I've tried doing some independent research on this, and the answer I've arrived at is: it depends!
I am currently in my second year of University in London, and while studying I'm also doing a part-time SWE internship at LEGO. This will continue in my third year, and it looks like I will be offered a job once I graduate in 2024.
With that in mind, would it make any sense for me to go for a Masters degree and delay working in industry for one year?
I'm mostly thinking in terms of opportunities in the future and personal development.
I should also note that my current University is not very prestitious, but my grades are excellent, so I believe I could be accepted into a better one for a MSc.
I would recommend doing it at another university though and make sure you find a program that interests you. This is so you can broaden your network and meet faculty and students at another place. I was advised to do this by one of my lecturers, I ignored the advice and stayed at the same university but in hindsight I can see I would have got a lot more out of my MSc if I had gone somewhere else.
I did an MSc (in mathematics though) and feel that it opened doors for me in my career. This may be less true for computer science though.
When I was in your position years ago I took situation B, but before doing that I had good reason to believe I had a job lined up that was interested in the MS. My main reason for choosing B was I felt I’d never have the time to do a masters full time once I entered the job force, and I wanted do have a degree that distinguished myself. All of that worked out fine for me and I have a good job now.
However, looking back I would choose Option A. I didn’t learn a lot of new things from my Masters because there was so much overlap with my undergraduate degree. I would have appreciated it more as a part time program later in my career when I had more experience. Also, it took me 5 years to catch up with the salaries my friends who didn’t take the pause were making.
I’d recommend taking the job, work for 5 years then revisit the masters.
~30Y later after running start-ups and working with companies of all sizes, but none on the Continent, I am starting a PhD because I have an issue that I really want to research and resolve: I'm a bit late for it to be a career boost, whatever a 'career' is. B^>
I'm glad that I followed the MSc for many reasons, and especially if we are going to scoot along the edge of a recession for a while, maybe you could finesse that also by doing a Master's.
Why do you need to decide right now? You’re not even half way through with your Bachelors, and you haven’t had any of the hard CS courses yet.
Statistically you’re much less likely to go back to school after you graduate, so if you want to get MSc you should do it right after BSc.
Also, the benefits of having an MSc from a recognizable university would normally outweigh the 1-2 year delay for the start of your SWE career, unless you’re somehow offered an amazing job opportunity (hint: not a boring 9-5 entry level job at Lego).
Personally, I would take the possibility of a few years of a down economy in the tech world as a big variable in this decision. Depending on how secure you think your job is, it might be safer to ride out a few down years in academia and try and time your graduation for the possible economic upswing.
I got my masters and it was moderately technical, but also included people that didn’t have a comp sci undergrad degree, which made classes like advanced algorithms really awkward, and detracted from the program.
Overall I’d do it again if it were either highly technical, or way more business oriented, but I definitely wish I’d known that up front.
I don’t think any degree is a replacement for full time working in your field, so if you expectation is to learn more in order to be more prepared for a corporate career, you may be disappointed.
If you want a job in science (in Europe), then you'll want a Masters. If you want to work for companies like LEGO, then probably not.