loveofprofit

Concurrently, actually, in the engineering space.

My path was BA philosophy -> MS Finance (worked as an investment advisor) -> after a year break I went back for a post-bacc certificate in CS during which I interned as a software engineer -> OMSCS, which I started the same month I started my first full time software engineer position. A year later I transitioned to a junior DS position, and am now a DS. I'm 30.

I graduated in December. Before this I already had an MS in Finance.

Overall OMSCS was a phenomenal value. The lectures are hit or miss, but that's not where the value lies in general, though there are exceptions (Joyner's classes like Human Computer Interaction). The value of the classes lies in the curated projects that high class professors designed and selected to facilitate learning. I learned so much in RL and ML especially due to those projects, as well as Educational Technology due to a project I selected myself.

FWIW I was working full time as a new software engineer when I started the program and after a year it helped me move internally into a data scientist position where I've now been for 2+ years.