I think you had better go take up this job offer. At some point you have to put some distance between you and your parents, and this is a good opportunity to do that. The pay and job and whatnot sounds good too.
Get the fuck out of there asap.
I don’t understand your parents’ point of view. It is really bizarre. Their kid has chosen a sensible and well respected course of engineering study with good career prospects, and indeed has secured the first job in that career path. I thought this was what parents were programmed to want. I’m so confused.
“Son, I know you love the engineering and all that, but please consider staying on heroin as inspiration for your prog rock band aspirations. I’m not trying to control your life, its just … a backup plan in case the well respected engineering career doesn’t work out.”
You absolutely need to move on. The benefits of doing so compared to staying put seem ridiculously one sided based on what you’re saying. Also, someone already mentioned aging out of being employable. This is absolutely true. What is your parents’ proposed end game here? That you’ll be stuck in this dead end position until you are 50? I think you should consider getting away from your parents as a positive, quite frankly they seem toxic.
At the risk of derailing your thread, what are your impressions of the Georgia Tech OMSCS program? I’ve been considering signing up for it myself.
It’s good. A few thoughts :
a. None of the courses have prerequisites, but certain courses make others easier
b. I’ve only taken 3 of them, so I don’t know what the rest are like. The 3 I took, most of your grade came from coding projects. Much of the grading is done automatically. It isn’t easy - I think the more talented you are as a programmer, the easier it will be. The 3 I took, Python was the correct language to use. (one lets you use Java, but Java sucks for what you are supposed to do)
c. In essence, every week, you watch the lecture videos at about 50% speedup. That part is great. You usually also need to see a TA video or a video made about how to do a specific project. You then need to complete the project, and it needs to work, or you are going to get a very bad score. Quite stressful, and like I said, some people need days to finish the coding projects, as there are many pinch points you can get stuck on, while others can do it in a few hours.
d. Georgia Tech is a top 10 school. I don’t know how directly the exams of OMSCS compare, it’s the same professor, and the coding projects are sometimes exactly the same as given to the students on campus. I’ve seen past paper exams that were harder, for at least one course, but that might have been just the course being altered over time. Two of the exams were open book. One, you had to take while supervised by a webcam, another exam was essay writing, so you had to write a unique essay.
e. If you graduate, the degree is on paper the same as for online. No employer will know the difference. However, they are probably going to graduate hundreds of people, maybe 1000+ OMSCS students yearly once they reach full pipeline performance. So it’s hard to say how valuable the degree will be. The theory the people running the program are banking on is that about 1/3 of the courses offered are related to AI and robotics, and those fields have nowhere near the number of people working in them needed to reach full potential. We’ll see, I guess. The progress that Google has made in the last few years is supposedly enormous, and it should allow for AI algorithms that let you build robots that work in the real world reliably, and not just in university labs and carefully constrained factories. Google’s brain team is a lot of PhD, and I am expecting it will take thousands of engineers at the Master’s level to actually convert their brilliant new algorithms into reliable robotic systems that can be used.
f. The entry requirements are relatively easy. You basically need just a STEM degree and about a 3.0, and you have to police up someone to write you a recommendation letter. You then need to take at least 2 courses your first year with a B to stay in. I’ve gotten my grades this semester, and I have 3 As.
So, TLDR, for me personally :
I plan to take a lot of courses in the program, possibly twice the number required for the degree. (you can now continue to take courses after graduating)
I hope that Masters in Computer Science, Georgia Tech, 4.0 is something I can put on my resume. If so, that’s pretty good - I would assume that someone from MIT or Stanford would be a slight notch above, but I don’t know. I also don’t know if the market is going to be flooded with other people who did the same thing, or if the number of companies making artificially intelligent robots is going to explode, creating enough demand to hire everyone. No idea.
About the only thing guaranteed in this world is medical school, and I didn’t have the grades in undergrad for that. Also, Single Payer would lower the effective salaries of physicians to the point that it wouldn’t be a sure path to richness anymore. (of course, single payer has been planned since the days of FDR, so…)
Thanks for the detailed response. That is all good information.
