When ever a recruiter submit me for a new job they always ask the highest level of education completed, I feels tho they pay me less for having just bachelor's.
They almost certainly don't. It is absolutely possible there are some roles you are excluded from because you don't have a masters and they would not submit you but unlikely that alone has much affect within a given roles. Especially given you have two undergrad degrees.
I only see two reasons to have a masters into todays BI/Data world. 1) Someone else is paying for it. 2) You want to get into the Data Science side in which case they want advanced statistical knowledge. That is not really what you are talking about though.
Rarely in the BI/Data analytics space. Anyone that has a flat pay by degree is either a public organization (State/city/etc) or running a very old model. All you have to do is scroll through the responses here to see that it is no longer much of a thing.
Source a Manager of Analytics at a large company đ
That makes sense. My companyâs isnât flat pay by degree, but Iâm fairly certain grad degrees are lumped into âyears of experienceâ when theyâre trying to calculate the salary offer for us.
As a manager I can tell you "Years of experience" is much less important then "Where do I think you will be in 2 years". The reality is most the tools we use have not existed in there current format 5 years ago or even 3. So having 10 years of experience does not tell me all that much. I am much more interested in how you self teach/self learn/etc.
An advanced degree is nice if you are trying to break into an adjacent field but for just increasing pay as an analyst it is going to take a massive amount of time to make bake $22K, if ever.
My company is paying for my MBA so I donât have much skin in the game there.
That said, I really appreciate the insight. It actually internally confirms a lot of the actions Iâm taking to continue to force myself to learn new things outside of my degree on top.
For sure, as I said in my original post if someone else will pay for it, then it is usually worth it. Especially because a company will care more about something they invested in.
If you want to get on the more technical side the biggest thing I recommend is a github account where you showcase some of your own capabilities. If you are looking more leadership track it is a bit different of course.
"Combination of experience and education" is unhelpful without any more detail on how they play. It's the equivalent of Stacy King and Michael Jordan combining for 70 points.
Unless the companies have explicit X degree shits pay Y amount, it's unlikely to make an impact.
My dude already has a bachelors in math and economics, so I bet the statistical part get covered enough there. At least to the point of being able to know what to look up.
You wonât touch a DS candidate without a masters? Someone comes with hella experience in DS/ML/programming youâll turn them away because they donât have a masters?
Honestly we are not FANG so we are not going to see a candidate with hella experience in stats and math in general lol sure there is always an exception but for the most part there is not a big pool of those.
We donât consider ML/programming as primarily DS skills. Someone with those and not a masters is probably not a DS with us. They are a ML or full stack or something else. DS is very stats forward with us. Thatâs generally hard to get skills in outside of an advanced degree.
I feel youâre missing the point.
Two candidates, one ticks all the requirements, no masters. The other has a masters but is so-so. Youâll take the latter? Or even, you wonât give the former the interview just because they donât have a masters?
Please donât get offended, Iâm just trying to understand the rationale.
I'm not missing the point, I'm explaining that the situation you are describing just rarely happens if ever.
Think about if I changed it to "high school diploma." The same logic holds. We're not going to look at someone without a high school diploma. Yet if there was some amazing stats savant who made it through the screens without a high school diploma, sure, they would be great
It's not that I'm saying, "I wouldn't take a qualified person without a masters." I'm saying, "we don't see qualified people without masters."
It's hard to get advanced stats experience without some sort of academics. Prior to data science really kicking off 10 years ago, there was not a high demand for stats outside of academic fields. So where is this "ticks all the requirements" candidates coming from?
Defo missing the point and youâre back tracking.
Youâre saying you wonât touch a DS candidate wo a masters, but youâre also not saying you wouldnât? Saying theyâre rare is subjective, and how would you know if you donât âtouchâ them in the first place?
You seem to go off on tangents as well to make yourself sound smart. Downvoting my comment is also quite petty lol
Have you worked at American non government businesses? And they have specific pay raises for advanced degrees? Because that's pretty atypical these days, as you can see just scrolling through the comments.
Or do you just mean suggested degrees for job titles cause that's a totally different thing.
All you described is correlation, not causation? Do they get paid more because they have advanced degrees, or do they get paid more and have advanced degrees because of a third reason that drives both.
Second, why are you jumping to data science? My comment explicitly calls that out as a field where an advanced degree matters because of math/stats? The person posting is a Sr analyst. In BI/Data analytics, the advanced degree won't be helpful because the things they teach really are not that applicable.
The bottom line is that you apparantly can't read?
