ML Master's at top uni or Continue working at Meta?

TL;DR Should I go for an ML master's at a top uni (have offers from CMU MSML, Cambridge MLMI) or continue working at Meta. My short career timeline: - BSc in CS from a top Swiss uni - Joined Meta as a new grad (IC3) SWE, joined an ML team and changed profile to ML Generalist - Mostly data manipulation and backend, no ML modelling - recently promoted to IC4 after 1 year Motivations to go: - Ultimately I would like a research role at an AI lab like DeepMind/FAIR/OpenAI. As I’m not too keen on doing a PhD, I’m aiming for research engineering roles rather than research scientist. - I could be more innovative in creating new ML solutions if I had a strong theoretical background, rather than just knowing what I learned on the job (i.e. data manipulation) - I’m not learning any technical skills in my role anymore, mostly just project management and communication. Motivations to NOT go: - Heard that a master’s degree is useless after some YoE in the industry, but is this true for top AI labs as well? - Possibility to transfer to a FAIR applied research team internally, though I’m not sure if I will have enough skills to be useful in a research team. - Monetary cost What would be the better choice in the long-term? Having a hard time deciding, some advice would be helpful! TC £135K, 1.5YOE #meta #deepmind #fair #openai #masters #machinelearning #research