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Assuming that you could have landed the job at Google without studying part-time (could you?), I’m a bit baffled by your experience. Unless your degree really p

Assuming that you could have landed the job at Google without studying part-time (could you?), I’m a bit baffled by your experience. Unless your degree really propels you in your career (read: your employer values academic degrees over experience), couldn’t you have learned those skills without putting up with the cost and timely investment of formally enrolling for a master’s degree? I’d even go as far as to say: in your late 20s/early 30s, it pays off more to put in the hours at work and to start a family in what’s left of your days. Companies like Google ought to offer great ways to learn “on the job”.

lbriner 5y ago
That's my question too. I expect that the larger companies can afford to require qualifications for entry or promotion but for most of us, there is an insane demand for developers and I can choose to learn more about things that I find difficult. I thought about a master (my UG degree was electrical engineering) but I was wondering if it was just an ego thing that would take loads of time, cost loads of money and not really make any difference.
Beldin 5y ago
On-the-job training would typically improve skills needed in your day-to-day work. A master's programme should improve academic skills (things like abstraction, reflection, generalisation, communication). The first makes you better at your current job, the latter makes you more flexible and versatile for any job. Both are valuable, but for different reasons. Whether pursuing a master's degree is worth it depends on your individual circumstances.
10x-dev 5y ago
Some context: during my part-time masters degree, which took 3 years to complete, I wrote the following from scratch: a MIPS and ARMv4 CPU in FPGA, an emulator for ARMv4, an assembler for it, a compiler for C89, an OS kernel with a shell, a 3d game, and several websites, webapps and mobile apps. A job at Google won't bring you even close to be able to learn all of that on the job. The real world version of most of such projects are orders of magnitude more complicated, take years to develop and have tens to hundreds of people working on them. Since you lack both the theoretical and practical knowledge of writing a kernel, for example, you will not be designing the solution for it at Google. At best you will learn to implement a piece of it, and it will take years (think of working on Fuchsia with no prior kernel experience). A (master's) degree isn't an automatic ticket to becoming the lead developer on Fuchsia, but it gives you the chance to learn the theoretical portion of the domain and apply it in a controlled environment, at an accelerated pace, under the guidance of a person who specializes in teaching (not jaded Joe who's waiting for his RSUs to vest), so you have a large foundation on which to build the real world practical skills on the job. Even if you switch teams every half, you will still not be able to cover the breadth of the material in a master's program on the job, not to mention having to perform to get a good enough rating to stay employed, while having essentially no prior knowledge of the topic. You could supplement by taking some courses or reading books after work, but this would essentially be a diy masters without access to experienced professors, that would take much longer and be several times more stressful and inefficient.
- deleted 5y ago
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- cepher 5y ago
  That sounds like an interesting curriculum. Would you mind sharing what program that was?
  - 10x-dev 5y ago
    I went to Harvard Extension School. At the time, about half the classes were shared with the engineering school's undergrad program and those tended to be the most fun courses with projects that I mentioned previously. In many classes I chose what project to work on and I chose to push myself to work on difficult projects (e.g. I could have chosen to implement a basic stack machine with a small instruction set, instead I chose to implement an ARM CPU, which lead to many overnighters to meet the deadlines; the 3D game was my choice as well - I could have picked to implement an easy visualization in opengl). In all honesty some of the intro courses were not worth the price tag, but the advanced ones I'd consider taking again just for fun. If your employer covers the tuition, then I'd say that any course taught by instructors at SEAS (Harvard's engineering school) is absolutely worth taking.
otras 5y ago
That's a good question, and there are a few things behind the "why" that I didn't go into in the write up, including: - Enjoying taking classes - Interest in learning about breadth of material that I wasn't seeing as a FE eng (even at Google) - Some minor concern about having CS credentials (less these days, but very much a concern earlier in my career) - Interest in learning about academia and doing research For me, there were enough intangibles that interested me, and importantly I didn't do it just for the career benefits, though I think it helped out (although with survivorship and confirmation bias, it's hard to say). > in your late 20s/early 30s, it pays off more to put in the hours at work and to start a family in what’s left of your days Another reason why I'm not continuing with the part-time studies! I've joked with my wife that in my free time, we _could_ have kids, or I could do a part-time PhD for 5 years...

