Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are tops in salary, says nerdwallet

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/comparing-colleges-by-what-new-graduates-are-doing/

by nuromancer • 14 years ago

46 38 14 years ago

bucks.blogs.nytimes.com

iag• 14 years ago

CMU grad here, let me chime in a few words if I may...

As much as I am proud to hear that Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are making the top $, it saddens me a bit to realize that our graduates are playing it too safe.

I don't have the exact numbers, but my guess is that the percentage of CMU grads doing startups is probably at a much lower number rate than other top tier tech schools like MIT and Stanford. As a result, while these other school's immediate graduate salary is lower than CMU, their life time salary is probably going to be higher.

Yes, making $100K out of college is glorious, but that novelty is going to wear off and you'll be like everybody else slaving their life away. While you still can, while the market is still hot, why not aim for something better like creating the next instagram or dropbox? What's the absolute worst that can happen if you fail? Returning to that $100K/year job?

Life after college is like stepping into a casino for the first time and the casino offers you a free roll. It's silly not to give it a shot if you have practically nothing to lose.

phxrsng2• 14 years ago

I'm not sure I agree, for many reasons.

1 - a lot of grads have loans to pay off, and that $100k/yr job sure helps get it done quickly so you can focus on anything you want without that on your back.

2 - That $100k/yr job can help you meet a lot of great people to work on projects with at a later time. A lot of SCS grads come out having done nothing but stare at code for 4 years (I'm one, and I was saddened by the number of my classmates who made no connections on campus outside of SCS, connections that would be vitally useful in a startup). Working at a great company in the valley can help get you into the startup scene in a way that Pittsburgh might not.

3 - Nothing says you can't work on a startup outside of the 40-50hrs/wk you put in at your 100k/yr job. SCS grads are used to loooong work weeks; a normal work week seems short in comparison, especially right after graduation when you aren't (probably) supporting a family or anything else. That leaves time to make money AND try out some projects.

4 - Not being part of a startup =/= slaving your life away. There's a lot of great, rewarding work to be done in the valley and in the tech industry, it isn't an all or nothing thing with the all being becoming a startup founder. Being part of a company growing quickly and doing cool things can be just as rewarding as being a founder.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

You are spot on with most of that, but #3 is not exactly true. When you sign on for $100k/yr you are almost guaranteed to have signed a non-compete clause, as well as a clause generally surrendering rights to novel work.

It's somewhat of a blurry, contentious line I don't well understand, but if you are working for Google chances are you can't incubate a software startup by moonlight.

nemothekid• 14 years ago

Number 1 is also a big one. Stanford is a much more finically generous school. I go to CMU currently, and I have a friend in the same income range as me that goes to stanford, and I pay almost double what he does.

mendocino• 14 years ago

> While you still can, while the market is still hot, why not aim for something better like creating the next instagram or dropbox?

I guess not everyone wants to build yet another website/app. A lot of interesting/hard/capital-intensive R&D is done outside of the startup bubble and there are only so many job openings at SpaceX.

babar• 14 years ago

I think your chances of succeeding in your startup increase tremendously if you've taken a couple of years to work at another startup, see what is required to make it work, and see what problems you want to avoid, before starting your own. I also think, for CMU in particular, students have less exposure to the Silicon Valley startup culture than Stanford students. Hopefully that is better now than when I went, but being naive about the business side of things can have some pretty negative consequences when you try to start your own thing.

Of course, if you really have an idea you are passionate about you should go out there and make it happen. But maybe find some other more experienced CMU folks to give you some advice while you do it :)

khuey• 14 years ago

Well of course CMU students have less exposure to the Silicon Valley startup culture than Stanford students. One is right down the road, the other is on the opposite side of the country.

mnutt• 14 years ago

I was on a panel at CMU, as part of a NYC startup tour designed to encourage students to move to NYC and/or join a startup. Of all the schools we went to, the CMU event had the best attendance and students I talked to afterwards seemed the most interested in entrepreneurship.

tikhonj• 14 years ago

This could just be because CMU students have less exposure to startups and the like, so your tour was proportionally more interesting to them.

I'm a Berkeley student, and I bet that your tour would have been less well attended here, simply because we're inundated with startups as is. (And because anybody wanting to start a company is probably going to stay in the Bay Area, but that's another story.)

Maybe (very likely, even) I have a poor view of Pittsburgh, but my impression was that it is not particularly full of tech startups. This is also self-reinforcing to some degree--the sort of people who like startups are more likely to choose one of the other top CS schools because they're in significantly more startup-friendly areas (e.g. Boston or the Bay Area). That was actually one of my main criteria when considering CMU.

jsprinkles3• 14 years ago

"Other people in my class aren't doing what I want to do, and this saddens me."

Startups aren't the One True Path of computing, and some people appreciate clocking out at a consistent time every day (or have an eye on a family, or whatever); the Silicon Valley life is not for everyone, and being saddened by other people not choosing your lifestyle is just silly. Why does this matter to you?

dasil003• 14 years ago

Maybe he wants to hire them for below market salaries ;)

aswanson3• 14 years ago

Because he looks at it as a waste of human potential. Most rational humans are disturbed by as much.

frankdenbow• 14 years ago

SCS grad here, I echo your sentiments. There are lots of CMU grads in startups, though from companies like Dulingo, Homerun, Everlane, Gazehawk, etc. Seems that the school is doing more for the entrepreneurship program which is encouraging.

jblock• 14 years ago

"...if you have practically nothing to lose."

My student loans say differently. :)

But honestly, so many factors go into post-undergrad job hunting these days that it's difficult to simplify the issue into "go to a startup" and "don't go to a startup."