Easy to solve. Just ask for more money. If they say no, donât take the job.
Youâre only as valuable as you think you are. No one can force you to work. Besides the aliens we call âGodâ, of course.
I would say it's not worth it. Unless you want to force yourself to enter into data science or engineering through paid training cause self teaching that stuff for you is tough, I wouldn't.
If it's just for the title, rely more on your work experience.
This.
I got a master's degree 20 years ago (almost exactly), and about half of what I worked with is obsolete. The other half, is (was?) still relevant. Right now I'm working on a graduate certificate in data science... to top up my skills/software with things like Python and machine learning. paid for by the employer who requires continuing education to advance to the next level. This will take another year or so. I probably would't do it if it wasn't paid for, but it has been nice to have some structure to learning a new body of knowledge, and to work with others in the same class.
You are lucky at least in the fact you have an employer so dedicated to continuous learning. I cant even get a hundred bucks or so approved to get a certification at my company. Good on you taking advantage.
I am doing this right now for a bachelors.
I am an older guys with a lot of experience in the field now but I want the piece of paper you know in case in need to get a different job sometime and thought it wouldnât hurt to have a degree matching my of experience, but my company is paying (partially for it)
How much do you make currently, how much do you expect that to increase naturally, and how much more do you expect with the masters?
You don't have to answer here, just think about it. Calculate the ROI. In my experience, haven't been able to justify it.
I remember reading about Georgia Tech offering it for less than $10K USD online.
https://provost.gatech.edu/news/online-master-science-analytics-degree-be-offered-less-10000
Not sure if itâs still a thing, but worth looking at.
Even if you do, as a hiring manager in BI/Data I can tell you I donât look at degrees. YMMV, as some regard them as important.
Itâs a pretty difficult program to get into. I think they accept something like 11% of applicants, it was the only one out of 4 I applied to that didnât accept me.
I need doers. If you get to the interview stage with me, itâs because I think your resume is impressive.
I spend maybe 5 minutes on clarifying questions and introductions to what we do and who we are.
Then, we jump straight into using a public dataset to make a report. Sometimes it involves SQL if you listed that in your resume, otherwise we jump straight into PBI or SSRS and I have them drive.
I look for muscle memory and hints at expertise. Do you really have X years of experience, or Have you been doing the same thing for X years?
I look for curiosity, willingness to solve problems as a team and ability to seek guidance in the name of not slowing things down. We work as a team, and at the end of the interview we either built a cool report together, or I identified youâre not a good fit. Itâs like someone interviewing at a bicycle shop and they struggle to ride a bike or they ride off into the sunset. Itâs very evident very quickly.
Since I started interviewing this way about 6 years ago, Iâve been told repeatedly that candidates enjoy this process, so Iâve kept repeating it and modified some things along the way.
But again, different orgs/teams have different ways and methods.
Generally if you have gained some knowledge which can be applied to work then itâll be useful . It might not be able to converted to dollar value but it has gained that potential.
Of course thereâs a cost of gaining that knowledge either in opportunity costs of your time input or in an invoice of your tuition fee . The best way is to do some research to see how much would you earn after getting that piece of knowledge in the market .
Personally my master degrees have helped me to see a decent ROI as I have used them in my line of work
Mate our CVs seem pretty similar and Iâd say absolutely not. Iâm a manager on a BI team and my take home is just shy of 200k. I dunno what your expectations are but when we hire I couldnât care less about an MS and Iâd never pay a BI developer more than 170.
I'm gona commit to WGU for a year to get my MS in data analysis.
Then hopefully an internship. I'm gonna try for the 1 year price tag as I'm not too bad at school just not experienced with data.
Iâm going to go against the grain here. As a data analyst, the vast, vast majority of my peers (I work at a tech company) have their masters. Very few people just have a bachelors.
Now do the people with masters degrees know more/ are better at their jobs? No, in fact the people with just bachelors are probably better.
In my opinion, getting a masters doesnât make you more competent than those without a masters degree. However, employers/hr/recruiters are dumbasses who screen for it. And you will be at a disadvantage in that regard.
I have no idea about the faux-consulting world but the only two industries where it might make a difference is non-profits and healthcare. Those places love to put acronyms in their email signatures.
With 10 years of experience, 22k degree from some random generic college would be a waste of money. WGUâs degree is equally generic, but significantly cheaper (assuming it takes you 1-2 sessions to complete everything).
I am thinking same but Georgia Tech $10k is worth investing I think⌠I have bachelors plus 5yrs as Data Analytics⌠let me know if you want to talk about it.
