Ask HN: Given AI advancements, is a master’s degree in CS worthless?
Hi all,
I’ve got a BS in Computer Science and have been considering pursuing a Master’s degree part-time with a focus on ML/AI.
I know the common narrative is that a Master’s in CS really isn’t worth it if you’re just looking for a pay raise. However machine learning is an area I’m interested in but lack the requisite background. I just really worry the degree will mostly be worthless by the time I graduate considering the rate at which AI is advancing.
The degree would mostly be for personal knowledge/fulfillment, but I don’t want to bother with it if we’re all going to be unemployable in a few years anyways. Another alternative I’m considering is learning HVAC repair as a fallback career.
What are your thoughts?
121 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 212 ms ] threadThat is how you should be thinking.
(I typed this comment as I was in between writing technical articles being assisted by ChatGPT doing 90% of the actual w writing while I am telling it what to write about and making corrections)
I feel like this may answer your own question? It may be trite, but even in a world where AI makes us obsolete, there's still value in doing something fulfilling that you're interested in. Just because DALL-E 2 can replicate an oil painting doesn't mean that there isn't personal value in physically painting anymore.
Can’t comment on the state of machine learning/ai as it is not my field of expertise but I would also guess no. The mathematical basis on which ai is based is not going to radically change. Linear algebra etc is always going to be useful no matter what happens.
Neil Gaiman says that he visualised becoming a writer as climbing a mountain and weighed up every decision as whether it took him closer to the summit. I would say you need to get clarity on what your ultimate goal is/which mountain you want to climb and then evaluate taking the masters in relation to that. We can never be sure if we are going to make it to the top regardless so you’ve got to have a little bit of faith. And you could very well fail at whatever your back up plan is so you might as well take a chance on the thing you actually enjoy.
I don't think AI advancements will cause a problem for the value of the degree (or rather, if they do, then it wasn't a very good MS degree). The value of formal university CS education done well, at both BS and MS levels, is learning skills in a context that integrates those skills into a knowledge framework that transcends any particular technology and hopefully outlasts several trend changes. The specific ML algorithms you would learn in an ML-focused MS will likely be out-off-date soon; the training on problem formulation, data preparation, fundamental limits of learning, and the theory of how ML works will not only outlast many technology shifts, but give you a good framework for navigating those shifts and integrating new advances into your knowledge.
There are likely many programs that would not provide this kind of foundation. But in understanding in general the value of an MS, this is how I would advise a student to think about it. (and on MS vs BS, BS usually provides some opportunity for specialization but is very much a generalist degree; an MS provides more opportunity for specialization and credentialing on that specialization.)
Disclaimer: I dropped out, but i do wish i finished just because it's sad to now be 36 and I hate leaving things undone.
In all seriousness, i think higher ed has issues to resolve regardless of whatever AI does to it. The ongoing imbalance between the value one can extract from a degree and what you get out of it has been mostly impacting students other than CS or other engineering degrees, but with a slower economy we may end up sucked into the issue other fields have long suffered from. Speak to anyone in the environmental field, hard to believe this is /the issue/ of our time yet we value is so poorly.
While I don't disagree with your main point re the value of a CS degree, this is the same argument verbatim given by every English, History, and Underwater basket weaving professor.
That said I also believe many fields have gone bunkers. The whole everybody needs a degree also creates incentives for degree factories.
Also the intersection of CS, probability and statistics is a very interesting area to work on. Less trendy than deep ML, but really practical. See e.g. Stan, Pyro, Andrew Gelman's books, etc.
It's weird to me that formal verification isn't more widely used; I would think it would be common at least in safety critical systems development.
Unlikely. There might be less routine work grinding out boilerplate code to be done but competent developers are far from being replaced.
> if we’re all going to be unemployable in a few years anyways
I'd be more worried about the economic outlook for the next couple years.
Having interviewed a bunch of job candidates with CS Masters and CS Bachelors for jobs in a fairly small, research-y group, and a shmear of PhDs, level of education absolutely matters. The more education, the more prepared people are to think well on their feet. The average high school dropout can think. Thinking well requires training. Generally, CS Masters hits a sweet spot: they can hit the ground running and mold themselves into a job. They may need a bit more guidance to understand the space around the problem. The PhDs have often self-selected into the job and have a good grip on the problem but take a bit more guidance on what to not do. The bachelors folks need strong leadership and team around them. While you may get that in larger orgs, if it's a smaller org, that may not be reliably available at all times.
