One of the things that I heard a lot of before I started my master’s was that it wasn’t really necessary to be successful in the technology space. Since I’ve completed my degree I thought I would put some thoughts together about my experience and offer some perspective on the subject. I just earned a master’s of information technology from Virginia Tech. The program site is here: https://vtmit.vt.edu
The tl;dr is that no, I don’t think it’s necessary to pursue it to be successful in technology, but I have already realized benefits of my degree program, and intangibly it has made me a much stronger leader and engineer, and it has established a deep confidence in my career and my ability to execute, which is the very thing I was expecting to get out of the degree in the first place.
As tangible benefits go, the master’s degree program cost me about $36,000. During the course of obtaining the degree, I have been promoted two times and have secured a role of technical leadership. Between a job change and the promotions (in three years), my annual salary has risen by almost $40,000. While obviously this is not entirely attributable to the degree, part of it certainly is. Since the salary increase is effectively permanent, and there are about 25 years left in my career, this was well worth it for me, financially speaking.
Why I went for a master’s
A high-up cybersecurity executive recently asked me why I was motivated to get a master’s degree. You should have a good sense of your “why” before you commit to a master’s program. Mine was originally practical: it would have led to a pay bump in my previous role and my previous employer would have covered part of the cost. I left that role, but stayed in the program anyway, because I wanted to step up in my career and be able to speak cybersecurity more eloquently to the business. I absolutely achieved that goal through my studies. I also wanted to have an opportunity to teach (undergraduates) part-time, which is really not possible with only a bachelor’s.
In fact, some of the best courses in the degree program were also part of the Pamplin MBA program, and for a brief period I considered switching to the MBA program entirely. In retrospect I am glad I did not do that because I valued the technical content I got out of the information technology courses.
Getting a master’s degree while working full-time and raising children is no joke.
I registered for my first class while we were at the hospital the day after my daughter was born. I knew it was going to be a challenge, but it was a challenge. It is not for everyone. If you want to do this, you will lose almost all of your free time. I also gained weight and my hair grayed.
I am writing this while we are on vacation and I was struck when I looked in the mirror and noticed that I looked younger. I have been walking regularly for a couple of weeks and have been sleeping relatively well for the first time in years. I’m looking forward to feeling like myself again.
It’s hard to overstate how much you give up when you commit to something like this. The feeling of achievement, however, is pretty remarkable.
Not every hiring org values a master’s degree…but most do
I have a lot of opinions about certifications in cybersecurity. Most of them are negative, with the notable exception of SANS – if you can take a SANS training, you should. I have held cyber certs in the past and almost always let them expire. I currently work for a company that, unfortunately, does not have the budget for certifications or professional development. I have taken calls from recruiters in the past few months that have gone like this:
“Do you have any certifications?”
“I have some inactive ones (CCNA, Security+, CompTIA CASP, SANS GCED), but right now I’m working on a master’s degree with a concentration in cyber.”
“Have you considered getting some certifications?”
“I will happily obtain a certification is the cost and time is covered by my employer, but my professional growth is focused on my degree program.”
A master’s degree relevant to the position should carry more weight/have more impact on a resume than a certification. If your organization’s recruiters disagree with this, I think they are wrong. I also think certifications by and large are a money grab, and again – a degree or a cert is not required to be successful in tech. But that is OK. My company also did not help me pay for my degree (I paid cash and lived conservatively, and got support from my wife, who does well for herself being an attorney). Smaller technology companies seem to value the master’s degree less tangibly, but again, I can attribute my promotions at least somewhat to the degree program.
What I want out of my career has changed
My career was already going in this direction, but I am much less interested in highly operational, hands-on work. I have embraced being a technical leader and moving the focus of my work into more strategic and less tactical decision making. I make this pretty clear when I have conversations with recruiters. The day-to-day is just not a good use of my skills anymore – getting a master’s will change the overall tenor of your skillset, especially if you are mid-career like I am.
I still firmly believe that the best technology leaders have hands-on experience, and there are areas of professional development that I neglected (especially in cloud) over my degree program, so there is definitely opportunity cost there. I don’t think I want to ever be completely hands off, because being hands on is what got me into tech in the first place, but I derive a lot of career joy out of mentoring and building, not so much operating.
The degree program amplified that and my desire to work somewhere where what I can offer is more strategic and entrepreneurial. Many people think the goal of education is to increase your “known knowns.” This is partially true, but the real goal is to decrease “unknown unknowns.” Being successful in your career and in business is a product of being able to make accurate predictions and understanding risks. Education reduces the space where those predictions are wrong and enables you to take good risks. You (and I) will still be wrong, nobody is perfect, but you will be right more often on higher-paying bets.
Since placing those bets well is a skill I learned through my studies (and through experience), I want to be somewhere that I have the agency and authority to place them, which will be more to the benefit of the organization than a role that is exclusively hands-on.
Requirements gathering is one of the most difficult things to nail down for any technology project. I happen to be quite good at requirements gathering, to be honest, though I attribute that more to raw career experience than the degree program. Anyway, once you have gathered your requirements you need some way to execute on them as efficiently as possible. If you know what the “dead ends” are in advance, you can proactively avoid them, but the only real way to know what the dead ends are is by experiencing failure. Education distills those experiences into something tangible by turning an “unknown unknown” into a “known unknown.”
This is why formal education is useful even though the coursework is always a step behind the bleeding edge. This is true and something I experienced during my studies at Virginia Tech, however, people who instinctively dismiss the value of formal education because of it do so at their peril.
Of course, when you realize that you don’t know things, you realize how much you don’t know. And nothing bears this realization (that I know nothing) like getting a master’s degree. It is both humbling and weird.
OK, so what?
I’m very satisfied with what having a master’s has brought me both tangibly and not. There are a lot of naysayers in the tech space around formal education. My advice is to ignore them, but also be aware of what you are getting into and have a strong sense of what you are trying to achieve with a master’s degree before embarking on the journey, because it is a long road.
It is also true that a degree (of any kind) is not strictly necessary to be successful in tech. Many people in tech are smarter and more successful than I am without any degree. That is great! But few things have brought me more personal and career satisfaction than obtaining it for myself. It’s hard to put a dollar value on the feeling of accomplishment, capability, and confidence.
That’s all for now. If you have questions about education in your career feel free to email me and we’ll set something up.