Ask HN: I'm 24. Should I leave my job to study a second degree?
Hi, I'm 24 and European, have an unfinished CS bachelor degree (less than 1 year left) and around 3.5 years of work experience--1.5 of which I did on my current well-known company, which has put me in the 11% of people with highest salary in my country so I'm doing good (and expecting a promotion very soon).
Retrospectively, this CS degree has taught me almost nothing. I've been self-learning since 10, and I already knew most of the important stuff about software engineering before even starting my degree, but with a bit of pressure from parents and teachers ended up studying something that was really of no use to me.
I don't think of me as a person with high intellectual abilities, but I do think I can do more interesting things than writing boring code for the next revolutionary product I don't really believe in. Every day I come to Hacker News and see a lot of stuff going on that I'd love to know more about (e.g. compilers, formal languages, machine learning, type theory, modal logic, abstract algebra, physics) but all of these involve a lot of math, which I'm not really versed in.
I've been actively looking for a job because I wanted to see how the job market is right now and after doing some interviews I've started to realize that I'm pretty disposable, lucky to be on my current position and that in some years, tech jobs will be extremely specialized (with generalists like me replaced by underpaid AI-assisted junior developers).
So yes, learning math it's a personal pleasure of mine, but also a valuable tool for jumpstarting a career in AI/ML research. I could probably specialize in AI/ML by doing a Master's degree and some training, but I'd love to do actual research in the future, so I want to have a good foundation in mathematics. Of course, this would require me to finish my current degree and going back to university to do a B.Sc. in Mathematics (after finishing my CS degree, because it's 10x easier to enroll in a degree if you already have one).
Do you think my plan is realistic? Am I being too naïve? Should I just give up, settle on my current job and focus on getting promoted, buy a house and forget about dreams and all that stuff?
Thanks!!