7 ms·
Ask YC: What are starting salaries for CS grads this year?
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.
- rms 19y agoA 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 19y agoI've seen offers from 75k to 95k (though the 95k was an outlier). Most were in the 80-85k for first tier companies.
- tomjen 19y agoJust write a cobol to java compiler and be done with it.
- NonEUCitizen 19y agohe may not have to write one himself: http://www.jazillian.com/howCOBOL.html disclaimer: i don't know cobol and have never tried this.
- rms 19y agoThat is a consulting company, not a software product.
- rms 19y agoI 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 19y agoBut don't let on. Work on your startup with the new extra time.
- adammichaelc 19y agoI 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.
- mrtron 19y agoThe 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 than 1% what I saved them per year.
- suboptimal 19y agoYeah, 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.
- donw 19y 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.
- csmajorfive 19y agoMasters is +10 in my experience.
- cperciva 19y agoI 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.
- menloparkbum 19y agoI 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.
- carterschonwald 19y agois that supposed to be +30? else that doesn't make sense?
- suboptimal 19y agoI think he means the PhDs have been flogged by academia longer than the Masters, who thus retain a modicum of self-worth. I don't know about starting salaries, but DC-area hiring is plentiful, and you should be able to hit $100k in a few years (if not sooner). Of course if you want to be under the bright lights, and not spend your career backstage, then: Go west, young man.
- cperciva 19y ago
- nuggien 19y agoI'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.
- jmzachary 19y agoThat $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.
- nuggien 19y agoThat 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.
- jmzachary 19y agoI understand that. And it's true that it is best to negotiate the highest starting salary as possible because most people, on average, will get a standard "cost of living" (whatever that means anymore) raise increase on an annual basis. But, I wanted to point out that there is definitely hope for non-namebrand CS program graduates, too.
- menloparkbum 19y ago$80K +/- 5K at GOOG for Stanford grads and $85K at Amazon for a Berkeley grad.
- mrtron 19y agoRoughly the same numbers for Waterloo grads at those places.
- natch 19y agoFor 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 19y ago100k 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_it 19y agoWow, just wow. I live in Moscow and earn about 30K a year. 25 years old, 10 of them coding for money. Maths degree.
- iamelgringo 19y agoMoscow'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_it 19y agoI 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.
- tomh 19y agoSalaries 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.
- vtx 19y agoHow about $5K for 2 years experience PHP developer in Dnepr, Ukraine. I work for this now and my motivation is lost completely. May be I will try to relocate. Now i see even in Dnepropetrovsk salary for html coder for $10K and php dev $14K, but they require strong knowledge of all what can imagine, even speaking english. My bad, need better education.
- projectileboy 19y ago$30k + $1300/month rent?? Dang... Are other countries an option for you?
- dmnd 19y ago80k to start in 2009 at MSFT. Makes me think I should've thought more about inflation before signing.
- simianstyle 19y agoI 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 :)
- csmajorfive 19y agoOn 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 19y agoRaises? It's called changing jobs.
- csmajorfive 19y agoI'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?
- pchristensen 19y agoyes. raises tend tp ne 2-3%, You can get 10-15% or more for changing jobs
- andreyf 19y agoYou don't need to actually change jobs. If you get a better offer, you can tell your company that you feel you're being undervalued, and ask for a raise. It's just money, so don't be shy.
- hsu 19y agoI've been working for over 10 years, and I've found that most companies offer 2% - 5% raises, a little more if you are a super employee. The only ways to get more than a 10% raise are to change jobs or to use another job offer as a means to extract a counter offer from your current employer.
- timcederman 19y agoAs 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 19y ago
- AndyKelley 19y agoAm I going to be screwed over because I go to Arizona State?
- timcederman 19y agoIt depends. If you're a rock star candidate, then no. If you're average to good, then probably yes.
- Todd 19y agoNot 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.
- jmzachary 19y agoTodd is right. After a couple of years, your school is much less important than what you've done with it during that time.
- projectileboy 19y agoI 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 19y agoNo, 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 19y agoIn 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 19y agoSounds like it's time to move?
- aceofaces 19y agoIn 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 19y agoWe may want to hire you. Email my yahoo address please.
- goofygrin 19y agoThere 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 19y agoAcademia, 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 19y agoSalary 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.
- hugh 19y agoI'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 19y agoThe CRA Taulbee Survey (http://www.cra.org/statistics/ 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 19y agoFor 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 19y ago60~70 in Cambridge/Boston. There are some major companies here (Google, Microsoft, ITA) that probably offer more to really good hacker candidates.
- lunchbox 19y agoTry salary.com for statistics on this. -- enter "Software Engineer I" or "web developer".
- wallflower 19y agoSo if we take into account cost-of-living adjustments (ignoring quality of life +/- adjustments), the average starting salary is around $50K
- wensing 19y agoIn Chicago, 55-60k.
- tonyvt2005 19y agoIn D.C. it's about 55-65, but if you have clearance it can go 5-10 more.
- fishhead 19y agodallas 65
- goofygrin 19y agoI 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 19y agoI'd agree, the average is 50 but any decent grad should be able to grab 60-65
- fishhead 19y agoI'm an ms grad so probably you're right.
- lyime 19y agoFriend just got offered 90K from both Adobe and Amazon. Got rejected from Google and MSFT. Has had quite a few good internships.
- humanlever 19y agoAccording to Fortune's best places to work (http://tinyurl.com/3dofj9 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.
- aggieben 19y agoIn 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 19y agodid 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...
- aggieben 19y agoI'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 19y agostarting at 50-60 in San Diego, CA, graduated from UCSD. Mostly from web programming jobs (php, rails, and java).
- iamelgringo 19y agoWow. And living in San Diego is expensive, too. Probably a lot more expensive than in Dallas or Austin that have comparable salaries.
- jomunculus 19y agoI'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_dahl 19y agoMan - my first job out of college was $16/hour. That's what I get for majoring in philosophy.
- monological 19y agomy buddy just got a job in san jose w/ a salary around ~$86K
- r0bert0 19y agoBachelor'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 19y agoas a biz major i was offered $100k after 1 year out of college in a pm role by a major ocmpany.