18 ms·

Master’s Degree in Computer Science

• sbahr001 4y ago
  Thank you for this, it saves me a lot of research; I have been considering going and getting a masters.
• driscoll42 4y ago
  I'm personally in the Georgia Tech Online Master's in Computer Science (OMSCS) program right now and can't say enough good things about it. The coursework is rigorous, deep, and varied, you really do learn quite a bit through the program and more than just random learning on your own, you get a degree out of it. Plus you get the opportunity to do some research and publish papers.
  • sthatipamala 4y ago
    I'm also a proud OMSCS alum! But "the opportunity to do some research and publish papers" is certainly not the default. Can you describe how you were able to do that?
    • allanbreyes 4y ago
      Check out https://lucylabs.gatech.edu https://lucylabs.gatech.edu! David Joyner started it to help foster this opportunity for students and alumni, alike.
    • driscoll42 4y ago
      So there are a few ways now! I do agree that it's not the default, I'd probably say <5% of people do, but it does exist. 1. Courses -There are a number of courses now where you can create projects and publish papers. Again, not the default, but if you put in the effort it's doable. To name a few, Computing for Good, Big Data for Healthcare, Deep Learning, Educational Technology, Human-Computer Interaction and others. 2. VIPs! These I consider one of the "hidden" gems of OMSCS and what I personally did. You can see them here: https://www.vip.gatech.edu/ https://www.vip.gatech.edu/ but basically instead of a class for a semester (but counts as a class for credit and graduation purposes) you work for a professor on a project with several other grads/undergrads. I did one this past semester and was asked to stay on as a research assistant over the summer doing work in NLP. Really excited for it actually and has been a fantastic opportunity. I put a lot more details here - https://redd.it/u6cj5z https://redd.it/u6cj5z 3. Master's Project/Thesis - This is the option to do a Master's Project or thesis instead of just ten courses, but it does require more work from the student to find a professor and do that. There's many more details here https://redd.it/9t48b2 https://redd.it/9t48b2 and frankly I wish I had done so, but too late now.
      • marksimi 4y ago
        This is the most comprehensive list of what I've seen for OMSCS research opportunities. Thanks for pulling this together.
  • treeman79 4y ago
    I’ve had good experiences working with people from there.
  • donthellbanme 4y ago
    The problem is when you have paid the tuition, and finished the degree, it's so hard to objectively rate it. I have a Bachelor's degree from a decent state school in California. At the time, I felt the courses were too easy, and my four years were a bit of a waste of time. I remember going to a graduation party, and you would think we graduated from med school. The graduates were carrying on like it was so rigrigrous. (I have a very, very average intellect too. I actually flunked kindergarten.) To this day I will not denigrate the school in any way.
    • yumraj 4y ago
      I have no idea how one flunks the kindergarten, but I’m pretty sure that it does not reflect one’s intellect in anyway. Am pretty sure there’s an interesting story there somewhere :)
      • coastflow 4y ago
        Out of curiosity, I found a sample kindergarten curriculum for the province of Ontario in Canada. [0] Children as young as four in the province are evaluated by educators on (pages 306–308): the development of the ability to interpret and respond to basic communication, demonstrate independence and "self-motivation" in learning, giving and accepting constructive criticism, developing problem solving skills ("e.g. trial and error, checking and guessing, cross-checking), personal hygiene, self-control of emotions, assertiveness when feeling safe or uncomfortable, and other skills. Indicators that educators look for include phrases from children such as "I'm really frustrated" (page 161) as a demonstration as an awareness and ability to label emotions; "I put my vehicle on the shelf so it would be safe" (page 167) as evidence of problem-solving ability; and persistence in difficult games (e.g. card games and outdoor children's games). I was also curious whether education in kindergarten could actually have a causal effect on improving long-term outcomes. I couldn't find an immediate conclusion on whether or not interventions are effective, but in at least one paper, it's treated as established knowledge that interventions work. From a quick search, a longitudinal study published in a paper called "Task-Oriented Kindergarten Behavior Pays Off in Later Childhood" [1] with 2837 participants showed a correlation between self-regulation skills in kindergarten and long-term outcomes. The researchers wrote that "early screening by teachers [in kindergarten] introduces the possibility of preventing future learning and behavioral difficulties." They also asserted that "classroom engagement is malleable and amenable to interventions." While causality was not clearly established in this paper alone, it looks like a reasonable prediction from the correlation that improving classroom engagement as early as in kindergarten could plausibly lead to better life outcomes in years later in life. TL;DR: While kindergarten in Ontario in recent years may have different expectations than the commenter's time in kindergarten, it appears that educators do evaluate young children on general life skills (e.g. self-control and ability to be aware and label emotions) as a screening tool, and also potentially for interventions to improve engagement in the classroom (which could plausibly lead to better outcomes in years later in life). [0] PDF, 2016: https://files.ontario.ca/books/edu_the_kindergarten_program_english_aoda_web_oct7.pdf https://files.ontario.ca/books/edu_the_kindergarten_program_... [1] 2013: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23369956/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23369956/
  • wirthjason 4y ago
    I have a more mixed experience with the OMSCS. Overall it's a good program, and if the choice is between Udemy or OMSCS then it wins hands down. For me the central issue is online vs. in-person. Education is an interactive experience, the value of a good professor and classmates is helping to identify issues when you are stuck and nudge you just enough for you to connect the dots. As an undergraduate I liked attending study groups and office hours. I learned as much from my peers, both me helping them and them helping me, as I did from my professors. This spirit was difficult to replicate this in OMSCS. The problem is that high tough, in-person communication is very effective but this doesn't "scale" well. I can only imagine how different the world would be if Plato was teaching online. :) Also I was in the 2nd cohort, there were certainly a lot of "bugs" and issues they were working through. Additionally, the culture of video conference and zoom was also less a few years ago, which could make an impact.
    • knicholes 4y ago
      I was in the second or third cohorts, and I dropped out during the first course because the assignment was to write their registration system for them for free. They had specific requirements for Java, MySQL, etc. If I'm going to work, I'm sure as hell not going to be paying to do it.
      • TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
        I’m incredulous. That sounds like some kind of abuse of power.
      • kettleballroll 4y ago
        I'm sorry, but this doesn't sound credible. You wouldn't let potential newbies write an important part of your infra. Plus a credible school has more than enough software developers. Might it have been the other way around, that the people who actually wrote the system have designed assignments that are based on their experience? That's something I sometimes did when I held classes: nothing gets you closer to a realistic real-world practice problem than the one you just solved yourself
    • 4y ago
  • 1983054104 4y ago
    I created this account for a specific question because the subject is something I'm thinking of right now. My question is: How much time do you invest every day on this degree? I dropped out of my MS degree 20 years ago and would love to do that again, but I feel like I would only have (at most) 1 hour a day to work on it due to all my work and family commitments. I could squeeze an additional hour at work to learn but that's about it.
