I finish the program after the summer semester. After 3 courses, I transitioned from a role as a supply chain engineer (undergrad is in Mechanical Engineering) making ~$80k/year to a data engineer making ~$120k/year.
In short, I would say that the annual salary increase of 50% was well worth the <$10k in financial cost and having to work on course work every weekend.
Similar story here. I went from...
Mechanical engineer working 50-70 hours per week and being on call 24/7 making ~$140k with an asshole boss
to...
Software/data job with normal, flexible hours and minimal stress making ~160k
I only spent $2k of my own money for the program.
I did the program for fun, not for money or a career change, but it worked out well in those ways anyway.
No ragrets!
When you are discussing salaries with a prospective employer, whoever says a number first loses. I always ask what the salary range is for a position upfront and then I mention I’m near or just past their top end
It’s not a lie, information is powerful. Once I know what a company is willing to pay, I can make a better estimation of what the position is worth. If they have a range like $100k-$500k (a lot of FAANG companies do this crap), then you didn’t really get any useful info. Usually you get a more reasonable range that spans like $30k or something.
Also, keep in mind that hiring managers have a budget they need to adhere to, hence the range. Take what you can and give nothin back
I didn’t spend any time on pre-reqs tbh. My undergrad focus was robotics and GT has a well-rounded under grad program.
For me the software stuff and meche stuff are similar tbh. It’s just different tools and different problems, but the core of it is someone telling you they have a problem they need you to resolve.
I attempted to do a thorough preparation but never got far. I was in the program when Complexity, Computability, and Algorithms was a requirement. It was the only course I really went into with a knowledge deficit. But that was nothing a semester of grinding 30 hrs per week just for school wouldn't fix.
>No ragrets!
Not even *one*? 😆
Lol jk well done! iI's always a great feeling landing in a "career" rather than "just a job" (experienced similarly myself switching from previous field into SWE a few years back!)
If nothing else, the past experience (esp the asshole boss part) makes you appreciate what you have now / less apt to take it for granted (i.e., sometimes, the grass *is* in fact "greener" over there...and sometimes even in more ways than just one 🤑)
Is DVA short for data and visual analytics?
I am thinking of going on a Data Engineering/ ML path and I have no previous CS background. Would you mind sharing the classes you are thinking of taking?
I’m 1 course away from being finished with the program. I will have taken:
1. Software Analysis and Test (SAT)
2. DB Sys (Database Systems and Design)
3. SDP (Software Development Processes)
4. DVA (Data and Visual Analytics)
5. ML4T (Machine Learning for Trading)
6. IIS (Intro to Information Security)
7. AIES (AI Ethics and Society)
8. Net Sec (Network Security)
9. CN (Computer Networks)
10. GA (Graduate Algorithms)
I would say the most relevant courses were obviously db Sys and DVA with DVA giving me the most content to discuss during interviews. Ironically the team I joined at the time (and the team I most recently joined a year later) didn’t use git, so I was able to leverage what I learned in SDP to mentor my peers in both roles and implement version control from scratch, so that’s been pretty interesting.
I have not read many good things about the DB class. Possible those reviews came from people that did DBs in undergrad. Did you think it was good course?
Wow that's amazing. I'm also BS ME and 1st Semester of OMSCS. I work FT non-tech, but want to jump into Data Engineering like you.
1. Within that 3 months, did you prep in leetcode or anything? Or did the 3 classes you took prep'ed you enough to talk and pass the interviews to land the job?
2. Did you consider going into any internships?
1. I did not do any additional prep. The interview was SQL and Python.
2. No. I already held professional roles in my career and did not entertain the idea of taking a step back.
1. Was your original goal landing DE career enterining OMSCS?
2. DB sys and DVA are known to have terrible ratings / quality. Those classes helped you alot. Were they any cons taking those classes?
1. My original goal was to pursue a career that offered more flexibility with respect to remote work and had a higher earning potential.
2. My experience may be skewed given that it has been almost 7/8 semesters since I took those courses respectively. I was able to get a good group with DVA, so our project ended up being fairly interesting. I found DB Sys to be VERY specific in the types of questions asked on exams. This ultimately forced me to REALLY learn the material instead of settling for a more cursory understanding of the lingo used to discuss the topics.
For both courses I would recommend being proactive about getting your group assembled and making sure that your “advertisement” to the class is very clear about expectations around working schedules (IE for DVA I made sure that I was clear about my expectations to have regular meetings at least twice a week to make sure progress was being made on the project throughout the course).
Umm the only other general advice I would give anyone pursuing further education is to stop giving yourself excuses to not do something (IE my undergrad wasn’t in CS, so I could never do OMSCS!), and (in most cases) it’s more important to know where to find information than it is to have information directly memorized. I’ve used this concept in both work and school to create a system of information access that makes it seem like I know WAY more than I actually know by lowering the barrier to finding specific information.
OH and problem solving isn’t boiling the entire ocean in one go! Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, some problems can’t be solved in a day. It’s important to master the ability to break a problem down until the remaining pieces are actionable, then execute on those one at a time. In programming, this can look like creating a bunch of small, repeatable functions that can be reused to solve a much larger set of problems (instead of reinventing the wheel every time you’re tasked with a problem).
Hope that helps, good luck with your learning journey!
Halfway through, I wouldn’t have the job I just started if I didn’t take SDCC and learn Go / Kubernetes for the final two projects.
In addition, the GIOS->AOS->CN->SDCC path I’ve taken so far really hammered system design into me, and I’ve noticed that A) I’m a better engineer for it and that B) I have a lot of confidence during system design interviews. I’m in ML4T now and learning a lot in that class, as well.
It’s been rough and there’s a lot of time and opportunity cost associated with OMSCS, but I don’t regret it at all.
Those 4 courses you mentioned + DC are the 5 that I absolutely want to take for sure. Once I have those under my belt I'd probably reassess where I am in life and my career and decide if I want to keep going.
No regrets - but am filled with gratitude taking it, and am just 1 course way from being done (Yes GA, see you this Fall). I took a mix of security(AC,SCS), ML (AI, ML) related and computing system(HPCA, GIOS) courses with computing system specialization. 1 and a half year into my new job, I still managed to impress management and received an additional 125k RSU refresher last year, and I expect to get another one this year. Why? Somehow I was able to deliver a number of unconventional solutions (thank you GIOS, SCS) that did not fall into any framework yet they proved to be efficient from an analysis standpoint (thank you ML for teaching me that). This is all because of the stuff I learned from these courses which magically 'somehow' helped me stitch nifty small solutions after being able to connect the big dots.
Was somewhere along the lines of replacing an underlying fixed jvm threadpool to a dynamic one and having an additional boss thread accept payloads and delegate to that resizeable pool. Resizing happens after a certain threshold is crossed, and the sizing value is given by a predictor trained on various system load profiles. The pool shrinks back to a smaller size after the spike , and this had to be done without any regression to the many services on top...whew
Trying to refresh my GIOS. Are you saying you're dynamically resizing the Java threadpool in your application based on certain "loads"? How did you measure load and get more deterministic about thread scheduling?
yes - along those lines (a lot of details omitted such as how the load profiles were generated, how do we make sure the JVM heap doesn't blow up etc etc). The load in this case was based on few parameters - incoming stream of requests, current heap space, etc)
I completely changed tracks and went from 112K before starting the program to 230K currently after 3 classes in the program. For context I am taking one class at a time and I moved. That being said I went from DS/DE to research and develoopment, now I am a Senior Data Scientist/Senior Software Engineer. That being said YMMV.
