Different approach: If your job is secure take the retention bonus and stay. Probably you can negotiate your salary? You are in it for the money 😎. The decision may depend on your age. And another idea might be that you negotiate that you can do some further education/research/studies @work. In the last company i was with this was luckily the case. We where encouraged to play, study and do some „research“ if there was some time left. E.g. I had the luck to play around with PHP, Flex and TransActSQL for 2 or three months. This leaded to some projects that where good for about 5 years of work. A win-win situation. And if I where in your shoes I wouldn’t worry so much about CS. It‘s more about engineering AKA applied science for the self-taught 🍷. Best regards and good luck, Karl