Ask YC: What are starting salaries for CS grads this year?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=178092

by iamelgringo • 18 years ago

45 109 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm curious to find out what grads from CS programs are getting offered. The last post by Spolsky seemed to say that MSFT is offering starting salaries close to 6 figures.

s this accurate? Can anyone corroborate? If you're graduating and have offers on the table, would you mind posting a ball-park figure of what you're getting offered? I'd love to hear it.

rms3• 18 years ago

A friend of mine just took a menial enterprise programming job (in Pittsburgh) that is paying 55k. And I mean menial, it's converting legacy systems from Cobol to Java.

itay• 18 years ago

I've seen offers from 75k to 95k (though the 95k was an outlier). Most were in the 80-85k for first tier companies.

tomjen• 18 years ago

Just write a cobol to java compiler and be done with it.

NonEUCitizen• 18 years ago

he may not have to write one himself:

  http://www.jazillian.com/howCOBOL.html

disclaimer: i don't know cobol and have never tried this.

rms3• 18 years ago

I talked to him, he said that there are a bunch out there already and they'll be using them to aid in the process. But there's still work to be done, there are a lot of legacy systems that need to have optimized/readable code.

Raphael• 18 years ago

But don't let on. Work on your startup with the new extra time.

adammichaelc• 18 years ago

I think you should let on... first of all, it's honest (I know if I were the founder I would really want to keep an honest problem-solver happy and well-paid) and second of all what goes around comes around.

donw• 18 years ago

$85k +/- 5k seems to be the average here out on the West Coast. I'm curious as to what the difference is for people with masters degrees or doctorates, though.

csmajorfive3• 18 years ago

Masters is +10 in my experience.

cperciva3• 18 years ago

I haven't seen anyone even suggest less than $100k for a newly minted doctorate in CS from a good university, and I've seen numbers in the $120k - $140k range thrown around. It sounds like East Coast hedge funds are even more generous.

menloparkbum3• 18 years ago

I have. HR knows that CS PhDs will work for peanuts because they've had their financial self-esteem slowly beaten out of them over the past five years. East Coast hedge funds mostly hire physics and applied math PhDs. Masters +10 PhD -30 but YMMV.

hugh2• 18 years ago

Wow, way to make me feel bad for being a postdoc! :(

(Computational physics, not CS, but still...)

notauser• 18 years ago

Here in the UK the starting salary for coders outside London is around $45k (+$5k for a masters).

However that is for a 37 hour working week. Most people can add 50% over basic in overtime (for 40% extra hours, due to premium rates).

Northern Mexico is about $30k which, compared to basic cost of living, equates to about $120k in California :)

immad2• 18 years ago

In London, CS grads at banks get around $80k. IT consultants get $60k. You can't really survive on much less than that in London :)

nuggien2• 18 years ago

I've seen it vary greatly here in the SF bay area. I've seen offers as low as 65k and as high as 95k. The two most important factors that decide where in the range you fall are the company making the offer, and the school you graduated from. You probably have a lot more leverage in asking for 5-10k extra if you are graduating from a place like stanford/berkeley as opposed to sjsu. But then again, 5-10k is nothing to a company if you are an impressive candidate.

jmzachary3• 18 years ago

That $5-10k delta could be made up within a year or two for a good developer coming from a non-namebrand CS school who puts his/her nose to the grindstone.

nuggien2• 18 years ago

That is true. Good engineers will always rise above the bad ones, regardless of what background they have. But we are talking about starting salaries here.

menloparkbum3• 18 years ago

$80K +/- 5K at GOOG for Stanford grads and $85K at Amazon for a Berkeley grad.

mrtron2• 18 years ago

Roughly the same numbers for Waterloo grads at those places.

natch• 18 years ago

For anyone wondering the other question, what about salaries for experienced developers, keep in mind the numbers others are sharing here are just what was asked for, -starting- salaries. After a few years, the salaries are much higher, but still under $150K. $130K plus options is pretty standard in the West Coast for an experienced developer with or without any degree. Seems to have jumped up some in the last couple years along with gas prices. Google, though, pays less.

culley• 18 years ago

100k plus options. 10 yrs experience. NM. Nice House in city center $800 a month. 20 min commute. But no comparable companies to move to in town.

cousin_it6• 18 years ago

Wow, just wow. I live in Moscow and earn about 30K a year. 25 years old, 10 of them coding for money. Maths degree.

iamelgringo3• 18 years ago

Moscow's supposed to be about as expensive to live in as the Bay Area or Manhattan from what I've read. Rents here in the Bay area are around $1400 for a 1 bedroom apartment. What are they in Moscow?

cousin_it6• 18 years ago

I pay around $1300 for a 1 bedroom apartment. This is a bit on the high side, but I like living in the city center, in summer it's almost European.

dcurtis• 18 years ago

In San Francisco, 1400 dollars will barely get you a studio (in the interesting parts of the city).

andreyf2• 18 years ago

Manhattan ranges - 1br in the West Village goes for $1,950/month.

skavish2• 18 years ago

My guess is that after taxes, but in the US they are usually talking about salary before taxex. So basically your $30K is about $40K here.

apotheon3• 18 years ago

Are you saying that $30K is like $40K after taxes? It'd be closer to $55K, I think. Taxes are insane in the US (though nothing like northern Europe).

yan• 18 years ago

Is that before or after taxes?

cousin_it6• 18 years ago

After.

dmnd• 18 years ago

80k to start in 2009 at MSFT. Makes me think I should've thought more about inflation before signing.

simianstyle• 18 years ago

I just graduated with a business degree, but I was hired at a startup in Boston as a Rails coder making $65K. I turned down an offer of $100k at a big corporation for obvious reasons.