    • wil421 4y ago
      Not sure how old your kids are but last time this topic came up I asked someone a similar question. My kids are both under 3 and they said no way if your kids are very young. I don’t think an hour would cut it unless you had a large part of Saturday you could spend time doing projects.
    • Icathian 4y ago
      I'm almost done with my OMSCS run. An hour a day won't cut it. Most people either do a couple hours an evening plus a chunk on weekends, or else dedicate most of their weekend. I tend to fall in the first camp, and then also add more weekend for harder classes. The time commitment varies from 5-30 hours per week depending on the class. Most classes fall pretty close to 10 per week in my experience, but I also have been mostly picking medium difficulty classes on purpose.
    • ecshafer 4y ago
      It varies for me. I am a bit over half way through. I think I spend on average 10-20 hours a week doing work for the class. But I typically am the type to burn a weekend doing a project then do not much work for the next week.
    • driscoll42 4y ago
      I'm sad to say that an hour a day is unlikely to let you finish the program productively. You can look at https://omscentral.com/courses https://omscentral.com/courses for student's estimates of how long they spent per week in courses, but most are over 10 and quite a few 20-30. You can get through it by taking some easier courses, but it is like a second job in many ways.
  • el_benhameen 4y ago
    I’m curious whether anyone here is doing/has done OMSCS with a family in addition to a day job. I would love to do the program, but I’m not sure how realistic it is to take it on with young kids in the house. Does all of your non-work time end up being consumed by coursework?
    • alanfranz 4y ago
      You can do one class per term, and even skip terms. You can alternate hard classes and easier classes. If you don’t rush, it’s doable. Source: graduated from omscs last year, with two small kids and a full time job. Took 3.5y though, and I had to skip a couple of hard but interesting classes because they would have been too difficult given the situation (covid lockdowns with kids at home and increased job-related workload)
    • fm2606 4y ago
      I did my degree online with a "day" job and young family. My kids were 6 and 3 at the time. But my job wasn't a 9-5 so I didn't have that burden. Also, it got to the point where the day after lectures were posted, which were around 9 pm to midnight, I would get up at 3:30 a.m. to watch a 3 hour lecture. The old adage "where there is a will there is a way" is definitely true.
    • JoeDaDude 4y ago
      I did in person MSCS with a day job and one kid, about 7 years old at the time. It's doable with a supportive spouse. I spent one or two hours (outside of class) a during the week, and sometimes more during the weekends. I completed this at one class per semester, except for the semester I attempted two classes to speed up the process. While I was able to complete both classes, I felt the learning suffered as I was just rushing to complete assignments in time instead of really learning the material.
    • njhartwell 4y ago
      I just graduated from OMSCS and have four young kids and a full time job. It took me four years and I made full use of my employer’s generous continuing ed program (50 days/year, introduced about a year after I started) which kept after-hours work to a manageable level. I had to pass on a few good courses due to predicted workload, but made it through a good number of the harder/more rewarding ones and am very happy to have done it. I do not think I would have stuck with it if I was working 40 hours/week and doing the program entirely on my own time.
• drunkenmagician 4y ago
  All the best for your studies. I also decided to do a mid career masters, but as I did not have a completed undergrad degree I opted for an MBA in AI via a “non prestigious” UK university, as I also wanted part time, online and cheap. I’m a 3rd way through now.
  • e-clinton 4y ago
    UK doesn’t require undergrad for MBAs?
    • barry-cotter 4y ago
      Neither does the US. Universities can do as they damned well please, subject to accreditation agencies. MIT does not demand a Bachelor’s to do its DEDP programme, just successful completion of the preceding MicroMaster’s. U Colorado has three Master’s on Coursera with similar demands. Do the preceding online courses to the requisite level and they’ll admit you to the Master’s. But it’s also hard in the UK. Maybe there are more universities that allow it but don’t advertise it anywhere but the number who will state clearly they will take work experience in lieu of a Bachelor’s is small.
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    Good luck in your studies!
    • drunkenmagician 4y ago
      Thank you. Although I expect luck and some hard work will be required to complete
  • dan1234 4y ago
    What course/uni was this at? I’m in a similar position (incomplete BSc, but 20+ years commercial experience) and was looking at the OU’s masters but wasn’t that impressed with the syllabus.
• blobbers 4y ago
  GAtech seems like the premier online degree both in price and quality. The OMSCS program has continued to add extra content!
• rahimnathwani 4y ago
  Getting a mid-career bachelor's degree in computer science: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180816
• sthatipamala 4y ago
  Based on what the OP wrote, Georgia Tech's OMSCS program would be worthwhile, especially if they are interested in the systems track. The UT Austin program is also modeled on GA Tech's program and looks especially good for its theoretical ML courses. OMSCS has a lot of flexibility in being able to attenuate your course load, gives 6 years to complete the degree, and your peers are mostly working professionals. That's a big advantage of online-first programs.
• nomilk 4y ago
  I made a spreadsheet to compare cost, time commitment, esteem, and language(s) of AI short courses. It's 2 years out of date, but might still be useful: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mCETBcQJ5V1UA2maojCa78qQgyBvJgzYTn32sGgYdE4/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mCETBcQJ5V1UA2maojCa... In the end I didn't do any of them because they're less productive than self-teaching (basically YouTube + Kaggle + real personal projects), and I don't value the CV cred highly.
• bradlys 4y ago
  Where would a masters degree in CS help for someone with 20+ years of software experience? Genuinely - I have no clue. I don’t have a masters. I’ll likely never need one. If there was a specific field that required intense learning and was cutting edge (computer vision or something) then I’d understand a masters (or especially a PhD) but for general work…? Don’t get it. You’d certainly be better off financially from doing more leetcode or system design prep instead.
  • arvinsim 4y ago
    If I had to get a masters, I would take one unrelated to software development. Marrying software development knowledge with another non-tech domain expertise would make one valuable.
    • bradlys 4y ago
      > would make one valuable. To who though? A lot of people won’t care if your masters is in education if you’re gonna work in most fintech. I think it pigeonholes you further if you go down this route. If you want that then go for it but I’ve seen many wasted masters and PhDs in Silicon Valley. Many.
      • iamsrp 4y ago
        Maybe an English degree would be a good complimentary one? "To whom..." Sorry. Couldn't resist...
