Item — HN Reader

Depends on your specific intention, as in why?

Research? - Absolutely, But pick the top universities for your subject matter (Computer Science in this case). There are even some universities that give you the option to skip a Masters and go straight into a PhD depending on your academic achievements.

A SWE Job? - Not necessary for some companies, but most usually throw in, or even emphasize the preference for masters grads. If it is a typical software engineering role at a FAANG company, then yes. The competition is too fierce for BSc or nano-degree holders and I wouldn't risk applying without one.

As you said 'MS in Computer Science' some people usually take this to enter into the field professionally from a different industry to get up to speed. At this point if I previously did a BSc in the same subject, I would specialize in a masters on where the industry is going, such as security, quantum computing or deep learning.

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> If it is a typical software engineering role at a FAANG company, then yes. The competition is too fierce for BSc or nano-degree holders and I wouldn't risk applying without one.

As someone who worked for one of those companies for 5 years this is completely wrong. Most SDEs there only have a Bachelors degree and as someone who was involved in the hiring process most of their new hires were also those with just a bachelors degree. On all the teams I worked on I only worked with 3-5 people who had a masters that I knew of in my 5 year tenure at that company.

> As someone who worked for one of those companies for 5 years this is completely wrong.

Well this is 2019, not 2014. The requirements for any typical software engineering grad to apply straight into a FAANG company is still fierce I'm afraid. A BSc is not good enough to fend off the competition of other BSc holders when the hiring managers at these companies still prefer a masters grad over a BSc if they can.

So the competition to apply for FAANG companies for a new grad position in the last 5 years is still very high.

Did you miss the part where I mentioned that I was involved in the hiring process (interviewing candidates both phone screens and in person) and the anecdotal statistics of postgraduate degree holders in the company over a non trivial amount of time? I am basing my claim on actual experience as opposed to "feelings" which you seem to be following.

People involved in hiring at these companies put almost no weight in if you have a post graduate degree when hiring SDEs. Most of the weight is put in the interviews, they'll interview almost anyone esp Facebook, Google and Amazon. They hire at such a high volume that they don't have the luxury of targeting post-grads.

As far as I can see work experience is more important so if you land a Google Summer of Code and / or a couple good internships a bachelor is fine.