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Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are tops in salary, says nerdwallet

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Re: Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are tops in salary, says nerdwallet

#11

Post by aswanson »

jsprinkles wrote: post #7
iag wrote: post #2

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, wh…

"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?

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

Re: Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are tops in salary, says nerdwallet

#12

Post by [deleted] »

aswanson wrote: post #11
jsprinkles wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

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

[deleted]

Re: Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are tops in salary, says nerdwallet

#13

Post by tikhonj »

mnutt wrote: post #6
iag wrote: post #2

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, wh…

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.

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.

Re: Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are tops in salary, says nerdwallet

#15

Post by bartonfink »

aswanson wrote: post #11
jsprinkles wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

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

Who is anyone on here to decide what grads should do with their potential, or whether they're wasting it? That's the height of arrogance, and I see no rationality whatsoever in such an attitude.

Re: Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are tops in salary, says nerdwallet

#16

Post by khuey »

babar wrote: post #5
iag wrote: post #2

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, wh…

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 be…

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.

Re: Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are tops in salary, says nerdwallet

#17

Post by nuromancer »

igillis wrote: post #14

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.

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

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

Re: Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are tops in salary, says nerdwallet

#18

Post by cschmidt »

igillis wrote: post #14

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.

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.)

Re: Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are tops in salary, says nerdwallet

#19

Post by smokinn »

aswanson wrote: post #11
jsprinkles wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

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

That's very debatable.

While you may think that people working big companies are wasting their potential, those working there might think the same for people at startups.

Let's explore a counter-argument:

At a big company you get incredible leverage for the work you do. Most large companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) don't bother with a few thousand clients. Your work goes out to millions. That's quite an impact you can have.

Startups on the other hand usually fail. And they fail after having affected relatively few customers. Very few ever make it to even tens of thousands of customers.

So which is is the bigger waste of human potential? The person working 80+ hours a week whose company goes bust after a year after being used by barely anyone or the person working 40 hours a week on a product being used by 100 million people?

Re: Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are tops in salary, says nerdwallet

#20

Post by jsprinkles »

aswanson wrote: post #11
jsprinkles wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

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

Not working at a startup is a waste of human potential? You're going to have to elaborate on that, as that's extraordinarily disrespectful to pretty much everybody else in computing.
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