        • nitrogen 4y ago
          Maybe an English degree would be a good complimentary one? Muphry's Law strikes again: compl-e-mentary vs. compl-i-mentary.
          • iamsrp 4y ago
            Haha, very fair! Hoisted by my own leotard...
• gumby 4y ago
  > Even if nobody else noticed or cared about that one line on my resume, I think I would notice, and that would make a difference. Just in terms of self-confidence This is the most important line in the article. Perhaps that’s part of being “mid career” but that’s an excellent level of self awareness and shows that there are multiple upside/benefits. I wish him the best of luck!
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    Thank you!
• petesergeant 4y ago
  Consider Oxford’s MSc in SoftEng: http://softeng.ox.ac.uk http://softeng.ox.ac.uk
  • oxml 4y ago
    +1 to this. Good program. Great faculty. Department does well in rankings.
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    Thanks! I was looking for a program at Oxford. USN&WR has it at #11 worldwide for CS. The SE program at Oxford doesn't seem to be available for 100% remote study, though. Am I missing something? I love this informal, friendly Web site, and I might be looking in the wrong places.
    • oxml 4y ago
      It's primarily an in-person program, delivered in one-week intensives. However, they went 100% remote for during the pandemic and apparently they are considering a hybrid option in the future.
    • petesergeant 4y ago
      I can’t speak to what the current sitch is, but when I was there you had to be onsite for 11 weeks over four-five years. Quite a few Americans would fly in for it
      • evanprodromou 4y ago
        11 weeks over 5 years is quite doable.
    • grumpytiger 4y ago
      I’m currently attending it. It was full-remote during pandemic. Now you have a few courses still online but most of them are in person (1 week of lectures per module in Oxford). Not sure how it will be when things settle post-pandemic, but my impression is that it will continue to require in-person classes.
• triyambakam 4y ago
  For the opposite perspective: "The case against CS master’s degrees" [1] [1] https://ozwrites.com/masters/ https://ozwrites.com/masters/
  • nomilk 4y ago
    > In my experience, an MS degree has been one of the strongest indicators of poor technical interview performance. Oouf. Felt that one (and I don't even have a MS degree).
    • calvinmorrison 4y ago
      Maybe stupidly, but with the super segmented world we work in, with massive systems, I'd honestly rather a few certs in whatever enterprise thing we are working with.
    • alanfranz 4y ago
      > In my experience, an MS degree has been one of the strongest indicators of poor technical interview performance. I'll share a comment that I made when I read that article: please note _technical interview performance_. Not job performance. Because a MS may not teach you leetcode-style algorithms as a BS. Spoiler: OMSCS does, with graduate algorithms, which is in fact quite pointless if you're a mid career software engineer, but useful if you're a career switcher.
• markus_zhang 4y ago
  https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/Master/2021-2022/parallel-and-distributed-computer-systems/X_405100 https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/Master/2021-2022/parallel-and-di... This is the ONLY program I'd like to get into because so far it is the only program that I know deals a lot with hardcore malware analysis. There are probably more programs available but I didn't spend much time researching options. Unfortunately this program is NOT online, and I'm not in Europe. ALAS! If anyone knows a similar online program in NA please let me know!
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    Good luck! I saw a few master's programs that had a specialisation or focus on information security, but that might not be hardcore enough for you.
    • markus_zhang 4y ago
      Thanks! There are a lot of security programs but I feel half of them are law programs...
  • anonymousDan 4y ago
    My advice to you - look at the top tier security conferences (CCS, IEEE S&P, USENIX Security and maybe NDSS). Find malware analysis papers that interest you. Look what universities the authors come from and see if they offer an online program. The university you link to above are research leaders in this area (H. Bos & C. Giuffrida), and in general this will usually be reflected in the quality of teaching available for a particular topic in a given institution.
    • markus_zhang 4y ago
      Thanks man, that's a very good thought! I'll check the conferences.
  • shazzdeeds 4y ago
    Georgia Tech online masters looks like it does. I found this in the article author’s links when he breaks down the schools. Id really like to take this class too so it stood out to me. https://omscs.gatech.edu/cs-6747-advanced-malware-analysis https://omscs.gatech.edu/cs-6747-advanced-malware-analysis
• stblack 4y ago
  OP may already possess a master's degree, school-of-life alumnus. But I "get" it. I've thought of doing this too. I would add one criteria: I get to do the whole master's degree using Rust. I'm sure this would narrow the field of schools. I want a master's from a school that recognizes that it's effectively over for C++ and Java. At least it's completely over in my own mind. There's no way in hell I'm doing a master's degree where the school's obsolete syllabus dictates those legacy languages. This stipulation might garner considerable traction. This quirky old guy, with more industry experience than anyone on faculty, will run advance reconnaissance for us, which is something he's been doing much longer than our typical master's students have been alive. Because let's be honest guys: it's all about Rust going forward. If you feel otherwise I respect that view, but you haven't seen the shit I've seen. I'd do a Rust-centric master's degree in a heartbeat, and I'm sure I'd love every minute of it.
  • nomilk 4y ago
    > There's no way in hell I'm doing a masters degree where the school's obsolete syllabus dictates those legacy languages This applies not only to languages, but techniques, systems knowledge, documentation - everything about it really. Part of the problem with selecting a degree on the basis of modernity is each course in the degree can be vastly different - some are up to date, others are 10 years out of date. There's also a slight risk in doing a course in its first year, because the bugs haven't been ironed out.
  • thematrixturtle 4y ago
    I think you're looking at this from the wrong angle. A MSc is not supposed to teach you programming languages, because whatever you learn now will in any case be obsolete in 10 years. It's supposed to teach you fundamentals and how to think, which is timeless. One of the most famous introductory CS courses in the world, MIT's "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", was for decades taught using a programming language called Scheme, a dialect of Lisp that's wildly different from any mainstream language and is used for basically nothing other than this course. This was partly intentional, since it does a great job of shocking teenage hacker wannabes out of their "I already know language X so I'm hot shit" complacency.
• tinco 4y ago
  I did sort of the opposite of OP, during my masters I stopped just about halfway in because I just couldn't justify the time investment needed to complete the program over gaining experience at the startup I was already heavily involved in. I completed all the "fun" courses, the ones that really taught computer science, but the focus and attention I needed to complete courses like advanced logic and discrete mathematics III I just couldn't combine with a fulltime job. I'm no math wiz, so those courses were really tough for me. I now realize there's other universities that have less maths and more of the fun stuff, but even still say I wanted to jump to another specialization if I had 2 full time years to do it I could spend my time so much more efficiently than at a university.
