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Comment by skwirl | Hacker News Reader

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.

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There are different kinds of MS degrees. Some take people with no real cs knowledge, and some are stepping stones to a PhD. The latter is a very valuable credential, as it indicates deep technical and theoretical cs knowledge. The interview should be able to elicit this

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.

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.

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.

> Netflix, SpaceX, JPL

Interesting list of examples, I wouldn’t necessarily have grouped these together?

Have you applied for these at some point? I haven’t, but the emphasis seems quite different at each company

Yes, they are close by. JPL app was rejected within 5 minutes. Grapevine tells me they discourage talking to folks with "just a" Bachelor's these days.

No degree at all here. I don't think it prevented me from attaining any job.

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