It depends a lot on the teachers imho, the difference is chalk and cheese, I did my degrees before the internet. I had some math teachers that in hind sight weren't very good, I found this out many years later watching Gilbert Strang teaching linear algebra amongst others. In CS though I was lucky enough to have a couple of lecturers that wrote the books on the subject, the depth of knowledge they had was huge (as you'd expect). To be a crotchety old man - you youngsters have it so easy now :-) - you can watch the experts in any field teach it, even ask them a question, the stuff of dreams. So I think because of this the value of a masters coursework is a lot less than it was, at least in CS.
Master’s Degree in Computer Science
131–140 of 265 posts
Re: Master’s Degree in Computer Science
#132I'm in a somewhat similar situation and had been considering a Masters degree for several years before finally giving up on the idea. I wish the author luck, and from what I saw doing my research I expect he'll need quite a lot of it if he wants to be successful.
The challenges I've seen with masters programs fall into a few broad categories:
First, few admissions processes seem to really be designed to accommodate returning students, especially those who have been out of academia for a long time. Most schools want recommendation letters, and expect at least one or two of those to come from academia. You can get professional recommendations, and it seems like having one or two is a benefit, but a lack of any academic recommendations seems to put you in a bad position for admissions.
It's also quite hard to make up for other admissions blockers if you've been out of school for a while. If you have missing prerequisites or a low GPA your out of luck. Finding out you need more research experience seems to be another significant blocker, although I've heard of people in industry successfully volunteering time working with researchers to get experience ahead of Masters applications, so that could be possible in some circumstances.
Overall, it seems that unless you finished up your undergrad program already planning for a masters degree, you're going to be stuck with some semesters of taking undergrad courses as a non-degree seeking student to fill in missing prerequisites, get the relationships with instructors that you'll need for referrals, and possibly get documented evidence to counter questions about a low GPA.
That ties into the second problem: Most programs lack the flexibility they'd need to provide real value to experienced developers. Masters programs could have a lot to offer experienced developers without a formal CS background, but they are largely designed for people with little work experience, and the requirements involve a lot of courses that are going to be a waste of time for someone with substantial industry experience. The vast majority of masters programs have some required courses designed to prepare people for industry that are going to be superfluous to anyone with substantial experience. If you have a lot of missing prerequisites on your transcript that can be even worse as you're also required to take unnecessary courses outside of a degree program to even be considered.
The lack of flexibility also manifests in another problem: The abysmal state of online programs. There are a lot of bad masters programs out there, but even the good ones aren't going to be good for everyone. Every school has a machine learning and cyber security masters track, and if you have interests outside of those areas then you're going to be substantially limiting the already narrow choices of schools that have a decent curriculum that you can get admitted to. At least for my areas of interest, few of those had quality online programs. That said, suppose you do find an online program that aligns with your interest, the online education system these days requires complete submission to a ludicrous panopticon of the shittiest and most invasive software imaginable. If you like in-person learning or you don't want your life for the next several years to be massively and shamelessly exploited by proctoring spyware, then you better be prepared to relocate, and hope that your manager is okay with you being gone in the middle of the day a few days a week, because few of the best programs offer evening or weekend course options.
After looking at the state of masters programs, I personally decided the easier thing to do was to simply continue self learning, making contacts with researchers who are working in areas that interest me, and work to establish myself enough to have a chance to collaborate independently on research and find ways to get into the kind of work I'm interested in without formal credentials.
Re: Master’s Degree in Computer Science
#133It depends a lot on the teachers imho, the difference is chalk and cheese, I did my degrees before the internet. I had some math teachers that in hind sight weren't very good, I found this out many years later watching Gilbert Strang teaching linear algebra amongst others. In CS though I was lucky enough to have a couple of lecturers that wrote the books on the subject, the depth of knowledge they had was huge (as yo…
Gil Strang got me through Lin alg, stopped going in person after I found his videos. Haven’t heard that name in years.