  • kbenson 4y ago
    What I remember most in general from my undergrad courses is that most the "fun" ones are the ones where I already was interested in the topic to the degree I knew something about it or if I didn't it's obvious I would have learned something if it was brought up at some time. The "not fun" ones on the other hand are the ones I remember the most from because those memories aren't competing with lots of other exposure to those concepts and thus they left a lasting impression that I might not have gotten any other way. Going down the path of "fun" might be easiest and overall more enjoyable, but it also ultimately might be less fulfilling in the end. Your mileage may vary, of course.
• commandlinefan 4y ago
  > The value of a MSCS for me is that I think it would get me more interesting jobs that pay more. Unfortunately no, not really.
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    Maybe not more interesting to you, but possibly more interesting to me!
    • commandlinefan 4y ago
      What I mean is the jobs that you can get with a master's degree you can get just as easily with a bachelor's degree. The advanced degree really doesn't make a difference.
      • adamsmith143 4y ago
        People always say this but I don't think you have experienced the other end in practice. There are countless job postings in the AI/ML/DS space for example that explicitly want people with MS or PhDs and recruiters will happily tell you that straight to your face. Hell I was just passed up for a Director of DS position and they explicitly said it was because I don't have a PhD!
      • evanprodromou 4y ago
        I don't think that's true. I have seen job descriptions for Director or VP that require a master's degree in CS.
• jsiaajdsdaa 4y ago
  Miss me with that credentialism. I look young, talk like a kid, and my team respects me as the lead/architect/business facing engineer.
• skwirl 4y ago
  As someone who has a MS in CS (I did a combined BS/MS program) and who interviews lots of people, I don't think a MS in CS has much value as a credential (if any). If you enjoy taking classes and get a lot out of them, that's primarily where the value will be. It definitely helps a ton to have a undergraduate degree. CS is great, but if you have been working in the industry for a while, most people do not really care what your undergraduate degree was in, either. Is it a cure for imposter syndrome for those who think it's due to not having a CS degree? I don't know. It's a very expensive cure (in time and money) if so.
  • calvinmorrison 4y ago
    No degree at all here. I don't think it prevented me from attaining any job.
  • digisign 4y ago
    You won't even get a reply (from employers where folks want to work), such as Netflix, SpaceX, JPL, most other BigTech without a CS/IT/EE degree. Resume goes straight to /dev/null. Basically anywhere where you have to compete with a lot of people, it is the first filter to cut the stack from 100 to 50.
    • clarle 4y ago
      I’m an engineering manager at Netflix and this isn’t true. I’m really proud of the fact that a lot of colleagues come from so many different backgrounds. I’ve seen data scientists from political science backgrounds, UI engineers who studied literature and philosophy, and I have a CS degree myself, but I’m originally from the bioinformatics space.
      • digisign 4y ago
        Never received a reply from the Hollywood office, over the span of three to five years, despite 20 years of VFX and internet co experience. Others have said the same. Now, networking is a thing of course. Many people get in that way, but for J. Random Applicant reading this, not an option.
• albemuth 4y ago
  Will this cure burnout?
• tclancy 4y ago
  Does anyone have experience with the step down from this? I have zero formal CS education but two decades of experience at pretty much all types of development. I live within spitting distance of my local state university (UNH) and don’t really care about any piece of paper, but I would love to take formal/ hard CS classes, whether for credit or audit. Is there a “right” way of doing this? Does it make any sense?
  • hauget 4y ago
    Why not just go through MIT's open courseware syllabus, or perhaps emailing/contacting a university teacher for guidance?
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • tclancy 4y ago
      Without the rigor/ expectation of formal classes, I always wind up trailing off.
  • majormajor 4y ago
    Looking at the course listing for UNH ( https://ceps.unh.edu/computer-science/program/bs/computer-science https://ceps.unh.edu/computer-science/program/bs/computer-sc... ), I'd suggest auditing (I imagine that's cheaper if you're not looking for a degree?) some of the following: Data Structures and Introduction to Algorithms, Assembly Language Programming and Machine Organization, Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Operating System Fundamentals, Algorithms, Programming Language Concepts and Features, Compiler Design, Systems Programming, Formal Specifications and Verification of Software Systems. Those are the ones that look like more formal CS, and gets you into at least an intro to fun formal/theory stuff like automata, grammars, low-level programming, functional programming. Performance Evaluation of Computer Systems and Mathematical Optimization for Applications also look fun to me, or you may be interested in some of the other electives too like Computer Vision, ML, etc. If that's local, affordable, and easy, I wouldn't worry too much about looking for something "fancier" right off the bat, I think there's a lot to sink your teeth into there. There's a lot of stuff online too on all these topics of course, but if you're like me, that's not the same as taking a live course.
• majormajor 4y ago
  Off topic, but the fact that three schools are tied for #2 and three more tied for #6 in these grad school rankings (and FIVE tied for #11) strikes me as a hilarious commentary on the arbitrariness of these rankings. Like, if you weren't fudging the numbers some, but were trying to come up with real scores, you'd have that many exact ties?
  • caffeine 4y ago
    I think the author did the right thing here: pick an arbitrary cutoff like top 20, and assume that within that bucket they’re all pretty good, without worrying too much about the specific ranking of each school.
  • vikingerik 4y ago
    This is fine. Ties just mean that the scoring has fairly low resolution. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Heck, "close enough to call them tied" may be a better representation of reality than trying to separate them by a third or fourth decimal digit.
• llaolleh 4y ago
  Also did OMSCS. Highly recommend it. The problem with self-learning is that sometimes you convince yourself that you understand something when you really don't. Only when you get smacked by an exam or an assignment you realize that you've been fooling yourself. The ML and Systems track is pretty hardcore. If you survive those you have pretty good foundational knowledge. Fair warning though - the program is not a joke. Georgia Tech always leans towards application. You will spend a lot of time writing code and tinkering, but it's worth it if you want to learn a ton.
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    Thanks, very helpful!
  • kevdev 4y ago
    Current OMSCS student here (4 classes down, 6 to go). I'll second this comment, so far I've been impressed with the program. It's definitely rigorous, but I've already learned a lot.
  • chucksmash 4y ago
    One reservation I have when I read about these MS programs is that they often sound like they will be heavy on group work. I see where that is valuable to prepare people just starting off in their career, but as someone who has been doing "group work" for the past 10 years irl, I'm not really interested in the mock UN version of having a day job. Have your classes been built around group projects, or can you go it alone if you're doing it for kicks? I'd love to spend some time studying CS and end up with something to show for it, but I'm not interested in group-work-as-workplace-prep.