> considering is learning HVAC repair as a fallback career.
Having had HVAC guys install and repair A/C systems at various homes, I think you would quickly find the baseline work mind-numbing. That said, if you make it through the apprenticeship, you might be in a good position to build a startup.
Why not both? My neighbor configures HVAC for datacenters as a living. From what I've understood in our chats, there's a lot of expert system processing going on. It's only going to grow as ML/AI does. When there's gold rush, don't invest in gold, invest in pickaxes.
A couple years ago the pointless code started to compile.
A year ago we got copilot.
Past week or so I have been pasting React components into Chat GPT and it successfully tells me what it does, and I ask it to change it, and it can change my program for me.
I would say in a couple of years AI may be in complete control of entire Git repos for backends, front ends, etc... and you will be able to modify it by telling it the new stuff, in plain english.
I mean right now it's just the same thing as Stable Diffusion, but with code and so it's "mostly right". When that crosses over, it's going to take out this profession. I honestly don't know what to do.
Current LLMs will not threaten programming jobs in any way.
A masters is two years. What significant AI developments could possibly happen that would reduce job security?
Do you plan on your job being about writing 20 liners solving the most common CS questions on SO? If yes, SO has already replaced you, if no, what competition from AI do you have?
I don't want to make any grand predictions, but current generation LLMs will not make a dent into programmer jobs.
I went to university from 2005-2008. Back then, with dot-com scars still fresh in everyone's mind, an extremely common piece of "advice" I received was: Don't bother going into programming; software development is going to all be outsourced to offshore developers. You'll never make more than $50k/year in your career as a developer, the competition from India and Bangladesh will be too high.
As much as futurists hate to admit it, coding AI is still way worse at many things than even the now-near-universally-loathed "outsourced dev" boogeyman. Your job as a software developer isn't to write functions that reverse a binary tree or solve the Towers of Hanoi puzzle. I haven't seen any evidence that AI can evaluate a legacy codebase and determine what the best integration path forward is. I haven't seen any evidence that an AI can figure out how to put together a backwards-compatible API. I haven't seen any evidence that an API can put together a build pipeline.
Your question is based on an assumption that because ChatGPT can spit out some pretty impressive stuff that an entire career path isn't going to be viable. I will tell you emphatically that assumption is wrong. Spend a few years in the industry and you'll understand that ChatGPT is impressive, but only touches about 5-10% of what a software developer really needs to do.
It will be an important tool for developers going forward, and maybe reduce the overall number of devs needed in the world due to increased efficiency, but no, it's not going to replace software developers. Not even juniors.
The day when AI technology can fix bugs in a multi-million line codebase, make improvements to it; that's the day when I will start worrying. That day is far, far away.
For instance, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that the low-hanging fruit of developer AI will be combing AI with no-code so that a small to medium business owner can build their own website or apps using the English language, assuming their needs are pretty typical. This is more or less already possible with sites like Wix, just without the AI part; AI would add some flexibility that Wix and Squarespace lack. A business owner would then be able to say "put a widget on my homepage that shows the latest video from my youtube channel" and AI would probably able to do it when an existing component either wouldn't exist or not be as straight forward.
So what ends up happening is human software development more or less becomes an exercise in shoveling dung rather than building new things from scratch, which I think we're already seeing more or less regardless of AI.
As an example, even as late as the 00s, you could still get a job as a "web developer" where you only made static sites with HTML, CSS, and basic Javascript. First tools like Dreamweaver or Frontpage, and now sites like Wix, made that kind of position obsolete. However, a "web developer" is now called "front-end developer" and is still very much alive, just focusing on different things.
Or another example, there is this nearly extinct breed of people known as "database administrators." You used to be able to get a job as a DBA by just knowing how to set up backup scripts, optimize indexes and set up disk space monitoring. (If you could set up a read replica, you were top-tier!) Now cloud tooling has made all of those things trivial. Yet those same people are now very likely "DevOps Engineers" or "Cloud Engineers" which, again, are in extremely high demand.
You should only feel threatened by advances in tech if your life plan was to learn how to do one thing, then never develop any skills. In the tech industry, that's been a path to failure since the beginning. For most of us, AI will, in the best case, be another tool and allow developers a whole to move onto the next big thing.
