Ask HN: Does a supervisor/university matter for a Masters in CS

4 points by solo754 11 years ago | 6 comments

So I am in a bit of a peculiar situation and thought I might ask. A few years back, I made a career change to get into CS and ended up doing a diploma. While on the diploma I got a full-time job as a coder. Now, I don't want to quit my job and I'd like to do a Master's degree (towards ML\NLP). I have a supervisor but he is not very well known in the field. Neither is the university. However he is willing to accept me as a part-time student for a thesis project. Is this a good approach or should I consider other options (such as doing course-based masters) ?

dirtflinger 11 years ago |

A CS degree doesn't fully train you to be a coder, and coder training doesn't prep you for an advanced CS degree. The Java/C++/Python they taught in my undergrad CS courses, along with the homework assignments that took 30+ hours to do, are only about 30% of the level of stuff you'll be expected to do in a high-paying job. Most of the stuff I learned was on my own...I had expected a college CS curriculum (an Ivy nonetheless) to touch on the stuff I had self-learned but they never did.

Funny story for what it's worth: When I was in undergrad, a few friends and I launched an API service...We needed some extra help...so we put out a part-time programming internship on nearby Craigslist Manhattan (hoping to get some smart college kids since there are many colleges nearby). We actually got a resume and cover letter from our not-so-nice CS T.A. who had graduated with a masters....from a year ago.

Keep your job.

monroepe 11 years ago |

What is your end goal? If it's to be a professor, then maybe it matters a little. But the quality of your work/research matters quite a bit too.

solo754 11 years ago | |

Well, maybe sometime in the distant future. But for now it would be to find a better job.

monroepe 11 years ago | | |

If it's just to find a better job, then I wouldn't worry too much about the prestige factor. You will get a better job through quality of work and the ability to prove it. The prestige factors plays more into jobs in academics. Don't get me wrong, a degree from a top notch school can make a difference in finding work, but not as much as your ability to code and display your ability.

sukilot 11 years ago |

Supervisor has no meaning. University name matters if it is famous or the same one your prospective hiring manager went to.

hmottestad 11 years ago | |

I can agree to this. We hired someone, and we didn't know the university, looked it up and seemed fine. I got a lot of job offers myself a couple of years ago from simply applying to jobs in the same city as I went to uni in. Everyone there knew the uni and knew that it was plenty good enough.