Comment by squigs25 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by squigs25 | Hacker News Reader

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Unless you do a masters degree in Data Science, AI, CS, Statistics, or a related field, a masters degree only serves as proof that you are intelligent and work hard. Someone without a masters degree can still have those attributes, but they would just have to prove it some other way.

For example, if you have a bachelors degree from a top engineering school (MIT, Cal Tech, Stanford, Berkeley, etc.) you have proven that you are intelligent and can work hard.

People without a masters degree, but more business experience, bring a different perspective, and are often more business results focused, and potentially work more collaboratively than an individual who just graduated from a masters program.

Source: I am a Data Science hiring manager, and have interviewed 100+ candidates at several companies

> Unless you do a masters degree in Data Science, AI, CS, Statistics, or a related field, a masters degree only serves as proof that you are intelligent and work hard. Someone without a masters degree can still have those attributes, but they would just have to prove it some other way.

I think the commenter’s point is (implicitly) about specific, directly relevant Master’s degrees. Obviously a general Master’s wouldn’t provide much of an advantage. The difficulty isn’t demonstrating intelligence and work ethic, it’s demonstrating targeted expertise.

> People without a masters degree, but more business experience, bring a different perspective, and are often more business results focused, and potentially work more collaboratively than an individual who just graduated from a masters program.

To be honest with you, this sounds to me like complete speculation. I’m not saying it’s wrong; rather it seems like it’s at best unempirical, and at worst unfalsifiable. The qualifiers you’re using (like “potentially”, or “often”) don’t seem like strong heuristics.

I think it would be helpful to discuss straightforward job descriptions. For most real data science roles, I would not weight any of what you’ve listed (except collaboration) as being remotely as useful as demonstrable expertise in computer science and statistics. For candidates without a Master’s degree, I wouldn’t take business experience or lack thereof as a signal whatsoever - I’d look for a relevant heuristic to replace it.

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