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It's an impediment because, when you're applying for jobs, you're older, poorer, and have no extra job experience. There are absolutely jobs where it would help, like research. If you wanted to work on the super-technical stuff at Google or Facebook, like developing new languages, you'd probably need that MS. But generally speaking, employers care exclusively about your experience (partially because there are so many self-taught people that do good work), and a Masters just says, "I'm going to demand a higher salary". On a semi-related note, I'm self-taught, like you are, and I considered a Masters. I now laugh at that idea -- I don't know even a tiny fraction of what's needed to get a Masters. It was very humbling to talk to people with CS degrees and hear all the things they learned. When you miss out on an undergraduate CS degree, you miss a lot of theory and math. Jumping right into an MS program would be incredibly difficult unless you're a prodigy of math and logic (and have the time to spend on catching up). (None of that is to say that your typical web development job requires a CS degree at all. We use high-level languages and, oftentimes, widely-used, lightly-customized software.) |