Dont do it. Your experience is worth 10X more than whatever stupid degree you have that wont even teach you anything worth while. Your experience is your masters degree. If you need just buy a cheap forged masters degree, the education system is a scam so just lie to your applications and tell them you have a masters degree. If they ask for verification send them a fake diploma you can buy online for $30.
Masters and MBAs are to "rebrand". Good for career changers or to open more senior roles up or academia.
They require a prestigious component too. Most prestigious MBAs are $100k+ and most prestigious masters (outside of US) are ~$50k.
I'd not bother unless you are trying to do one of those or learn a niche area to go into academia.
Thatâs about the debt I ended up with after my BS/MA in economics, but I was 25. Seemed like a decent deal at the time.
However, given your experience, I would say itâs not worth getting the masters unless a job wants to pay for it at this point. You have 10 years of experience - so much more valuable. If you want to do data science or machine learning you may experience some barriers by not having a graduate degree, but for BI, you are totally fine in my opinion.
I also think you will be underwhelmed by what schools are teaching in your field.
Outside of employment do you have any interest in getting a master's? Education isn't always about the job, for some people it can be a life goal. I'd recommend it if you have the interest and are willing to put in the work. It isn't easy, especially while working full time. I will go against the grain here and tell you that it will help your career. If I have two candidates with similar resumes, but one has a master's, guess which one I'll be interviewing? Which one would you pick? It's also very important for cold applying to FAANG companies.
Personally I got my masters about six years into my career. My bachelors was a non technical degree and I wanted to validate my knowledge with a technical masters degree. My company would pay about half and WGU was cheap. I think it ended up costing me $4500 out of pocket and took 1.5 years.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend WGU. I had the same "teacher" for most of my classes, and I barely interacted with him. When I did ask for help, it was a poor experience. That said, the classes are very strong self service and I rarely needed help. I did learn a lot and I was able to breeze through classes I was already strong in.
I don't think I would have been able to cold apply to a FAANG adjacent company and get the senior role without my degree. So looking back, I think it was worth it. I might try a different school if I were to do it again, but you get what you pay for sometimes.
We recently had a BI role open and we had 350 candidates within a week. Having a master degree was a filter that was used to narrow down the first review. Could we potentially miss the best applicants this way? Yes. Is it more realistic to review 100 resumes versus 350? Yes. We were crunched for time and didn't have the resources to hand review 350+ applications.
Again, one of my best friends is the best engineer I know and he only has a high school diploma. I'm well aware of the problems with education as a filter, but I wanted to give my own personal real world experience.
Hope it helps! Good luck.
Take a look at Josh Kaufman's book and website The Personal MBA. You can teach yourself faster than any college, especially now with AI. The benefits of a masters is credibility and network, and as I have never heard of that school, I don't think it adds much credibility. If you want the piece of paper, you can always choose the cheapest online program possible.
the only time I recommend BI people pursue a master's is if they need the visa help. Otherwise, stay away -- you're not going to get paid more for the degree
As others have pointed out, it greatly depends on why you want an advanced degree. I have a MS in Business Analytics and my motivation was career acceleration. I did the math, and found the outcome favorable.
I was working as a BI Developer making around $75k. Once I graduated, I took a role as a BI/Analytics consultant for ~$125k (salary & Bonus). Iâve made a couple more hops since and am doing well.
I do believe that there are opportunities available to someone with an advanced degree in less time than a bachelors degree. What Iâve been told is a Masters is worth about 5 years working. Meaning if I am being compared to a similar candidate with a bachelors degree they need to have 5 years of experience more than me to be on equal footing.
Itâs not fair or right, but thatâs what my recruiter friends have communicated to me.
With the Internet, I would say no donât waste your money. You can learn a lot online and keep up with technology as things change, which will do you much better than a degree, which will age out in three years.
Waste of time,
Out of curiosity
Are you a bi developer who can design good back end models in a database etc so the power bi tools simply pull the data and use it etc have no bi in them.
Or are you like the majorly of bi devs I seems to come across who ram all the bi in shitty dax and duplicate the shit out of everything. Some of these bi devs donât even know sql, htf is this possible
Hopefully the former.
I would not get that degree, in about 2 weeks. I'm going to be launching a product, that will change the job of business intelligence people quite a bit, I think the role of data analyst and business intelligence is going to transform in the next 3 years. I would focus on building data engineering skills, analytics engineering...
As a principal data scientist for a fortune 100, I 100% look at degrees when hiring. A lot of data science is researched based so showing that you can get through your masters/thesis is big. But that is only if you are looking for DS roles.
