6 ms·

I'll generally rate an MSc lower than BA/BSc. (The exceptions would be if you needed the MSc to meet some visa requirement, or if you had an BSc in some weakly-

I'll generally rate an MSc lower than BA/BSc. (The exceptions would be if you needed the MSc to meet some visa requirement, or if you had an BSc in some weakly-related field beforehand.) From downvoters: I would genuinely love to hear a defense of an MSc per se. What university has their shit together enough to actually accelerate/compress 2-4y of work experience into 1-2y years of academic project, which is what's always the claim? If all you're doing is the courses, those are accessible to 4th year undergraduates in every university I know. To a person, everyone I've interviewed who did an MSc for the coursework had to because they finished their BSc with minimum effort and no one was interested in hiring them. Even worse is when you see 4y BSc, 2y work, 1y MSc.

comfypotato 4y ago
I think an accelerated bs/ms might be another exception you should consider. (This being when a bs student can do another year immediately following to get their ms.) It makes sense on ROI as many companies have HR departments more likely to get you into the interview process, and then it’s often a slightly higher starting role. Also, from a knowledge standpoint, some graduate classes help practical abilities only. A 500-level databases course, for example, isn’t research-oriented. It just teaches more advanced topics that might actually matter in the workplace (an intuitive understanding of how/where to use an index, more complicated examples of projects with database connections, etc.). I fall into the case of your first exception, so I’m not actually sure undergraduate courses don’t teach these things. I’ve had a few 500-level classes that had absolutely no research orientation (“object oriented design and development” is another example of a class where the projects are just super-complicated examples of what you experience in industry). Pursuing an accelerated degree shows that the student wasn’t careless in thinking research was something they wanted to do.
- morelisp 4y ago
  Undergraduates in CS can fill their senior year with 500 level courses easily. Motivated ones also much of their junior year. Why would I take the applicant who did it five over the ones who did it in four? Worrying about the “MSc” label at the end for the same work is just credentialism.
  - comfypotato 4y ago
    Credentialism is bad, yes. It’s important to get over prejudice that less education is worse, yes. Saying that an ms student with the same gpa (adjusted for graduate grade inflation) from the same university as a rule is worse than a bs is ridiculous. You’ve gotten things twisted past overcoming prejudice. It’s great that programming as an industry has lots of room for people who go without education, but your logic is delusional. Of course a 4 year student who accomplished the same as another who took 5 is better, but that doesn’t justify your statement that started this.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    Your confusion in this thread stems from the assumption that there is only actually enough CS to cover 4 years for a good student and 5 for a mediocre bs+ms. This is complete bullshit because the truly motivated undergrad would spend the senior year doing 500s and then the next year doing a bunch more for more breadth. At any of the large CS universities, there are usually 4+ masters tracks you can go down (security, hpc, p/l, HCI, algorithms, etc). Someone who quits with just a BS has no interest in going further theoretically. The absolutely did not cover all of the topics available - let alone get into research.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
I agree with you on the value of a master's, but not about the some of the assumptions you make about the people who get them. The most legitimate use of a MS degree is to move from one field to an adjacent field (eg math to CS). You know the basics, and you just need the advanced coursework in the other field. A lot of people I have seen use a master's as a pure signaling tool, getting a high-profile University on their resume. For example, I have seen a lot of resumes with "BS from Unknown University" and "MS from Stanford/Harvard/MIT." In interviews, these students have not performed nearly as well as students with a BS from Stanford/Harvard/MIT, so I tend to discount the MS if I see this pattern. Another common reason for the MS that I have seen is as an immigration tool. These people are usually pretty smart.
vladtheimpala 4y ago
One does not typically return to undergraduate study after gaining a first BS degree. If you have a BS (or in my case a MS as well) in a not-directly related technical field and wish to study CS, you get a graduate degree. This often requires extensive additional coursework, in my case about 12 additional semester hours. Thanks for ranking people like me lower than someone with less education; I doubt I would enjoy working for you anyway.
- morelisp 4y ago
  I described precisely this case even before my edit and said it was an exception. There are a lot of people coming with 4+1y or 4+2y purely CS/SE. That's who I'm talking about.
  - vladtheimpala 4y ago
    I'd quibble with the meaning of weakly related vs. not directly related, but fair enough.
throwaway675309 4y ago
A masters program is generally going to cover deeper theoretical subjects and will also give you stronger mathematical underpinnings in those areas. If you're just looking for a code monkey to do your e-commerce react website then obviously work experience will always trump academia.
- morelisp 4y ago
  Those aspects of a MSc are easily accessible to any motivated undergraduate as well.
  - robryk 4y ago
    Yes (in the field of CS, in other fields it might vary). That said, for me the most important difference was a thing around expectations: I felt fine to spend all the time I wished on the thing that became my thesis, to the exclusion of everything else, while at the same time not feeling the obligation to do so.
