My motivations:
- Canadians need a bachelor’s degree to work in the USA.
- Graduate programs typically require a bachelor’s degree.
- Canadians need a bachelor’s degree to work in the USA.
- Graduate programs typically require a bachelor’s degree.
Will I get left behind in the industry among a sea of Master's and Phds?
Some places, like Google, and to a lesser extent, Apple, Microsoft, and a few others, still really require you have to a degree (bachelors or otherwise), at least when hiring from the outside.
Other places, like Meta, often default to experience or degree, but not per se requiring both. There are of course exceptions at all of these places, however it seems to hold true in aggregate.
It won't hurt you, thats for sure, and if (when?) the job market tightens, those with degrees often get preferred to those without. That was my experience in the last down turn anyway
Though I wouldn't say it's true it won't hurt me - the debt is certainly harmful.
In my experience doors closed on me because I didn't hit that "checkmark". In fact I remember interviewing at a company (who's name I don't 100% remember, I interviewed a lot in the 2010s and I don't want to call out a company by mistake) and they somehow missed that I didn't have my degree yet and halted the entire interview process after the 2nd round because HR couldn't justify deviating from their norms. I also was told by many recruiters at that time that it was the only barrier to me getting into their hiring pipelines. I eventually caught a break and wound up at Apple, but its because I didn't get hired through traditional means (right place, right time).
This has changed as the labor pool tightened, and by 2020 I wasn't in the same position anymore regardless, but those first two situations have always stuck in my mind about how hard it is to get hired when automated systems gate keep things. I since learned alot about how to work around them (without directly hurting your prospects) and through experience know alot more about networking (though I'm no expert), so I'm a little better insulated, but it was much harder for me than it was for my peers who all got their CS degrees early in their careers comparatively.
Ironically, through pure grit, luck (can't underestimate luck to be honest) and my own drive I've ended up being very successful, but it took alot more work than it would have otherwise, I think. I believe truly I would have reached this point earlier in my career (I'm a Staff Engineer now at a mid sized startup in Silicon Valley) and been better off for it.