I also wouldn't say that 100K is "slaving your life away" if you want to raise a family and live a comfortable life. I went to a small school in southwest Indiana (Rose-Hulman) and most graduates want nothing more than to work a 9-5 engineering job and find the love of their lives.

And frankly, I can't find the heart to advise them otherwise.

jenntoda• 14 years ago

Another CMU grad here, and I can't agree more.

Attention all new CMU SCS grads: I envy you. You have the brains, the skills, and the YOUTH to do whatever you want! DO IT! It doesn't have to be a startup, but it should be something that you really really want to do and would do even for free. You literally have nothing to lose.

If you think you would work for someone else for free - then do it. The minute you take a job for the pay however, you're on the slippery slope of selling your soul for money.

You can always make money. Your youth is ticking away by the minute. You will never get it back.

I graduate from CMU 6 years ago. I took the safer route. Instead of searching for something I am passionate about, I settled for the paycheck. It took me 4 years to gather up enough courage to admit that I was miserable on the paycheck treadmill.

See, when you work for a paycheck, you sell yourself to the person in control of your pay - your manager. Your incentive is to please your manager so that you can get your raise. Often times, this means that you have to compromise your own judgement to be “in alignment with the management”. Each time you compromise your own judgement, you actually become more adversed to making your own judgement. And as you lose your sense of judgement, you lose your confidence in yourself to do any differently. This is when you are really in trouble. You become risk adverse: the more you compromise your soul to gain your material belongings, the more you become committed to holding on to your material goods for dear life.

I saw this happening to myself but I didn't have enough courage to just quit outright, so I took the only other socially (parentally) acceptable route: go back to school.

At my MBA program I found a whole collection of folks similar to me. Regardless of whatever we wrote on the application to get in, most of us were just soul searching. Searching for the meaning of our lives beyond our paychecks. There, I observed a phenomenon. The “I want to do something else BUT” disease. Usually, the BUT is a “but I have sustain my materialistic life”. So even as most of us were soul searching, by far the majority went right back onto the paycheck treadmill. And that is sad. Really sad.

Avoid the treadmill altogether and you will be happier for it. If you can’t, if you need the money to sustain yourself and your family, then at the very least keep your conciseness in check and remember that you’re just working for a paycheck. In your spare time, do what you truly want to be doing, challenge yourself and don’t listen to what the majority wants you to do. Be different. You only live once. Live it.

jcdavis• 14 years ago

Its probably worth mentioning that one of the reasons SCS is so above others on that list is that unlike most schools in the US, at CMU CS is a separate school from engineering, and thus reports its own separate numbers. Not that the CIT (engineering) students are doing bad at #4 on http://www.nerdwallet.com/education/grad_surveys/top-salarie... , but CS grads at other top schools likely would see similar numbers if they reported individually.

igillis2• 14 years ago

What I take away from these results on first glance is that employers tend to value an instilled work ethic, as evidenced by the (to me) surprisingly high rankings of schools like GaTech, Johns Hopkins, Harvey Mudd and CMU.

nuromancer• 14 years ago

How do you find CMU to be a 'surprisingly high ranked school'?

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-gradu...

igillis2• 14 years ago

Mostly I felt the non-SCS schools were ranked surprisingly high. (disclaimer, I'm currently a rising senior at CMU SCS, didn't want to hurt any H&SS kids' feelings :p)

cschmidt• 14 years ago

Those are 4 top notch engineering schools. Why is it a surprise that they would be popular with employers. (Disclosure: I'm a CMU alum.)

msellout• 14 years ago

GaTech ranks very high (inter)nationally in most engineering disciplines. Resulting salaries are not surprising.

msutherl• 14 years ago

After graduating from school in Canada – where nobody cares where you go to school – and moving to New York – where it's supposed to mean everything – I can't emphasize enough how much this doesn't matter.

Go where you want to be, where you can find people like you, and do your thing.

giardini• 14 years ago

A friend's son was top of his class. He convinced himself to go into CMU SCS program. He was a novice programmer with barely any background. I warned him away, saying that he would find himself in unforgiving competition with people who had been programming seriously for 10 years or more and recommending that he choose a state school instead. He ignored my warnings.

He lasted six weeks before changing majors. It really messed him up psychologically - he's got a serious inferiority complex now. I believe that, had he chosen from any number of other schools, he would be a happy CS grad and programmer today. It is difficult to go from the top of your class to the very bottom.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

I dunno, I feel like my life has been a constant cycle of big-fish, little-pond- and I'm grateful for it. It drives me to achieve more.

nandemo• 14 years ago

Anyone knows why Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, etc, don't even appear? Were they not included in the study? And if so, can the study still be considered meaningful?

superprime• 14 years ago

It says at the bottom: "some schools do not report salary data."

http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/education/college-and-career-...

sdpurtill• 14 years ago

I know for a fact that Stanford CS majors are making on average $80,000 per annum upon graduating from the undergrad program. A document circulating the CS mailing lists a while ago had all the figures. Note that despite the increasing difficulty to dismiss its allure, I am not a CS major.

zombinator• 14 years ago

fk u and all your money. I am from pakistan and only the best of the best news about u fellows make it here for us to inspire from . this is the first time i am hearing about a college called CMU. I have heard MIT, Stanford, Harvard and i believe they are the shit. U guys,, never. STart doing something for the effin world. My dad makes more money selling garments here for sure. Steve jobs was not from any of these college right? idiots. paisa and paisa. and wtf is nerd wallet. why would u go to that site also?

Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are tops in salary, says nerdwallet

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