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Ask Slashdot: Worth Going For a Graduate Degree In the Middle of Your Career?
spiffmastercow writes "After nearly a decade of professional software development, my desire to work on something more interesting than business applications has pushed me toward looking into going back to school. I'd like to go into a graduate program for Computer Science, but I need to weigh my options very carefully. Is a Ph.D. a near-guarantee of a spot in a skunkworks type of job (Microsoft Research and the like)? Is a M.S. just as good for this? How does the 'letter of recommendation' requirement work if you haven't kept in touch with your professors?"
If that comes in the form of a graduate degree, so be it.
As long as you keep learning
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A PhD opens a lot of doors to jobs that are not available to people without doctorate degrees. At many companies, a PhD is very useful if you want to be on a management track. Of course nothing is guaranteed, but a PhD has definite benefits. A MS degree is similar, but does not open as many doors compared to a PhD. Whether or not those benefits end up being worthwhile it is not possible to say. If you job allows you, take one graduate level course a quarter/semester for a year and see what you think. This is the best way to tell if graduate school is for you. When I took my first graduate level class, I could tell within the first week that this level of education would be highly beneficial for me. It is a night and day difference from undergrad classes. Many schools give you 5-7 years to complete a MS. If you end up liking the graduate courses and see worth in them, enroll in an MS program. Within 3-4 years of part time enrollment, you'll have a MS degree and a good chunk of additional education.
As others have said, keep learning. But structured learning with validated recognition of that learning is a good bet. Work on an advanced degree from a decent school. It's more likely to benefit you than a bunch of ad-hoc classes from various websites.
So letters of recommendation don't usually mean a whole lot for a senior student. If technically competent people have given you good recommendations that's fine, but usually you find a supervisor first, then apply.
A PhD in comp sci isn't a guarantee to anything, it's usually not worth it financially (an MSc usually is), and spending 4 years, or more, of your life on 20k a year with the theoretical payout at the end of it is a bad plan. Academia is usually based on years since you completed your PhD, so even though you could talk your way into some credit as a programmer (a programmer is not a scientist by the way), so that's more likely to be more harm than good. Research is usually very front loaded in a career, you produce the good stuff before you're 40, you supervise other people doing good stuff until you're 50, and then you teach and sit on committees and supervise people who may or may not do good stuff. If you're jumping into that process late you have to realize you're going to be treated like you're supposed to be 20 years younger than you are, and well, it's just not easily workable.
In terms of industry an MSc is worth it, a PhD isn't. An MSc shows you have a bit of a step up as a self starter, a bit more advanced knowledge and interest in a specialized area and you can do something interesting that isn't necessarily financially driven which still sounds cool. (My MSc was on GPU ray tracing, which, when I did it, wasn't going anywhere fast but everyone I applied for work with knew what those things were and immediately had a connect as to something 'interesting'). But for a PhD it's not usually worth it, industry experience is more valuable (and lucrative) unless you really need a PhD for a particular job you want, which would only be in academia, it's not worth. Again, keep in mind, a PhD is definitely science, you can get by as a programmer in a BSc and an MSc but if all you are is a programmer you're going to get your arse handed to you when someone asks you to develop a novel model of a problem or a novel solution and they don't really care what language you implement it in, if at all. Where I am we have a couple of PhD's in comp sci who I don't think ever write code, ever, but they're extremely well respected because they do theory of computation and fairly sophisticated mathematics development (which their grad students might implement).
As someone else said, there's no harm in doing a masters, and it's usually upside, so it's worth doing if you're interested, and the requirements are pretty lax to get in. Don't do a coursework masters, do a thesis masters though, coursework masters is like an undergrad with more advanced topics, so you're not getting anything, those are basically there to pad 'years of experience' for foreign students looking to move to your country. A masters you can reasonably accomplish at least part of it part time and keep your job (and income) too. Here the course requirements are 4 courses total, so one or two a term for a year or two, and then a thesis after (which is basically writing a 150 page book on some topic, and having an interesting idea you can demonstrate an example of).
A PhD though... ugh. It's a lot of risk, if you're a stellar programmer already it won't make you better and you're better to just keep making money. It lets you solve more novel problems, but those can be bad precisely because they're novel, which makes them hard to solve if not unsolvable. There's no guarantee for a decent gig at the end of it either, and you might end up stuck in a job that is the same as someone with an MSc, so you've wasted 4 years or more of good earning power on it.
PhDs don't get you jobs. I can point you to plenty of PhD students that have come from the university where I work that had trouble finding work. Now to be fair, most deserved it, they weren't very good, just hoop jumpers who kept jumping through enough hoops until they got their degree (it isn't supposed to work that way, but it does).
Get a PhD if you want to do research. Basically if getting a PhD sounds like something you are interested in, then sure, go for it. Education for your own sake is never a bad thing, so long as you can afford it. However don't look at it is a "better job-getter" particularly if you already have work experience since that is what employers tend to weigh most heavily.
The only jobs you get a PhD for are jobs that require it. There are a few, mostly in academia but a few out of it. However other than that, no it doesn't help you get work to a significant degree and can even be a harm in some cases because employers will reason you'll be too expensive for them or too bored with the job and leave.
Goes double if you aren't that interested and are just going to "hoop jump" it like some of our grad students.