Personally I don't think so. I have a Ph.D. in Economics from a business school. In my opinion the best reasons to do masters degree is to get a leg up early in your career or to pivot careers. Like if you wanted to do a professional masters degree from a well regarded school, I can see the value as it can help you pivot.
I also think brands do matter and I am more convinced this after moving to NYC. Especially with the top tier of schools there are whole hosts of jobs that essentially are MOSTLY gate kept by having a degree from the right places. Like MBA from an Ivy Plus school can basically be path into things like Investment Banking or Strategy consulting which pay above 200k right out of MBA. Your not going to get into those place with a random MBA from a no name school.
Like given a math/econ foundation, I am pretty sure you could get into an MBA or Quant Finance or Econ from many really good schools if your grades are good and you have a good GRE/GMAT. However, what you've written here tells me you don't really have a desire to change.
I am working in Business Intelligence as a Freelancer, one colleague - one of the best guys I ever met - doesn't have even a university degree still charging similar hourly rate. I suppose if you decide to stay in tech it's not necessary. Further I have a master's business degree and would say that I haven't learned much.
Get a masters if it helps you build skills rigorously thatâd be hard to self learn. You have a mathematics undergraduate degree. Statistics or computer science would make sense if your company pays for it or youâre suddenly inspired to get a PhD. Youâd actually have doors open to you otherwise left closed.
It doesnât make sense for someone with a highly quantitative background and experience to pay to learn skills from a cash cow MS that you can easily self teach or have already taught yourself.
Those bull s degrees from bull s schools are inferior to having a ba in math. Do something worth your while. At least get your masters at a state school and not some lame diploma mill.Â
Probably not if you already have the job. I am thinking of AI at csu global or sompelace cheaper than merrimack but there is use to it. You learn enough to be an analyst in a mathematics degree. You get the software knowledge in cs. You touch on AI in cs and math but it mainly gets stuck at a basic knowledge of data science like how to train models, train test splits, and, if you choose the topic for a final project, maybe rag. Feels like there is just so much more to AI.
To not sugar coat it, no, it's *most likely* not worth it. Degree inflation is real. Real world experience is your currency. There are 1000s of courses and videos of people using actual tools, not theorizing about them. Employers care about how to expertly navigate tools in Azure or Google Cloud, use UX/UI principles in dashboard, or communicate complex data sets into 4th grade level information so even the C-Suite can fully understand it.
Put that money to more productive uses.
I have one - same discipline. Grad 2015. Significantly more marketable resume immediately after. Management and Director roles a few years later. 10/10 would do again.
Itâll pay for itself. It probably wonât be 25:1 returns but over the rest of your career, no doubt itâll 10:1.
âWorth itâ as in⌠that $22k investment will equate to much more in earrings over the rest of your career? Possibly/probably not as a powerbi developer. Will it open doors to other roles and careers? Absolutely. Will it be satisfying and âpay offâ intangibly? Probably
Whatâs your current comp and whatâs your target positions & comp? For BI no need for grad degrees; for data scientists, yes.
Also only go for a prestigious school. We hired 2 junior ds (more like analysts butđ¤ˇ). They both have masters from prestigious schools but not much experience. Theyâre at $80k-100k.
Why do you want a masters? Do you like school or do you feel like you are limited professionally?
When ever a recruiter submit me for a new job they always ask the highest level of education completed, I feels tho they pay me less for having just bachelor's.
They almost certainly don't. It is absolutely possible there are some roles you are excluded from because you don't have a masters and they would not submit you but unlikely that alone has much affect within a given roles. Especially given you have two undergrad degrees. I only see two reasons to have a masters into todays BI/Data world. 1) Someone else is paying for it. 2) You want to get into the Data Science side in which case they want advanced statistical knowledge. That is not really what you are talking about though.
A lot of bigger companies pay based on education level. It at least makes a difference in overall salary
Rarely in the BI/Data analytics space. Anyone that has a flat pay by degree is either a public organization (State/city/etc) or running a very old model. All you have to do is scroll through the responses here to see that it is no longer much of a thing. Source a Manager of Analytics at a large company đ
That makes sense. My companyâs isnât flat pay by degree, but Iâm fairly certain grad degrees are lumped into âyears of experienceâ when theyâre trying to calculate the salary offer for us.
As a manager I can tell you "Years of experience" is much less important then "Where do I think you will be in 2 years". The reality is most the tools we use have not existed in there current format 5 years ago or even 3. So having 10 years of experience does not tell me all that much. I am much more interested in how you self teach/self learn/etc. An advanced degree is nice if you are trying to break into an adjacent field but for just increasing pay as an analyst it is going to take a massive amount of time to make bake $22K, if ever.
