{"id":37961,"date":"2025-11-07T03:11:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T03:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-worked-in-tech-for-over-20-years-now-im-getting-a-masters-in-ai-because-theres-too-much-for-me-to-learn-alone\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T03:11:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T03:11:14","slug":"i-worked-in-tech-for-over-20-years-now-im-getting-a-masters-in-ai-because-theres-too-much-for-me-to-learn-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-worked-in-tech-for-over-20-years-now-im-getting-a-masters-in-ai-because-theres-too-much-for-me-to-learn-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"I worked in tech for over 20 years. Now I&#8217;m getting a master&#8217;s in AI because there&#8217;s too much for me to learn alone."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68da16d81c1f80efbec47981?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Michael Lane is wearing a white shirt and looking ahead.\"\/><figcaption>Michael Lane, 49, is vice president of development at Rev, an audio transcription company. Lane said he will be pursuing his master&#039;s degree in AI at East Texas A&amp;M University next year.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Lane<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Michael Lane, 49, is the vice president of development at Rev, an audio transcription company.<\/li>\n<li>Lane&#039;s career in tech spans over 20 years. He now leads engineering for Rev&#039;s AI products.<\/li>\n<li>He told Business Insider that he plans to return to school next year for a master&#039;s degree in AI.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michael Lane, Rev&#039;s vice president for development. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified his employment and academic history.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>My academic journey is pretty circuitous.<\/p>\n<p>I matriculated at the University of Toronto in 1995 as an undergrad majoring in computer engineering. Sadly, I had to drop out in my third semester because I couldn&#039;t afford the tuition.<\/p>\n<p>Not being able to complete the program left me with a lot of regret.<\/p>\n<p>After dropping out of college, I started my career in sales. I spent a couple of years doing tech sales, then got a job at a company that developed software.<\/p>\n<p>Working there reignited my interest in tech and got me thinking, &quot;You know what? I&#039;d like to finish what I started.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>I switched to a programming job and enrolled in a distance-learning program to get a bachelor&#039;s degree in computer science. Wrapping up my undergraduate studies in 2006 meant a lot to me. It helped fill up the void in my life when I left the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n<p>I have come a long way since then. I have worked in tech for over 20 years and held roles at companies such as Logitech and Kobo. I joined the audio transcription company, Rev, in 2024, where I now lead the engineering efforts for their AI products.<\/p>\n<h2>Going back to school to study AI<\/h2>\n<p>AI is unlike anything I have ever seen in my industry.<\/p>\n<p>When ChatGPT was released, it was like an explosion in the world of tech.<\/p>\n<p>There really isn&#039;t any precedent for how one can go about learning a technology like AI. It&#039;s new. It&#039;s different. It&#039;s complicated.<\/p>\n<p>I knew that if I wanted Rev to be at the forefront of AI, I needed to go deeper into the subject. If we want to build a trustworthy AI product for our customers, we need to understand how it works.<\/p>\n<p>That&#039;s why I will be pursuing a part-time master&#039;s degree in AI at East Texas A&amp;M University in spring 2026.<\/p>\n<h2>Online courses can only get you so far<\/h2>\n<p>Tech companies don&#039;t expect their directors and VPs to write code. I still write code every day, but I recognize that it&#039;s not the value I provide to Rev.<\/p>\n<p>That said, as managers, we need to be able to listen to a technical discussion and guide our engineers to see problems from a different perspective. The only way I can do that is by keeping myself up to date on the latest technologies.<\/p>\n<p>If I don&#039;t understand our code base and what we are trying to build at a fairly deep level, I cannot help my team.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I could have learned more about AI through online courses and books, but most of what&#039;s available is superficial.<\/p>\n<p>I have taken some excellent courses on platforms like Udemy and Coursera. Some instructors do a fabulous job of explaining concepts. Those courses are great if you just want to learn how to use AI tools in your daily work, but they lack the foundational knowledge a master&#039;s degree can provide.<\/p>\n<p>You will need those foundations if you want to build, and not just use, AI tools.<\/p>\n<p>You will still need to understand basic concepts like machine learning and neural networks in order to make sense of the research papers you are reading.<\/p>\n<p>Getting a master&#039;s degree will allow me to strike a better balance in terms of my learning. Building up a solid foundation is the best way for me to understand the field and then apply it in my work at Rev.<\/p>\n<p>My advice to anybody, at any level of software development, is to embrace AI. Learn to use it to supercharge what you do.<\/p>\n<p>There&#039;s a lot of controversy surrounding AI as being detrimental and harmful. I don&#039;t take that view at all. It&#039;s a tool that can change how we do business, just like the iPhone did.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Lane, 49, is vice president of development at Rev, an audio transcription company. Lane said he will be pursuing his master&#039;s degree in AI at East Texas A&amp;M University next year. Michael Lane Michael Lane, 49, is the vice president of development at Rev, an audio transcription company. Lane&#039;s career in tech spans over [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37962,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}