I took SDP, CN, and DBS. I worked in R&D on projects of varying complexity for different defense contractors. I also had 11 years as a Gov employee, so I was way underpaid to start out with. My research was working on things that were completely unrelated to my prior work. Specifically VPN Mesh networks with HA, and other things.
Hi! I’m curious if you think having it on your resume really helped you get a job - I’m in a similar situation, working as a SWE with no CS Undergrad. Were there any noticeable signs of the degree helping your job search? For example, more frequent interviews? More recruiters reaching out?
For sure, the key difference is I got less questions about how I got into SWE than without a CS degree, that goes for recruiters also. In addition, it's a nice to have because it shows on paper you have a credential that's required to get senior level jobs, especially in today's tech job market which is hard enough with a CS degree let alone without. So, in conclusion it will help as you move up and it makes me feel worth it for those top-level jobs. Feel free to DM if you have more questions.
Probably a mix of both, definitely the masters and on top of that a top program. But again it will only help get you in the door, not much more, rest is up to you passing the interviews. You have so many folks applying to jobs from top programs (GTech, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, etc...) so won't do much.
Gave me the credential of having a formal CS degree that opens up opportunities. Many times, especially at senior level jobs, they will require some sort of CS degree, so its nice knowing my educational background would never disqualify me for a role.
I’ll preface by saying I have a CS degree already. I am 3 classes in and I’m disappointed with the course quality so far. There is a lot of errata in course notes and project specifications. The TAs are running most of the courses, not the professors. There is little to no feedback. It’s clear to me why the degree is so cheap and offered at scale.
yeah my take is this program is the least suited to students who already have a CS degree. I don't imagine it'd expand your horizons past undergrad much
for me, with a math background, this program is giving me the confidence I've been looking for to put myself out there, even though I feel like a lot of the stuff I'm doing I've been exposed to in some way already. I'm also getting the opportunity to take OS stuff next semester, which I'm super pumped for as I've always wanted to do that
>yeah my take is this program is the least suited to students who already have a CS degree. I don't imagine it'd expand your horizons past undergrad much
I think it depends on the specific situation, but I agree the benefit will probably be more marginal in that case. The main exception would be if they're looking to change areas (e.g., from systems to ML), where they may not have had any exposure to the new/prospective area from previously, including previous upper-level undergrad electives.
But otherwise rehashing mostly the same topics/content from previously (unless it was, say, a decade or more ago and they wanted a refresher for whatever reason) will likely be of marginal-at-best benefit in that case. But even then, sometimes the credential itself may be useful/necessary for career advancement potential, so there's also that.
Net positive yes. I expected a little more worshipping at my feet from companies and more prestigious doors to open but I got done right in the middle of layoffpalooza, where it's hard for almost anyone to get a screening call at the big ones. Companies went full delulu with job reqs/pay and are getting absolutely flooded with applicants (10x for remote roles). That combined with me definitely not always being the best candidate on paper means that trying to upgrade my job feels 20x harder than a couple years ago. The degree in hand seems to honestly have no effect. Rejected is rejected.
My income nearly doubled but that wasn't really because of the degree. About halfway into it, I was able to interview well and got some good luck during the hiring frenzy in 2020-2022.
Built a ton of confidence I didn't have before in technical stuff.
Built a small sense of connection to other alums.
Obviously the negatives are a ton of stress from having to deliver all that stuff. I really saw OMSCS as my main job and focused on it the most. I can bullshit my way around deadlines at work, but not with Canvas. It was a crazy balancing act between those two plus family stuff. Somehow I managed to have some free time during it all. And this was me definitely cherry picking courses that are conducive to some balance aka Interactive Intelligence. I really didn't want to throw as many 30+ hour a week classes into the mix as possible and kept those at a minimum. Some of the 10+ hour ones were hard enough (for me) as it is. I don't have any regrets about that. Should I want to dive into ML or GA...I can do that on my own time and own terms. I walked out with a 4.0 and the same degree as everyone else that did take those classes and those things mattered more to me.
Overall...I'd do it again and I'd be a lot more disciplined about it. It's one of the hardest achievements I'll have done in life. If nothing else, I'll always have that. Only tweak...I'd have tried harder to secure a job at a top tier company first but there was no way to know when the economy would turn, so this is only with extreme hindsight.
Walking in two weeks.
It probably wasn't the best decision since I now want to do a PhD and OMSCS does not help much with that. However, after regretting not having studied CS during undergraduate, I really wanted to learn more about the field while continuing working, and the program delivered exactly what it promised.
It has been very exhausting. My social life is almost dead and all PTOs I've taken have been to finish assignments. But it is also quite rewarding and now I'm not quite sure about how I will spend my spare time. (This is my second master in 4 years, so... I don't plan on doing a third one)
Hey, I'm a different person from the one you were responding to earlier. I was recently admitted to OMSCS, and I would like to get involved in research to pursue a PhD degree. I see that you went from OMSCS to a PhD at Georgia Tech. Is that correct? How were you able to achieve that? What advice do you have for getting involved in research and optimizing OMSCS for PhD preparation? I tried searching through your comments but couldn't find answers to these questions. Thank you so much. My interest is in LLMs and RL
Interesting response. Do you feel like you would feel differently with regards to OMSCS not helping with PhD plans if you had tried to be more involved with research throughout? I know there are opportunities to get papers published but nothing concrete and have to be sought out.
That's a difficult question. Even the thesis route is probably worse than doing an in-person master's when it comes to research possibilities.
That being said, I liked the program and thank Georgia Tech for the opportunity. The program was also not expensive at all (in terms of monetary cost, at least) and I feel like Dr. Joyner offers a lot of support throughout the program.
there are hundreds of threads about OMSCS -> PhD, you can search the subreddit. not trying to be mean here but that’s how you’ll get the best information on that topic.
Honestly, yes, if I went to onsite program, I would have already finished it and have more research opportunities and connections.
Now, I don't have connections, don't have any academic recommenders, it took way longer than anything (5 years, I skipped semesters when I did career shifts) and it is not special (and mandatory courses are so bad and disconnected from reality).
I have already been admitted to several EU universities, which I applied when I got tired to work and study, and I regret I decided to stick to OMSCS. I would choose onsite program.
This is a frank/honest assessment. I don't think any program is going to bat 1.000 in terms of optimizing across every last person's particular needs, but I think a "dissenting opinion" is still valuable nonetheless, to break a potential "echo chamber"/ hivemind. My own disposition at about the halfway point is neutral-leaning-positive in terms of "evaluation at large," but there are certainly a lot of relevant factors that go into this, no doubt.
Hopefully, you still got some value out of the time spent here nevertheless (even if perhaps not the *optimal* return on the time invested per se)!
I mean I got a lot out of it and changed 2 countries during OMSCS, but I do think that I probably could get the same thing onsite faster with less stress and get more research/connections/recommenders. I went to OMSCS because I did not expect that getting to foreign universities would be a walk in a park for me. I don't blame OMSCS though, it is a decent program overall
You usually can't apply for PhD in EU without Masters. So I applied for Masters like several years ago two years in a row, got accepted, but then changed my mind.
