Will a Masters Degree increase my chances of getting a good development job?

Question

I've already read through a number of related questions about whether a Masters degree increases a developers ability and awareness, but one of the things I've struggled to understand is just how a Masters degree would help me.

I'll be graduating in 2010 and with luck will have landed a place on a Masters degree course at a decent university. However, once I've finished my Masters I'll want to get a real job developing software. Will this Masters degree increase my chances of employment? With a MSc would I still be rooting around the entry/junior level roles? A lot of people have told me that a MSc in Computer Science/Software Engineering usually equates to five years in a job, although I really cannot see that.

Finally, I can understand how getting a Masters in Computer Science would be beneficial for my development ability and understanding of theoretical CS. However, for the purpose of getting a job would a MBA be better or worse?

Related Questions:

• Did your Masters help you as a Programmer
• Is a Masters degree overkill
• Should developers go to grad school
• Masters vs Work Experience

Answer 1

No amount of pure education can translate directly into industry experience. While a Masters will add weight to your job applications and may affect your ability to command a higher starting salary or possibly better job prospects, employers will still want to see some understanding of the market in which you'll be working.

Typically, an employer wants to see that you have an understanding of business and business processes, customer relationship management or customer communication skills, you might need to demonstrate a portfolio of your recent work or detail the sorts of problems you've encountered and overcome during projects and such.

So yes, your higher qualifications are important and relevant, but so is industry experience and you might find that you have to work the hard yards for a while to start off with.

Answer 2

My personal opinion, as a developer who has interviewed numerous folks for developer positions is that a masters may help. In reality, the most important things that I look for during an interview:

• Ability to think. Specifically, can you reason through a problem. In many cases, I don't even care if you come up with the quote-unquote right answer... I want to see how you work.
• What experience do you have writing code? Not dinky little projects, but real meat-on-the-bones projects. As a college student, did you do any internships? Did you demonstrate an ability to succeed in "the real world"? How does your experience map to the job I'm interviewing you for?
• Can you write code? Let's be honest...this is what a developer does. I ask folks to write code on the white board...others I've worked with bring in a laptop. It's never anything crazy, but just show me that you're not just faking. (Yes, we've run into folks who can't code up a simple "Hello World").

Now, as a disclaimer...I do have a masters. Has it helped me? I think when I was fresh out of college, I did get interviews that I would not have gotten otherwise. In the jobs I've had since then, have I used my OS theory, compiler theory or database theory or....? No, not much. On the other hand, having this knowledge has come in handy once in a while. Would I do it again? Yeah, probably.

Last thought... I've wound up at smaller, startup software companies. (That is, companies that live and breathe software. I've been working side-by-side with guys who have a PhD. Were they better developers than me? I don't think so.) I really don't know if the situation is different in larger software companies or other companies that have internal software development teams.

Answer 3

You really need to ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you want to code all the time for the rest of your life? (MS would help, MBA won't)
• Do you want to go towards the architect role? (MS would help, MBA might)
• Do you want to go towards Project Management and that stream up? (MS would help, but experience helps more, MBA would help if the experience is enough)

The equation of MSc = 5 years of experience is (we all know) not true. So, leave that. Focus on the questions above and I'd say leave the MBA decision for some years. MBA isn't effective until you have at least 8-10 years of experience if you choose any of the choices above.

MSc or MCS is a good "plus"; but that doesn't guarantee a job until and unless you know how to perform your job. So, keep your work-performance as a primary aspect of your career unless you want to go into research and your thesis of MS is directed towards that.

When we interview a person for a job, it's his performance in the interview and not the degrees which pass or fail that person in the interview.

Finally, the equation will be:

All other aspects Constant + MCS is greater than All other aspects Constant

Answer 4

For the purposes of getting a job, an MBA will only help if you're seeking a management position rather than a development position.

That being said, it would be much more beneficial for you to take up a development job, and perhaps take the MBA later on prior to moving up to management. Nothing annoys developers more than a manager who does not understand the needs of a software development team.

While an MBA or even an MCS would be a plus in your resume no doubt, grunt work in the trenches will be more relevant and appreciated by your team.

