Ask Slashdot: Best Degree For a Late Career Boost? 234
Qbertino writes "I'm in my early 40s, and after a little more than 10 years of web, scripting and software development as a freelancer and some gigs as a regular, full-time employee, I'm seriously considering giving my IT career a boost by getting a degree. I'm your regular 1980s computer kid and made a career switch to IT during the dot-bomb days. I have quite a bit of programming and project experience, but no degree. I find myself hitting somewhat of a glass ceiling (with maybe a little age discrimination thrown in there). Since I'm in Germany, degrees count for a lot (70% of IT staff have a degree) so getting one seems fitting and a nice addition to my portfolio. However, I'm pondering wether I should go for Computer Science or Business Informatics. I'd like to move into Project Management or Technical Account Management, which causes my dilemma: CS gives me the pro credibility and proves my knowledge with low-level and technical stuff, and I'd be honing my C/C++ and *nix skills. Business Informatics would teach me some bean-counting skills; I'd be doing modelling, ERP with Java or .NET all day. It would give me some BA cred, but I'd lose karma with the T-shirt wearing crew and the decision-makers in that camp. I'm leaning toward Business Informatics because I suspect that's where the money is, but I'm not quite sure wether a classic CS degree wouldn't still be better — even if I'm wearing a suit. Any suggestions?"
Glass Ceiling @40s (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have any other degree already . . . ? (Score:3, Interesting)
You did not mention if you have a higher education degree in anything else. This makes a big difference. If you have a university degree in a science field, I would not bother. I see plenty of successful IT folks who are retreads with physics, chemistry or other engineering degrees. If you have none at all, or something in arts or social science, I would consider getting a degree.
Re:what's your advantage? (Score:4, Interesting)
Degree may not boost your career, do you see so many jobless PhDs around ? Take some risk to start up your own company may give you a boost.
Because you posted AC, I'm going to assume that you don't realize that a Ph.D can take, on average, between 6 and 10 years, lacking any undergraduate work. Also, starting your own company may give a boost - but that's not really answering the question.
There is one thing that the AC/OP got right - the type degree doesn't matter nearly so much (notice: I qualified that with "nearly") as the fact that you hold a degree. What I'd suggest, is to get a degree in the type of management that you'd like to be - If you're planning on overseeing a bunch of programmers, figure out what they would have, and try for that. In other words - your "promotability" doesn't depend on your degree, it depends on the success of your direct reports (your area of responsibility).
If you connect with your direct reports in a way that makes them more productive (and it sounds as if you plan to use the degree to do this), then going "higher" will happen. You'll be a top performer, as a manager, and in most companies, performance is the #1 factor in promotion. Isn't that your goal?
Career Boost (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is what I did, last year I came off a really good year, 6 figure income from my personal consulting business so I took a year off, and went back to UW-Madison to finish my foreign language requirements and took one advanced course towards degree CS credit.
I however, am back to work full time with my business and am making Bioinformatics tool sets for the mobile genomic researcher.
Now, if you can take a year off an pay for cash all of your expenses, plusd have a independant income like I have then you can do what you want.
However, even I would never consider taking all the time off to get a CS degree. That would be nuts and too costly.
So I do it when I have the time and money.
If you are thinking about taking off, or quitting your job, and taking out loans, you should see a doctor and have your head looked at to insure you haven't had a recent stroke or something.
-Hack
PS: It was a nice vacation too. The student lifestyle is pretty nice. Most of my friend at my age (47) look at me in wonder because they have no independent income, have a huge mortgage, and are in my view no better off than I am with thier degrees in hand. (Certainly far more stressed out it would seem.)
Re:Game the system (Score:4, Interesting)
You have SO no idea what the working environment in Europe is, especially in Germany. A university degree is the entry card to a very invisible club. I work in a Telco, and that sector has had many lateral recruits in the 90s. One of my colleagues is a journeyman pastry chef. Another one is a licensed railway train driver. We have tons of physicists, electrical engineers, a few engineers of other disciplines, chemicists, a few MBAs, even a Master of Divinity, all doing IT and network engineering work.
Those without a university degree usually don't play in the same level though (exceptions do exist, but are rare). And even among those - Germany has an extensive sub-university education system. Folks with a technical journeyman qualification can easily find a job elsewhere. Those without have a very very hard time. They are chained to their current job - because to the HR dept in another company they are just a guy without papers.
Enroll in AppStore U (Score:2, Interesting)
If you already have practical experience, school is a waste of time and money. You want to increase your potential employability and/or income? Then create an App, publish it to iTMS, Google Play and Amazon.
There's many ways to monetize apps, but even if it's just a free app with no ads, you can put it on your resume and link to it.
Don't know Objective-C or Java or the Mobile APIs/SDKs? No problem in fact, in most cases it's more practical for a lone developer or small software shops not to use native code. You can create cross-platform Native Apps for iOS and Android with either HTML5/JS with Titanium or PhoneGap or with AS3/MXML with Flash Builder 4.6.