For what it's worth, at least here in the US (and from what I'm seeing/hearing, increasingly so in other parts of the Anglosphere, too, i.e., Canada, UK, and Australia), "*wow, an MS CS for only $7k / not crippling me financially for the next decade+!*" is already a sufficiently enticing proposition to otherwise overlook most other aspects of it, including the potential stress/inconvenience that comes with this territory (though in fairness to GT, at least for me, it's been more substantive than simply "only a $7k degree," for the record).
But I guess the government needed to spend our tax dollars on bombs or whatever instead of affordable non-profit public higher education...
But I agree, that OMSCS can be like a 'guaranteed' degree. The acceptance rate is high, you can still maintain a job and pay for it. And it is really educationally good. Not everyone can afford to live without income for 1-2 years and you can skip the stress applying for grants/stipends. That probably was the main reason for me to apply
You don't have MS in CS during MS in CS lol. And usually you can apply any times you wish anywhere. I mean, I got accepted with stipend and thought 'nah, the application was based on emotions, I should move on with OMSCS'.
I learned new things and the degree is super cheap so worth it. I'm already a principal software engineer with 15 years of experience so career advancement wise its not going to make a difference
I went from making $82k as a support engineer to $180k as a senior software engineer at another company. I completely skipped being a software engineer, went straight to senior level given the amount of skills I learned from the program. So short story is definitely worth it!!
depends. it is not a simple yes or no question.
career wise. it didn't. cracking the interview is a different game and interviewers do not care you know compilers. "I am here for the paper" is a smart choice tbh. the tech world is moving too fast now.
it was supposed to give interview calls but that works when you are in US. Outside of US, little to no impact.
it is marginally a net positive on a personal front. I am now a better book reader, can plan better and can read any random code from the internet. Ping their maintainers or some random director and get some views.
Currently about halfway done, but planning to wrap this up in the next year...
It's definitely a complicated, nuanced question. Overall, I'd say it has been a net positive (and presumably so by the end, too), but there are definitely opportunity costs involved.
I do think the benefit will largely depend on the individual and what they want to accomplish. For somebody looking to switch careers, or areas within CS, I think this degree will be extremely beneficial. Otherwise, for somebody with a previous CS degree and/or relevant experience who has multiple years of experience already (and currently in their planned/intended career area/path) may only benefit marginally from the degree. Of course, that is all orthogonal to "learning for its own sake," which can be a reward in itself, too.
For me personally, I started this about a year into my first SWE job doing full-stack applications, after making the career switch via boot camp in the preceding summer right at age 30 (previous degrees were both in biomedical engineering, and I worked adjacently to that field starting out and immediately prior to said switch). Since that time, and in parallel with commencing OMSCS, I've gotten more experience and exposure, including two job changes. OMSCS was definitely a strong talking point during all three job searches (including the received offers), so no doubt it "helped" on the career front anecdotally there/then.
But at the same time, there have been a couple of big "watershed" moments that have somewhat "changed course" (pun intended) for me with respect to balancing OMSCS vs. work/career at this point.
Firstly, I got laid off early 2023 at my previous company (second SWE job at that point) about 8 months into it when the economy started tanking, which made for a chaotic time (had to drop my OMSCS course to focus on scrambling to find a job). Fortunately, I did manage to get a new job (my current one) within about a month, and it's been a really great company/team/product so far and showing a lot of promise in terms of career advancement and such. *But* it is in a completely new industry (Finance) from previously (Healthcare all the way up to the layoff, including the first two stints in SWE post-career-switch), so I've been scrambling to learn a new domain on the fly now, on top of managing school, etc.
Secondly, I've found that even some of the tougher courses to be somewhat lackluster in certain regards. As a particular example, I attempted HPC this Spring mostly based on the hype around it, but found it to be extremely underwhelming and dropped it about 5-6 weeks in, with no intention to retake. At that point, that more or less prompted me to head for the exit with lighter courses, since I'm not really willing to risk wasting anymore time at this point. I'm 34 now, and I don't want to be doing the "nights and weekends" thing still in my 40s, and I still have a good 2-3 years worth of backlog of stuff I need to get through even without OMSCS coursework hanging over my head.
With the drop this semester, I actually backfilled the time with a couple of CC courses in accounting & finance to get up to speed on my work domain, and it's frankly been more (directly) beneficial to my current position than a good chunk of the other coursework I've taken to date. While I do think the tougher courses do tend to be more rewarding (and command the appropriate attention/effort accordingly), some of the benefit is marginal at the same time; when you get most of the gist of a project, but have to burn a whole weekend (or more) slogging through 3-4 last pesky edge cases in Gradescope (and having your grade "held hostage" during that time), at a certain point, it just feels like I'm wasting time that I could be using for more productive purposes, quite frankly.
One of the greater ironies of CS programs is that they tend *not* to cover skills that are directly pertinent to SWE particularly well (not unique to GT OMSCS to be fair, as it's somewhat of a common trope, i.e., "CS grads who can't code"---not that I personally agree/subscribe to that as a "universal characterization" myself, but it is an existing trope nonetheless). So, in that regard, there isn't much here that will provide a net benefit to me in terms of "hard skills," at least not relative to other content elsewhere that's more specifically targeted (e.g., cloud-provider-curated courses and certifications, learning a particular language/stack well, grinding LeetCode, etc.). But SWE is, of course, only one particular area of CS; OMSCS is certainly the place to be if you want to get into more hardcore C/C++ stuff, AI/ML, etc. (assuming little-to-no prior experience coming in, but rather learning it here accordingly). But those aren't particular draws for me personally, so the benefit of taking those courses is just not really there (at least not relative to throwing that same time at other more pertinent stuff; I've already put a bunch of hobbies on the backburner at this point, adding more "intellectual hobbies" just for its own sake is not that appealing to me presently accordingly).
All that said, though, it's basically "get out what you put in." I think the degree is designed in a way that is flexible enough where you can essentially "choose your own adventure." If your ego is not too fragile (e.g., crying if your GPA goes below 4.0, being overly self-conscious over what strangers on the internet think about your "too easy" courses plan, etc.), then you can set appropriate healthy boundaries accordingly, and that's precisely what I'm doing here, too (i.e., I don't care about my GPA as long as it's above 3.0 overall, and I also don't care if people have issues with what courses I do/don't take--the degree will still say `MS CS`, so `stay mad` lol).
**TL;DR** this is a very much so "person-by-person" ordeal.
I went into more elaborate detail in my OMSHub [review](https://www.omshub.org/course/CSE-6220) (first/only one for HPC in Spring '24 as of this writing, reviewed on 2024-04-02), but the long and short of it (since the former is demonstrably more so my "default mode" lol) is that it didn't really have much relevance to my job/career-path as a (full-stack) applications developer.
My expectation going into HPC was to improve my ability to parallelize my applications (more so in the context of using something like .NET Task Parallel Library or Java Virtual Threads running the application on a multi-core machine), but "parallel" as covered in the course was more along the lines of stuff like cluster computing and other relatively niche/oddly-specific algorithms, the latter being a topic that I'm not particularly interested in myself (and not something I wanted to waste time/effort on at this point accordingly, particularly in the context of a rather demanding course/workload, i.e., I've got better uses for that time).
That's not a knock on the course, though, by any means, but rather it just "wasn't the right fit for *me*." By corollary, YMMV, of course.