    • llaolleh 4y ago
      The only time I did group work was for the Deep Learning class (2-4 people) and my group members were excellent. Other than that one, no group work for me. The key is to pick classes that are hard, and form groups early. People that reach out earlier usually have their shit together.
    • 4y ago
• hahnchen 4y ago
  is mscs recommended for frosh?
• tenpies 4y ago
  Slightly surprised that Harvard's School of Extension Studies didn't make the cut.
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    So, one of my criteria is a credentialed master's degree at the university, available 100% remote. I don't see a master's degree in CS or software engineering on their site. Also, it seems like the degrees they do give are from "Harvard Extension", which is also something I don't want.
    • Kon-Peki 4y ago
      It's also not 100% remote, as they require at least 1 on-campus class.
    • yCombLinks 4y ago
      Hi Evan, they do have a masters in software engineering through the extension school. I'm currently working on my degree there. It's not 100% remote. I'm very happy with the school though. Anyways, here's the link for the masters program : https://extension.harvard.edu/academics/programs/software-engineering-graduate-program/ https://extension.harvard.edu/academics/programs/software-en...
      • evanprodromou 4y ago
        Wow, thanks! That does look really good. I don't like "Extension", but otherwise it seems solid. The price tag sounds like they consider it a valuable commodity.
        • yCombLinks 4y ago
          Yeah, just want to clarify, I'm working on an undergrad. I don't like the extension part either. But no other "brand name" school offers undergrad (mostly) online. My company does help pay for it though. Undergrad is a little cheaper than grad, but not by a lot.
• Diesel555 4y ago
  I got mine through Auburn distance learning. The main appeal to me was that it was the same degree as in-residence. You were just watching the classes online. This was pre-COVID, so many more universities may do this now, but it seemed rare back then. I really enjoyed it. Also, to caveat, This masters was in Software Engineering, which is obviously different than Computer Science (one of my undergrad degrees). I've also seen people mentioning if they were going to get a masters they would do so in a different field. I just finished one in policy. I learned much more in this masters than I expected. I realized there are many games to be played, this article was posted to the top page this week and resonated because of it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31267685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31267685
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    Thanks! I'll look into the program at Auburn.
• autokad 4y ago
  I did my masters of Computer Science at University of Pennsylvania mid career. It was the best career decision I ever made. Prior, no company would give me the time of day - couldn't get a phone screen. My TC prior was 60k, and doubled a few weeks after graduation. Doubled again within a few years. I was going no where, maybe some don't need it, but I did. Was it hard? extremely. a lot of concepts were very old in my memory, but it was also a lot of fun. I enjoyed going to class every day.
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    Thanks for this! It's extremely helpful and motivating. Congratulations on your achievement!
• martin1975 4y ago
  If you're already working as an engr/scientist, the best motivation for a graduate degree would be to contribute something 'new' to the field and/or expand your skills so you get better at the job you're already doing. A grad degree may or may not result in more opportunities or better pay - and if these last two are your motivation, you probably shouldn't get a grad degree in CS. Getting ahead or earning more has very little to do with your IQ and probably a lot more to do with your EQ... I've seen brilliant folk get masters and PhD even in CS, an MBA, even JD... only to end up disenchanted because they start out with the wrong motivation and the outcome doesn't match their expectations. Examining your motivations is not easy and should be done with someone that knows you well, isn't family and can offer objective/'cold' advice. If they fail to dissuade you w/some real life experiences and you are still fired up, then you should probably go for. it. TLDR do not embark on a major undertaking without due process (or self process, as it may be). Trust me, I've 20 years of software engineering exp and an undergrad in CS.
• slotrans 4y ago
  No way this guy earns his money back. There is no salary premium for a CS master's. Employers that want to see one are places you don't want to work. I mean, if you want to do it just for fun, knock yourself out. Just don't delude yourself about what you hope to accomplish.
  • digisign 4y ago
    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.
    • triyambakam 4y ago
      At the last start up I worked at, the director of Engineering had a BA in English.
      • kjs3 4y ago
        One of the best programmers I ever worked with had a BA in Music.
    • blululu 4y ago
      >> 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 at faang companies who had no grad degree. If the person learns some useful new skills that could open doors. The credential might also help open some doors that an obscure college would not. But saying they are likely to make it back in 6 months is a bit of a stretch.
      • digisign 4y ago
• gbronner 4y ago
  I don't think that studying mostly theory is going to convince anyone that you are a good manager. Different if you want to upskill as a programmer
• Sirened 4y ago
  related but unrelated: does anyone have experience going back for a PhD/transitioning into academia after years in industry? I can't find many people who've done it, most of the professors and grad students I've ever spoken to either ended up working at a lab as their "industry" work or just went straight to grad school.
  • plafl 4y ago
    I'm trying to do a PhD part time while working although I don't plan to go to academia, now or in the future. For me it's a way of focusing on some topic related to my work: I'm a machine learning engineer and I'm doing the PhD in AI/optimization. I have spent just a year on it so success is still far away. I know people however that went back to academia but they had some previous experience for example as teaching assistants.
  • j_french 4y ago
    I've drifted in and out of academia since my undergrad (in physics). Started out at hardware design in industry, went back to do PhD in space science, later on ended up working as software engineer in industry, now teach software development at a technical university.
  • runeblaze 4y ago
    It is a complex topic, and imo the people who have done it have high variance in their outcomes. For example some brought their industry perspective back into academic research and did well, and some just feel very ill-adjusted to academic research (I just cannot get over the fact that performance critical code gets written in often buggy Python in my area) and get homesick. I think some parts of CS academia just does not care about the software engineering (robustness, speed, etc.), and these can be tough to adjust to, so it varies by area too. Disclaimer: never been in industry, but knows several people (PhD students, professors) who were in industry once
• justinlloyd 4y ago
  I've gone and gotten a mid-career masters (or five). I went because I needed the self-validation. Terrible impostor syndrome. I carefully evaluted every programme. I spent probably a year or two looking at different programmes, not through analysis paralysis, but because I was looking for programmes that had things that interested me and weren't either simply a shake-down for money or getting lost in proofs and theorems. I do better with project based work that builds up, rather than term papers and exams, which I am terrible at. I know myself, so I picked appopriately. My wife is the complete opposite. My focus for picking a programme is always "show, don't tell" when it comes to "how do I demonstrate my knowledge in this subject." It is what works for me. Pick what works for you. There are a lot of good master's programmes out there, but you really have to do your due diligence and not just rely on some website that screams "100 best online master's degrees!1!" Look in to Open Classrooms, Thomas Edison, Structuralia, and several others just as a starting point. Don't get lost in the rigid academic weeds of North America. There's an entire world out there to explore. It comes down to "are you looking for academic rigor that leads to more academic qualifcations later" or "are you looking for an education that will serve your professional needs." Most programmes are the former, and few are the latter. I spent about $10,000 on my most expensive one. I spent 3K on my cheapest one. There was no difference between them in terms of what I got out of them.
