Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hello Programmers without Masters degree, what are your future plans?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–25 of 25 posts

Re: Hello Programmers without Masters degree, what are your future plans?

#21

Post by iends »

ruraljuror wrote: post #20
smt88 wrote: post #2

In my field (web software development), a Masters degree is actually an impediment. People are less willing to hire someone with a Masters or PhD for some reason. Maybe there are exceptions for research positions at big companies, but that'll mostly hold true. Not many people can (or do) write code until 60. Most will become managers. If you don't want to be run over by the next generation, develop and manage the res…

Could you expand on how you see a masters degree as an impediment? Is it just that you've noticed few people have master's degrees or is it actively an impediment? The reason I ask is that I am a self-taught web developer (BA in English & Classical Studies) considering getting a master's degree in computer engineering. I am not certain if I do go down that road that I would want to stay in web development, but I am r…

Not who you asked, but it's not been an impediment to me. I've worked at 4 person companies and 100,000 person companies and the masters degree has never been an issue expect I make more money than those without it. I do full stack javascript (Node/Angular).

If you don't have a CS degree, getting a more technical degree couldn't hurt you, but it's more about the opportunity cost.

The masters degree is certainly not that useful for Web development, but it's a lot of fun and was pretty enjoyable to interact with smart people. It's also helped to have more formal learning in things like compilers for the few times I've needed to write a parser, etc.

Re: Hello Programmers without Masters degree, what are your future plans?

#22

Post by AnimalMuppet »

insoluble wrote: post #19
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #5

I'm 53. I've been a programmer for 30 years, mostly in embedded systems. My explicit career goal is to never become a manager. As you get older/more experienced, it becomes harder to find jobs. When "senior developer" means 5-7 years of experience, what do you do with 30 years? It gets hard to find places that will pay for that experience. I've found, though, that there are jobs. You won't be switching jobs every 1-2…

> Along those lines, one of the most valuable things is the bugs you don't write and the bad design decisions you don't make. This point is very important yet elusive. I do contract development, and it's often difficult to get clients to understand the significance of this point without sounding negative or exaggerated. It would be nice if maybe I knew of some formal studies done in this area to give the clients a mo…

I wouldn't use a study. I'd ask about their own negative experiences - where a contractor did something, and it took them another six months to fix it. If that's ever happened to them, they'll get the point without needing a study.

Re: Hello Programmers without Masters degree, what are your future plans?

#24

Post by smt88 »

ruraljuror wrote: post #20
smt88 wrote: post #2

In my field (web software development), a Masters degree is actually an impediment. People are less willing to hire someone with a Masters or PhD for some reason. Maybe there are exceptions for research positions at big companies, but that'll mostly hold true. Not many people can (or do) write code until 60. Most will become managers. If you don't want to be run over by the next generation, develop and manage the res…

Could you expand on how you see a masters degree as an impediment? Is it just that you've noticed few people have master's degrees or is it actively an impediment? The reason I ask is that I am a self-taught web developer (BA in English & Classical Studies) considering getting a master's degree in computer engineering. I am not certain if I do go down that road that I would want to stay in web development, but I am r…

It's an impediment because, when you're applying for jobs, you're older, poorer, and have no extra job experience.

There are absolutely jobs where it would help, like research. If you wanted to work on the super-technical stuff at Google or Facebook, like developing new languages, you'd probably need that MS.

But generally speaking, employers care exclusively about your experience (partially because there are so many self-taught people that do good work), and a Masters just says, "I'm going to demand a higher salary".

On a semi-related note, I'm self-taught, like you are, and I considered a Masters. I now laugh at that idea -- I don't know even a tiny fraction of what's needed to get a Masters. It was very humbling to talk to people with CS degrees and hear all the things they learned.

When you miss out on an undergraduate CS degree, you miss a lot of theory and math. Jumping right into an MS program would be incredibly difficult unless you're a prodigy of math and logic (and have the time to spend on catching up).

(None of that is to say that your typical web development job requires a CS degree at all. We use high-level languages and, oftentimes, widely-used, lightly-customized software.)

Re: Hello Programmers without Masters degree, what are your future plans?

#25

Post by insoluble »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #22
insoluble wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Along those lines, one of the most valuable things is the bugs you don't write and the bad design decisions you don't make. This point is very important yet elusive. I do contract development, and it's often difficult to get clients to understand the significance of this point without sounding negative or exaggerated. It would be nice if maybe I knew of some formal studies done in this area to give the clients a mo…

I wouldn't use a study. I'd ask about their own negative experiences - where a contractor did something, and it took them another six months to fix it. If that's ever happened to them, they'll get the point without needing a study.

This approach may be suitable with more experienced clients, but smaller/newer clients may lack the experience or "self-awareness" to reflect in this manner.

It's curious that inexperienced developers are bad for clients while inexperienced clients are bad for developers. Perhaps it takes experience to appreciate experience. At the same time, inexperienced developers may go well with inexperienced clients since they can learn together -- albeit with plenty of inefficiency.

Post reply on HN