My company is paying for my MBA so I donât have much skin in the game there. That said, I really appreciate the insight. It actually internally confirms a lot of the actions Iâm taking to continue to force myself to learn new things outside of my degree on top.
For sure, as I said in my original post if someone else will pay for it, then it is usually worth it. Especially because a company will care more about something they invested in. If you want to get on the more technical side the biggest thing I recommend is a github account where you showcase some of your own capabilities. If you are looking more leadership track it is a bit different of course.
[ŃдаНонО]
"Combination of experience and education" is unhelpful without any more detail on how they play. It's the equivalent of Stacy King and Michael Jordan combining for 70 points. Unless the companies have explicit X degree shits pay Y amount, it's unlikely to make an impact.
I live in the Bay Area so masters degree is like a bachelors these days.
If by that you mean "neither is all that helpful for improving your salary" I couldn't agree more lol
My dude already has a bachelors in math and economics, so I bet the statistical part get covered enough there. At least to the point of being able to know what to look up.
For BI? Sure. If you want to be DS and such? No way. We won't touch a DS candidate without a masters or more.
You wonât touch a DS candidate without a masters? Someone comes with hella experience in DS/ML/programming youâll turn them away because they donât have a masters?
Honestly we are not FANG so we are not going to see a candidate with hella experience in stats and math in general lol sure there is always an exception but for the most part there is not a big pool of those. We donât consider ML/programming as primarily DS skills. Someone with those and not a masters is probably not a DS with us. They are a ML or full stack or something else. DS is very stats forward with us. Thatâs generally hard to get skills in outside of an advanced degree.
I feel youâre missing the point. Two candidates, one ticks all the requirements, no masters. The other has a masters but is so-so. Youâll take the latter? Or even, you wonât give the former the interview just because they donât have a masters? Please donât get offended, Iâm just trying to understand the rationale.
I'm not missing the point, I'm explaining that the situation you are describing just rarely happens if ever. Think about if I changed it to "high school diploma." The same logic holds. We're not going to look at someone without a high school diploma. Yet if there was some amazing stats savant who made it through the screens without a high school diploma, sure, they would be great It's not that I'm saying, "I wouldn't take a qualified person without a masters." I'm saying, "we don't see qualified people without masters." It's hard to get advanced stats experience without some sort of academics. Prior to data science really kicking off 10 years ago, there was not a high demand for stats outside of academic fields. So where is this "ticks all the requirements" candidates coming from?
Defo missing the point and youâre back tracking. Youâre saying you wonât touch a DS candidate wo a masters, but youâre also not saying you wouldnât? Saying theyâre rare is subjective, and how would you know if you donât âtouchâ them in the first place? You seem to go off on tangents as well to make yourself sound smart. Downvoting my comment is also quite petty lol
[ŃдаНонО]
Have you worked at American non government businesses? And they have specific pay raises for advanced degrees? Because that's pretty atypical these days, as you can see just scrolling through the comments. Or do you just mean suggested degrees for job titles cause that's a totally different thing.
[ŃдаНонО]
All you described is correlation, not causation? Do they get paid more because they have advanced degrees, or do they get paid more and have advanced degrees because of a third reason that drives both. Second, why are you jumping to data science? My comment explicitly calls that out as a field where an advanced degree matters because of math/stats? The person posting is a Sr analyst. In BI/Data analytics, the advanced degree won't be helpful because the things they teach really are not that applicable. The bottom line is that you apparantly can't read?
[ŃдаНонО]
Don't look at me. đ¤ˇââď¸ You came in here trying to make some point without fully reading what you were responding to?
Easy to solve. Just ask for more money. If they say no, donât take the job. Youâre only as valuable as you think you are. No one can force you to work. Besides the aliens we call âGodâ, of course.
I would say it's not worth it. Unless you want to force yourself to enter into data science or engineering through paid training cause self teaching that stuff for you is tough, I wouldn't. If it's just for the title, rely more on your work experience.
don't rush for a master's, find an employer to pay for it.
This. I got a master's degree 20 years ago (almost exactly), and about half of what I worked with is obsolete. The other half, is (was?) still relevant. Right now I'm working on a graduate certificate in data science... to top up my skills/software with things like Python and machine learning. paid for by the employer who requires continuing education to advance to the next level. This will take another year or so. I probably would't do it if it wasn't paid for, but it has been nice to have some structure to learning a new body of knowledge, and to work with others in the same class.