  • triyambakam 4y ago
    That's quite amazing! For Open Classroom s, my impression is that it is more like Coursera or Udacity and not a "real" degree? I also recall the same thing with Structuralia and the Titulo Propio
    • justinlloyd 4y ago
      It depends on the programme you study. Structuralia hands out mostly EQF 7, but backed by a number of Spanish universities that are wholly recognized by the government, and also several British universities. There may be other universities and countries they are working with, but those are the only ones I know of. These are "Master's diplomas", for all intents a Master's degree without thesis, I have a couple of those. OpenClassrooms also does EQF 6 (Bachelor's) and EQF 7 (Master's) diplomas, some of them are backed by Universities in France (Ecole de Management, Central Supelec, and others), and again, may be a degree or may be a diploma - but if it is a degree or diploma backed by a University with a charter, then it is a real qualification. Same goes for Structuralia. You need to check the programme. At the end of the day, if you have an EQF 6 (Baccalaureate) or EQF 7 (Master's), and it is underwritten by a university with a charter, you're golden. It only matters if you need the thesis for going on to a terminal degree (and even then) or want to be in academia. I don't. I'll take the five master's and be happy with it. If you do any of those courses, you're still going to get put through the wringer, it ain't a walk in the park. I'd say the AI one, though easy because I knew the subject pretty well, was the hardest because I really stretched far beyond what I had grown comfortable with. I have studied at nine different European universities/colleges at various levels, one in Asia, and four in the US. I feel I got value out of all the education (except that one MBA with a concentration in HR that I absolutely hated), but I prefer the European system most. Footnote: When my wife mentions my qualifications in conversation, I correct her and say "two master's degrees, three master's diplomas." I still have that conscious bias myself. But every time I check the paperwork and every university I've shown them too for my next educational step, the university has come back with "that'll do nicely. These look good." It's that impostor syndrome kicking in again. And one more thing... Bachelor's and Master's with and without thesis doesn't delineate degree or diploma. It comes down to how the certificate is awarded, not what you had to do to get it. My Master's degree in Computer Science was a "without thesis option." Education above grade-school gets muddy, which is why you need to do research on the subject.
• t43562 4y ago
  The top 3 items on your list seem to be about prestige/status. I imagine you're thinking about buying that. If so then I understand - if you've seen other people getting promoted and wondered about whether it was the extra qualifications. I am not really sure at the moment. I used to think that way and then I got a promotion which was nothing special to anyone except me - to me it was a huge breakthrough. It was not just because of my personal performance but about how extremely useful I was to my boss at the time and because he had another problem to solve which he thought he could put me onto. In other words it was all circumstances that mattered. To be fair, it is also because he is probably the best manager I've had so far (he thinks that hiring people who are nice is more important than anything). Before my mini step-up I had been in companies where either the source of all solutions was always expected to come from outside i.e. we were to be soldiers without initiative or situations where other, better connected people were in the view of the management. There wasn't any chance for the people 2-3 levels above to form any opinions of you and the person directly above you was basically a competitor. I'm not joking that "the smokers," who had to leave the building to get their fix, was the most important clique to belong to at one place because people of all levels mixed there and got to know each other. To get back to your Masters, I think it's a heavy investment for someone whose top concern is advancement/prestige. It feels a bit not right that the things that you want to learn about aren't at the top. It might be that you will do all this work on learning things you're not really that interested in when it could turn out that the real problem is that you're just not working at a place where the conditions are right to show your usefulness and/or you don't have good management above you.
• Kosirich 4y ago
  Has anyone completed an edX master degree program in Computer Science and later got hired because of it? In general I would like to hear positive and negative experiences of doing a CS master online on edX.
• chadcmulligan 4y ago
  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.
  • hamburglar1 4y ago
    Gil Strang got me through Lin alg, stopped going in person after I found his videos. Haven’t heard that name in years.
  • metasyn 4y ago
    Gilbert Strang is fantastic, both his videos and written material
• rebeccaskinner 4y ago
  I'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.
• jrumbut 4y ago
  I 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.
• bdastous 4y ago
  "I don’t have time or energy to study for and take the GRE right now." Good luck with compilers...
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    Fair enough. I had an older model of the GRE in mind, when there were only 1 or 2 in-person test sessions per year, so taking the GRE in spring 2022 would mean I couldn't start classes until fall 2023. It looks like the GRE is now available online, 24/7/365, so I could probably study and take it in the next month or two. There were a cluster of Fall 2022 application deadlines at the beginning of May, but if I decide to apply for Spring 2022, a GRE might be worthwhile to give my application package a boost. Thanks for the note!
• opensrcken 4y ago
  This 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.
• m12k 4y ago
  I 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.
  • hardware2win 4y ago
    That is consistent with my experience Masters is just for degree
  • bjourne 4y ago
    The major hurdle in a Master's degree is the thesis. Spending half a year writing and defending a scientific work requires and trains skills that are usually not acquired in the industry. Master's degrees that do not require a thesis defense are imo not really "master's" degrees since the student has not demonstrated "mastery" over any particular subject.
• TheOrange 4y ago
  Have you looked at the amazing CS50 online courses on Harvard?
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    I hadn't, no. It looks like a great way to get a quick update on undergraduate CS. It doesn't meet my requirement of having a real master's degree from an accredited university without the "extension" or "electronic" qualifier, though. I'm doing the Algorithms specialisation from Stanford on Coursera right now, just to make sure I'm ready to get started on a master's in the fall.
• trhoad 4y ago
  I studied for my MSc in the UK mid-career. I didn't really do it for the potential payrise (there is/was none), I just did it because I enjoy learning about computing and wanted to do something structured so that I stuck with it. It cost me about £10,000 and I paid monthly over the 2 years so it wasn't so bad financially. I think you can take a loan in the UK to cover postgrad stuff, but I didn't bother, I was in the fortunate position that I could afford not to.
  • jack_riminton 4y ago
    Interesting thanks. Did you do an OU course? how did you find the curriculum/pace?
    • trhoad 4y ago
      Birkbeck. Yes, I would recommend it - although as with all these things you get out what you put in.
