Ask HN: Should I return back to studies or continue to work?

[jollojou]

I have a master's degree in social science. My minor is in business administration. In addition to that degree, I have also studied about a third of a BSc degree in computer science. I currently work as a programmer.

I'm having hard time deciding should I continue with my BSc degree or just continue with the programming job. The job in its self feels just fine to me, but I'm concerned about the long-term perspectives of my career. Will it limit my potentiality if I keep on advancing my IT career without a degree on the field? Or will it hurt my options more if I now drop out of work for a couple of years to finish my studies?

I'm less than thirty and financially I'm quite well of; I would not have to fund my further studies with loan. I have over five years of experience on my field of programming, and I'm comfortable with the basic cs stuff. I don't know how to write a compiler but I can reason about algorithms and discuss programming languages rather well. The programming I do does not require advanced cs knowledge, even though it never hurts to know them.

What insights would the HN community offer to this kind of a situation? Thank you in advance!

[jacquesm]

One thing is for sure, if you don't go back to studying now chances are you never will.

And whether or not it will be useful to you is very much depending on your future career path, if you are looking forward to continued employment in that field than an extra degree certainly won't hurt, if you plan on going entrepreneur then it is of much less value (though for sure you'll benefit from the networking opportunities that come with a large university).

Five years of experience and already a third of your BSc in CS, you might be able to do it 'on the side' but that's really an exercise in self discipline.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

  > The programming I do does not require advanced CS
  > knowledge, even though it never hurts to know them.

It's more than not hurting to know them. Although you may not ever use the knowledge directly, knowing these things affects your thinking in a myriad of subtle ways.

My degrees in mathematics appear pretty much useless on the surface, and rarely if ever get used directly. But when I think about business, algorithms, implementation, planning, etc., I find myself explaining things with words in my head such as "the topology" or "the metric" or "continuous" or "min-max". I then usually have to expand these to explain what I mean, and I've found yet again that the landscape in my head, put there by my studies, is helping me think things through in a way that others find difficult.

You won't need your degree, but studying this stuff (if it's a good school and you study it "properly") will have long-term intangible benefits.

The question is whether they will out-weigh the additional direct experience of working, not studying. Without knowing you I can't say, but I would tend towards learning this stuff.

[jrp]

You might be able to choose the third option of studying part-time while staying with your comfortable job.