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Comment by dhawalhs | Hacker News Reader

"Tuition for the Master of Science in Product Management program is charged at a flat rate of $65,000 for the 12-month program. This cost covers tuition only. It does not include university fees, summer electives or other miscellaneous expenses."

Ouch.

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It's very funny that "Get rich quick! Buy my DVD and come to my training course to learn how" scammers are thought of in a negative light but when you are a university and charge more money it becomes noble endeavor.

These universities are accredited so they are hardly a scam.

So was ITT Tech, and we saw just how much their accreditation was worth when somebody actually bothered looking into it.

I think the ROI here is going to be a lot better. It's a masters from one of the most prestigious schools in the country.

Maybe, maybe not. It's not just $65k plus fees and expenses, its also the opportunity cost of having sunk a year into this.

How long would it take to recuperate those losses on a product manager salary?

Perhaps just landing an entry level product manager job would teach you the practical skills you need, and you get paid for doing it instead of the other way around.

100% agree. The key here is that they are targeting people who already have a CS undergrad degree and thus are likely already employed or going to be employed in high-paying jobs with good future prospects. I'm not really seeing the ROI on this.

Well it formalizes the product manager role.. so like an MBA? Here you also get connections across the software industry. You probably learn some skills as well. Longer term it might help push you further up the food chain.

As a resident of a country where education of all levels is basically free, this always sounds so unreal to me. I would never even think about it, how would you make that kind of money back in a reasonable amount of time to be worth it ?

PMs at established tech companies can make $200k+ in salary and usually have extra massive stock options to boot. An Amazon PM averages something like $600k/year if they stick around for 5 years.

you honestly think Pm's at Amazon make 600k a year??????????

Factcheck: Senior Product Managers at Amazon HQ with 4-6 years of experience self report an average salary of $123K and average total comp of $162K.

Even if a single Amazon PM has made $600K in one year, it does a disservice to readers to imply that that's commonplace.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Amazon-Senior-Product-Manag...

This is really not true. PMs with 4-6yrs of experience at Facebook/Google easily make >$300k/yr. Can't imagine Amazon being too behind. $40k in stock after 4-6yrs of PM experience is ludicrous - not sure any bright PM will ever take that.

Ask yourself: even if you disagree with the parent's numbers, do these numbers from Glassdoor make sense to you?

A friend of mine has a younger sister who was offered $120k base salary out of college to work at Google in NYC, and another 30k in RSUs. She's told me this compares favorably with what friends of hers were offered at similar companies on the east and west coasts.

I'm going to avoid a discussion about merit, but suffice it to say that I believe seniors PMs working at Amazon for a few years are far closer to $600k than $100k.

Numbers at Glassdoor are at least based on some kind of aggregate data. You can argue about their methodology, but I would trust it over "that guy on HN who swears his brother's nephew's roommate knows one guy who makes $600K at Google."

Sure, that's fair. I was specifically attacking Glassdoor and how low their numbers are.

well one: seattle companies pay around 10 pct less because of state taxes.

two: I got an offer from Amazon when I graduated and it was very low compared to other companies. Only around 100k whereas other companies offered more than your friend's little sister.

And how many PMs get into one of those companies and make it long enough to receive that kind of compensation ?

People studying in a country where education is free and go to one of the top schools, can still go to the US and do the same, if they so desire.

Average over what time?

Getting grants of AMZN (or GOOG/GOOGL) every year or so for the last ~5 years has worked out pretty well for those of us who have been so fortunate, but if the stock had been flat or moved downward I doubt you'd have many PMs pulling even half of that.

If you're paid heavily in stock you are taking on a bit of risk, and summarizing $200k in salary and $400k in vested stock as "averages something like $600k/year" fails to capture that information.

Here we go with another one of those "Tech workers average $600K in salary" threads again. This time it's product managers instead of senior software engineers.

Thank you to user tedsanders for a reality check.

your daddy or mommy pays for it because they want you to get a job.

Ive been paying my taxes as an employee for 12 years. Did i mention that we have free healthcare too ?

hm? confused what you mean. I'm just saying that a lot of people who do these programs in America come from rich families that can pay for it.

ah got it, i thought you were implying my parents were paying the taxes so i can have free education, which is right to some degree (i didn't downvote you btw)

I'm paid to do my master's degree and it's still expensive. The difference between the job I left and my pay as a student is about $70k/year. Choosing to do my degree has left me roughly $200k poorer than I otherwise would have been.

I doubt it will ever be a net positive financially. It's worth it to me personally, though.

I could easily forsee being able to make $10,000 extra per year with this credential, probably a lot more. After 6.5 years this would've paid for itself financially. Maybe this is one of the reasons US jobs pay more (at least software product focused ones like software engineer, product manager, designer etc) than in European countries.

you aren't factoring in the year of not getting paid as well as living costs. To start, costs outside of tuition probably bring it to 80k. Next, you could have made a good amount of money for that year. (varies how much)

Seems in line with MBA costs.

It's a great deal. Way more cheaper than some fly-by-night coding "academy" which charge 35K$ for 4 months. Also they offer a real degree, from a good US university accepted as a valid qualification by governments & corporations world-wide.

Note: Not affiliated with CMU.

> Way more cheaper than some fly-by-night coding "academy" which charge 35K$ for 4 months

Comparing an overpriced thing to a really overpriced thing doesn't change the fact that they're both overpriced

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