My buddy got a computer science degree from a top 10 school and works at a FAANG and his experience of the GTech program has been that it is _a lot_ of work. Feels to me like it might be overkill, and perhaps too much, for someone without as much of a CS background.

Hmmm, are some FAANG roles just way less onerous than I've always imagined? My experience with OMSCS is that it's pretty straightforward if you can already build stuff, and even more so if you can write too. Without a CS background I can understand it being a challenge, but I'm surprised to hear your friend thought it was a lot to take on.

I completed the OMSCS program last year at a moderate pace (1 course per semester, except for 2 semesters where I took 2 courses). I did not avoid "hard" classes if I thought I'd learn something interesting and some of the courses are legitimately a lot of work. I think in particular Advanced Operating Systems and Compilers Theory and Practice took the heaviest toll on me. The projects for those classes were very time consuming and at a few points I was pulling 40 hours a week after my full time job to get them done.

This is my experience with OMSCS as well, although I'm only four classes in. My background is in electrical engineering and it hasn't been too challenging (yet) for me to catch up on the CS stuff (although I did take several CS courses at community colleges to help fill in some gaps before enrolling and I've been programming for over years now).