I am graduating this upcoming spring and am looking for advice regarding my future career. I am currently deciding between two offers - one from Amazon as an SDE I, and one as a SWE at a ~300 employee startup (leaving the name out to preserve anonymity). So here are my main questions: 1. How necessary is grad school for future career development? 2. I haven't done research and I don't know any of my professors well to trust letters of recommendation from them, so I feel like I need some years of industry experience before I can make a competitive application to top CS grad schools. Which opportunity would set me up best for grad school? 3. If grad school isn't as necessary, would you recommend working for a behemoth like Amazon for a few years, or getting into a startup that is growing like crazy while it is still relatively young? Lots of questions here, hopefully some of you actually read this and respond! Thanks ahead of time.
I'd recommend working for a few years at Amazon and then deciding if you want to go to grad school and what type of company you want to work for. Having a few years at a big name like Amazon will open doors and help you decide on what you want
Real World Expierence is worth more than a Master's Degree unless you want to stay in academia
A masters degree doesn't get you anywhere in academia. PhD is entry level for academia. I'm not entirely sure what a masters degree is good for...
Either phd or masters, a few years of work experience first is very valuable. What type of company doesn't matter much, imo
The opportunity cost of going to grad school when you don't need/want to is too high in my opinion not to go with a company like Amazon (which is what I did). The university of Washington has a masters in CS that you can do part time here in Seattle which is what I am thinking of doing while working
UW doesn't have a Master's in Computer Science at its UDistrict campus and I wouldn't recommend other UW campuses for MS in CS.
I'm talking about the professional master program which (I think???) looks like from there website is at the UDistrict campus https://www.cs.washington.edu/prospective_students/pmp
Work for amazon.
Grad school is waaaay not worth it for your career, only do it if you're passionate about it. After getting a PHD you'll just be back where you are now, it won't open any doors outside of academia
That's not quite true. PhD opens doors to research opportunities even at commercial companies. Those are roles you won't even hear about w/o a phd. And you sort of get the benefit of the doubt in decision making so it can fast track you into project/program management.
2yr for a masters and another 3-5 for a PhD doesn't sound like much of a fast track.
Grad school in CS is an epic waste of time. Take a look at the opportunity cost. For a 2 year program, at the very least, you will be paying $20k/year in tuition and room and board. Then you factor in the lost income from. It working for two years. Ultimately that degree is going to cost you something like $200k. Even if your master's actually increases your income (it won't), it won't be by much. So you'll be looking at 10 years or more before you've broken even. And by that point, your salary is far more dependent upon experience anyway. Do the math. When I see a resume with a Masters, I will generally pass it by because in my experience it either implies that the person couldn't find a good paying job with a Bachelors or that they have bad math skills. Both are bad. If you really, really want to get a Masters, do it in some other field that you can then combine with your CS knowledge. Software is everywhere today. There's no better knowledge to combine with other disciplines.
Please don't listen to everyone here including me! Decide yourself. First, most people here at some point probably wondered the same questions as you. They are either lazy to go back to school due to their comfort at daily job, or they just find what they are doing is enough for their life. Grad school is a waste of time if you just come back to study like software engineering skills or sam shit data structure and algo classes. It's absolutely not waste of time if you want to have a dive in specific area like ML or VR sth like that. Some will immediately ask why can't you learn these yourself; again, barely anyone pretending that they can do 2 things at the same time and get the best out of both is even able to finish a coursera course in a good time frame. So yeah, people bullshit you in many way. Just weight your need and goal then decide by yourself. You can read plenty of articles people sharing about the experience they have been through with grad school.
Or better yet. If you want to do VR, go get a job in VR. Then you can learn from people who are actually doing something rather than professors who have read some ACM papers on VR. You'll learn more in the industry in less time and get paid while you're at it.
You are just like many d**k here: go get an ml, vr blah blah job and learn from real professionals. Any people in the core ML team of any top 10 tech company won't even give a shit about your application unless you have studied the material in grad level or maybe you have like 5 years exp in the fields which is not a thing for most people. So fk you and any d**k who keep saying the same shit that I bet you can't even get in lower ranked companies.
Build experience, get sh**t done. Show value!
Go for a PhD at a top school and leave after 2 years for a top company like Google once you get the masters earned. The PhD will pay for the masters for you that way. Also intern at top companies while you're there. Btw Facebook pays interns 100k signing bonus if they take the offer after the internship.
This is true. I have some friends done this, but they are exceptional people.
You can get these questions answered online. Do your due diligence first and stop being lazy.
Microsoft being Microsoft as usual
Appreciate the help!