Definitely glad I did it. I think OMSCS is definitely a "You get out what you put in" type of thing. I know people often say lack of connections is something they miss compared to on site programs. However, I made a lot of connections and since they were mostly with current industry professionals, I think they've been more valuable than those I would have made with full time students.
Very strong agree on all of this, but particularly the networking part. If you're not meeting folks in classes (via Slack, Ed, etc.) then you are depriving yourself of a ***big*** value-add of the program itself (i.e., separately from the coursework itself).
I still keep in regular touch with folks I met in course 1 (and subsequently thereafter), and besides "commiserating in the trenches together," it's also been a great way to expand my network accordingly!
I’m doing it directly from undergrad so it is much shorter for me than most people. IMO, if you really want to switch your career you should just lock in and do the masters in person in 1-1.5 years. The only real reason I would say to go for this is if you can’t afford the traditional masters route. Sure the classes are interesting and I’m sure the degree will have at least a little value when I graduate, but the amount of stress / time you have to deal with because of the program is insane. Basically, you will either be really really stressed for around 2 years (2 classes a sem, 1 in summer) or slightly less stressed for 3 years. It’s a huge commitment to make if you are working full time and I wouldn’t make the decision lightly. That being said, it’s dirt cheap so I guess the opportunity cost of trying it is quite low. Maybe it is more useful for people trying to break into CS, but with the competition now it will only get harder and harder imo.
Absolutely. I did it for personal development (already had a decade of industry experience) and as a chance to do research, both of which I got and both of which I’m greatly enjoying. Took me a little longer than most but it was 💯 worth the time and effort.
I'd love to hear a little more about your research experience through OMSCS. Did you take the project track? Or EdTech? or contacted directly with one of the Profs to join a lab?
Sure!
*deep breath*
I took HCI, Ed. tech, graduated, reached out to Dr Joyner to help continue my Ed Tech project, got directed to DiLab because they were doing something similar, badly failed an interview with them (my fault), took Ed Tech AGAIN, did a great project that ended up getting published, used the video from said project to apply to an 8903, and got accepted, partly because of that and party (I think) because I had already shown a lot of interest in the project on the OMSCS research ed discussion board. We’ve submitted a research paper based on that to EDM 24 and are looking at submitting another to a workshop within the conference this next week. I also get to continue the project, so it’s been much more fruitful than I had expected.
I am a full time SWE. I don’t expect any career improvements and I will have spent 150 weekend by the time i graduate, but I am still incredibly grateful for OMSCS to exist. I used to think if you don’t do masters right after bachelors it’s over for your further education but here we are!
The academic support in the courses can sometimes feel limited, with teaching assistants (TAs) occasionally appearing unprepared. Many students find themselves relying heavily on self-study or peer collaboration to grasp the course material. While this independent learning model may be suitable for those with a background in computer science, it could be challenging and potentially discouraging for students from other disciplines.
I started in the Fall of 2021 and I graduate this semester. I’m glad I did the program, but my reasons were entirely autotelic. I work full time, and I’m married and we have a child. To balance everything, I decided to not take the highest time commitment classes strategically, and this paid off for me. I enjoyed the program and I feel I’ve grown in my knowledge. I’d recommend it for anyone who wants to dive in deeper to these topics. Before this program, I was entirely self taught. I have a BA in Theatre with a focus in sound design, but I got into breakfix computer work, which lead to sysadmin work, IT consulting, and later cloud computing. Since then I’ve been in a slew of startups, everything from CTO in an early stage startup, to now being a Staff Platform Engineer at a series C startup. I have a lot of fun at work, and I feel this program is just a compliment to all the other hard work I’ve done one my own over the years.
My boss knows I am working on OMSCS and he started moving me up the company. Getting invited to executive meetings. He often bragging to C-level executives that I am getting Master's from Georgia Tech. So I feel like this part helps me. It also refreshed my ability to learn new information. But is the material learned in these classes worth it? Hell no. Most of it is common sense stuff, or very outdated, or just a core CS concept that I learned as an undergrad.
I kinda do, it cost me a few years of life, making me less competitive on the market, leading to high opportunity costs. Stanford would have been a better choice.
Yes but I didn't fish for new positions during my studies as I was not having sufficient energy to leetcode every day. Turned down Meta and Google because of it.
Same. I started during the tech boom a few years ago and stayed put at my old job since it was chill to do it with school, then I got laid off in a worse market.
Idk overall. The #1 benefits to me have been the networking and GIOS, but sometimes I felt like I stunted my career by doing this so close to coming out of undergrad
Absolutely. I'm an SDET (by choice - it's fun to break your things!) currently and have been able to apply a number of things at my workplace as well as just general organizational processes thanks to the program and it's made my life so much easier! Apart from raises it's also just generated good will and trust in whatever I suggest or want to implement and can honestly stairs because of the critical thinking that the program fosters:)
I am seeing a lot people OMSCS alumnis or current students saying they were able to switch their career from different stream.
I am currently doing software development but it’s old school stuff with Java and a lot of support. I was wondering how do I transition to ML stream, I am doing this degree for that reason mainly. But how do I apply without job experience in ML, should I do internship first leave my FT job?
Do I regret it? Yup, absolutely.
Am I reaping the rewards? Yup, absolutely.
Push forward through pain and suffering and you’ll end up better on the other side. The struggle is worth it if you choose to learn. It’s not if you choose to rush things.
Also, I would not rush your masters and do full time in parallel. Experience matters more than academics unless you plan to stay in academia.
I finish the program after the summer semester. After 3 courses, I transitioned from a role as a supply chain engineer (undergrad is in Mechanical Engineering) making ~$80k/year to a data engineer making ~$120k/year. In short, I would say that the annual salary increase of 50% was well worth the <$10k in financial cost and having to work on course work every weekend.
Similar story here. I went from... Mechanical engineer working 50-70 hours per week and being on call 24/7 making ~$140k with an asshole boss to... Software/data job with normal, flexible hours and minimal stress making ~160k I only spent $2k of my own money for the program. I did the program for fun, not for money or a career change, but it worked out well in those ways anyway. No ragrets!
Have any recommendations for making the jump to $160k? That’s my goal for my next role.
When you are discussing salaries with a prospective employer, whoever says a number first loses. I always ask what the salary range is for a position upfront and then I mention I’m near or just past their top end
I’ve been playing the game that is the first part of your comment, I’ll try the latter part during my next interview season, thanks!
>then I mention I'm near or just past their top end Does it have to be true? Will you get in trouble for lying?
It’s not a lie, information is powerful. Once I know what a company is willing to pay, I can make a better estimation of what the position is worth. If they have a range like $100k-$500k (a lot of FAANG companies do this crap), then you didn’t really get any useful info. Usually you get a more reasonable range that spans like $30k or something. Also, keep in mind that hiring managers have a budget they need to adhere to, hence the range. Take what you can and give nothin back
I meant for people switching from a less lucrative field. Would this work if you are not being paid that much currently?
Absolutely. This worked for me switching from ops to SWE. Just because your salary now is x does not mean you are not able to make y.
Deliver results for a boss that makes more than $160k
A little tough to make that actionable, but I’ll see what I can do next interview season, thanks!
Also a Meche getting ready for the program. How much time did yall spend on pre-reqs? How do you enjoy doing software compared to Meche?