  - bbor 4y ago
    Would you agree that all of the most important aspects of a bachelors in CS are easily accessible to a motivated non-student?
    - Fogest 4y ago
      I'm not the OP, but I find a lot of the time the University program isn't too relevant and it's really the work experience that matters. For example, I used to work in our IT department that handled the CS/Math departments at our University. We are a fairly well regarded school in the computing fields. However when we did co-op hiring of students for roles we had in the department there was one thing that stood out. People who only had programming experience through the school were not good programmers. It was the people who either had past work experience or had their own side projects who actually knew their stuff well. At the end of the day I think CS degrees often go heavy on the theoretical and I find much of the theory is not applicable to the majority of CS/SoftEng jobs out there. I feel like someone who is motivated can gain the skills to be hirable in many software companies out there without going to school. I view things like co-pilot not as a problem. This will hopefully force the professors to make assignments that teach people more complex and work applicable content, rather than having them write generic intro to programming style cookie cutter programs.
beej71 4y ago
I got my MS directly after my BS without looking for work. In my case, your claim is that experience was actually detrimental to my knowledge, somehow erasing part of the value of my BS. Maybe that's why you're getting downvoted. (Not by me, for the record.)
- morelisp 4y ago
  But my options aren't ever "candidate A with BSc" and "candidate A with MSc", it's "candidate A with BSc" and "candidate B with MSc". I don't assign negative value to the MSc per se.
  - beej71 4y ago
    I still don't get it, though. If I'm candidate b with the MS, does candidate a with the BS get preference?
Miraste 4y ago
Graduate degrees aren’t meant to simulate work experience or take more classes, they’re intended for research. If your MSc lists no research and is applying for some sort of boilerplate frontend job, then I understand the hesitation, but normally one would take that experience into a cutting-edge field which focuses on innovation rather than making web apps as fast as possible. In jobs with an element of R&D, university research experience is very useful.`
- nightpool 4y ago
  For most university CS labs, "research experience" comes down to 1) writing code in an overcomplicated way (because it's theoretically cooler) and 2) with no thought to future maintainability (because once the paper's published, the code gets thrown in the garbage). There are a few CS jobs where those skills come in handy! But in most jobs, even jobs doing "R&D", they're bad habits.
- morelisp 4y ago
  I mean that's the theory, and it still seems true for PhD programs. (So I guess I'd include "ABD" as another possible exception if the program also granted an MSc but it feels like this is much less common than it was when I graduated - the many problems of grad school are now better communicated to undergrads.) But for MScs, nah. The more focused coursework is directly accessible to undergraduates, and the projects are often like "port this 20yo tool to a new kernel version" or "build me a DB schema" or a few other things you'll have also done but 3x over in your first year of a real job.
  - robryk 4y ago
    > (...) the projects are often like (...) This seems to suggest that asking a candidate with an MSc about their thesis might be useful
kortilla 4y ago
This just sounds like you’re punishing candidates because you have an inferiority complex. Many master’s holders started out thinking they might have been interested in research and decided industry was a better fit after seeing how the sausage is made. You’re “rule of thumb” punishes undergrads who were inspired to push the boundaries of knowledge in the field.
- morelisp 4y ago
  Cool personal insult - who has the inferiority complex here? Your explanation can be reframed as "many MSc holders did not invest any attention to how the academy works during their BSc years" - why should I prefer them? My rule of thumb punishes such people compared to those with a broader view and better self-knowledge, yes.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    > holders did not invest any attention to how the academy works during their BSc years" - why should I prefer them? More inferiority complex. Some people give a shit about research and want to give it a try to see if they can make it work. There is no way you understand the nuances of how NSF or DoD funding works for your specific areas of research until you spend a lot of time in the weeds of grant proposals and reading reviews. > My rule of thumb punishes such people compared to those with a broader view This is a joke. Most BScs have no clue at all how academia works because they don’t care. They are absolutely not more enlightened to the nuances of career prospects in research in their areas of interest. There are wide gulfs in the funding available depending on sub fields of CS. Research security and you’ll have plenty of money and opportunities at national labs, research arms of corporations, and academia. Go the P/L route and it gets dry pretty quickly. > Cool personal insult - who has the inferiority complex here? If you’re gonna try to insult, at least get it right. It would be a superiority complex if you wanted to view my post through the lens of pushing “how smart” grad students are. Yours is an inferiority complex because you’re taking out your lack of institutional credentials on anyone who has them with some convoluted logic about how people are stupid if they spend extra time in academia.

