Ask Slashdot: Best Degree For a Late Career Boost?

Qbertino writes "I'm in my early 40s, and after a little more than 10 years of web, scripting and software development as a freelancer and some gigs as a regular, full-time employee, I'm seriously considering giving my IT career a boost by getting a degree. I'm your regular 1980s computer kid and made a career switch to IT during the dot-bomb days. I have quite a bit of programming and project experience, but no degree. I find myself hitting somewhat of a glass ceiling (with maybe a little age discrimination thrown in there). Since I'm in Germany, degrees count for a lot (70% of IT staff have a degree) so getting one seems fitting and a nice addition to my portfolio. However, I'm pondering wether I should go for Computer Science or Business Informatics. I'd like to move into Project Management or Technical Account Management, which causes my dilemma: CS gives me the pro credibility and proves my knowledge with low-level and technical stuff, and I'd be honing my C/C++ and *nix skills. Business Informatics would teach me some bean-counting skills; I'd be doing modelling, ERP with Java or .NET all day. It would give me some BA cred, but I'd lose karma with the T-shirt wearing crew and the decision-makers in that camp. I'm leaning toward Business Informatics because I suspect that's where the money is, but I'm not quite sure wether a classic CS degree wouldn't still be better — even if I'm wearing a suit. Any suggestions?"

Comments

Glass Ceiling @40s

[ohnocitizen]

I'm curious when people find the glass ceiling beginning to show it's face in their respective countries. The age discrimination the poster hints are starts pretty early in the USA, I've seen it start in as early as one's late 20s (though usually it seems to pick up in the early 30s).

Re:Glass Ceiling @40s

[Matheus]

At that young it's not as much age discrimination in the US as it is $$ discrimination. They are saying that because you are older you expect more pay and therefore if we can find someone fresh out of school who can do the same job we'll hire them because we can pay them peanuts.

Honestly, in person, the only people I have run into complaining about age discrimination before showing lots of grey hair haven't put forth the effort to keep their skills fresh and are completely surprised why no one will just hand them a job. Interviewing for a high paying, higher level position when unfortunately they are only qualified for the entry level / junior positions still. This is probably true in all trades to some extent but in the computer field I think more than others if you are not constantly learning new things, adding new capabilities to your repertoire then you are moving in reverse. There are too many people resting on their laurels and I will hire a young kid a couple years out of school long before I'll hire someone who has demonstrably become stagnant.

If anything, for the OP's OQ, reverse age, or at least experience, discrimination helps him. If I'm hiring someone fresh or recently out of school then their schooling will play heavily into whether I bring them into an interview or not. Once someone has 5-10 years of experience under their belt, as he says he has, I rarely even look at that part of the resume as, frankly, it's not relevant anymore.

Re:Glass Ceiling @40s

[Mr Z]

We should set RidiculouslyCleanPC (2637867) and LookAtThatCleanBooth (2637863) up on a date. Maybe they can spend some quality time cleaning each others... erm... PCs.

MBA might be a good choice.

[MaerD]

Wait.. wait.. hear me out. The MBA will give you insight into how those who are MBAs think (and therefore, most of management). Also, your experience will say "I can do IT/CS", while the degree will say "I can do business". Which means you're more likely to be able to make a jump to management if you find your career options topping out on the IT/CS end.

And you'd be following in the footsteps of Alan Cox.

Re:MBA might be a good choice.

[garcia]

Yes an MBA might be a good choice depending on the person. As an IT manager myself, I work(ed) with and supervise a variety of individuals who are very well suited for IT but are not at all suited for management.

Just because you earn an MBA doesn't mean that you will suddenly have the personality or qualities required for IT management.

---

On a related note: I chose to go with an MPA instead of an MBA. Why? Well, I'm personally interested in the public sector but both types of degrees provide a fairly similar background--just with one providing more for the public sector's unique needs.

I still get the HR, finance, etc, etc, etc, but I have the ability to leverage both sides of the fence more easily. If the government changes its focus to move away from "smaller" to "larger" I may have an advantage that MBA degree holders do not.

Re:MBA might be a good choice.

[dontclapthrowmoney]

You will need an undergraduate degree before an MBA

You often don't need an undergraduate degree to do a post-graduate degree like an MBA - I didn't - if you can demonstrate long term, relevant experience. It would depend on the institution where you were doing the MBA, many offer this option.

The "work experience" option exists for a degree like an MBA, because the OP would have worked in a business environment for most of his career. There is an understanding that an undergraduate degree prepares you to a specific level and often work experience can teach the same level of preparedness to complete a post-graduate degree (note, that's your ability to study, not your preparedness to work in a specific job).