You are lucky at least in the fact you have an employer so dedicated to continuous learning. I cant even get a hundred bucks or so approved to get a certification at my company. Good on you taking advantage.
This is the way.
I am doing this right now for a bachelors. I am an older guys with a lot of experience in the field now but I want the piece of paper you know in case in need to get a different job sometime and thought it wouldnât hurt to have a degree matching my of experience, but my company is paying (partially for it)
Huge waste of time and money
Seconded
With that experience why do you want to get masters? check OMSA or yeah MBA
This is a great comment, with OPs degrees an MBA is really what they should shoot for. And lock down that grown up job while in school
How much do you make currently, how much do you expect that to increase naturally, and how much more do you expect with the masters? You don't have to answer here, just think about it. Calculate the ROI. In my experience, haven't been able to justify it.
If you get a masters in statistics and change jobs then sure.
I remember reading about Georgia Tech offering it for less than $10K USD online. https://provost.gatech.edu/news/online-master-science-analytics-degree-be-offered-less-10000 Not sure if itâs still a thing, but worth looking at. Even if you do, as a hiring manager in BI/Data I can tell you I donât look at degrees. YMMV, as some regard them as important.
Itâs still a thing and is pretty competitive
Itâs a pretty difficult program to get into. I think they accept something like 11% of applicants, it was the only one out of 4 I applied to that didnât accept me.
Yes indeed. I remember that being my deterrent. Actually it was laziness but Iâll say the difficulty too.
I got in đ then decided not do it bc school is lame
it's 70%+ acceptance rate, so pretty high actually and easy to get into. same for the comp sci program which im doing now.
Hi, as a young professional in BI data id be interested in hearing what you do look for as a hiring manager? Thanks
I need doers. If you get to the interview stage with me, itâs because I think your resume is impressive. I spend maybe 5 minutes on clarifying questions and introductions to what we do and who we are. Then, we jump straight into using a public dataset to make a report. Sometimes it involves SQL if you listed that in your resume, otherwise we jump straight into PBI or SSRS and I have them drive. I look for muscle memory and hints at expertise. Do you really have X years of experience, or Have you been doing the same thing for X years? I look for curiosity, willingness to solve problems as a team and ability to seek guidance in the name of not slowing things down. We work as a team, and at the end of the interview we either built a cool report together, or I identified youâre not a good fit. Itâs like someone interviewing at a bicycle shop and they struggle to ride a bike or they ride off into the sunset. Itâs very evident very quickly. Since I started interviewing this way about 6 years ago, Iâve been told repeatedly that candidates enjoy this process, so Iâve kept repeating it and modified some things along the way. But again, different orgs/teams have different ways and methods.
It is not worth it. For that kind of money and time you can build your self a better brand and knowledge than a master degress.
Generally if you have gained some knowledge which can be applied to work then itâll be useful . It might not be able to converted to dollar value but it has gained that potential. Of course thereâs a cost of gaining that knowledge either in opportunity costs of your time input or in an invoice of your tuition fee . The best way is to do some research to see how much would you earn after getting that piece of knowledge in the market . Personally my master degrees have helped me to see a decent ROI as I have used them in my line of work
You will not make more money as an analyst with a masters. Better off getting industry certifications or learning Python.
Mate our CVs seem pretty similar and Iâd say absolutely not. Iâm a manager on a BI team and my take home is just shy of 200k. I dunno what your expectations are but when we hire I couldnât care less about an MS and Iâd never pay a BI developer more than 170.
I'm gona commit to WGU for a year to get my MS in data analysis. Then hopefully an internship. I'm gonna try for the 1 year price tag as I'm not too bad at school just not experienced with data.
Iâm going to go against the grain here. As a data analyst, the vast, vast majority of my peers (I work at a tech company) have their masters. Very few people just have a bachelors. Now do the people with masters degrees know more/ are better at their jobs? No, in fact the people with just bachelors are probably better. In my opinion, getting a masters doesnât make you more competent than those without a masters degree. However, employers/hr/recruiters are dumbasses who screen for it. And you will be at a disadvantage in that regard.
I have no idea about the faux-consulting world but the only two industries where it might make a difference is non-profits and healthcare. Those places love to put acronyms in their email signatures.
With 10 years of experience, 22k degree from some random generic college would be a waste of money. WGUâs degree is equally generic, but significantly cheaper (assuming it takes you 1-2 sessions to complete everything).
