principia1

UT-Austin. I completed my undergrad at UCLA, so their reputations are similar. I'd like to move back home near my family, but Austin is a much better place for startups than LA

"at a regular tech startup, you'd be surprised to find out that beyond the core employees, most people have average or below average experience/education. On a team of a dozen software engineers that I'm a member of, one has an MS, and it isn't in CS"

You mean the technical workers have below average programming skills? I haven't really been applying for jobs at startups because I thought I had to be really good at programming or statistical analysis

"Some places might ask for grad school grades - Google, I'm guessing, they're strange about that sort of thing - but in my experience this is pretty damn rare, especially when the grades are of questionable relevancy. "

It's not so much the possibility of getting low grades that troubles me as the fact that my grades may be EXTREMELY bad (ie, FAILing)

So you think getting an MA as opposed to just dropping out now is very valuable?

I am in Austin. I haven't really looked much into the startups here, but based on the few jobs ads I've seen, they are looking for programmers with alot more programming experiences and skills than I have. That's why I was wondering what position they could possibly want me for. Or, I could just work really hard on improving my programming skills. But am I better off doing that while working for a non-startup or in grad school?