Re: Master’s Degree in Computer Science
#134It depends a lot on the teachers imho, the difference is chalk and cheese, I did my degrees before the internet. I had some math teachers that in hind sight weren't very good, I found this out many years later watching Gilbert Strang teaching linear algebra amongst others. In CS though I was lucky enough to have a couple of lecturers that wrote the books on the subject, the depth of knowledge they had was huge (as yo…
Gilbert Strang is fantastic, both his videos and written material
Re: Master’s Degree in Computer Science
#135I did the same thing starting in 2018 (so far fewer programs offering anything online plus I wanted one that offered health insurance because I was contracting at the time). I went to a school that is not at all prestigious but it's proven to be an amazing decision.
I got some mentorship that triggered growth on an intellectual, professional, and even personal level. At the end my advisor really worked hard to put me in a great job that was exactly right for me, it didn't change my earnings but the work is fascinating and the environment is excellent.
All this to say that like anything else it is what you make it and it's all about specific relationships. Look for specific faculty members you might connect with, even just taking their classes.
Also if you do enroll, make sure to go to campus at least once a semester: shake some hands, sit in some offices, make sure people can put a face to an email signature.
Re: Master’s Degree in Computer Science
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a post on bigtech salary levels recently. Each promotion was equivalent to $100k or more, there were many levels. Hiring into a director position might double it. A degree makes these things substantially more likely. He'll probably have his money back within six months.
>> A degree makes these things substantially more likely. There is a bit of a leap from more likely on a low probability event to probably will pay off their debt. Getting promoted at a Faang company takes a good bit of work. Becoming a director is not something most people can expect. I’ve never heard of a promo committee at a Faang Corp take a degree into consideration and I’ve known plenty of director level people…
Budget was under $50k, which you can make in a few months at a tech job. Nice raise will pay for that nicely in no time.
If you don't think a lot of places aren't gatekeeping on degrees, you haven't looked at many.
To be more clear for folks that think it is an absolute filter, of course it is not. I remember about half of hiring pipelines ending on that point last time I was looking. Was 100% of the top companies with too many applicants however.
Re: Master’s Degree in Computer Science
#137"I don’t have time or energy to study for and take the GRE right now."
Good luck with compilers...
Re: Master’s Degree in Computer Science
#138This is an interesting take. I find CS to be a beautiful subject that I've enjoyed studying in my free time, and would probably enjoy it even more if I really delved into it. But I have a hard time justifying the time and cost. The key question: would it make me a more effective software engineer?
I've been in the industry for many, many years now, and the work I do has a small amount of overlap with the contents of a CS degree. But a lot of software engineering in the real world exists "above" the layer that CS teaches, not unlike CS living above electrical engineering. On top of that, in general, soft skills seem to matter so much more than having 10-30% more hard skills. This varies with your position of course, but I'd wager that the majority of software engineering positions are like this.
Having a credential from a decent school might help get more compensation, but without being able to truly quantify the amount of "help" it gives, it becomes impossible to adequately quantify the ROI.
And sure, you'll see some job postings from time to time that say they "prefer a masters degree," but what about once you're in the door? I don't think I've ever heard a software engineer explicitly put much weight onto the educational credentials of a peer. There may be unconscious biases, but for most engineers, it's about producing results.
Re: Master’s Degree in Computer Science
#139I have a master's degree in software engineering. I honestly never felt that the two years to do my master's degree added much on top of my bachelor's degree that I couldn't just as well have learnt in two years of working in the industry instead. To be fair, I think the content of my bachelor's degree was quite good, setting me up with a foundational understanding of algorithmics, program analysis, interpreters, processors, AI (no ML, this was pre-deep-learning), concurrency, networking and linear algebra (and probably other topics that I don't even think of, but just take for granted). There's a bunch of things like that, where I think fully self-taught coders might tend to miss out on a depth of knowledge that can be useful as a foundation in your understanding of computing. But setting up that foundation doesn't need to take more than a couple years at most, and after that it's much more important to learn the trade, the tools, the techniques, the best practices, that a real-world programing job is the best way to learn.
So at the end of the day, whether a master's degree is worth it, I think depends on whether you've got a good enough foundation already - if you have that (from a bachelor's degree or otherwise) then a master's degree only really makes sense if you want your career to target the kinds of companies (typically enterprise) where where there's a bias toward promoting mostly people with master's degrees.
In OPs example, they have a bachelor's degree in physics, so I think it makes sense to add a couple years of computer science on top.
Re: Master’s Degree in Computer Science
#140Have you looked at the amazing CS50 online courses on Harvard?