There are technology/management post-graduate degrees also, which is what I did, and I do not have an undergraduate degree, and that's never been an issue for me. For the most part it's been having a degree of some kind that gets the "tick" when applying for jobs, again at least in my experience.

You would often need to complete the initial graduate certificate (in my case, that was 4 subjects) with a specific grade point average to be able to continue on to the full degree.

And that was going to be my suggestion to the OP - not to do a full degree initially, look at post-graduate options that he may have access to as a mature-age student. Advantages include, there is an early exit point (graduate certificate, graduate diploma) and they are faster to complete, as there are less (but harder) subjects. In my case my degree was 12 subjects, the undergrad would have been 24... I finished it in 2 years, while working full time.

consider enhancing your portfolio with a PMP certification.

I completely agree - PMP or maybe CAPM if he doesn't have the PM experience to do the PMP straight away - and/or Prince2 (just do the foundations cert if you're short on cash). These are "quick wins" also, doing them is an instant line to add to your resume.

Re:MBA might be a good choice.

[frost22]

Nice of you to recognize that you (and nearly everybody else) is blowing hot steam.

There is no college in Germany. Until very recently, we didn't even have Bachelor degrees at all. There are full universities and "universities of applied science". (Fachhochschulen). The latter are, in theory, not staffed and equipped for research and cater to a lower qualified student tier, but these days everyone and his dog are offering masters programs under the new Bologna rules, and depending on their motivation and other factors they may or may not do research.

I do assume the OP has the necessary requirements for university attendance (Abitur for universities, "Fachhochschulreife" plus relevant experience for universities of applied science).

The MBA market in Germany has become especially intransparent. Here Bologna has really ruined the educational system. Crappy provincial Fachhochschulen compete with first rate universities offering the same title. Moreover, the MBA is NOT part of the "consecutive" system (where a Master require a Bachelor) but are basically given to everyone who completed the course, whatever its requirements were. There are MBAs that can be had after 2 years of distance learning.

If you want a regular masters degree in Business Administration, otoh, you'll get a M.A. in Business administration. Bologna at its finest.

Business Informatics

[gristlebud]

Since you're doing this for the money, and hitting the "glass ceiling", honing your business skills will give you the best chance of moving into a position where you can make significantly more money. You say that you want to go into project management, and having business skills in achieving the trifecta of a successful project (scope, schedule, and budget) will go far. Since you've spent a significant part of your career in deep technical fields, it will also give you a different perspective on what your employer thinks is important. It will also give you a hand-up on your peer competition, because being able to tell when the tech folks are bullshitting the "suits" is extremely valuable.

Re:Any suggestions?

[cyber-vandal]

Age discrimination must be the government's fault since no business would ever discriminate against any particular group of people for fear of going instantly bust due to the magic market fairy [/libertarian]

Seconded.

[khasim]

I'm pretty sure that any limits are really ageism and not related to whether you have a degree or not. It's all about how many hours-per-week they can get out of you for $X per month. The older you are the fewer those hours are.

Even if the hours you do provide are really worth more in terms of productivity because your experience means that you do not go off on unproductive tangents.

But just in case the limit really is the degree .... get the fastest cheapest degree you can. It does NOT matter what the subject is. As long as it is fast and cheap. It is just the first step and at this point you really aren't concerned about making the correct relationships with the other kids in the frats.

THEN start working on an advanced degree in the subject that you really want. Such as computer science. Or whatever.

Is any degree late in life a good decision?

[taxman_10m]

Anything you go for will take time and put you into debt. What are the odds you will make enough money so that the degree pays for itself? It's something I've thought of myself. I'd rather plug along and slowly build or maintain what I have rather than incur a great deal of debt. Maybe a cert here and there, but that's it.

Re:Is any degree late in life a good decision?

[Lurks]

"What are the odds you will make enough money so that the degree pays for itself?"

I'm a little loath to reply to this on the basis that the vast majority of posts from the Slashdot crowd on anything to do with university tend to view education as all about money. I suspect that's a heavy cultural bias from the US... anyway.

As someone who is a 40-something about to finish a degree this year, I have some experience of this but for me, at least, your question loads the dice. I was earning plenty of money doing what I was doing before, I just didn't like it. I'd be happy to earn a living, doing something I love and that is what, in my experience, most mature students are doing back at university.

Granted that might be a little skewed because useless public services like healthcare and universities cost more in the US than anywhere else in the world, and maybe you do feel some pressure to get a career result to pay back the debt. That said, there are cheap or even free ways to get educated if you're willing to move beyond the top-tier universities.

Finally, I'd add this: It's easy to make the decision to go to university to study something based on some sort of future goal. What universally happens is that by the end of the degree, you have a different idea about what that goal is. It's also quite hard to motivate yourself, do well, and even benefit particularly well from a degree if you aren't really interested in the subject.