  • golondon 4y ago
    Which Uni you had the masters from? Would you suggest them?
    • trhoad 4y ago
      See above :)
  • dwhitston 4y ago
    I did the same! It fitted well with a career break I wanted to take, and it's been helpful in rounding out some of the more theoretical parts of my knowledge. I suspect it's viewed positively by some employers for some roles, but mostly not as positively as staying in a job for the two years instead. Not everything has to be viewed purely as a career investment though.
  • yobbo 4y ago
    > I didn't really do it for the potential payrise (there is/was none) In many places it's a matter of employability. Without a degree, you are simply not employable (or promotable) unless you have the right network. Discussing the relevance of the contents of a master's is like discussing the relevance of leetcode. At no point does anyone, either from the university or industry, claim the contents are relevant to the job. It's also why many degrees are effectively interchangeable as long as they are similarly prestigious. I think mid-career degrees can have the effect short-circuiting the elitism.
• advael 4y ago
  I view university education as poor-to-useless vocational training for software engineering as well as most if not all careers that aren't explicitly research-focused, and I say that as someone who's gotten a master's degree in computer science, intended to get a PhD, and for the most part didn't for financial reasons. I really enjoy and respect academia, but it exists to train researchers, and the more advanced a degree you get, the more clearly that's their top priority and competency. A university simply isn't focused on building you job-relevant skills, and while you'll likely learn some incidentally there, there are much more efficient ways to do so. (For software, think code bootcamps, workshops and conferences, hackathons, mentorship from local communities of software engs, or even just autodidacting with internet resources and a fun project you came up with). That said, you can definitely leverage a master's program to get some in-depth specialization, build confidence as a researcher (Which some software orgs do like to hire), and sometimes the credential really will work in your favor. As long as that's true, it could end up worth it in terms of career advancement, but it could just as easily not at all. Personally, I think it's worth it anyway, but that's only because I intrinsically value educating myself, and find myself often wanting to move in a research-focused direction.
  • galcerte 4y ago
    I'm currently in a master's degree in data science and I haven't really felt like what you said was happening; we were taught just the right amount of theory (how things like backpropagation, PCA, statistics, optimization work) but more advanced techniques were described only briefly, just so we could understand how to use them in our assignments, which makes sense given the little time there is. There was much emphasis on making use of a wide variety of techniques in practical scenarios.
    • Big0_nlogn 4y ago
      I would argue a data science degree is less a Computer Science degree and more Mathematics degree. Programming is simply a tool. The real meat of it is the maths.
    • mywittyname 4y ago
      I think a big difference here is program scope. A data science program is directly applicable to data science career because the scope of the program is very narrow. Whereas a computer science program is going to cover a good bit of material that is not directly applicable to a software engineering career.
• lvl102 4y ago
  Instead, it might be better building something like an OS from scratch. I think that would encompass nearly everything valuable you can learn from a Master’s.
• fm2606 4y ago
  I obtained a MS in CS online from DePaul and I really enjoyed it. I got it as a backup plan as I wasn't working as a programmer at the time (but I am now a FT programmer). To be honest the course work felt like a glorified BS degree but it served its intended purpose. Honestly I would love to get another MS in data science and/or statistics. I could go the self-learn way but I need the structure and accountability that is required to obtain a degree. Otherwise I get side tracked in my self-learning path ... SQUIRREL!
• xaxaxb 4y ago
  I know I'm gonna get downs for this but they could've just written that they want the degree for free, without doing anything that is required for a proper Master's. All in all, it looks like the author wants convenience and the cake too.
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    I'm very interested in filling in gaps in my CS self-education. But, yes, I do like convenience and cake.
• siva7 4y ago
  Getting a MSc mid-career usually won't make any significant difference in your pay as a software developer. I've hired lots of developers and the degree didn't make any difference mid-career for the offer but your professional experience. For some niche jobs it might make a difference but for most jobs it won't.
• wejick 4y ago
  I took a look at the UT and university of Illinois page, they are full online programs using edX and coursera. I would like to know How are a program like this valued by industry / society? Whether it's valued or just skipped by many since it's "not real/online" master degree. Full online courses like this interesting for me who's based on the other part of the world.
• evanprodromou 4y ago
  I added a note about pay, but I'll say it here too: NACE did a survey in 2021 that showed a 46.9% starting salary differential for holders of a master's in CS over those with a bachelor's. If you've got some data to the contrary, please feel free to share it.
• sswezey 4y ago
  As someone currently mid-career in UT Austin’s part time MS in Software Engineering program, avoid this program. I got my undergrad from Georgia Tech 10 years ago, and Georgia Tech is better in every regard. UT has this nice list online that they never truly offer - you have at most 3 courses to pick from each semester. And to finish in 2 years you have to take the summer course, which there is one class and no options to pick from. Last summer I took algorithms… probably one of the first CS courses you ever take. I have to take whatever classes are offered every semester to actually finish in 2 years. The program is disorganized, with you not knowing what classes offered are till a month before registration. And the program scheduling is awful. It’s a Friday and Saturday once a month. It has consistently been on every 3-day weekend. The program does nothing to accommodate full-time workers despite its description. The courses are re-packaged regular MS courses, complete with all the homework and office hours in the middle of the work day. Sometimes you’ll have projects that are awkwardly due, due to requiring information from lectures once a month. And you will spend time doing tedious projects - most of them are not well-designed to reinforce the course material and end up being busy work. All in all, it’s not worth it. It has marginal value a few years out if you don’t have a CS undergrad, but it’s value drops quickly with every year of experience.
  • gbpz 4y ago
    Also a UT Option III student, same as you. I too regret doing the program. It just feels like such a hassle and to your point it is extremely disorganized. I will say certain instructors like Vijay Garg make the program feel worth it. You learn new material, read research papers, and have implementations around research papers. His courses were the reason I stuck around. I took his advanced algorithms and distributed systems courses which were great.
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    Thanks! UT is one of the schools I applied to, so this is kind of a disappointment. Do you notice it getting better, worse, or staying about the same?
    • sswezey 4y ago
• mkoubaa 4y ago
  Masters degree programs are in part designed to subsidize undergraduate degrees, where (bewilderingly) many universities operate at a loss
• throwaway6734 4y ago
  I went back for a mid career masters and it was a great choice. It allowed me to reenter the "fresh grad" hiring pipeline and allowed me to get a job at a more prestigious and research focused company than I think I would have been able to get otherwise
• hacym 4y ago
  I graduated in December with my masters from Georgia Tech and I highly recommend it. Great program. To the commenter who said that a masters won’t help you and is only for entry level positions… that’s simply not true. Many positions have a masters degree as a prerequisite. Having an education is never not a good idea.
