireland.
Although it's interesting that I heard it has been a trend in US that tech giants like Amazon hire MBA graduates from top business schools, for business position like product owner and I could see it's kind of true on Linkedin.
I wonder if this trend applies or will apply to tech hubs in Europe such as London, Dublin, Berlin etc. 

You can filter by locality in LinkedIn to see which schools those firms hire from and what degrees they have taken. Remember that unemployment is very high in Berlin and wages are lower, much lower for those who do not speak German. 

Duncan,
It is a sad fact because Berlin seemed to be a very attractive place to live and work in for a person who loves startup/tech.
Thank you very much for your informative advice.

Supply and demand. It's a great place to start a business because people will take a discount on their salary to live in Berlin, and foreigners have lower labour mobility (eg if your company is selling in the domestic market you are worth a lot less to it if you cannot write and speak idiomatic, native-level German). 

This is not unique to Germany. It's common to see international students from top universities getting 15% or so less because they are able to take only a subset of jobs, generally the less valuable ones, because of poor language skills and acculuration. 

[Edited by StuartHE on Feb 18, 2021]

StuartHE, aslamo,



Although it's interesting that I heard it has been a trend in US that tech giants like Amazon hire MBA graduates from top business schools, for business position like product owner and I could see it's kind of true on Linkedin.
I wonder if this trend applies or will apply to tech hubs in Europe such as London, Dublin, Berlin etc. 

[Edited by aslamo on Feb 18, 2021]