1. Become more desirable for US-based employers? If your undergrad is already in CS, doing a CS masters will have negligible effect.
2. Become more desirable for foreign employers? Yes, some countries prefer more highly-educated candidates (eg: they might have a quota for undergrads, and another one for Masters or PhDs).
3. Personal growth? By all means yes, you can take more specialized elective classes during a masters and explore more deeply within your concentration of interest than in undergrad. However, chances are that you won't use 95% of the knowledge you learn unless you are very fortunate to get into a research position rather than just building commodity CRUD apps. That remaining 5% could be the difference between being a 2x engineer and a 1x engineer though. If you are self-disciplined, you can get much of the same experience by taking classes through EdX or Coursera but without the shiny diploma at the end.
4. Networking? Yes, college/university is a great place to make friends (it might get harder to make new friends once you're in the workplace depending on the industry you are in). Although you're probably already getting many of these networking opportunities in undergraduate.
Another option is to go into industry and take night/evening classes through an online masters like Georgia Tech or Stanford Online. There are many problems with this though:
- it might take 2 or 3 years (since you can probably only take about 1 or 2 classes per semester/quarter than the usual courseload of 3 or 4)
- you will miss out on many of the networking opportunities, and not have much of a social life or free time if you are also pursuing a full-time job
I only recommend it if you are in financial need, otherwise just enjoy the extra year in university (in the grand scheme of things, 1 year is not such a long time out of a career spanning 30+ years).
If they are taking out student loans for an extra year or two it will have a negative effect financially. I work with senior engineers without degrees and they are in the same pay band as people with that title, a degree has no effect on salary. In all the discussions about levels at different places, including FAANG, I've never heard of a degree level impacting salary. The outlier there might be for very specialized research PhD types from prestigious universities. Someone can be book smart and excel in an academic environment and not have any practical experience for doing actual work.
In my opinion, anything beyond a Bachelors in CS is only going to help if you're going into academia or research.
I don't see myself doing a PhD, it's too much time to commit to something I'm only marginally interested in. (I haven't read the link yet, but just based on the ToC, it doesn't look like it's going to convince me otherwise!)
Another option is to go into industry and take night/evening classes through an online masters like Georgia Tech or Stanford Online
Comments
It depends on your goals.
1. Become more desirable for US-based employers? If your undergrad is already in CS, doing a CS masters will have negligible effect.
2. Become more desirable for foreign employers? Yes, some countries prefer more highly-educated candidates (eg: they might have a quota for undergrads, and another one for Masters or PhDs).
3. Personal growth? By all means yes, you can take more specialized elective classes during a masters and explore more deeply within your concentration of interest than in undergrad. However, chances are that you won't use 95% of the knowledge you learn unless you are very fortunate to get into a research position rather than just building commodity CRUD apps. That remaining 5% could be the difference between being a 2x engineer and a 1x engineer though. If you are self-disciplined, you can get much of the same experience by taking classes through EdX or Coursera but without the shiny diploma at the end.
4. Networking? Yes, college/university is a great place to make friends (it might get harder to make new friends once you're in the workplace depending on the industry you are in). Although you're probably already getting many of these networking opportunities in undergraduate.
5. Prepare for PhD? If you want to break into a PhD program, do a masters and get to know the upper-division professors very well. But PhD is not for everyone: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5c70typ50be0d9l/pguo-PhD-grind.pdf...
Another option is to go into industry and take night/evening classes through an online masters like Georgia Tech or Stanford Online. There are many problems with this though:
- it might take 2 or 3 years (since you can probably only take about 1 or 2 classes per semester/quarter than the usual courseload of 3 or 4) - you will miss out on many of the networking opportunities, and not have much of a social life or free time if you are also pursuing a full-time job
I only recommend it if you are in financial need, otherwise just enjoy the extra year in university (in the grand scheme of things, 1 year is not such a long time out of a career spanning 30+ years).
If they are taking out student loans for an extra year or two it will have a negative effect financially. I work with senior engineers without degrees and they are in the same pay band as people with that title, a degree has no effect on salary. In all the discussions about levels at different places, including FAANG, I've never heard of a degree level impacting salary. The outlier there might be for very specialized research PhD types from prestigious universities. Someone can be book smart and excel in an academic environment and not have any practical experience for doing actual work.
In my opinion, anything beyond a Bachelors in CS is only going to help if you're going into academia or research.
I don't see myself doing a PhD, it's too much time to commit to something I'm only marginally interested in. (I haven't read the link yet, but just based on the ToC, it doesn't look like it's going to convince me otherwise!)
Have you done this before?