So my advice is this: do a degree in something you're really interested in and when faced with choices, go for the flexible choices. There is every chance that you'll run into some niche off of something you're interested in which will turn out to be a gold mine. It happened to me. I found a field that blended my previous skills with what I was learning and it's the best thing that ever happened to me.

Long view

[YrWrstNtmr]

Where do you want to be 10-15 years from now? Aim towards that.

Well, hope this helps. . . .

[Salgak1]

. . .my bachelor's dates to 1983. Lot of been-there-done-that IT engineering since then. 2006, got TOLD that if I wanted to advance, I'd need a Masters' and at least one advanced certification. I went and got a Masters' in Management Information Systems online (fairly painless, other than writing 20-30 pages every weekend) and followed it with a CISSP cert and a CEH cert. Income is up 50% since I started the Master's program. Except for a few things, like an introduction to Forensics, and crawling into database theory, it wasn't anything new and/or hard. And most of my fellow students (who were either just out of undergrad, or late 20s) weren't much competition. The few that WERE, I'm still in contact with: their inputs and opinions are as valuable as anything I'd learned in the classes. Mind you. my employer paid for most of it, I had (at max point) about 7K in student loans. But considering the uptick in salary, even doing it ALL on student loans would probably have been somewhere between a good and very-good investment. Your mileage may. of course, vary: I was a security geek BEFORE my Masters', CISSP, and CEH. . . but all three combined opened doors and definitely raised compensation. . . .

No Degree.

[Lumpy]

Stop working for Faceless Corps and switch to a smaller company where you rub elbows with the Owners daily. They are not stupid and do the "only youngsters here" stupidity. They realize the older worker is a pro in the field they have been in for the past 20 years and use them to compete with the morons that have MBA's

I'll never work for another Fortune 500 company again. I prefer having beers at the end of the day with the guys that own the business.

Informatics is more likely to be useful

[billstewart]

The submitter's not in America, he's in Germany, so ranting about US attitudes is off-topic. I don't know much about the German market, but having a BA is pretty commonly useful in business, and if you're thinking about doing project management professionally, here in the US it helps to have some professional certification in that. Also, I don't know how much college you have taken already; whether you're looking for two years or four can make a big difference in your plans.

If you haven't had a good course in algorithms and data structures, you'll benefit from that, and you're going to need math if you don't have that, but you can take those along with the Business Informatics, and if you're thinking about going into management, you're not going to be doing compiler design or operating system development yourself anyway.

Career Boost in 40's

[David_Hart]

I'm in my 40's and just completed a Masters degree in IT Management from Brandeis University, I already had a Bachelors in both Business and Computer Science. The degree spanned two employers, both of which offered employee education reimbursement.

I guess you could say that I am now three degrees above zero... ; - )

A Masters degree is 10 courses and can be completed in 3 to 5 years when going part-time. For most Master's programs, if not all, you first need a Bachelors degree. Some educational institutions will recognize work experience as an equivalent.

It sounds like you have not completed a Bachelors degree. A Bachelors degree takes 120 credit hours or 30 per year over 4 years. It's a lot of work and time which is why most students go full time. Basically, you wouldn't be completed in time for it to help your career.

The first step to get a Masters degree, assuming you are working full time and are not a contractor, is to determine if your employer has an education reimbursement program, what their limits are per year, and what you need to do to apply. If they do, you next need to research the type of Masters degree you want and the schools. Narrow down the schools to your top 5 and begin calling their Admissions department to determine if you can use your work experience and what, if any, additional courses you will need to take. While doing this, talk to your manager and let him/her know that you are interested in advancing your career by taking a Masters degree. Go into how it will prepare you to take on a greater leadership role, in project management and as team lead. Once you have all of the information about the school, put it together in a package with your employer education application and begin the employer approval process. Once approved at work, you then need to apply to the school and get accepted. The rest is just a lot of hard work...

David

Re:Law...

[gpmanrpi]

Yah, about that lawyer thing. I have a degree in CS. IAAL and got my degree from a decent Florida Law School. However, I just started medical school to get out of the legal field. Law is an odd field. There are many states where there are actually too many lawyers. You can make a respectable living as a lawyer, but it won't be doing the "cool" stuff you normally think of. If you are not in the top 10% of your law class, many of those "cool" jobs will not be even an option until you get 2-5 years of experience doing something horribly boring for very little pay. Also coming from an IT field you may undervalue yourself in the work that you do, I know I did. Also, whatever you do, don't do family law. Please I did, and it was what turned me off of the legal profession completely. That is my 2 cents.

Re:Wow!

[Mr Z]

Mr. Plow, that's his name, his name again is Mr. Plow.