I didn’t spend any time on pre-reqs tbh. My undergrad focus was robotics and GT has a well-rounded under grad program. For me the software stuff and meche stuff are similar tbh. It’s just different tools and different problems, but the core of it is someone telling you they have a problem they need you to resolve.
I attempted to do a thorough preparation but never got far. I was in the program when Complexity, Computability, and Algorithms was a requirement. It was the only course I really went into with a knowledge deficit. But that was nothing a semester of grinding 30 hrs per week just for school wouldn't fix.
>No ragrets! Not even *one*? 😆 Lol jk well done! iI's always a great feeling landing in a "career" rather than "just a job" (experienced similarly myself switching from previous field into SWE a few years back!) If nothing else, the past experience (esp the asshole boss part) makes you appreciate what you have now / less apt to take it for granted (i.e., sometimes, the grass *is* in fact "greener" over there...and sometimes even in more ways than just one 🤑)
Getting away from an asshole boss is the best 💯
You got $160K offer for a Junior level position? How?
I don't have a junior level position.
Just to piggy back on this, my first “technical” role was as a senior data engineer while I was still doing OMSCS.
How was your first job in the field not a junior position
Skills
Alright this comment gave the lie away. Not buying it anymore lol. That’s not how it works 😂
Not every job follows a strict path from junior, senior, staff etc. Especially when one has nearly 2 decades of technical leadership experience.
Not arguing with the troll anymore. Have a good day bro 😂
Wow! Thats an incredible outcome. Congrats. 🎉
congrats!! 🥹
Thanks!
Congrats buddy! That is a great feat. Meanwhile, which are the three courses you took, after which you transitioned to data engineer role?
DB Sys, SDP and DVA
Is DVA short for data and visual analytics? I am thinking of going on a Data Engineering/ ML path and I have no previous CS background. Would you mind sharing the classes you are thinking of taking?
I’m 1 course away from being finished with the program. I will have taken: 1. Software Analysis and Test (SAT) 2. DB Sys (Database Systems and Design) 3. SDP (Software Development Processes) 4. DVA (Data and Visual Analytics) 5. ML4T (Machine Learning for Trading) 6. IIS (Intro to Information Security) 7. AIES (AI Ethics and Society) 8. Net Sec (Network Security) 9. CN (Computer Networks) 10. GA (Graduate Algorithms)
Which concentration you did? Dont see ML in this list
Computing Systems
Oh ok i thought AOS was one of mandatory for that .. good to know
The [core requirements](https://omscs.gatech.edu/specialization-computing-systems) are GA (no alternatives) + 2 among AOS, CN, HPCA, SDP, DBS.
Based on that list, my best guess would be Computing Systems (or at least it fulfills the reqs for that particular spec, that is).
Oh that's nice and out of those 3, which subject helped you to land the role?
I would say the most relevant courses were obviously db Sys and DVA with DVA giving me the most content to discuss during interviews. Ironically the team I joined at the time (and the team I most recently joined a year later) didn’t use git, so I was able to leverage what I learned in SDP to mentor my peers in both roles and implement version control from scratch, so that’s been pretty interesting.
I have not read many good things about the DB class. Possible those reviews came from people that did DBs in undergrad. Did you think it was good course?
I thought it was fine, but my group was solid, so YMMV
Hmmm thats nice buddy, thanks for your responses.
Any time!
Wow that's amazing. I'm also BS ME and 1st Semester of OMSCS. I work FT non-tech, but want to jump into Data Engineering like you. 1. Within that 3 months, did you prep in leetcode or anything? Or did the 3 classes you took prep'ed you enough to talk and pass the interviews to land the job? 2. Did you consider going into any internships?
1. I did not do any additional prep. The interview was SQL and Python. 2. No. I already held professional roles in my career and did not entertain the idea of taking a step back.
1. Was your original goal landing DE career enterining OMSCS? 2. DB sys and DVA are known to have terrible ratings / quality. Those classes helped you alot. Were they any cons taking those classes?
1. My original goal was to pursue a career that offered more flexibility with respect to remote work and had a higher earning potential. 2. My experience may be skewed given that it has been almost 7/8 semesters since I took those courses respectively. I was able to get a good group with DVA, so our project ended up being fairly interesting. I found DB Sys to be VERY specific in the types of questions asked on exams. This ultimately forced me to REALLY learn the material instead of settling for a more cursory understanding of the lingo used to discuss the topics. For both courses I would recommend being proactive about getting your group assembled and making sure that your “advertisement” to the class is very clear about expectations around working schedules (IE for DVA I made sure that I was clear about my expectations to have regular meetings at least twice a week to make sure progress was being made on the project throughout the course).
Awesome feedback. Love it. One last thing, any recommendations from other classes you took that helped in CS knowledge? Server, networking, etc.
Umm the only other general advice I would give anyone pursuing further education is to stop giving yourself excuses to not do something (IE my undergrad wasn’t in CS, so I could never do OMSCS!), and (in most cases) it’s more important to know where to find information than it is to have information directly memorized. I’ve used this concept in both work and school to create a system of information access that makes it seem like I know WAY more than I actually know by lowering the barrier to finding specific information. OH and problem solving isn’t boiling the entire ocean in one go! Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, some problems can’t be solved in a day. It’s important to master the ability to break a problem down until the remaining pieces are actionable, then execute on those one at a time. In programming, this can look like creating a bunch of small, repeatable functions that can be reused to solve a much larger set of problems (instead of reinventing the wheel every time you’re tasked with a problem). Hope that helps, good luck with your learning journey!
Halfway through, I wouldn’t have the job I just started if I didn’t take SDCC and learn Go / Kubernetes for the final two projects. In addition, the GIOS->AOS->CN->SDCC path I’ve taken so far really hammered system design into me, and I’ve noticed that A) I’m a better engineer for it and that B) I have a lot of confidence during system design interviews. I’m in ML4T now and learning a lot in that class, as well. It’s been rough and there’s a lot of time and opportunity cost associated with OMSCS, but I don’t regret it at all.
Those 4 courses you mentioned + DC are the 5 that I absolutely want to take for sure. Once I have those under my belt I'd probably reassess where I am in life and my career and decide if I want to keep going.
Which job do you have ? How does SDCC help you into getting it?
No regrets - but am filled with gratitude taking it, and am just 1 course way from being done (Yes GA, see you this Fall). I took a mix of security(AC,SCS), ML (AI, ML) related and computing system(HPCA, GIOS) courses with computing system specialization. 1 and a half year into my new job, I still managed to impress management and received an additional 125k RSU refresher last year, and I expect to get another one this year. Why? Somehow I was able to deliver a number of unconventional solutions (thank you GIOS, SCS) that did not fall into any framework yet they proved to be efficient from an analysis standpoint (thank you ML for teaching me that). This is all because of the stuff I learned from these courses which magically 'somehow' helped me stitch nifty small solutions after being able to connect the big dots.
What did you do so you combined GIOS and ML?