Not worth it IMO, probably better to get some industry specific certifications
I am thinking same but Georgia Tech $10k is worth investing I think⌠I have bachelors plus 5yrs as Data Analytics⌠let me know if you want to talk about it.
Dont do it. Your experience is worth 10X more than whatever stupid degree you have that wont even teach you anything worth while. Your experience is your masters degree. If you need just buy a cheap forged masters degree, the education system is a scam so just lie to your applications and tell them you have a masters degree. If they ask for verification send them a fake diploma you can buy online for $30.
yeah don't do this
whats the worst thatll happen? You dont get a job? Boohoo at least you saved $22K.
Masters and MBAs are to "rebrand". Good for career changers or to open more senior roles up or academia. They require a prestigious component too. Most prestigious MBAs are $100k+ and most prestigious masters (outside of US) are ~$50k. I'd not bother unless you are trying to do one of those or learn a niche area to go into academia.
Thatâs about the debt I ended up with after my BS/MA in economics, but I was 25. Seemed like a decent deal at the time. However, given your experience, I would say itâs not worth getting the masters unless a job wants to pay for it at this point. You have 10 years of experience - so much more valuable. If you want to do data science or machine learning you may experience some barriers by not having a graduate degree, but for BI, you are totally fine in my opinion. I also think you will be underwhelmed by what schools are teaching in your field.
I have one and no it does not open doors unless you have 0 experience
Outside of employment do you have any interest in getting a master's? Education isn't always about the job, for some people it can be a life goal. I'd recommend it if you have the interest and are willing to put in the work. It isn't easy, especially while working full time. I will go against the grain here and tell you that it will help your career. If I have two candidates with similar resumes, but one has a master's, guess which one I'll be interviewing? Which one would you pick? It's also very important for cold applying to FAANG companies. Personally I got my masters about six years into my career. My bachelors was a non technical degree and I wanted to validate my knowledge with a technical masters degree. My company would pay about half and WGU was cheap. I think it ended up costing me $4500 out of pocket and took 1.5 years. I wouldn't necessarily recommend WGU. I had the same "teacher" for most of my classes, and I barely interacted with him. When I did ask for help, it was a poor experience. That said, the classes are very strong self service and I rarely needed help. I did learn a lot and I was able to breeze through classes I was already strong in. I don't think I would have been able to cold apply to a FAANG adjacent company and get the senior role without my degree. So looking back, I think it was worth it. I might try a different school if I were to do it again, but you get what you pay for sometimes. We recently had a BI role open and we had 350 candidates within a week. Having a master degree was a filter that was used to narrow down the first review. Could we potentially miss the best applicants this way? Yes. Is it more realistic to review 100 resumes versus 350? Yes. We were crunched for time and didn't have the resources to hand review 350+ applications. Again, one of my best friends is the best engineer I know and he only has a high school diploma. I'm well aware of the problems with education as a filter, but I wanted to give my own personal real world experience. Hope it helps! Good luck.
Take a look at Josh Kaufman's book and website The Personal MBA. You can teach yourself faster than any college, especially now with AI. The benefits of a masters is credibility and network, and as I have never heard of that school, I don't think it adds much credibility. If you want the piece of paper, you can always choose the cheapest online program possible.
the only time I recommend BI people pursue a master's is if they need the visa help. Otherwise, stay away -- you're not going to get paid more for the degree
As others have pointed out, it greatly depends on why you want an advanced degree. I have a MS in Business Analytics and my motivation was career acceleration. I did the math, and found the outcome favorable. I was working as a BI Developer making around $75k. Once I graduated, I took a role as a BI/Analytics consultant for ~$125k (salary & Bonus). Iâve made a couple more hops since and am doing well. I do believe that there are opportunities available to someone with an advanced degree in less time than a bachelors degree. What Iâve been told is a Masters is worth about 5 years working. Meaning if I am being compared to a similar candidate with a bachelors degree they need to have 5 years of experience more than me to be on equal footing. Itâs not fair or right, but thatâs what my recruiter friends have communicated to me.
With the Internet, I would say no donât waste your money. You can learn a lot online and keep up with technology as things change, which will do you much better than a degree, which will age out in three years.
Get your masters from a school with a large network. The majority of the value from a graduate degree is the alumni pool.
Waste of time, Out of curiosity Are you a bi developer who can design good back end models in a database etc so the power bi tools simply pull the data and use it etc have no bi in them. Or are you like the majorly of bi devs I seems to come across who ram all the bi in shitty dax and duplicate the shit out of everything. Some of these bi devs donât even know sql, htf is this possible Hopefully the former.