lbriner 5y ago

That's my question too. I expect that the larger companies can afford to require qualifications for entry or promotion but for most of us, there is an insane demand for developers and I can choose to learn more about things that I find difficult. I thought about a master (my UG degree was electrical engineering) but I was wondering if it was just an ego thing that would take loads of time, cost loads of money and not really make any difference.

Beldin 5y ago

On-the-job training would typically improve skills needed in your day-to-day work. A master's programme should improve academic skills (things like abstraction, reflection, generalisation, communication). The first makes you better at your current job, the latter makes you more flexible and versatile for any job. Both are valuable, but for different reasons. Whether pursuing a master's degree is worth it depends on your individual circumstances.

10x-dev 5y ago

Some context: during my part-time masters degree, which took 3 years to complete, I wrote the following from scratch: a MIPS and ARMv4 CPU in FPGA, an emulator for ARMv4, an assembler for it, a compiler for C89, an OS kernel with a shell, a 3d game, and several websites, webapps and mobile apps. A job at Google won't bring you even close to be able to learn all of that on the job. The real world version of most of such projects are orders of magnitude more complicated, take years to develop and have tens to hundreds of people working on them. Since you lack both the theoretical and practical knowledge of writing a kernel, for example, you will not be designing the solution for it at Google. At best you will learn to implement a piece of it, and it will take years (think of working on Fuchsia with no prior kernel experience). A (master's) degree isn't an automatic ticket to becoming the lead developer on Fuchsia, but it gives you the chance to learn the theoretical portion of the domain and apply it in a controlled environment, at an accelerated pace, under the guidance of a person who specializes in teaching (not jaded Joe who's waiting for his RSUs to vest), so you have a large foundation on which to build the real world practical skills on the job. Even if you switch teams every half, you will still not be able to cover the breadth of the material in a master's program on the job, not to mention having to perform to get a good enough rating to stay employed, while having essentially no prior knowledge of the topic. You could supplement by taking some courses or reading books after work, but this would essentially be a diy masters without access to experienced professors, that would take much longer and be several times more stressful and inefficient.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cepher 5y ago
That sounds like an interesting curriculum. Would you mind sharing what program that was?
- 10x-dev 5y ago
  I went to Harvard Extension School. At the time, about half the classes were shared with the engineering school's undergrad program and those tended to be the most fun courses with projects that I mentioned previously. In many classes I chose what project to work on and I chose to push myself to work on difficult projects (e.g. I could have chosen to implement a basic stack machine with a small instruction set, instead I chose to implement an ARM CPU, which lead to many overnighters to meet the deadlines; the 3D game was my choice as well - I could have picked to implement an easy visualization in opengl). In all honesty some of the intro courses were not worth the price tag, but the advanced ones I'd consider taking again just for fun. If your employer covers the tuition, then I'd say that any course taught by instructors at SEAS (Harvard's engineering school) is absolutely worth taking.

otras 5y ago

That's a good question, and there are a few things behind the "why" that I didn't go into in the write up, including: - Enjoying taking classes - Interest in learning about breadth of material that I wasn't seeing as a FE eng (even at Google) - Some minor concern about having CS credentials (less these days, but very much a concern earlier in my career) - Interest in learning about academia and doing research For me, there were enough intangibles that interested me, and importantly I didn't do it just for the career benefits, though I think it helped out (although with survivorship and confirmation bias, it's hard to say). > in your late 20s/early 30s, it pays off more to put in the hours at work and to start a family in what’s left of your days Another reason why I'm not continuing with the part-time studies! I've joked with my wife that in my free time, we _could_ have kids, or I could do a part-time PhD for 5 years...