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Fresh CS graduate wages down 20 percent

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: Fresh CS graduate wages down 20 percent

#21

Post by lliiffee »

smanek wrote: post #18
mynameishere wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't pull numbers out of nowhere. http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresu... There's no way that an "average" starting salary is 70k. Salary.com is famously inflationary and they have the median at 54K--and that's not just fresh grads. My guess would be more like 40K, with huge variations depending on where you live and whether you went to a well-known school. But then, "average" people don't go…

First of all, I said my numbers apply to major cites. Your own source places the median salary in th 60K-65K range for most metros. Second, my numbers aren't pulled out of nowhere they are based on my friends and my experience. And they seem to be independently corroborated by litewulf. Third, note that my poor/average/good ratings weren't based on quintiles or anything like that - it was based on my personal charact…

Fourth, "average" usually refers to the mean, and for distributions with big upper tails (like salaries), the mean is higher than median.

Re: Fresh CS graduate wages down 20 percent

#22

Post by KWD »

utnick wrote: post #20
smanek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It varies greatly on skill/pedigree (the two often, but not always, correlate). If you are poor to average you'll start at $50K-70k/year. If you're average to good you'll start at 70k-90k, and 90k+ if you're particularly good (about 150K is the maximum I've heard of, and that's more in modeling or quantitative development than straight programming). About a 10% bonus is normal in my experience, but that obviously var…

sounds correct also, it seems like a large % of cs graduates are unable to get jobs in programming due to lack of experience

I'm just trying to move back into I.T., and even entry-level positions are asking for 2-3 years of experience. I'd say there are probably a lot of underemployed programmers since getting the foot in the door is tougher these days.

Re: Fresh CS graduate wages down 20 percent

#24

Post by ewanmcteagle »

mynameishere wrote: post #16
smanek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It varies greatly on skill/pedigree (the two often, but not always, correlate). If you are poor to average you'll start at $50K-70k/year. If you're average to good you'll start at 70k-90k, and 90k+ if you're particularly good (about 150K is the maximum I've heard of, and that's more in modeling or quantitative development than straight programming). About a 10% bonus is normal in my experience, but that obviously var…

Don't pull numbers out of nowhere. http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresu... There's no way that an "average" starting salary is 70k. Salary.com is famously inflationary and they have the median at 54K--and that's not just fresh grads. My guess would be more like 40K, with huge variations depending on where you live and whether you went to a well-known school. But then, "average" people don't go…

FWIW, I've found Salary.com to be pretty good with it's mean and distribution information.

Re: Fresh CS graduate wages down 20 percent

#25

Post by qqq »

smanek wrote: post #18
mynameishere wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't pull numbers out of nowhere. http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresu... There's no way that an "average" starting salary is 70k. Salary.com is famously inflationary and they have the median at 54K--and that's not just fresh grads. My guess would be more like 40K, with huge variations depending on where you live and whether you went to a well-known school. But then, "average" people don't go…

First of all, I said my numbers apply to major cites. Your own source places the median salary in th 60K-65K range for most metros. Second, my numbers aren't pulled out of nowhere they are based on my friends and my experience. And they seem to be independently corroborated by litewulf. Third, note that my poor/average/good ratings weren't based on quintiles or anything like that - it was based on my personal charact…

Your friends aren't average.

Re: Fresh CS graduate wages down 20 percent

#26

Post by pg »

poshj wrote: post #5

Hi guys, I want to know how much exactly do fresh CS graduate(B.Sc) gets in US nowadays? I'm based in Japan, and we will get 2147 USD(200k yen) for base salary only no matter how good you are. It seems very cheap :( since the high living cost here. The yearly bonus is about 4~5 months of base salary, but you don't usually get it unless you are really recognized by the management team. EDIT: I must say, this is also t…

$2100 a month? That is extremely cheap by US standards.

Re: Fresh CS graduate wages down 20 percent

#27

Post by timr »

poshj wrote: post #5

Hi guys, I want to know how much exactly do fresh CS graduate(B.Sc) gets in US nowadays? I'm based in Japan, and we will get 2147 USD(200k yen) for base salary only no matter how good you are. It seems very cheap :( since the high living cost here. The yearly bonus is about 4~5 months of base salary, but you don't usually get it unless you are really recognized by the management team. EDIT: I must say, this is also t…

I made more than $2100 a month as a grad student -- and we weren't paid very well.

Re: Fresh CS graduate wages down 20 percent

#30

Post by poshj »

pg wrote: post #26
poshj wrote: post #5

Hi guys, I want to know how much exactly do fresh CS graduate(B.Sc) gets in US nowadays? I'm based in Japan, and we will get 2147 USD(200k yen) for base salary only no matter how good you are. It seems very cheap :( since the high living cost here. The yearly bonus is about 4~5 months of base salary, but you don't usually get it unless you are really recognized by the management team. EDIT: I must say, this is also t…

$2100 a month? That is extremely cheap by US standards.

Yeah, I feel cheap too, but it's almost like the standard here :( Unless you enter google or bulge bracket banks, you won't get too far from $2k/month base salary here.

Just my curiosity, did you find this cheap after reading my other comment too: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385479 ? And btw, by CS graduate I meant B.Eng. or B.Sc. not M.Eng or M.Sc.

So, Is it save to assume that entry level programmer will get above $50k/year in US?

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