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Comment by wly_cdgr | Hacker News Reader

Go get your MS/PhD. By the time you finish, the market will be stronger, and so will your resume

The Georgia Tech online MS is good and about $7k total. You can pay for it working at Starbucks

I have never once in my career seen someone with an MS get hired over someone with a BS because they had a MS. If you're doing it purely for return-on-investment, it's a massive waste of time and money.

You may be underestimating the number of job descriptions which demand a masters degree to even be considered. This is especially the case for data science roles for tech/fin/blue chip. From experience OMSCS is perfect for this.

That's a small number of jobs and they are in niche areas.

Also, the degree requirements on job descriptions are usually flexible. If you are qualified, apply anyway.

As a counter example: I've seen that plenty of times. PhDs too.

I've seen hundreds of job descriptions for a wide range of interesting roles (data science, ML, systems, computer graphics, AI research, CV, etc) that list an MS or PhD as a requirement

But even if that bullet point is BS, I am sceptical that the ROI on spending $7k to get 1000+ hours better at your field can be THAT bad. Maybe suboptimal, with all the good free/cheap resources out there, but a waste of time? I'd be surprised.

Besides, you get to avoid meetings for a couple more years, and that by itself might be worth $7k :)

For many software engineers, taking time off work to get a Master's degree would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost earnings. That's a much bigger deal than the cost of tuition.

I've worked for a place that would only hire MS or PhD grads.

>I've worked for a place that would only hire MS or PhD grads.

Specialized regions aside, how bad was their code?

Haha not great, issue was the PhDs automatically were hired at Senior Software Engineer or higher, and then they couldn't write a concrete list of expectations of the role, because so many PhDs had no experience.

What can be said - is that recessions and hiring stops send people back to schools, and you suddenly have a lot of people with Masters degrees applying for the same jobs.

Tech could very well be immune against credential inflation like that (because of the growth) - but others are not. There are industries where you don't even get interviews unless you hold a graduate degree - precisely because there are too many applicants with graduate degrees. Maybe more relevant to the niche positions within tech (data science, for example)

Getting a PhD for this reason is an absolutely terrible idea. A PhD is an apprenticeship to be a university professor. It's only sometimes, incidentally, helpful for the would-be engineer, and it's very rarely more lucrative than staying in the job market. And, it's generally absolute hell for a few years. Most people don't make it through.

If the OP had any business doing an PhD he would already know it---he would either have a burning desire to become a professor, or he would have a burning desire to do intellectual research. In the latter case, a modern PhD will probably still be a huge disappointment.

There are tons and tons of pieces online arguing exactly this; I would encourage anyone considering a PhD to seek them out and consider their observations carefully.

This comment is pretty US centric, but also applies to some extent to other countries.

For the Georgia Tech online MS, what does the process look like? If you wanted to, could you accelerate the timeline (instead of 2-3 years part time)? That is, take multiple classes at once? Are the lectures prerecorded and you only need to complete the required coursework and lectures or are you required to pace at the same time as a traditional degree?

Don't know the current answers to all your questions, but re: courseload: you can take 6 credits max in the fall and spring and 3 credits max in the summer. You need 30+ credits to graduate, so the quickest you can finish is 2 years (but this should be quite doable from a workload POV if you're not working full-time)

I don't know for sure about OMSCS, but in OMSA you can ask the advisors to let you take more than 6 credits and they'll usually approve it. There are a fair amount of people who try to finish it in 3 semesters, although that seems a little crazy to me. It probably depends on your course selection, but I would struggle to take more than 3 classes (9 credits) at once (without working), and I would definitely have a shallower understanding of the material.

I don't think the market will be stronger in a year. There is also an opportunity cost to studying over getting on the career ladder - more years of work experience entails a higher salary.

> the market will be stronger

what makes you think so?

People anticipate the drop to hit hardest in 6 months, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as everyone cancels hiring immediately to see how the market will end up.

I don't think companies are stopping because they're out of money. They're just slamming the brakes because something strange and unexpected happened.

No deep expertise, just looking at the last few decades and eyeballing the odds

> You can pay for it working at Starbucks

Ah, so housing included in tuition huh? :D (/s)

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