I’m doing pretty well for my career so far. Looking to get into FANG. I see a lot of LinkedIn for FANG engineers are masters and some even PhD. For a senior software engineer, with a career path for technical side as far as I can take it, with 10 years of experience already. Is it worth it to go get my masters? I’ve seen a couple places that offer online masters degree for software engineering. Something respectable, not Phoenix. Should I put in the time and energy into more schooling, or just focus more on job related performance and skills. I guess my question is, I can see a new grad masters helping a lot, but how much does a masters degree at 30 help? Worth it?
Yes, it’s worth it. In many companies, you can have a higher terminal level with a graduate degree.
“Even” PhD... 🤔
Waste of time. It can help you right out of college but at this point, it won’t
I was in the same boat as you and was conflicted about how to grow my career. I always knew I wanted to go to grad school but kept putting it off. I finally applied to an elite university and got my masters in CS. I graduated when I was 34. It was hard work, but worth it. It took a year after graduating to get into FANG, but now I’ve got 5 years of FANG under my belt and am doing great, having fun, and I’m making ~550TC. Best advice I can give is put in the hard work, go to a top tier program in person (not online) so you can grow your network while there. Don’t treat it like a check the box exercise, you get what you put into it. Good luck!
I would agree to this. If you do a 2 year, in person in Stanford, that would be worth it in itself. If you are not in the Bay Area now, it will make a huge difference in ur career.
What schools would you consider elite universities for a masters?
Do it for knowledge. TC depend on luck
For software engineers, a Masters degree is far less relevant to FANG than your work experience and your performance in the interview. Not worth it unless you really want to do it. If you do it, focus on learning AI/ML/CV.
Industry not FANG. FANG mostly do not critical software. No rocket science in industry, but so many stuff to learn after leetcode.
I don’t think masters will help much. As long as you have relevant background and good at Leetcode style of questions plus system design, you should be good.