Making it a poll to get more input. In OMSCS right now, boss at work has flat out said it won't matter at all where I'm at. I have unrelated BA and MS degrees so I check the box of having a degree. I am a US citizen, so don't need it for visa. The reason I started it last spring is to fill in knowledge gaps and make future job searches easier. My experience with database class so far has sucked enough that I'm questioning whether it'll really matter for job searches since any company worth a damn shouldn't care. Edited to clarify: Already working as a mid lvl Software Engineer currently, so don't need it to break in. Edited to add relevant details: Do not plan on specializing in anything that the MSCS would specialize in or provide specialized knowledge of like ML. Just plan on being a generalist full stack developer or, preferably, a backend engineer. Nothing fancy. #engineering #software #swe
How much work experience do you have? You may be able to supplement your work experience with certificates and gain a better ROI than a Masters to add to your resume. The exception is if you’re in an area like R&D or government where your colleagues will tend to have a Masters or even a Doctorate.
About 2 YOE, already bumped from associate SWE to mid lvl SWE when I changed jobs 6 months ago
With 2 YOE, a Masters could absolutely be worth it. It won’t help you if you stay in your current position because companies rarely will give their employees a direct bump in their same position. However, you can use your educational benefit to have your company offset your education costs then look for new jobs when you have your new degree. Your new degree will put you in a new category for base salary and you can use that for negotiations at your company or simply move if they can’t match it.
Do you already have a job working as a software engineer? Then the impact will be minimal. For people looking to transition however MSCS is one of the few ways to be taken seriously without the undergraduate degree
A good MSCS is valuable. Probably not a lot for job hunting if you already have BSCS. But, the learning is helpful nevertheless. Your boss is idiotic.
What was wrong with the database class?
Poor grading structure, asinine bullshit exams that count for 50% of grade, and group project. To be fair, I'm learning a lot, and I have a 4.0 in the program after first class in infosec, got like a 97% overall for class, but seriously considering withdrawing from this class because of group project and at that point just time to re-evaluate if it's worth the time.
It's absolutely useless. If you really feel you lack knowledge in specific topics, then just go and do a Coursera course and further learn from Google.
Its absolutely great. OMSCS took me from making 70k 3 years ago to my previous job making 120k and now my new job making 250K TC ... so in 3 years have gone from from 70 to 250k TC. Absolutely worth it.
250k at Ford?!
Of course not at Ford. Left Ford 1 month ago.
leetcode is more helpful than omscs
Just self teach yourself from Udacity/ Coursera/ Udemy or MIT open courseware.
You can look up the courses that comprise a good masters degree at a renowned school and then find those equivalent courses online to get the education you want. Build a portfolio/ good projects and leetcode aggressively to land a gig.
Having said that, the only motivation of getting a masters degree is to keep yourself accountable that you will do the work (take quizzes, do assignments and pass exams). I have found that you can do a complete CS masters degree online at a fraction of cost from udacity (7k) from georgiaTech’s college of computing. I think if you do that no one in the industry is going to question your credentials and why you didn’t end up spending thousands of dollars more to go to school.