As a developer I feel my career advancement stagnating in its current trajectory.

This feels silly to ask, but is there merit to obtaining a masters degree as a software/design engineer to get to staff level one day?

My gut says experience and street cred matter way more but I'm curious what others think of the ROI.

father, husband, css golfer, ux engineer, silently defining variables as /sdv sdv.wtf

Potentially dumb question but what's the desired endpoint or attributes of that endpoint that you're imagining? Managing many people? CTO at a Series B+?

Founder, designer, & product guy pushing pixels at /basepaint

That's helpful! But what do you want to do in 5-10 years? 😇

Not a dumb question at all!

My current skill set leans toward staying an individual contributor at a big company or possibly a freelancer or consultant of sorts.

I think I work best on a lot of small different projects than one massive long term one, as dictated by my attention span.