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Comment by adzicg | Hacker News Reader

This is not my experience in the UK (not sure if you consider UK part of Europe, though :).

If anything, it was the opposite, people I worked with would consider anything better than Bachelors in CS on a candidate’s CV (eg MS or PhD) as a signal that they wasted too much time in their life before starting with real work in the industry.

[edited for clarity]

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As a fellow Briton who quit university to become a software developer, I can confirm this. It depends on the field, of course.

> people I worked with would consider anything better than Bachelors in CS on a candidate’s CV (eg MS or PhD) as a signal that they wasted too much time in their life

I'm also in the UK, have an MSc (STEM subject), and FWIW have never come across this attitude.

IME it totally depends on the degree. Master’s in Electrical Engineering? You’ll be respected. Master’s in Anthropology? Yep, people will absolutely think you slacked off too much.

Isn't a computer science degree assumed ? I doubt there's that many people going to alstom with an anthropology degree.

You are correct, and as a experienced hiring manager I’ve seen little evidence that a masters adds anything to the effectiveness of an engineer. The only time it will affect my hiring decision is it a masters in CS but their batchelors was non CS, ans it’s basically a conversion, having said that I have a personal contact who did this and from a good uni, the masters really taught him very little.

That’s useful signaling for both sides though: higher education isn’t relevant to that specific company and the job would probably be too boring to the higher educated applicant (especially a PhD).

I doubt that. Bachelor is not sufficient for a lot of areas in CS, like DB/Distributed System/Machine Leanring, etc.

You can't seriously believe that a degree in CS, let alone a higher degree such as a PhD, is required for any of those things, do you? Unless you're working in theoretical areas of CS, or want to check off the PhD requirement for one of the big tech companies, then that sounds extremely pompous.

Why wouldn't I? For ML, without an advanced degree, you are seriously disadvantaged from the very beginning. That is my first hand experience. For those areas I listed, it is not adequate to contribute much during the bachelor's. To edge towards the frontier, it simply will take more time.

For Machine Learning, provided you're actually working on the core algorithms, sure, a CS degree could help you have the requisite knowledge. But for databases and distributed systems? Domain knowledge would get you much further than what you learn from a CS degree.

Would you like to provide evidence of that

Working in ML in a big firm. Data pointa are about 30. Most candidates pass the resume screen at least have Masters, majority have PhDs. Bachelors are rarely considered, unless EXTREMELY competitive, like good students from Harvard/MIT.

Interesting that your firm only recruits experienced people or do they think that there has been to much grade inflation.

Back in my first job (based on campus at CIT) they did prefer BSC's (with a first from the right uni, I think Harvard might just have made the list) for new recruits with the idea that they would do a masters /phd at the organisation.

I'm a software dev living in London but from Canada and while I completed most of my bachelor's degree, I never finished.

So far no one (not recruiters nor employers) has so much as even asked me about my education. But I guess I have enough experience now that it really doesn't matter.

Also from the UK, with a Master's. I have not found this to be the case. The majority of people at my university (Russell group) doing CS also got a masters.

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