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Comment by slotrans | Hacker News Reader

No way this guy earns his money back. There is no salary premium for a CS master's. Employers that want to see one are places you don't want to work.

I mean, if you want to do it just for fun, knock yourself out. Just don't delude yourself about what you hope to accomplish.

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There was a post on bigtech salary levels recently. Each promotion was equivalent to $100k or more, there were many levels. Hiring into a director position might double it. A degree makes these things substantially more likely. He'll probably have his money back within six months.

At the last start up I worked at, the director of Engineering had a BA in English.

One of the best programmers I ever worked with had a BA in Music.

>> A degree makes these things substantially more likely.

There is a bit of a leap from more likely on a low probability event to probably will pay off their debt. Getting promoted at a Faang company takes a good bit of work. Becoming a director is not something most people can expect. I’ve never heard of a promo committee at a Faang Corp take a degree into consideration and I’ve known plenty of director level people at faang companies who had no grad degree. If the person learns some useful new skills that could open doors. The credential might also help open some doors that an obscure college would not. But saying they are likely to make it back in 6 months is a bit of a stretch.

Budget was under $50k, which you can make in a few months at a tech job. Nice raise will pay for that nicely in no time.

If you don't think a lot of places aren't gatekeeping on degrees, you haven't looked at many.

To be more clear for folks that think it is an absolute filter, of course it is not. I remember about half of hiring pipelines ending on that point last time I was looking. Was 100% of the top companies with too many applicants however.

There are places that gatekeep on degrees as in "you must have a Bachelor's degree" or even "you must have a B.S. in Computer Science", but there are almost none that are gatekeeping on graduate degrees. I've worked at several FAANG-tier corporations, have friends at all of the others, and have interacted with all sorts of smaller companies. I can count on one hand the number of people I've worked with with graduate degrees, and all of them had their base degree in something other than computer science.

Correct for IC jobs. When you want to move up thru the "glass ceiling" to make the real money, guess who they'll pick of two similar candidates? The one with the better degree.

I'm really not convinced. I looked, and examples of my reporting chain at various points in my career:

Company A: Lead (yes, but undergrad in EE), Manager (no), GM (no), VP (?), SVP (no), President (yes), CEO (dropped out of MBA)

Company B: Lead (no), Manager (yes), Director (?), Senior Director (no), Senior Director (yes), VP (no), SVP (MBA), CEO (yes)

The plural of anecdote is not data, and I'm not a director, but a cursory comparison of senior leadership and LinkedIn doesn't leave me convinced that a graduate degree matters. Most of the folks who have one got one back in the 90s where things were very different.

Degrees are more important today than they were in the past, preferably a brand name one. Part of the reason they have been getting more expensive.

https://www.aplu.org/our-work/5-archived-projects/college-co...

This one says 400k+ higher lifetime earnings with "advanced degree". The source from georgetown says they are less likely to loser their job in a recession as well.

No, the real world is not black and white and this is not a guarrantee. But, get an advanced degree looks like an easy power-up at the prices OP was willing to pay.

> If you don't think a lot of places aren't gatekeeping on degrees, you haven't looked at many.

I can only think of aerospace, and other engineering-not-software companies that do this. They also don’t pay sw developers much to begin with, so this looks like a very false economy.

The Georgia Tech online program is ~$7k. That's not a lot of value to recoup, particularly for someone with a Physics degree.

I'm just one data point, but having done an MSCS (in person at UT Arlington) I agree - I have no reason to believe that I wouldn't still be in the same place now if I'd skipped it. I was fortunate that my then-employer paid for it, so it was no cost to me and I'm glad I did it, but I'm pretty sure that every job I've gotten since would have been available to me with just my Bachelor's degree. In fact, this recruiter: https://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in-compu... insists that Master's degree holders are less competent than BS degree holders.

OTOH, UT Arlington is no Stanford, so maybe it's worth it if you can get into one of the top 10 or so programs in the country.

Hold on a second though, I read that certain job levels get skipped if you have a masters or a phd for some companies when hiring. For where the field of study matches the company wouldn't that be quite valuable? Also cost of a masters where I live (Canada) is a lot less than America, but maybe comparable to Europe?

> I read that certain job levels get skipped if you have a masters or a phd for some companies when hiring

That only applies for very early career. You get to skip one to two of the most junior levels in the company. By mid career, there is no skipping anymore

Don't the various corporate pure-ish research labs require a masters these days? The ones that may or may not work on things that turned into products? Or do the need a PhD ?

I can see a lot of people wanting the job of "play with cool toys and don't be responsible for products", especially as a mid-career transition.

Broadly that’s PhD level. At companies actually doing cutting edge it’s ONLY PhD… especially given that one of their major outputs is academic papers.

SeparateLy… I find the same line gets used both for and against this degree: “the Masters is the new Bachelors”

FOR: to say the Masters is now the expected baseline — you need it like you used to need a Bachelors.

AGAINST: to say it’s already been watered down and/or too much quality variance - that it gives about as much signal as a Bachelors.

Hmmm.. Here I am with no degree at all. I wonder how I'll manage in the future

NACE showed a 46.9% salary premium for a CS master's over a bachelor's.

Also, after a career in startups, I am looking for work in bigger, more conservative organisations. So those are the places I want to work.

Hey Evan, I know for a fact that big tech companies like Google or Meta will hire you without a CS master's degree. If it weren't for a hiring freeze at Meta right now I'd give you a referral. There's no reason for you to expend time and money on a useless credential unless you really really just want to learn the material.

>There is no salary premium for a CS master's

Not true at all. Most FAANG companies factor in your MS in you compensation (especially if you are moving from one to another)

No, they don't. Plenty of data points in levels.fyi and anecdotal experience, if you are at Amazon or Google I can point you where to look(internal).

Yup, is usually, Whatever Insurance Co. that ask you to have degrees, to not have gaps in your resume, etc... Pretty ridiculous.

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