I wrote about my experiences a few weeks ago: https://schneems.com/2017/07/26/omscs-omg-is-an-online-maste...
I'm through my second OMSCS semester, and it you want to know if I think it's worth it...you'll have to read the post ;)
Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?
141–150 of 220 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?
#142Richard Schneeman (an engineer at Heroku) wrote a great blog post on this very topic; worth the read: https://schneems.com/2017/07/26/omscs-omg-is-an-online-maste...
Thanks for linking! I just saw this thread and posted too.
Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?
#143You may want to look at a previous recent discussion here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13382263
Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?
#144Online courses are worth nothing.
Employers will ignore you the second they find out your master is not legit.
Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?
#145Current working professional and an OMSCS student here. It highly depends on the context. Biggest pros are: 1. This is perhaps the cheapest Computer Science masters in the United States from a premier school. The degree is exactly the same as offered to the residential program and the credits acquired are all legit and transferable to other universities. I had friends who transferred from OMSCS to a regular school an…
Is it a straight MS in Computer Science, accredited and all, from GA Tech? Or some other thing?
Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?
#146Current working professional and an OMSCS student here. It highly depends on the context. Biggest pros are: 1. This is perhaps the cheapest Computer Science masters in the United States from a premier school. The degree is exactly the same as offered to the residential program and the credits acquired are all legit and transferable to other universities. I had friends who transferred from OMSCS to a regular school an…
Is it a straight MS in Computer Science, accredited and all, from GA Tech? Or some other thing?
It is.
Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?
#147> I believe this program is a good complementary source of knowledge to become a better software developer. That's something you could learn on your own. But your knowledge of "technologies" are more valuable to employers than CS degree - especially if you have work experience. The tech industry isn't like academia ( economics ) where you have to build up credentials. Work on projects that deal with web technologies…
Thanks! After reading all comments I more inclined to follow your advice and invest my time in first becoming a full stack developer/architect. The consensus is that it is very time-consuming. As a junior web developer I would have a lot of catch-up to do in Programming (some comments mention the need of intermediate level at C, Java, and Python, I have none of neither). As an Economics graduate, I have a fairly shal…
I've a quite similar background. Brazil, mid 30s, major in Business (FGV), transitioned into dev in 2015, though I had earlier experience. Two failed companies as well :)
I agree becoming a decent full stack developer is better than doing an MS were the focus is fundamentals. However, those matter. Things like concurrency, data modeling, relational algebra, strong OOP fundamentals are used daily in any non-trivial backend work. OTOH, engineering stuff like auth, version control, testing, data cleaning and migration seems not part of the course and are quite relevant.
My personal recommendation is to learn multiple languages. You'll learn the concepts and abstract away the implementation. C++, Java, Python and R are different enough and very useful when looking for jobs.
I also recommend doing puzzles to learn algorithms and data structures. Not because you'll see a lot of them in your day to day, but a lot of places use them to weed out job applicants.
Which brings us to the most important advice of all: focus on remote work for US customers. Really. You can easily make $30/h, that translates to around 16k BRL as a "PJ". After a few years, $50/h, $70/h and even more is not unusual. That's upper mgmt level money down here with a fraction of the burden.
You can ping me at cjalmeida at gmail.com if you want to talk more.
Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?
#148Using a temp account. I don't think I would have gotten any interviews at the best of the best tech companies without it (I had an engineering BS in another field). I was only 8 classes in. So career wise, it's definitely worth it.
The classes take a lot of time (see https://omscentral.com), but the learning has been a lot of fun. I loved it.
Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?
#149After a bachelor degree, university isn't that useful for CS unless you want to get into serious AI research. I don't think it has much effect on salary or opportunities.
Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Yellow Jacket myself I am somewhat amused that they managed to translate the stress and fatigue of the Georgia Tech experience into the online course. In a perverse way I think that means the program is as valuable as it purports to be.
We worked very hard to make that happen. For my third course, I may create online drown proofing.
I look forward to it.