It's not that I don't agree with you up to a point, but I wonder just how sustainable this trajectory really is. AI hasn't really been a "thing" in everyday life until relatively recently.
I think there will still need to be highly qualified people 'directing' the tools, teaching, and determining architecture.
I suspect there'll be less of us, and the job will change, but the market need will still be there. I think in this context a masters will indeed be quite useful.
(Saying all of this as a person who has gone their whole career without a degree.)
As for people who really like programming, that are passionate about it, those have nothing to be scared of. Coding camps, universities spilling software developers - all these needs to die. In the past plenty of people got miserable being doctors because a doctor is a good paying job and they were forced by their parents to become one. Only to either fuck a patient for life or to grind a soulless job just because it had financial and social status reward. Now software development/programmers are the new doctors.
It’s very, very unlikely IMO that AI will take our jobs in the next 5-10 years. But I think the demand for good ML engineers will stay strong. Having a master’s in this is a big leg up, it’s hard for people to learn ML well without formal education.
Also, education is a great way to ride out the current crappy job market.
Don’t sleep on this.
In 2008 I had a few friends go back for higher education rather than stay at/take low quality jobs. They graduated with additional debt, but also with credentials that accelerated their job search and earnings during the recovery.
If your personal situation allows it, it’s a good idea to consider.
Some professors are better than others, though, I think the value you get will depend a lot on that.
Speaking of children though, what the hell are we supposed to teach them?
If the breakthroughs are made by people with a MSc degree or higher, do you want to be a part of that group?
If you're in it for the 80 to 90 percentile pay, sure with enough grit you do without a degree.
My own experience is that masters is for people who need to immigrate to the US for work and can afford a masters degree. When I was in school, the masters level CS students weren’t expected to know CS well going in, so it was kind of like cramming a full CS degree into a two year window… with not amazing results. Obviously that depends on the student. Also lots of students who just didn’t want to work professionally yet, and you can get student loans to keep working on a masters degree.
All that is to say I’m extremely surprised by the people saying the degree is valuable on the merits and not for some other instrumental reason.
P.S. regardless of education level, programming, at least in software companies, is an extremely privileged career regardless of pay. Hours, work environment, remote availability, treatment of labor by management are all better than I can imagine even comparably-paid trades positions, especially if you’ve already invested in the bachelors. I think people in the software engineering bubble can, sometimes, fail to appreciate how good they have it relative to others (especially if you get caught up comparing between FAANG or have ever complained about an equity package).
This: https://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in-compu... lady suggests that Master's degrees are actually an indication that you're incompetent, unless you're a foreign student angling for a visa.
- many positions in EU, especially on the leadership level, straight out require a Master's degree.
- most masters are consecutive. This means you need to have a bachelor in the same or an adjacent field in order to pursue the master.
- there aren't any high fees and the admission process is often more competitive that for the bachelors. Employers would rather wonder why you left university early. Bachelor's still has the reputation of not really being a full degree.
Hate to admit it, but she has a point. Though my CS masters program (BSU, US) only accepted me on a provisional basis until I finished the undergrad CS algos courses. It was more challenging than many of the MS courses. Partly due to the challenge of a foreign discipline.
I'm a high school drop-out and I've been doing software dev for 17 years or so, currently a senior dev in FAANG. My experience with master's degree holders has been about the same and I often surpass them on teams I've been on when it comes to promotions or getting recognition. To be fair though, two of the most brilliant devs I've ever meet in my career had master's degrees.
From what era / decade? World isn't static. MS is CS earned in 80s means a different thing than the one earned today
The risk in CS that I worry about right now is suppressed wages as more folks enter the field and the large companies get better at paying us less.
Seems to me that the only thing stopping AI from doing our jobs in 5 years will be the legal department.. at that point I guess my last job will be to set up the on-prem/cloud infra that runs the model. AI doesn't change the requirement of owning your own data. After that, I dunno. What jobs will be left? AI trainer, mascot at Disneyland, and CEO?
I might have the time horizon wrong but I do think it's going to be a bloodbath. There's nothing about previous industrial revolutions to suggest it would be anything but. And if you think you'll be able to see it coming, have a look at https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/ . This problem space is starting to feel less like fusion and more like flight
The change AI brings could be lot more fundamental than that. What that means for jobs though, is really hard to predict.