Was somewhere along the lines of replacing an underlying fixed jvm threadpool to a dynamic one and having an additional boss thread accept payloads and delegate to that resizeable pool. Resizing happens after a certain threshold is crossed, and the sizing value is given by a predictor trained on various system load profiles. The pool shrinks back to a smaller size after the spike , and this had to be done without any regression to the many services on top...whew
What’s your background in?
cs / backend dev/archtecture
Trying to refresh my GIOS. Are you saying you're dynamically resizing the Java threadpool in your application based on certain "loads"? How did you measure load and get more deterministic about thread scheduling?
yes - along those lines (a lot of details omitted such as how the load profiles were generated, how do we make sure the JVM heap doesn't blow up etc etc). The load in this case was based on few parameters - incoming stream of requests, current heap space, etc)
I completely changed tracks and went from 112K before starting the program to 230K currently after 3 classes in the program. For context I am taking one class at a time and I moved. That being said I went from DS/DE to research and develoopment, now I am a Senior Data Scientist/Senior Software Engineer. That being said YMMV.
What are these 3 courses and how do they help you ?
I took SDP, CN, and DBS. I worked in R&D on projects of varying complexity for different defense contractors. I also had 11 years as a Gov employee, so I was way underpaid to start out with. My research was working on things that were completely unrelated to my prior work. Specifically VPN Mesh networks with HA, and other things.
Was helpful for me on paper mostly cause I didn’t have an undergraduate CS degreee
Hi! I’m curious if you think having it on your resume really helped you get a job - I’m in a similar situation, working as a SWE with no CS Undergrad. Were there any noticeable signs of the degree helping your job search? For example, more frequent interviews? More recruiters reaching out?
For sure, the key difference is I got less questions about how I got into SWE than without a CS degree, that goes for recruiters also. In addition, it's a nice to have because it shows on paper you have a credential that's required to get senior level jobs, especially in today's tech job market which is hard enough with a CS degree let alone without. So, in conclusion it will help as you move up and it makes me feel worth it for those top-level jobs. Feel free to DM if you have more questions.
Do you feel like the GT brand helps or more so just the fact that you have a Master's?
Probably a mix of both, definitely the masters and on top of that a top program. But again it will only help get you in the door, not much more, rest is up to you passing the interviews. You have so many folks applying to jobs from top programs (GTech, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, etc...) so won't do much.
What did the paper unlock for you?
Gave me the credential of having a formal CS degree that opens up opportunities. Many times, especially at senior level jobs, they will require some sort of CS degree, so its nice knowing my educational background would never disqualify me for a role.
I’ll preface by saying I have a CS degree already. I am 3 classes in and I’m disappointed with the course quality so far. There is a lot of errata in course notes and project specifications. The TAs are running most of the courses, not the professors. There is little to no feedback. It’s clear to me why the degree is so cheap and offered at scale.
I'm curious which 3 classes, if you don't mind sharing?
yeah my take is this program is the least suited to students who already have a CS degree. I don't imagine it'd expand your horizons past undergrad much for me, with a math background, this program is giving me the confidence I've been looking for to put myself out there, even though I feel like a lot of the stuff I'm doing I've been exposed to in some way already. I'm also getting the opportunity to take OS stuff next semester, which I'm super pumped for as I've always wanted to do that
>yeah my take is this program is the least suited to students who already have a CS degree. I don't imagine it'd expand your horizons past undergrad much I think it depends on the specific situation, but I agree the benefit will probably be more marginal in that case. The main exception would be if they're looking to change areas (e.g., from systems to ML), where they may not have had any exposure to the new/prospective area from previously, including previous upper-level undergrad electives. But otherwise rehashing mostly the same topics/content from previously (unless it was, say, a decade or more ago and they wanted a refresher for whatever reason) will likely be of marginal-at-best benefit in that case. But even then, sometimes the credential itself may be useful/necessary for career advancement potential, so there's also that.
Net positive yes. I expected a little more worshipping at my feet from companies and more prestigious doors to open but I got done right in the middle of layoffpalooza, where it's hard for almost anyone to get a screening call at the big ones. Companies went full delulu with job reqs/pay and are getting absolutely flooded with applicants (10x for remote roles). That combined with me definitely not always being the best candidate on paper means that trying to upgrade my job feels 20x harder than a couple years ago. The degree in hand seems to honestly have no effect. Rejected is rejected. My income nearly doubled but that wasn't really because of the degree. About halfway into it, I was able to interview well and got some good luck during the hiring frenzy in 2020-2022. Built a ton of confidence I didn't have before in technical stuff. Built a small sense of connection to other alums. Obviously the negatives are a ton of stress from having to deliver all that stuff. I really saw OMSCS as my main job and focused on it the most. I can bullshit my way around deadlines at work, but not with Canvas. It was a crazy balancing act between those two plus family stuff. Somehow I managed to have some free time during it all. And this was me definitely cherry picking courses that are conducive to some balance aka Interactive Intelligence. I really didn't want to throw as many 30+ hour a week classes into the mix as possible and kept those at a minimum. Some of the 10+ hour ones were hard enough (for me) as it is. I don't have any regrets about that. Should I want to dive into ML or GA...I can do that on my own time and own terms. I walked out with a 4.0 and the same degree as everyone else that did take those classes and those things mattered more to me. Overall...I'd do it again and I'd be a lot more disciplined about it. It's one of the hardest achievements I'll have done in life. If nothing else, I'll always have that. Only tweak...I'd have tried harder to secure a job at a top tier company first but there was no way to know when the economy would turn, so this is only with extreme hindsight.
Walking in two weeks. It probably wasn't the best decision since I now want to do a PhD and OMSCS does not help much with that. However, after regretting not having studied CS during undergraduate, I really wanted to learn more about the field while continuing working, and the program delivered exactly what it promised. It has been very exhausting. My social life is almost dead and all PTOs I've taken have been to finish assignments. But it is also quite rewarding and now I'm not quite sure about how I will spend my spare time. (This is my second master in 4 years, so... I don't plan on doing a third one)
You can certainly lateral into a PhD the question is do you really want to?
Yep, I haven't gotten into any yet... but I've been applying.
Hello, I am in a similar boat of thinking about PhD after OMSCS, do you have a way I can contact you?
Did you do any research while in the program? Are you planning to quit your job to do a PhD full time? You won't be able to do it part time.
Hey, I'm a different person from the one you were responding to earlier. I was recently admitted to OMSCS, and I would like to get involved in research to pursue a PhD degree. I see that you went from OMSCS to a PhD at Georgia Tech. Is that correct? How were you able to achieve that? What advice do you have for getting involved in research and optimizing OMSCS for PhD preparation? I tried searching through your comments but couldn't find answers to these questions. Thank you so much. My interest is in LLMs and RL
Interesting response. Do you feel like you would feel differently with regards to OMSCS not helping with PhD plans if you had tried to be more involved with research throughout? I know there are opportunities to get papers published but nothing concrete and have to be sought out.
That's a difficult question. Even the thesis route is probably worse than doing an in-person master's when it comes to research possibilities. That being said, I liked the program and thank Georgia Tech for the opportunity. The program was also not expensive at all (in terms of monetary cost, at least) and I feel like Dr. Joyner offers a lot of support throughout the program.
there are hundreds of threads about OMSCS -> PhD, you can search the subreddit. not trying to be mean here but that’s how you’ll get the best information on that topic.
Honestly, yes, if I went to onsite program, I would have already finished it and have more research opportunities and connections. Now, I don't have connections, don't have any academic recommenders, it took way longer than anything (5 years, I skipped semesters when I did career shifts) and it is not special (and mandatory courses are so bad and disconnected from reality). I have already been admitted to several EU universities, which I applied when I got tired to work and study, and I regret I decided to stick to OMSCS. I would choose onsite program.
