| So, I'm a PM at Mozilla who did an MDes in Interaction Design at CMU. I'm a dataset of one, but my experience there was absolutely worth the cost. A few notes: - 65k is a lot, but Pittsburgh is cheap compared to the Northern California or New York or almost anywhere. Someone on the thread tossed out 65k a year in additional cost of living; this number is way off. You can get a room for < 800 bucks a month (possibly significantly less if you're willing to commute even a little). Food is cheap, there is modest but acceptable public transit, the city's pretty bikable, and there's plenty of free stuff to do etc etc. TL;DR Pittsburgh is great. - There are lots of fellowships for grads available through CMU. I TAed Web dev and creative coding courses and IIRC, the money I got for doing so completely covered my rent and internet bill. - If you've spent any time at all on the CMU campus, it's pretty clear the the institution is absolutely unique WRT the depth and breadth of CS, Design, HCI, Robotics, and Business talent. BTW, this list is not exhaustive. The sheer density and variety and stuff happening on campus is simply not comparable to working at a startup (which requires laser focus). A big part of the CMU experience is expanding your horizons about what's possible in ways that MOOCS (and I daresay industry) cannot. - Also CMU grad programs place nearly EVERYBODY. It's the primary reason I went there as a chronically underpaid, semi-clueless freelancer having trouble breaking into industry. Their relationships with industry – both formal, and through causal peer/alumni connections – are pretty staggering. All of that being said, I didn't move into a PM role until I'd spent significant time in the UX org at Mozilla learning how the sausage gets made. I definitely only started to grok the on-the-ground dynamics of product management after several years in industry, and I'm still learning every day. My sense is that most PMs have similar trajectories of transitioning into the role after time in industry. I'd be curious about whether industry would look favorably on hiring PMs directly out of school. |