I figured it's enough for me to live comfortably and continue to work on my side projects :)

csmajorfive3• 18 years ago

On this note, I have a question that I (as a new grad) don't know anything about. What are raises like? How often do they happen? How much? What does it take?

cstejerean• 18 years ago

Raises? It's called changing jobs.

csmajorfive3• 18 years ago

I'm not sure what you're getting at -- should I change jobs when I feel like I'm due a better salary? Even if the job is awesome?

timcederman2• 18 years ago

As a new PhD grad, I got a raise after 6 months, and another (larger one) 6 months after that. Just ask for a performance review.

swombat• 18 years ago

Don't count on quick raises from a very low salary unless you've explicitly discussed that with your boss or at your interview. In most places I've seen, they're happy to calculate raises using %, which means you get a whopping 20% raise on a £20k salary - which still amounts to peanuts (£24k is not much different from £20k).

Negotiate your starting salary as high as you can, and don't count on quick raises.

Here's a useful article on the topic from ever-helpful Rands:

http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2008/04/11/the_busines...

Daniel

utnick• 18 years ago

haha ya... my first post grad programming job raise was smaller in $'s per hour than the raises I got as a lifeguard when I was 15 :(

CapnObvious• 18 years ago

Any significant 'raise' will require you to either change jobs, or to get a new position within the current company that suddenly takes on a lot more responsibility, and even that will limit you to maybe 10%.

Get a bit of experience and start shopping around, that's how you'll know what you're worth.

Note that the real value of a salary is almost entirely dependent on your location and cost of living.

AndyKelley• 18 years ago

Am I going to be screwed over because I go to Arizona State?

timcederman2• 18 years ago

It depends. If you're a rock star candidate, then no. If you're average to good, then probably yes.

Todd• 18 years ago

Not at all. Unless you went to a top school, where you went to school becomes irrelevant after a few years. Where you worked and what you did become much more important.

jmzachary3• 18 years ago

Todd is right. After a couple of years, your school is much less important than what you've done with it during that time.

projectileboy2• 18 years ago

I would say that after a few years, even if you went to a top-flight school, no one cares. The only lasting benefit is the collection of connections that you made while you were there.

brianm• 18 years ago

No, as someone doing a lot of interviewing lately, it really doesn't matter. YMMV, of course, I know more good programmers out of Drexel than Stanford, and am in Palo Alto!

phaedrus• 18 years ago

In Oklahoma it seems to be more like $40K. :( When I went to make some job applications, I realized none of my professors gave any of the new CS graduates any advice on what salary to ask for. It's a moot point because I'm not convinced there are any CS jobs out here. I'm graduating top in my class, have 3 years experience working at a (folded) software development startup, and I've even done a NASA intership - and even with a resume like that I haven't even so much as gotten an interview yet: the job market out here is just so low-tech...

brianr• 18 years ago

Sounds like it's time to move?

aceofaces• 18 years ago

In the Tulsa area there is a high demand for CS types. I probably get a call once every two weeks wanting an interview. My company routinely has a need for Java devs. I know of 2 companies hiring Rails jobs right now. I think you need to look a bit harder. Oh, btw I have no degree, work in CS, and make 70K a year in Tulsa, OK.

utefan001• 18 years ago

We may want to hire you. Email my yahoo address please.

goofygrin2• 18 years ago

There are a plethora of IT jobs in Tulsa and OKC. I know that where I'm consulting right now, one company they work with out of Tulsa likes to bring guys from Tulsa, pay them Tulsa salary and bill them at Dallas rates.

Now, the work likely isn't sexy. Look at the medical and oil/gas industry and start applying there.

And College doesn't teach you how to work in the real world. Why would you trust one of your college professors, who likely haven't worked at a "real" job in 20 years, with any advice relating to salary or real world type work?

fool• 18 years ago

Academia, of course, gives you entirely different salaries. For an Assistant Prof. job at a good university you are looking at ~65,000 +/- 10k depending on location. This of course is supposed to be for 9 months, but good luck telling your tenure review committee you didn't do any work during the summers. Word is lucrative part-time consulting gigs can be had if you are enterprising. It looks as if you are at about 1/2 of what an industrial lab will pay. But then if you are in the academy, supposedly you care more about freedom than money.

yummyfajitas• 18 years ago

Salary for the summer comes from grants. Universities like it that way, it gives you good motivation to go bring home the bacon.