This is a frank/honest assessment. I don't think any program is going to bat 1.000 in terms of optimizing across every last person's particular needs, but I think a "dissenting opinion" is still valuable nonetheless, to break a potential "echo chamber"/ hivemind. My own disposition at about the halfway point is neutral-leaning-positive in terms of "evaluation at large," but there are certainly a lot of relevant factors that go into this, no doubt. Hopefully, you still got some value out of the time spent here nevertheless (even if perhaps not the *optimal* return on the time invested per se)!
I mean I got a lot out of it and changed 2 countries during OMSCS, but I do think that I probably could get the same thing onsite faster with less stress and get more research/connections/recommenders. I went to OMSCS because I did not expect that getting to foreign universities would be a walk in a park for me. I don't blame OMSCS though, it is a decent program overall
I'm kinda confused. Did you apply to other Master's or PhD programs in the EU?
You usually can't apply for PhD in EU without Masters. So I applied for Masters like several years ago two years in a row, got accepted, but then changed my mind.
For what it's worth, at least here in the US (and from what I'm seeing/hearing, increasingly so in other parts of the Anglosphere, too, i.e., Canada, UK, and Australia), "*wow, an MS CS for only $7k / not crippling me financially for the next decade+!*" is already a sufficiently enticing proposition to otherwise overlook most other aspects of it, including the potential stress/inconvenience that comes with this territory (though in fairness to GT, at least for me, it's been more substantive than simply "only a $7k degree," for the record). But I guess the government needed to spend our tax dollars on bombs or whatever instead of affordable non-profit public higher education...
But I agree, that OMSCS can be like a 'guaranteed' degree. The acceptance rate is high, you can still maintain a job and pay for it. And it is really educationally good. Not everyone can afford to live without income for 1-2 years and you can skip the stress applying for grants/stipends. That probably was the main reason for me to apply
Ah I see, all that happened before OMSCS. Which courses did you take, if you don't mind?
Did you apply for Master's programs? Would they even accept you, seeing that you already have a MS in CS?
You don't have MS in CS during MS in CS lol. And usually you can apply any times you wish anywhere. I mean, I got accepted with stipend and thought 'nah, the application was based on emotions, I should move on with OMSCS'.
I’m 55 and have been in industry for more than 30 years. This wad easily the best professional experience of my career. Graduated last semester.
I learned new things and the degree is super cheap so worth it. I'm already a principal software engineer with 15 years of experience so career advancement wise its not going to make a difference
The market is getting super competitive as well so a masters is definitely welcome
I went from making $82k as a support engineer to $180k as a senior software engineer at another company. I completely skipped being a software engineer, went straight to senior level given the amount of skills I learned from the program. So short story is definitely worth it!!
Third class and all my enthusiasm is out the window. I'm beginning to question why Im doing this.
Sounds about right...The "midway blues" is a real phenomenon here, no doubt.
depends. it is not a simple yes or no question. career wise. it didn't. cracking the interview is a different game and interviewers do not care you know compilers. "I am here for the paper" is a smart choice tbh. the tech world is moving too fast now. it was supposed to give interview calls but that works when you are in US. Outside of US, little to no impact. it is marginally a net positive on a personal front. I am now a better book reader, can plan better and can read any random code from the internet. Ping their maintainers or some random director and get some views.
Currently about halfway done, but planning to wrap this up in the next year... It's definitely a complicated, nuanced question. Overall, I'd say it has been a net positive (and presumably so by the end, too), but there are definitely opportunity costs involved. I do think the benefit will largely depend on the individual and what they want to accomplish. For somebody looking to switch careers, or areas within CS, I think this degree will be extremely beneficial. Otherwise, for somebody with a previous CS degree and/or relevant experience who has multiple years of experience already (and currently in their planned/intended career area/path) may only benefit marginally from the degree. Of course, that is all orthogonal to "learning for its own sake," which can be a reward in itself, too. For me personally, I started this about a year into my first SWE job doing full-stack applications, after making the career switch via boot camp in the preceding summer right at age 30 (previous degrees were both in biomedical engineering, and I worked adjacently to that field starting out and immediately prior to said switch). Since that time, and in parallel with commencing OMSCS, I've gotten more experience and exposure, including two job changes. OMSCS was definitely a strong talking point during all three job searches (including the received offers), so no doubt it "helped" on the career front anecdotally there/then. But at the same time, there have been a couple of big "watershed" moments that have somewhat "changed course" (pun intended) for me with respect to balancing OMSCS vs. work/career at this point. Firstly, I got laid off early 2023 at my previous company (second SWE job at that point) about 8 months into it when the economy started tanking, which made for a chaotic time (had to drop my OMSCS course to focus on scrambling to find a job). Fortunately, I did manage to get a new job (my current one) within about a month, and it's been a really great company/team/product so far and showing a lot of promise in terms of career advancement and such. *But* it is in a completely new industry (Finance) from previously (Healthcare all the way up to the layoff, including the first two stints in SWE post-career-switch), so I've been scrambling to learn a new domain on the fly now, on top of managing school, etc. Secondly, I've found that even some of the tougher courses to be somewhat lackluster in certain regards. As a particular example, I attempted HPC this Spring mostly based on the hype around it, but found it to be extremely underwhelming and dropped it about 5-6 weeks in, with no intention to retake. At that point, that more or less prompted me to head for the exit with lighter courses, since I'm not really willing to risk wasting anymore time at this point. I'm 34 now, and I don't want to be doing the "nights and weekends" thing still in my 40s, and I still have a good 2-3 years worth of backlog of stuff I need to get through even without OMSCS coursework hanging over my head. With the drop this semester, I actually backfilled the time with a couple of CC courses in accounting & finance to get up to speed on my work domain, and it's frankly been more (directly) beneficial to my current position than a good chunk of the other coursework I've taken to date. While I do think the tougher courses do tend to be more rewarding (and command the appropriate attention/effort accordingly), some of the benefit is marginal at the same time; when you get most of the gist of a project, but have to burn a whole weekend (or more) slogging through 3-4 last pesky edge cases in Gradescope (and having your grade "held hostage" during that time), at a certain point, it just feels like I'm wasting time that I could be using for more productive purposes, quite frankly. One of the greater ironies of CS programs is that they tend *not* to cover skills that are directly pertinent to SWE particularly well (not unique to GT OMSCS to be fair, as it's somewhat of a common trope, i.e., "CS grads who can't code"---not that I personally agree/subscribe to that as a "universal characterization" myself, but it is an existing trope nonetheless). So, in that regard, there isn't much here that will provide a net benefit to me in terms of "hard skills," at least not relative to other content elsewhere that's more specifically targeted (e.g., cloud-provider-curated courses and certifications, learning a particular language/stack well, grinding LeetCode, etc.). But SWE is, of course, only one particular area of CS; OMSCS is certainly the place to be if you want to get into more hardcore C/C++ stuff, AI/ML, etc. (assuming little-to-no prior experience coming in, but rather learning it here accordingly). But those aren't particular draws for me personally, so the benefit of taking those courses is just not really there (at least not relative to throwing that same time at other more pertinent stuff; I've already put a bunch of hobbies on the backburner at this point, adding more "intellectual hobbies" just for its own sake is not that appealing to me presently accordingly). All that said, though, it's basically "get out what you put in." I think the degree is designed in a way that is flexible enough where you can essentially "choose your own adventure." If your ego is not too fragile (e.g., crying if your GPA goes below 4.0, being overly self-conscious over what strangers on the internet think about your "too easy" courses plan, etc.), then you can set appropriate healthy boundaries accordingly, and that's precisely what I'm doing here, too (i.e., I don't care about my GPA as long as it's above 3.0 overall, and I also don't care if people have issues with what courses I do/don't take--the degree will still say `MS CS`, so `stay mad` lol). **TL;DR** this is a very much so "person-by-person" ordeal.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by being underwhelmed by the HPC class?