comfypotato 4y ago

I think an accelerated bs/ms might be another exception you should consider. (This being when a bs student can do another year immediately following to get their ms.) It makes sense on ROI as many companies have HR departments more likely to get you into the interview process, and then it’s often a slightly higher starting role. Also, from a knowledge standpoint, some graduate classes help practical abilities only. A 500-level databases course, for example, isn’t research-oriented. It just teaches more advanced topics that might actually matter in the workplace (an intuitive understanding of how/where to use an index, more complicated examples of projects with database connections, etc.). I fall into the case of your first exception, so I’m not actually sure undergraduate courses don’t teach these things. I’ve had a few 500-level classes that had absolutely no research orientation (“object oriented design and development” is another example of a class where the projects are just super-complicated examples of what you experience in industry). Pursuing an accelerated degree shows that the student wasn’t careless in thinking research was something they wanted to do.

morelisp 4y ago
Undergraduates in CS can fill their senior year with 500 level courses easily. Motivated ones also much of their junior year. Why would I take the applicant who did it five over the ones who did it in four? Worrying about the “MSc” label at the end for the same work is just credentialism.
- comfypotato 4y ago
  Credentialism is bad, yes. It’s important to get over prejudice that less education is worse, yes. Saying that an ms student with the same gpa (adjusted for graduate grade inflation) from the same university as a rule is worse than a bs is ridiculous. You’ve gotten things twisted past overcoming prejudice. It’s great that programming as an industry has lots of room for people who go without education, but your logic is delusional. Of course a 4 year student who accomplished the same as another who took 5 is better, but that doesn’t justify your statement that started this.
- kortilla 4y ago
  Your confusion in this thread stems from the assumption that there is only actually enough CS to cover 4 years for a good student and 5 for a mediocre bs+ms. This is complete bullshit because the truly motivated undergrad would spend the senior year doing 500s and then the next year doing a bunch more for more breadth. At any of the large CS universities, there are usually 4+ masters tracks you can go down (security, hpc, p/l, HCI, algorithms, etc). Someone who quits with just a BS has no interest in going further theoretically. The absolutely did not cover all of the topics available - let alone get into research.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

I agree with you on the value of a master's, but not about the some of the assumptions you make about the people who get them. The most legitimate use of a MS degree is to move from one field to an adjacent field (eg math to CS). You know the basics, and you just need the advanced coursework in the other field. A lot of people I have seen use a master's as a pure signaling tool, getting a high-profile University on their resume. For example, I have seen a lot of resumes with "BS from Unknown University" and "MS from Stanford/Harvard/MIT." In interviews, these students have not performed nearly as well as students with a BS from Stanford/Harvard/MIT, so I tend to discount the MS if I see this pattern. Another common reason for the MS that I have seen is as an immigration tool. These people are usually pretty smart.

vladtheimpala 4y ago

One does not typically return to undergraduate study after gaining a first BS degree. If you have a BS (or in my case a MS as well) in a not-directly related technical field and wish to study CS, you get a graduate degree. This often requires extensive additional coursework, in my case about 12 additional semester hours. Thanks for ranking people like me lower than someone with less education; I doubt I would enjoy working for you anyway.

morelisp 4y ago
I described precisely this case even before my edit and said it was an exception. There are a lot of people coming with 4+1y or 4+2y purely CS/SE. That's who I'm talking about.
- vladtheimpala 4y ago
  I'd quibble with the meaning of weakly related vs. not directly related, but fair enough.

throwaway675309 4y ago

A masters program is generally going to cover deeper theoretical subjects and will also give you stronger mathematical underpinnings in those areas. If you're just looking for a code monkey to do your e-commerce react website then obviously work experience will always trump academia.