By the way, even your salary number seems low. Perhaps your numbers include teaching colleges?

As for summers, they are also a good time to build a startup. Most tenure review committees don't mind that sort of thing.

hugh2• 18 years ago

I've heard of offers as low as $48K for assistant professors in biological sciences. That's at a real PhD-granting research university, though admittedly not a particularly good one. Even lower for fields like English and History. Higher for hard sciences, and even higher for CS.

ible• 18 years ago

The CRA Taulbee Survey (http://www.cra.org/statistics/) has detailed info on CS faculty salaries in the US and Canada. 2005-2006 9-month salaries for a new PhD in CS with a tenure track position ranged from $70k to $99k with $82k median. Of course, you have to get one of those positions first. PhD production has been at record levels in North America for a few years now. It seems lots of people decided to go to grad school after the bubble burst. The survey has incredible detail including, for instance, how many positions opened up as a result of people dying!

azsromej• 18 years ago

For Atlanta, salary.com says 53-56K; median for Georgia Tech in 2007 was 60K. This is in line with anecdotal evidence I've culled.

mpc• 18 years ago

60~70 in Cambridge/Boston. There are some major companies here (Google, Microsoft, ITA) that probably offer more to really good hacker candidates.

lunchbox• 18 years ago

Try salary.com for statistics on this. -- enter "Software Engineer I" or "web developer".

wallflower2• 18 years ago

So if we take into account cost-of-living adjustments (ignoring quality of life +/- adjustments), the average starting salary is around $50K

wensing• 18 years ago

In Chicago, 55-60k.

tonyvt2005• 18 years ago

In D.C. it's about 55-65, but if you have clearance it can go 5-10 more.

fishhead2• 18 years ago

dallas 65

goofygrin2• 18 years ago

I think that's likely high (I'm in Dallas and have some experience in the last couple years with recruiting college people).

I'd say the average is around 50k, only people with real experience getting more than that. Some companies are paying higher, but they are turning around and billing them out at a stupid high rate (EDS I'm looking at you).

matthavener• 18 years ago

I'd agree, the average is 50 but any decent grad should be able to grab 60-65

lyime• 18 years ago

Friend just got offered 90K from both Adobe and Amazon. Got rejected from Google and MSFT. Has had quite a few good internships.

humanlever• 18 years ago

According to Fortune's best places to work (http://tinyurl.com/3dofj9), Adobe isn't a bad gig.

You can use the same list to see what people are making at different companies and what kinds of perks they're getting. i.e. A software developer at the SAS Institute pulls down $104,566/yr.

aggieben2• 18 years ago

In 2005, I had two offers upon finishing my master's: one in Austin for $61K and one in the Dallas area for $64K.

My officemate took an offer in Baltimore for $75K-ish, I think.

ia• 18 years ago

did you have any professional experience prior to that? i graduated in 05 with a ba in english, but will have my MS in CS in early 09 (so it'll have been about 3.5yrs of CS)... my professional experience is limited, so i anticipate a weird situation where i'm looking for jobs that i seem over qualified for (on paper) but may be under qualified for because i don't have the 3-5 years professional experience required...

aggieben2• 18 years ago

I've had that problem before too. It's just the basic bootstrapping problem of starting a career that everyone goes through.

To answer your question, my only professional experience before finishing school was through internships, including one at Microsoft which I am sure has opened doors for me (although I can't be sure which ones), and my graduate assistantship.

hbien• 18 years ago

starting at 50-60 in San Diego, CA, graduated from UCSD. Mostly from web programming jobs (php, rails, and java).

iamelgringo3• 18 years ago

Wow. And living in San Diego is expensive, too. Probably a lot more expensive than in Dallas or Austin that have comparable salaries.

jomunculus• 18 years ago

I'll let you know. I'm currently outsourcing my education to a 20 year old in Bangalore. If all goes well I'll have my BS in CS by the end of 2009 and at a huge savings.

jon_dahl2• 18 years ago

Man - my first job out of college was $16/hour. That's what I get for majoring in philosophy.

monological• 18 years ago

my buddy just got a job in san jose w/ a salary around ~$86K

r0bert0• 18 years ago

Bachelor's CS from Rutgers: IBM $75K, MS $90K offers. Took IBM because of a signing bonus and you work less hours (doing a startup in the other hours), and work from home. Living in East Village in Manhattan for $1900/month studio and i'm fine (except when a girlfriend is in the picture).

Know a few others for IBM BS CS (all over US) that start at approximately $60-$65K. If you want higher, do an internship with the group you want to go fulltime with, then get your manager to go to your VP for a higher starting (that's the only way in IBM).

Know a few Rutgers BS CS who started with financial companies in Manhattan (e.g. Merril Lynch), and they started at $60K, which was a bit surprising b/c NYC ain't cheap. Apparently, you get whipped around for a few years in the financial district and then you start getting huge bonuses and raises.

crxnamja• 18 years ago

as a biz major i was offered $100k after 1 year out of college in a pm role by a major ocmpany.

Ask YC: What are starting salaries for CS grads this year?

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