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Comment by tombert

10 days ago

I have been unemployed for the last few months, and there's only so much TV and YouTube I can watch without going utterly insane between interviews,

Since WGU just started doing masters degrees in CS, I decided it would be a way to kill large amounts of time while getting at least a little out of it, so I registered for it.

I've been a professional software person for like fourteen years, so I was able to knock it out extremely quickly due to WGU's competency based stuff, so now I finally am able to put "MS" after my name.

18 comments

tombert

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hmottestad  10 days ago

Good for you. Cross my fingers that you'll land a good job soon. Or create your own job.

  • tombert  10 days ago

    I have a few prospects lined up.

    I'm actually planning on doing a second masters from a slightly more prestigious university with a more theory-heavy degree [1], but it's nice to at least have an official graduate degree now. Hopefully it helps me find work a bit quicker, and if nothing else it's just kind of fun to pile up degrees.

    [1] https://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/qualifications/f04

    • yu3zhou4  10 days ago

      I was recently looking for a master's degree in math that is:

      - 100% remote

      - 100% self-paced

      - fairly cheap

      and it looks like Open University is the best option right now? Did you find any better option?

      9 replies →

hx8  10 days ago

Do you feel like you picked up additional knowledge and skills? The pluses you mentioned are fighting boredom, being affordable, and being credentialed.

  • tombert  10 days ago

    Not really, no. I was a bit underwhelmed by the whole thing; it didn't feel like "computer science", it felt like light software engineering, and since I've been doing software engineering for awhile I was able to fly through the work.

    I did have a bit of fun learning about some of the more "platform as a service" parts of AWS, that has been something I've been putting off at learning more about for awhile, but overall I don't feel like I learned a ton.

    I registered for another masters degree from a different online school to start in October that I think I'll enjoy and learn more from.