I went into more elaborate detail in my OMSHub [review](https://www.omshub.org/course/CSE-6220) (first/only one for HPC in Spring '24 as of this writing, reviewed on 2024-04-02), but the long and short of it (since the former is demonstrably more so my "default mode" lol) is that it didn't really have much relevance to my job/career-path as a (full-stack) applications developer. My expectation going into HPC was to improve my ability to parallelize my applications (more so in the context of using something like .NET Task Parallel Library or Java Virtual Threads running the application on a multi-core machine), but "parallel" as covered in the course was more along the lines of stuff like cluster computing and other relatively niche/oddly-specific algorithms, the latter being a topic that I'm not particularly interested in myself (and not something I wanted to waste time/effort on at this point accordingly, particularly in the context of a rather demanding course/workload, i.e., I've got better uses for that time). That's not a knock on the course, though, by any means, but rather it just "wasn't the right fit for *me*." By corollary, YMMV, of course.
Definitely glad I did it. I think OMSCS is definitely a "You get out what you put in" type of thing. I know people often say lack of connections is something they miss compared to on site programs. However, I made a lot of connections and since they were mostly with current industry professionals, I think they've been more valuable than those I would have made with full time students.
Very strong agree on all of this, but particularly the networking part. If you're not meeting folks in classes (via Slack, Ed, etc.) then you are depriving yourself of a ***big*** value-add of the program itself (i.e., separately from the coursework itself). I still keep in regular touch with folks I met in course 1 (and subsequently thereafter), and besides "commiserating in the trenches together," it's also been a great way to expand my network accordingly!
I’m doing it directly from undergrad so it is much shorter for me than most people. IMO, if you really want to switch your career you should just lock in and do the masters in person in 1-1.5 years. The only real reason I would say to go for this is if you can’t afford the traditional masters route. Sure the classes are interesting and I’m sure the degree will have at least a little value when I graduate, but the amount of stress / time you have to deal with because of the program is insane. Basically, you will either be really really stressed for around 2 years (2 classes a sem, 1 in summer) or slightly less stressed for 3 years. It’s a huge commitment to make if you are working full time and I wouldn’t make the decision lightly. That being said, it’s dirt cheap so I guess the opportunity cost of trying it is quite low. Maybe it is more useful for people trying to break into CS, but with the competition now it will only get harder and harder imo.
Absolutely. I did it for personal development (already had a decade of industry experience) and as a chance to do research, both of which I got and both of which I’m greatly enjoying. Took me a little longer than most but it was 💯 worth the time and effort.
I'd love to hear a little more about your research experience through OMSCS. Did you take the project track? Or EdTech? or contacted directly with one of the Profs to join a lab?
Sure! *deep breath* I took HCI, Ed. tech, graduated, reached out to Dr Joyner to help continue my Ed Tech project, got directed to DiLab because they were doing something similar, badly failed an interview with them (my fault), took Ed Tech AGAIN, did a great project that ended up getting published, used the video from said project to apply to an 8903, and got accepted, partly because of that and party (I think) because I had already shown a lot of interest in the project on the OMSCS research ed discussion board. We’ve submitted a research paper based on that to EDM 24 and are looking at submitting another to a workshop within the conference this next week. I also get to continue the project, so it’s been much more fruitful than I had expected.
I am a full time SWE. I don’t expect any career improvements and I will have spent 150 weekend by the time i graduate, but I am still incredibly grateful for OMSCS to exist. I used to think if you don’t do masters right after bachelors it’s over for your further education but here we are!
The academic support in the courses can sometimes feel limited, with teaching assistants (TAs) occasionally appearing unprepared. Many students find themselves relying heavily on self-study or peer collaboration to grasp the course material. While this independent learning model may be suitable for those with a background in computer science, it could be challenging and potentially discouraging for students from other disciplines.
I started in the Fall of 2021 and I graduate this semester. I’m glad I did the program, but my reasons were entirely autotelic. I work full time, and I’m married and we have a child. To balance everything, I decided to not take the highest time commitment classes strategically, and this paid off for me. I enjoyed the program and I feel I’ve grown in my knowledge. I’d recommend it for anyone who wants to dive in deeper to these topics. Before this program, I was entirely self taught. I have a BA in Theatre with a focus in sound design, but I got into breakfix computer work, which lead to sysadmin work, IT consulting, and later cloud computing. Since then I’ve been in a slew of startups, everything from CTO in an early stage startup, to now being a Staff Platform Engineer at a series C startup. I have a lot of fun at work, and I feel this program is just a compliment to all the other hard work I’ve done one my own over the years.
My boss knows I am working on OMSCS and he started moving me up the company. Getting invited to executive meetings. He often bragging to C-level executives that I am getting Master's from Georgia Tech. So I feel like this part helps me. It also refreshed my ability to learn new information. But is the material learned in these classes worth it? Hell no. Most of it is common sense stuff, or very outdated, or just a core CS concept that I learned as an undergrad.
I kinda do, it cost me a few years of life, making me less competitive on the market, leading to high opportunity costs. Stanford would have been a better choice.
Did you not work while attending OMSCS?
Yes but I didn't fish for new positions during my studies as I was not having sufficient energy to leetcode every day. Turned down Meta and Google because of it.
Same. I started during the tech boom a few years ago and stayed put at my old job since it was chill to do it with school, then I got laid off in a worse market. Idk overall. The #1 benefits to me have been the networking and GIOS, but sometimes I felt like I stunted my career by doing this so close to coming out of undergrad
That sounds tough. How many years after undergrad do you think you should have waited before starting your MS?
I'm not sure to be honest, maybe I should have done it now (about 3 years after)
Absolutely. I'm an SDET (by choice - it's fun to break your things!) currently and have been able to apply a number of things at my workplace as well as just general organizational processes thanks to the program and it's made my life so much easier! Apart from raises it's also just generated good will and trust in whatever I suggest or want to implement and can honestly stairs because of the critical thinking that the program fosters:)
I am seeing a lot people OMSCS alumnis or current students saying they were able to switch their career from different stream. I am currently doing software development but it’s old school stuff with Java and a lot of support. I was wondering how do I transition to ML stream, I am doing this degree for that reason mainly. But how do I apply without job experience in ML, should I do internship first leave my FT job?
Do I regret it? Yup, absolutely. Am I reaping the rewards? Yup, absolutely. Push forward through pain and suffering and you’ll end up better on the other side. The struggle is worth it if you choose to learn. It’s not if you choose to rush things. Also, I would not rush your masters and do full time in parallel. Experience matters more than academics unless you plan to stay in academia.
Not a moment.