Answer 5

A Masters will be much more useful to yourself, and be more highly valued, if it is undertaken after you have a few years work experience, and once you have a clear idea of what area you want to specialise in. This is doubly true of an MBA.

Answer 6

It obviously depends on how are defining a "good development job". One which you are focused on an area you are interested in doing? Better money? More opportunity for personal growth? Upward mobility?

If starting salary is your metric, it's not a ton of data - and it's MIT - but according to http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation07.pdf a 2007 EECS grad with a masters degree increased your average starting salary from $72k to almost $86k. And if you go the MBA route the average starting salary was $112k. So yeah, it probably helps to continue school...

Answer 7

It depends on where you live. In some countries, a masters degree is the default. People who leave college with "just" a bachelors degree are at a disadvantage because they'll be competing against people with masters' degrees.

In other countries (like the US, I believe), a bachelors degree is by far the most common, and is what an employer expects of you, so while a masters certainly won't hurt you, it might be better to spend the time getting industry experience. Maybe.

The thing is it depends entirely on the market where you live.

Answer 8

From my own experiences I have found that a masters does not really help at all- its just a LOT of extra work for virtually NO added benefit whatsoever. If you enjoy the course & love studying then by all means go for it; otherwise forget, just make sure to get a 2:1 or better bachelors. Incidently, I'm from the UK.

Answer 9

If you go for a really top-tier MS program (e.g., Carnegie Mellon's master of software engineering), the name-recognition may be able to land you jobs easier or help you advance in companies that care about such things. If you're a consultant, it may also look good on your business cards.

Just be careful and don't accidentally stick around for a PhD ;)

Answer 10

If you ever want to start your own company (which used to be the dream of all software developers back in the 90's), you'd probably find banks and investors a lot more friendly if you possess an MBA.

I got a masters in CS part-time while I was working fulltime. That's another route you could take, if you are anxious to get out and start working.

Answer 11

There is the question of whether you'd get both your Bachelors and Masters from the same school or not, which may play a role to some extent. If you study at different schools, then you may be able to add another resource to your job hunting arsenal of the other school's career services, or whatever it may be called at that particular school, to the mix. If you study at the same school for each then you may get to know the faculty better and they may have connections that could help you out.

Answer 12

Joel Spolsky talks about this:

• in his book Smart and gets things done
• on his blog The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing
• in the Stack Overflow podcast Episode 29 at 38 minutes (and a few seconds)

Basically he says that PhD's (and potentially Masters I guess) have a tendency to over-engineer/explore every possibility and make a "perfect" project every few years. This is the mode of original research - you need to look at everything to find something new. Business needs are rather different and require a product provides features on a code base that is "good enough".

To directly answer the question, I think a masters will help - as long as you make sure that you are able to "get things done", and demonstrate this in an interview.

Personally, I think there's probably more gains to be made getting direct industry experience [first] (as said in this comment).

Answer 13

An MSc (I have one) will put you above others in the pile but perhaps below PhDs. However, for getting a job it's all about how you perform in interview. It's for that reason that you should do an MSc, as these candidates are just so much stronger than their BSc counterparts.

It is not worth five years. It just cannot be quantified like that. Yes, you will still be an entry level newbie - just a better one. But, after five years you will still have a Masters as it won't have disappeared. And you will still be above others in the pile that also have five years but no Masters (assuming roughly similar experience).

An MBA will get you a different type of position. It really depends on what type of job you want to do and which company you want to work for. If you're a "programmer" as per this site, then you should do an MSc rather than an MBA. BTW doing an MSc can be very enjoyable. Just pick the right one.

Answer 14

Graveca, thanks for the giving info about 1st hand experience with obtaining a MSc. I completed Computer Science 4 -year sandwich (worked for a year) BSc and am looking for jobs. You don't need me to tell you the difficulty in getting a decent job in the current economic crisis. Therefore I am thinking about getting an edge over many graduates in that I have done an industrial placement, and also hopefully an MSc in the future.

Additionally, I have found that although I should be getting a 2:1 (results come out next week), I do not want to get into something too technical in terms of programming. I might get into financial computing. Is it worth trying to do masters in this type of field?

Any help is appreciated :)