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A remote masters in a field of interest spaced over 3-5 years? $400/year could be 20-50% of the cost, more lifelong than skills based training, and check the university to see if you get free journal access via their library, a must for a master's.
I know a few folks that use their learning allowance to work with fractional CTOs that offer paid mentorship i.e. grow from an engineering manager towards CTO. LMK if you need an introduction.
1. Of course, education that you find useful, interesting, and fun.
2. Education that also best "signals" knowledge useful for future employment.
As the past year+ has shown us, you never know when you'll suddenly find yourself in need of a job. So keep in mind your future and consider education that "sells" well.
For example: fill in "perceived" gaps that future employers might miss in this world of impersonal resume keyword scans or LinkedIn talent searches.
A. Based on the background you shared, it sounds like a lack of CS degree hasn't hampered your career. But it'd be great to not only beef up your CS knowledge, but show it. So one day an employer is comparing you to another Engineer with similar skills, but lack of CS degree... except you have a CS-related Udemy "Nanodegree" or Coursera courses under your belt. Your knowledge plus interest in relevant continuing ed will give you an edge.
B. If you like startups, knowledge to make you more well-rounded (aka generalist/full stack) would be useful. Consider courses in areas like Frontend development, Orchestration, Big Data.
C. "Hot topics" that have staying power. Between 2019 - 2021, it seems like everybody and their mother had the Self-Driving Nanodegree. Looking back, maybe a broader pursuit like Computer Vision courses (which still touch upon areas like SLAM) would have been more beneficial. Nowadays, maybe learning more about NLP (which will touch upon LLM) would be a good option.
And be sure to make this visible, e.g. LinkedIn profile.
I know a few folks that use their learning allowance to work with fractional CTOs that offer paid mentorship i.e. grow from an engineering manager towards CTO. LMK if you need an introduction.
This is interesting. Are these CTOs you know or an actual company that "contracts out" fractional CTOs?