• Blackstrat 4y ago
  I've never viewed degrees as vocational training. They were always something I did for myself. For example, I completed an MS and an MBA while in my 30s. Neither were particularly career enhancing beyond credentialism which seems pervasive here in the US. Hence, the success of the various certification programs, Microsoft, Java, et al., which as a former hiring manager, I didn't find that these certifications necessarily yielded better candidates. Both masters required an immense amount of autodidacticism to round out what was acquired in class. And many of these topics were covered on tests, i.e. if you didn't put in the time on your own, you weren't passing the class. Now that I'm retired, the question I haven't yet wrapped my arms around is whether I want to pursue another degree, e.g., math. No real application, just for fun.
  • BKirkpatrick 4y ago
    As someone with a bsc in math, Do it!
• bdavis__ 4y ago
  Did mine at 50. Two things: #1. The fundamentals are the same, but a lot of things have changed in the past 30 years. The coursework, somewhat, brings you closer to up-to-date. #2. Non-FAANG. Looking to be a director or a tech fellow? No formal education during your career is a bad signal. Of course there are exceptions, but it is expected that you have invested in yourself (MBA also meets this requirement). My personal achievements: #1. Greatly improved my writing skills. #2. Understand deeply and can communicate technical concepts that previously I dealt with on the "gut feel" level. #3. Able to identify ignorance and stupidity in my leadership directly, where previously I lacked enough context to be sure of them being wrong.
• brian_cunnie 4y ago
  My brother, 56, has been pursuing his Master's Degree at Columbia for over a year now, and he won't complete it until he's sixty (he's going part-time because he has a job), and the take-away is that it's a huge time investment, even as a part-time student. Sure, he cut away YouTube and Facebook, but he also had to cut away the gym. It's a sacrifice. The other take-away is that if you don't have the math pre-reqs for a course, and you figure that's okay because you've always been pretty good at math & you'll just power through: don't. Take the pre-reqs first, unless you want to needlessly suffer.
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    Great feedback, thanks!
• karagenit 4y ago
  > Purdue (#20) Ah, you fell for the trap. Notice how the course description you link is hosted on purdueglobal.edu? Purdue Global (formerly Kaplan) is totally unrelated to the main campus. Basically they took a garbage online college and slapped the Purdue name on it. The “real” Purdue of course has an MS in CS program, though AFAIK it’s only full-time and in-person.
  • evanprodromou 4y ago
    Thanks so much! Extremely helpful. I'll update the article.
• ea550ff70a 4y ago
  I'm currently doing one with Arizona State University and so far it has been pretty decent. Would recommend checking it out. It does match most of the requirements you are looking for.
• gofreddygo 4y ago
  > The value of a MSCS for me is that I think it would help get me technical leadership jobs at big companies Its 2022. Been 10 years in the industry. I cannot agree to this. I clearly see Big companies (recruiters, MANGA) selecting experienced resumes based on years of past experience, resume keyword matching, leetcode expertise and salary expectations. 1 year of leetcode + 1 year of AWS positions me better for an offer from Amazon than a Masters degree.
• masterof0 4y ago
  > The value of a MSCS for me is that I think it would help get me technical leadership jobs at big companies At least in the US this is not true. Many people on the leadership at Amazon and Google (at least in my tenure there) didn't have masters or PhDs, what matters most are your professional achievements, actually smaller/medium corporations are the ones that will be impressed with your cert/degree. I have seen managers with no degrees( that started as a self-taught developers and later became managers) managing engineers graduated from MIT/Hardvard/etc. Maybe in Canada things are a bit different in that regard. Not discouraging OP or anything , everyone can spend their money however they see fit. Just pointing out of the myths I see often in legacy media.
• ad8e 4y ago
  Andrew Gelman's blog has a discussion of Columbia cheating on its numbers reported to US News, which had a huge impact on its ranking. I don't know how far it extends to its Master's CS program specifically, but I feel that Columbia's ranking should be discounted entirely. This is quite unfortunate, as it has a distinguished faculty who take no part in this evil. Link: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/04/24/more-news-on-columbia-universitys-apparent-manipulation-of-numbers-that-go-into-its-u-s-news-ranking-spoiler-its-not-good-news/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/04/24/more-news-...
• fma 4y ago
  I have a BS in Computer Engineering and MS in Electrical Engineering (ML specialty) from a top 20 public engineering school in the late 2000s and now have ~15 years in industry. I am currently enrolled at Georgia Tech for OMSCS. I was getting bored at work, my employer would pay for it and I figured why not? I enjoyed my time in real world grad program, OMSCS would be just just as fun. Plus, it's Georgia Tech! I can upgrade my MS from top 20 to top...5? Well...it wasn't as educational or as fun as real world school. Those who claim Discord is a substitute (or even better?) for in person collaboration in an academic environment with like minded peers, uh ok...I am in those Discord channels and...100% disagree. One thing I found out about Georgia Tech's graduate program is that it's more of a measure of grit, not a measurement of your knowledge. Their harder courses aren't necessarily hard material that one can't grasp. It's that the 40 hour projects...it's 10 hours of learning/implementation and 30 hours of a few little nuance issues that add no value to your knowledge base. If you want to see how difficult the material are - many of the courses are on Udacity. Projects won't be listed, but maybe you can find similar ones online. Since my employer pays for education (not just graduate, but if you don't have a BS they'll pay for it too!), I have a lot of colleagues as well as peers in industry who went the Georgia Tech route. It makes sense. Pure online, inexpensive, renown. Everyone I know - and I mean everyone...when they have only a few classes left take the easiest ones to get it over with , i.e. Digital Marketing and whatever is ranked easy on OMSCS Central. If someone is young in their career and wants to upgrade their piece of paper this would be an OK route. If you're older - you likely have an idea of what you want to learn. And if not, well, just watch all the Tech Udacity classes! There are plenty of online resources and communities of top professionals to surround yourself in where your time is spent more effectively. As for me - I found myself taking Digital Marketing for my 5th class...I dropped my 6th class after getting tired of a particular bulls--- project. I will wait and see if I decide if I reenroll in the Fall. I am leaning towards a no. IMHO if you are or want to be a software engineer, plenty of more relevant resources out there to grow your knowledge without wasting your time. If you want to be a hard core computer scientist, do an in person program so you can focus and be surrounded by peers and professors. Tech's OMSCS is ground breaking in that it provides a quality education to everyone. But it is not a quality education for everyone and I wanted to have at least one post here with a contrarian point of view.