Why go back to uni after 2+ years of industry experience in tech?

I've had this question a few times now, great excuse to write a quick blog I can send around.

There were three main considerations for me going back.

E-3 pls

The big one is so I can get the E-3 visa and move to the US for a stint in my 20s.

This is probably the easiest visa for an Australian citizen to get to sf, and my blocker is that I need a bachelor's or higher degree in the specialty of work that I get a US job offer in.

Computer science would tick this box nicely.

I'm technical, I promise

Secondly, to improve on my technical ability / look like I have more technical ability.

This is mainly if I wanted to raise or work in product again since tech companies are getting stricter with the need to have some sort of technical background.

I doubt Atlassian would have considered me if I wasn't doing cs, and I don't disagree with this approach.

In the whole pm intern cohort, only one person didn't come from a technical background.

Frens

Another factor that’s of equal weighing is the social life, it only gets harder to spend so much recurring time with people my age.

Other

An added bonus of being back at uni are the uni breaks! Even though UNSW kinda sucks for this.

Travel is important to me, so I will be using these holidays well before getting back into full time work.

Writing this from a hostel in Bilbao, Spain after hiking the Pyrenees for a few days.

If it helps as context for why I didn’t go back to business, my year of business at UQ got credited to my computer science degree making it a 2, instead of 3, year degree.

If that didn’t happen I probably wouldn’t have made the degree switch considering the opportunity cost of the extra year.

Fun!