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Stanford Computer Science '10-'11 Salary Survey Results
I'm an undergraduate at Stanford and I recently got this mass email from the CS department. I figured it might be interesting to the Hacker News audience (with all the talk of bubble and stuff). No one said the survey results were not to be distributed so I assumed that it was okay to do this.
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CS/EE Undergrads
Data: I received 140 responses which described 360 job offers. 95% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 5% were from the Midwest and East Coast. 10% of the job offers were from start-ups.
Salary offers ranged from $64,400 to $100,000. The average salary offer was $79,914. The median salary offer was $ 82,200.
About 70% of students were offered stock options. About 80% of students were offered signing bonuses. And about 60% were offered relocation assistance and there were others who did not report the statistics since relocating did not apply to them. Relocation assistance ranged from $2,000 to $10,000 with an average of $3,000. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $25,000 with an average of $5,700. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values.
Students who replied averaged about 2 job offers. However, students may not have reported on all the offers they received. The average student who replied to the survey all had some job experience, nearly all of it through summer internships and averaged 3 summer of work.
Location, scope of work, salary/benefits, environment/culture, company were the important factors in accepting the offers for the undergrads.
CS/EE Masters
Data: I received 145 responses which described 330 job offers. 94% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 6% were in the Midwest and East Coast. 15% of the job offers were from start-ups.
Salary offers ranged from $66,000 to $120,000. The average salary offer was $94,634. The median salary offer was $93,000. The candidates who were offered $120,000 was reporting directly to the VP of his research group. Also, one of the candidates was offered $36,000 because the individual was doing an internship instead of a full-time position out of state which I did not include into the calculation.
About 78% of students were offered stock options. About 66% of students were offered signing bonuses. And about 43% were offered relocation assistance and there others who did not report the statistics since relocating did not apply to them. Relocation assistance ranged from $1,000 to $8,000 with an average of $1,740. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $35,000 with an average of $4,102. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values.
Students who replied averaged about 3 job offers. However, students may not have reported on all the offers they received. The Masters had a little more summer experience than the undergraduates, an average of 3 summer internships.
Like the undergrads, location, scope of work, company, and salary/benefits, and environment/culture seem to be the important factors for the MS grads.
CS/EE PhD's
Data: I received 26 responses which described 60 job offers. 79% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 21% were in the Midwest and East Coast. 30% of the job offers were from start-ups. 5% of the job offers were from a university.
Salary offers ranged from $132,888 to $145,000. The average salary offer was $123,972. The median salary offer was $138,944. One of the candidates was offered $43,000 because the individual was pursuing a Post-doc at a university which I did not include into the calculation.
About 45% of students were offered stock options. About 45% of students were offered signing bonuses. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $19,600 with an average of $6,150. Relocation assistance ranged from $5,000 to $10,000 with an average of $7,500. However, they may not have reported on all the benefits they received. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values.
Students who replied averaged about 3 job offers. However, students may not have reported on all the offers they received. The PhDs had about the same amount of summer experience as the Masters, an average of 2 summer internships and with the exception of 2 full-time experience.
Like the undergraduates and masters, location, company, environment/culture, salary/benefits, scope of work seem to be the important factors when it came to accepting their job offer.
- felipepiresx 15y agodamn, i dropped out, so i guess this make me unemployable.
- GuySensei 15y agowell..not really.. what are you good at?
- pault 15y agoWhen I see these surveys from the top-tier universities, I often wonder what the ceiling is for those of us who are self-educated.
- ericflo 15y agoThere is no ceiling.
- drido 15y agoLuckily for us, we can prove it. Not many people will ever get a chance to say, "hey, let me show you that I can do it". There aren't many hobbyist surgeons (I hope).
- dodedo 15y agoI have no degree. Base salary 160k roughly 50-60k in equity/year. 10 years experience. I'm not at the top of my game yet. I started at 70k with no experience no degree.
- alexholehouse 15y agoI would perhaps argue that 70k starting with no experience or degree is very much not the norm. I'm not questioning you, but how/where?
- Vishnevskiy 15y agoI have no actual work experience prior to my current job and no degree. I am 23 years old and I have a 6 figure salary and equity in the Bay Area. If you know people that know what you are capable of and can refer you to a company then an amazing resume is completely irrelevant. Last week I turned down a job offer from Blizzard Entertainment (was by referral) because they could not match my current salary.