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

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51–60 of 111 posts

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

#51
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

That is a consulting company, not a software product.

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

#52
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The menial job is likely NOT a startup, and is a huge corporation that will not likely recognize your massive contribution. I don't know that it is exactly good karma to not let on, but it would be something to consider. Would you really give the honest problem-solver what they deserve though? The last project I did at a large company that saved the company a lot of time and money netted me a 10% raise. Probably less…

Yeah, legacy COBOL probably equals "huge corporation." I assume, then, that there's an employment agreement covering this scenario.

It's an ethical dilemma, but in my opinion the fundamental right to earn a living (basic economic freedom) trumps the letter of an overly-restrictive contract, _if_ the employee's outside activities don't impact the employer in a material way. That's not law, that's just my opinion, and I realize it could be a bit of a slippery slope. However I just don't see how a company can own an employee's time away from work (again unless the employee is competing in the employer's direct line of business). See the work of Brandeis.

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

#54

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 e…

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

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

#55
post #9
post #4

$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.

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.

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

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

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

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Salaries for grads outside of Moscow are probably half that - I think PHP coders in Kharkov, Ukraine for example would be pretty happy with 12-15K. QA positions could be as low as 8-10K.

And $1300 for a 1-bedroom in Moscow center...what can I say you got off light. All my friends had to go through realtors for $2K places (2-3 rooms through) near Kitai-Gorod.

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

#57
post #33

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…

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.

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.

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

#58
post #33

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…

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!
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