<p>Your first 2 questions - it depends. If you want to go into management, a MEM should help because it’ll teach you project management principles, some accounting, big picture type stuff. A technical masters is an extension of your undergrad material. Do you need either one depends on what you want to gain. A technical masters doesn’t make you more competent or technical necessarily than having your BS, it just gives you more credibility. For me, getting the MEM first made sense as I’d rather manage things than calculate things, but I can do both.</p>
<p>Third question - the MEM does make the MBA redundant, but I hear there’s people who do it anyway. The core MEM courses are the same, but the MBA focuses a lot more on finance. I see the MEM as really what an engineer needs to know from an MBA. You can also get a dual one, see MMM from Kellogg. </p>
<p>Your final comment - the MEM is not technical at all. The most technical thing I did was a quality control course which was pretty much basic statistics. It’s truly a business degree for engineers, not an engineering degree for business people. It will not make you even slightly competent as an engineer if you aren’t one already.</p>