Is there any specific program / college / etc outside of tech that you would want to study if you could?
Ask HN: If you had to get a non-tech masters degree, what would you go for?
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Re: Ask HN: If you had to get a non-tech masters degree, what would you go for?
#2I like finance and business, not sure if I'd go to a masters but anyone doing tech is well rewarded for doing at least some business classes.
Study what you don't know and what is outside your area, and you become substantially more valuable.
E.g., a techie who has some legal understanding or a lawyer with tech experience vs those without.
Re: Ask HN: If you had to get a non-tech masters degree, what would you go for?
#3I would probably go for natural resources management or population biology.
Masters degrees are (from my experience in the US workforce) generally only professionally useful when there is an explicit requirement for one set by a professional standards body or codified in law. As in, you usually need a masters to get tenure as a teacher in a public school, and some government jobs have specific and inflexible degree requirements. But for private sector employment, masters degrees are mostly just for personal enrichment.
Re: Ask HN: If you had to get a non-tech masters degree, what would you go for?
#4I went to college late, so I rushed through. Which meant I didn't take the time to really engage with non-CS classes. So I'd like to go back for that. Especially the below masters, which should attract folks with similar feelings.
Re: Ask HN: If you had to get a non-tech masters degree, what would you go for?
#5If it is 'just for fun' then Philosophy.
If I was recommending for a friend in tech trying to advance their career: MBA
Otherwise something they enjoy.
Looking for a masters in Beer drinking, or camping.
Re: Ask HN: If you had to get a non-tech masters degree, what would you go for?
#6Do I have to pick? I moved to a university town last year and started registering for whatever sounds interesting. There are so many fascinating things to learn about! My first ever university course ended up being about nuclear weapons. I just finished the second, about the research front in life sciences. Next term I'm hoping to take a cosmology course. And just unofficially dropping in to some philosophy paper reading sessions. I'm only taking one course per term, always part-time evening classes as I work full time so this is purely a recreational thing. I want to study _everything_.
Re: Ask HN: If you had to get a non-tech masters degree, what would you go for?
#7An MBA. I dropped out of graduate school almost 25 years ago. My heart wasn’t in it.
I still plan on working for another 15 years [1]. I have been working in cloud consulting for 5 years and I’m a staff consultant now. It’s half management style “what you should do” consulting and half leafing implementations or doing it all myself for smaller projects. I specialize in app dev + cloud.
The mid to end gane is fractional CTO I think or more management style consulting outside of just “application modernization”
[1] don’t cry for me. I work remotely and we travel a lot and do long term stints away from home “digital nomadding”. Work isn’t stressful.
Re: Ask HN: If you had to get a non-tech masters degree, what would you go for?
#8I went for physics degree but left after two semesters due to lack of structure and other things(essentially I had no idea what was going on the entire time, what I was supposed to know or do, what books to buy, it was quite a shitshow despite it being the top college in the country for this).
I was wondering that maybe if i am alder and have nothing to do I could try again but I lost interest. I prefer physical things, like martial arts, running and things like that to sitting in a class reading books. Makes no sense to my any more.
Re: Ask HN: If you had to get a non-tech masters degree, what would you go for?
#9Probably Physics. I have always been intrigued by it so might give it a run.
Re: Ask HN: If you had to get a non-tech masters degree, what would you go for?
#10Do I have to pick? I moved to a university town last year and started registering for whatever sounds interesting. There are so many fascinating things to learn about! My first ever university course ended up being about nuclear weapons. I just finished the second, about the research front in life sciences. Next term I'm hoping to take a cosmology course. And just unofficially dropping in to some philosophy paper rea…
Just curious how do you manage to register those courses? I figured they must need some prerequisite? It would be a boon if they don’t ask for prerequisites.