Better To Get Masters After Graduation Or Wait After Working For 2 Years

Is it better to work after a bachelor's degree or do a master's immediately?

After getting my bachelors degree I got a graduate job at an engineering consultancy.On my first day, I remember walking through the big main entrance, swiping my personal staff card, and being greeted by the receptionist, “Good morning Avi”.I was even amazed at the simple things like getting free coffee from the machine and having a desk with my name on the front. It was very different from my t-shirt wearing days at University.I had truly ‘graduated’ and was now part of the real world for the first time! what a great feeling.I spent nearly three years at the consultancy. I learned design skills, contract management, report writing, communication, teamwork, negotiation, and gained a massive amount of self-confidence. All of these have been valuable in my career ever since.I then decided to leave my job to pursue a Master of Commerce. Sydney University here I come! I enjoyed every minute of this experience too. A great city with great people and studying subjects I was interested in was enjoyable.The big difference this time around was my added maturity.Three additional years of life and work experience gave me an advantage. I was more confident in my ability, had better time management, was faster at learning, and knew how to work well in a team.I am grateful for those three years between my Bachelors and Masters. I gained life and work experience which helped me perform at a higher level and get more from University life in Sydney.Work experience helped me get a job straight after graduation. I already had valuable skills that were in high demand in the job market. If I had gone straight from my Bachelor degree to a Masters I would have graduated with limited real-world skills. This would have put me on a near level playing field as a Bachelors degree graduate.In today's global job market the most valuable skills are those gained through work experience. If you can find a good job after your Bachelor's degree, then go for it!You won't regret getting paid to learn valuable skills instead of paying someone else to learn.Remember, you can always complete a Masters degree later on when you feel ready.The Reformed Student

Which is better, doing an MBA straight after a B.Tech from a top notch engineering college in India, or working for 2-3 years and then pursuing it?

Never do an MBA without having a clear idea of what an MBA does and what you are going to do after the MBA. For some people in India, MBA has become the 17th and 18th standards (13th-16th is our default BE/BTech). Before coming to the MBA, spend 3-4 years in an industry, really trying to understand how it works and how you can grow. Talk to the MBAs in your industry or in your target industry to understand what they do and if their work interests you. Gain the momentum while being there growing in the rank & file. And then, join an MBA to take the growth to the next stage. LearningI don't know about the IIMs, but in most good schools in the US, the whole MBA program is based on case discussions. In each class, you take up a company in a particular scenario and shred it to pieces. People from different backgrounds bring different perspectives. The company's difficulties might have been faced by you at your company. You see how an HR manager thinks, how a sales guy thinks, how an engineer thinks and how a finance guy thinks. Those perspectives are why you want to do an MBA. In those discussions, I often see the people with no work experience clearly lost. When they don't even know the pain point from their previous experience, they can't appreciate the perspectives nor the solutions. The business degree becomes of much less value.PhilosophyMBA prepares you for upper management. It provides you with tools to understand business in a very intricate way. Even star tech companies that rely on dropout founders, bring MBAs to lead at the earliest (Ballmer, Sandberg, Schmidt). Before you become a manager or an executive, you would be required to understand how the rank works. By starting to work in the ranks, you will get that perspective - a very crucial one. Most great leaders start out as great followers. CareersMost sought out career paths after an MBA includes Investment Banking, Management Consulting and Product Management. Each of these career paths usually requires prior work experience. By not acquiring the work experience, you might lose out some of the best career opportunities you might have otherwise qualified. Since the biggest career move comes immediately after the MBA, you go into a disadvantage. A lot of them have to settle for lower scales (analyst instead of a banker) or different jobs.

Is it a wise decision to pursue MS after 4 years of work experience?

I'm in the same boat as you, only difference being that I am yet to start gathering some work experience. Here's my analysis: It surely can't hurt, especially if you do it from a good place. We're in a skill based industry, and thats been the sole basis of your hiring. An MS will refine your skills and broaden your knowledge, which can only make you more productive.Downside, however, is that the kind of jobs open prior an MS and after an MS seem to be exactly the same. So if you expect to get a different or a "better" job post MS, I won't be so sure. Had you been talking about an MBA, or an MS in a different or specialized field, it might still have made a difference. In technology, not having an MS or a PhD is rarely a barrier to career growth.If your reason, thus, is career growth, an MS might not do too much for you and you should seek growth within the industry - or even the company. Amazon is a great company (possibly one of the top soft-dev recruiters in India at the moment), so I fail to see how an MS would aid in career-growth within the same line of work.