> Masters degrees are cash cows, which is why no one in unregulated industries cares about them. People in regulated/unionized industries also don't actually care; even educators, who at least nominally see intrinsic value in education, go to borderline diploma mills to get that union-mandated raise at minimal effort.

I don't mean this rudely, but it is attitudes like this which cause the CS interviewing process to be 100X more painful than the interviewing process in any other field: "I don't trust your credential so I demand you prove your competence to me on the spot and let's do 5 rounds of interviews just to be sure."