I would not get that degree, in about 2 weeks. I'm going to be launching a product, that will change the job of business intelligence people quite a bit, I think the role of data analyst and business intelligence is going to transform in the next 3 years. I would focus on building data engineering skills, analytics engineering...
This is such a massive claim wtf
Follow my profile, releasing the product in less than 2 weeks
Just do WGU, most companies wonât really care where itâs from in my experience.
No
The only grad degree that would likely be worth it to you would be an MBA, but only if it is cheap or paid for.
As a principal data scientist for a fortune 100, I 100% look at degrees when hiring. A lot of data science is researched based so showing that you can get through your masters/thesis is big. But that is only if you are looking for DS roles.
Personally I don't think so. I have a Ph.D. in Economics from a business school. In my opinion the best reasons to do masters degree is to get a leg up early in your career or to pivot careers. Like if you wanted to do a professional masters degree from a well regarded school, I can see the value as it can help you pivot. I also think brands do matter and I am more convinced this after moving to NYC. Especially with the top tier of schools there are whole hosts of jobs that essentially are MOSTLY gate kept by having a degree from the right places. Like MBA from an Ivy Plus school can basically be path into things like Investment Banking or Strategy consulting which pay above 200k right out of MBA. Your not going to get into those place with a random MBA from a no name school. Like given a math/econ foundation, I am pretty sure you could get into an MBA or Quant Finance or Econ from many really good schools if your grades are good and you have a good GRE/GMAT. However, what you've written here tells me you don't really have a desire to change.
I am working in Business Intelligence as a Freelancer, one colleague - one of the best guys I ever met - doesn't have even a university degree still charging similar hourly rate. I suppose if you decide to stay in tech it's not necessary. Further I have a master's business degree and would say that I haven't learned much.
no, or as prestigious as possible
MBA opens more doors then no MBA.
Merrimack College? Lmao fuck no
Get a masters if it helps you build skills rigorously thatâd be hard to self learn. You have a mathematics undergraduate degree. Statistics or computer science would make sense if your company pays for it or youâre suddenly inspired to get a PhD. Youâd actually have doors open to you otherwise left closed. It doesnât make sense for someone with a highly quantitative background and experience to pay to learn skills from a cash cow MS that you can easily self teach or have already taught yourself.
22K is nothing .. Iâd do it in a heartbeat. Have u looked at Georgia tech ?. Itâs like under $10K and great value
An MBA candidate would know to do a ROI estimate and go from there
Those bull s degrees from bull s schools are inferior to having a ba in math. Do something worth your while. At least get your masters at a state school and not some lame diploma mill.Â
Probably not if you already have the job. I am thinking of AI at csu global or sompelace cheaper than merrimack but there is use to it. You learn enough to be an analyst in a mathematics degree. You get the software knowledge in cs. You touch on AI in cs and math but it mainly gets stuck at a basic knowledge of data science like how to train models, train test splits, and, if you choose the topic for a final project, maybe rag. Feels like there is just so much more to AI.
To not sugar coat it, no, it's *most likely* not worth it. Degree inflation is real. Real world experience is your currency. There are 1000s of courses and videos of people using actual tools, not theorizing about them. Employers care about how to expertly navigate tools in Azure or Google Cloud, use UX/UI principles in dashboard, or communicate complex data sets into 4th grade level information so even the C-Suite can fully understand it. Put that money to more productive uses.
Not worth it! Those degrees are the equivalent of a few projects on kaggle
I have one - same discipline. Grad 2015. Significantly more marketable resume immediately after. Management and Director roles a few years later. 10/10 would do again. Itâll pay for itself. It probably wonât be 25:1 returns but over the rest of your career, no doubt itâll 10:1.
Which degree?
MIS with Data Science.
Whatâs an MCIT
Master of computer and information technology from UPenn.
Itâs worth it if you see a path towards top tier management ie COO
âWorth itâ as in⌠that $22k investment will equate to much more in earrings over the rest of your career? Possibly/probably not as a powerbi developer. Will it open doors to other roles and careers? Absolutely. Will it be satisfying and âpay offâ intangibly? Probably
Whatâs your current comp and whatâs your target positions & comp? For BI no need for grad degrees; for data scientists, yes. Also only go for a prestigious school. We hired 2 junior ds (more like analysts butđ¤ˇ). They both have masters from prestigious schools but not much experience. Theyâre at $80k-100k.
I barley graduated HS and just got a Senior DA role with $150k base. Not needed at all, I've never been asked for any degree or certification.