[miguelrochefort]

This is exactly the type of answer I'm looking for.

> I graduated at 44 and found a job immediately. Maybe not a sexy job with a ping pong table in the break room and beer on Friday, but it pays.

Before I recently quit, I had a job. The same job a CS degree holder would have (all my coworkers had CS degrees). There was even a ping pong table and beer taps on Friday. Getting a job is not what I'm worried about. Getting the flexibility to work in many roles at any company in any country is.

> I worked full-time, except for in the final year, I worked 22.5 hours for the final push. That said, scheduling everything was … hard. I couldn't find a way in Canada take an entire CS degree online (except Athabasca, and I was not interested in a degree from that school). So attending classes, mostly during business hours is required. If you don't have a job with flexibility in scheduling you will use a lot of vacation time. Sleep was minimal throughout.

I'm considering a completely online CS degree. I don't think I would be able to physically attend school, the commute alone would kill me. I've always preferred to learn things on my own, outside of class, and never attended optional lectures.

> What are you going to do with the degree when you're done?

Right now, I think I would apply to FAANG or other US tech companies. I expect that working there for 5 years (if that's even possible with a TN visa) would more than make up for the opportunity cost of going back to school. But I don't know if the plan will hold by then.

> Does taking 3-4 classes a term and working 40 hours a week sound like something you can do? I would work, in one form or another, from 6am-10pm for months on end.

This sounds like hell. I imagined that 5 classes would take closer to 25 hours a week. How much knowledge of CS did you have prior to taking these classes? What takes the most time? Are lectures long? Are there a lot of homework? Big team projects/labs? Maybe my expectations are skewed.

Congrats on finishing your degree. Your perspective is very useful. Thank you.

[jki275]

5 classes is 15 credit hours. That would generally be about 50 hours of work per week bare minimum, more for some classes.

I'm in GA Tech's MSCS now. I watch lectures and write code until midnight every single weekday. I generally study/watch lectures/code from 6am to 10pm both days on weekends. I take a day off work every now and then to finish up particularly nasty assignments. That's for two classes. I'm taking the hard classes, but the easy ones aren't that much easier. There is a ton of homework -- that's all they can use to evaluate you.

You need to manage your expectations here -- an online degree is harder than one in residence.

[jnbiche]

> You need to manage your expectations here -- an online degree is harder than one in residence.

Are you counting commute time? Because for many people, that adds on an additional 10-15 hours a week.

You have none of that with online classes.

[jki275]

If you're working, you're commuting for your job. Commuting doesn't go away unless you're independently wealthy and can sit at home and not work.

[jnbiche]

Yes, but going to university usually involves extra commute. Rarely do people live within a short walk or drive to both their work and a university.

Also, I've definitely not independently wealthy, but have worked remotely for 2 of the last 5 years, with no commute.

[jki275]

I'm not really even sure what you're trying to argue. Driving isn't difficult. Everyone does it. Good for you you've got a remote job I guess.

[jnbiche]

So the worker that commutes 2 hours a day, and the worker that commutes 10 minutes a day? Same thing?

You implied above that it doesn't matter.

If you really don't understand what I'm trying to argue, then I'd suggest reviewing your responses to me in this thread.

Also, no, once again, everyone doesn't commute (and the remark about the difficulty of driving is a total non-sequitur). And many people only commute a few blocks. That makes a huge difference in life quality. If you don't understand why, do the math.

[gulato]

How much knowledge of CS did you have prior to taking these classes? What takes the most time? Are lectures long? Are there a lot of homework? Big team projects/labs?

Previous CS knowledge -> If you gave me a design with some business requirements I could kludge something together that worked in Java. If you told me to code a linked list, traverse it, delete from it, explain A*, explain probability properly, explain any of the core design paradigms, programming paradigms, or any of the other (really trivial) core CS concepts, I could not. At my uni anyway, most classes met two times a week for 1.5 hours per meeting. Completing the homework in 2 hours may have been possible in 1st year during the intro classes, but that just simply wasn't enough time for me during algorithms, linear algebra, or discrete math classes. 3-4th year classes had lots of group projects, and it took over 2 hours a week just getting the group focused and on task in a coordinated way. This doesn't include the time to revise, understand the content, or actually code something for submission. Additionally, my degree had electives. I tried to pick things I found interesting, but writing papers on Pliny's views on mining, (and other somewhat interesting but unrelated to CS stuff,) took time =)