Georgia Tech has a pretty good reputation as an engineering school, if I recall correctly. I think a Masters in CS from there will be looked favorably upon. If they really aren’t making a distinction between online and in person then I have to think they feel confident that they’re not going to dilute the “branding” of their Masters degree. Of course, they could be wrong 
I’ve been working for about 13 years now in software engineering, in a field that is both academically and commercially interesting. I’m probably past the point where a Georgia Tech Masters versus my overseas B.Sc. makes much difference in how employable I am. But the courses look like they’d be personally enriching, and I think it’d round out my software engineering knowledge quite nicely. My company being willing to pay for it is a nice touch too 
Do you know about machine learning and how to use libraries like tensorflow? That’s the other reason to do it : that’s a state of the art topic that you wouldn’t have gotten any training in 13 years ago. It also is a neat trick as it in principle lets you take somewhat dirty and complex real world data (like camera and lidar feeds) and turn it into nice clean, accurate matrices containing what’s out there. Then conventional programming logic glues it all together, and you use a mix of machine learning and conventional logic for the robot (or robotic system like an automated vehicle) to decide what to do next. And then the outputs go to controllers that are also trained machine learning models, as those work better than classic PIDs for complex real world systems.
At least, that’s what I gather. To be honest, I’m only beginning to study this topic specifically myself. My thought is that this is a good topic to get verifiable education in (you can mess around by yourself but can’t prove you know it to employers) as it’s moving up the food chain - it’s an expanding field, it lets you do stuff you couldn’t do for decades in the past, and there’s a real possibility of getting in early somewhere and making a shedload of money.
I agree with the others – take the internship. A couple of points I didn’t see made:
This means that you already have a step-up on any other interns hired to do the same work as you. As long as you’re not an arrogant asshole about it, you should see yourself doing more challenging work well in advance of the others. And if there aren’t enough full-time jobs for everyone to be offered one, you should easily be a front-runner.
Well, okay, maybe they aren’t hiring more than one intern. Still, you’ll be demonstrably better than other interns they’ve hired for this work in the past.
Secondly, is your dad’s self-image tied up in this consultancy business? By which, I guess I’m asking if he gets a kick out of telling people, “My son and I are in business together”? If so, your leaving may be a bit more traumatic than it seems on the surface. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the internship, but may help you understand where he’s coming from.
That was my take on that list, too.
You have to look ahead. Where do you want to be in ten years? I don’t see your dad turning any control of the business over to you. You don’t have a job, you have a dependency. If your own parents don’t respect the job you’re doing, and from their arguments, they really don’t, think of trying to find a job after ten years of only working part time and never working for anyone who wasn’t your parent. That last can really put a crimp on your career.
Where do you think your parents see themselves in ten years? If they’re resisting taking care of the things in the other house, they’re probably not preparing for the inevitable end game in other ways as well.
Update : week 1 down at my internship.
Couple things I have learned :
a. My coding technique, while developed in isolation, isn’t actually that bad. I’ve seen much worse here from this big, almost Fortune 100 company’s coders.
b. Turns out, in a big shop like this, most workers are hyper-specialized and have little to no ability outside a narrow domain.
c. Nonetheless, they pay pretty well, their company name is a big one, and a small group of more elite coders has far more free rein and far more broad skill sets. We’ll see - if they make me a full time offer, hopefully it’ll be on a track that puts me in that group.
d. There’s an enormous amount I didn’t know about.
On the converse, it’s my understanding that job stability for that long, with enough compensation to buy a house (I’m presuming it was as the sole earner of the family) is pretty much a thing of the past.
That said, I come with a prejudice against personal ambition. That is, I don’t have any. Give me a steady job every time.
Which do you want: do you want to be a computer scientist or an oil engineer the rest of your life?
Ask yourself what would happen to your father if you died tomorrow. He’d be in the same position then as if you took the job. You’re not doing anyone any favors by prolonging the inevitable.
Is Samuel dying?? :_(
You took the internship! Good for you!
d is important. You know you don’t know stuff, so take this opportunity to learn everything you can.
How are your folks doing now that you’ve moved?
Awesome. Based on your list, (especially d) you will someday look back on this as one of the defining weeks of your life.
How’s the job prospects after graduation or while pursuing the degree ? … Are the companies(Google,Amazon,Microsoft and Facebook) willing to offer intern and full time positions despite it’s being an online program?.. How’s other people you know(OMSCS students) are doing in terms of career opportunities?
Update : so, I didn’t immediately get an offer. Returned to Houston and my previous employer has been a lot more respectful and given me a lot more hours, now that I demonstrated a willingness to leave.
Just last week, I finally got an offer. 80k a year, with the usual benefits, almost to the dollar what the market average is. It doesn’t start until 8 months into the future, after I graduate, and now I’m thinking I might be able to do better. 
However, it is nice to finally have a Real Job on the table. I accepted the offer and my thought is that if I find a better deal, as long as it’s 2 weeks before my start date would be, it would be reasonably ethical to change my mind.
Well done!
Very well done!
Congratulations!
Never hurts to keep your options open.