morelisp 4y ago
Those aspects of a MSc are easily accessible to any motivated undergraduate as well.
- robryk 4y ago
  Yes (in the field of CS, in other fields it might vary). That said, for me the most important difference was a thing around expectations: I felt fine to spend all the time I wished on the thing that became my thesis, to the exclusion of everything else, while at the same time not feeling the obligation to do so.
- bbor 4y ago
  Would you agree that all of the most important aspects of a bachelors in CS are easily accessible to a motivated non-student?
  - Fogest 4y ago
    I'm not the OP, but I find a lot of the time the University program isn't too relevant and it's really the work experience that matters. For example, I used to work in our IT department that handled the CS/Math departments at our University. We are a fairly well regarded school in the computing fields. However when we did co-op hiring of students for roles we had in the department there was one thing that stood out. People who only had programming experience through the school were not good programmers. It was the people who either had past work experience or had their own side projects who actually knew their stuff well. At the end of the day I think CS degrees often go heavy on the theoretical and I find much of the theory is not applicable to the majority of CS/SoftEng jobs out there. I feel like someone who is motivated can gain the skills to be hirable in many software companies out there without going to school. I view things like co-pilot not as a problem. This will hopefully force the professors to make assignments that teach people more complex and work applicable content, rather than having them write generic intro to programming style cookie cutter programs.

beej71 4y ago

I got my MS directly after my BS without looking for work. In my case, your claim is that experience was actually detrimental to my knowledge, somehow erasing part of the value of my BS. Maybe that's why you're getting downvoted. (Not by me, for the record.)

morelisp 4y ago
But my options aren't ever "candidate A with BSc" and "candidate A with MSc", it's "candidate A with BSc" and "candidate B with MSc". I don't assign negative value to the MSc per se.
- beej71 4y ago
  I still don't get it, though. If I'm candidate b with the MS, does candidate a with the BS get preference?

Miraste 4y ago

Graduate degrees aren’t meant to simulate work experience or take more classes, they’re intended for research. If your MSc lists no research and is applying for some sort of boilerplate frontend job, then I understand the hesitation, but normally one would take that experience into a cutting-edge field which focuses on innovation rather than making web apps as fast as possible. In jobs with an element of R&D, university research experience is very useful.`

nightpool 4y ago
For most university CS labs, "research experience" comes down to 1) writing code in an overcomplicated way (because it's theoretically cooler) and 2) with no thought to future maintainability (because once the paper's published, the code gets thrown in the garbage). There are a few CS jobs where those skills come in handy! But in most jobs, even jobs doing "R&D", they're bad habits.
morelisp 4y ago
I mean that's the theory, and it still seems true for PhD programs. (So I guess I'd include "ABD" as another possible exception if the program also granted an MSc but it feels like this is much less common than it was when I graduated - the many problems of grad school are now better communicated to undergrads.) But for MScs, nah. The more focused coursework is directly accessible to undergraduates, and the projects are often like "port this 20yo tool to a new kernel version" or "build me a DB schema" or a few other things you'll have also done but 3x over in your first year of a real job.
- robryk 4y ago
  > (...) the projects are often like (...) This seems to suggest that asking a candidate with an MSc about their thesis might be useful

kortilla 4y ago

This just sounds like you’re punishing candidates because you have an inferiority complex. Many master’s holders started out thinking they might have been interested in research and decided industry was a better fit after seeing how the sausage is made. You’re “rule of thumb” punishes undergrads who were inspired to push the boundaries of knowledge in the field.

morelisp 4y ago
Cool personal insult - who has the inferiority complex here? Your explanation can be reframed as "many MSc holders did not invest any attention to how the academy works during their BSc years" - why should I prefer them? My rule of thumb punishes such people compared to those with a broader view and better self-knowledge, yes.
- kortilla 4y ago
  > holders did not invest any attention to how the academy works during their BSc years" - why should I prefer them? More inferiority complex. Some people give a shit about research and want to give it a try to see if they can make it work. There is no way you understand the nuances of how NSF or DoD funding works for your specific areas of research until you spend a lot of time in the weeds of grant proposals and reading reviews. > My rule of thumb punishes such people compared to those with a broader view This is a joke. Most BScs have no clue at all how academia works because they don’t care. They are absolutely not more enlightened to the nuances of career prospects in research in their areas of interest. There are wide gulfs in the funding available depending on sub fields of CS. Research security and you’ll have plenty of money and opportunities at national labs, research arms of corporations, and academia. Go the P/L route and it gets dry pretty quickly. > Cool personal insult - who has the inferiority complex here? If you’re gonna try to insult, at least get it right. It would be a superiority complex if you wanted to view my post through the lens of pushing “how smart” grad students are. Yours is an inferiority complex because you’re taking out your lack of institutional credentials on anyone who has them with some convoluted logic about how people are stupid if they spend extra time in academia.