5 ms·

In the Bay Area, it's not unusual for 22-year-olds CS graduates to be making more than $80k/year, even at VC-funded places. Maybe that's "less" than what experi

by jes5199 13y ago

In the Bay Area, it's not unusual for 22-year-olds CS graduates to be making more than $80k/year, even at VC-funded places. Maybe that's "less" than what experienced developers can make, but it's just crazy-high for the country on average.

lsc 13y ago
>In the Bay Area, it's not unusual for 22-year-olds CS graduates to be making more than $80k/year, even at VC-funded places. Maybe that's "less" than what experienced developers can make, but it's just crazy-high for the country on average. Yup. The bay area, in general, is pretty crazy wage-wise. in '07, I think Yahoo was paying it's interns like $24/hr. Now, our housing is crazy, too... you see shared bedrooms going for $1000/person in mountain view. It's different here. Median per-capita income in Santa Clara is somewhere around $100K/yr. The thing is, if those kids got an entry level gig at a large corporation, they wouldn't make that much more, but they'd get dramatically better benefits. I mean, you want grants not options - but you can get those, and that's not the half of it. Also, you have dramatically more stability at a large place, and quite often get severance if you are laid off... something unheard of at a startup, and that is cherished by folks with families. Edit: Also note, you said "even at VC funded places" as if VC backed companies paid less. They only pay less, for a person without a lot of experience, in comparison to corporate behemoths. And even then, only if you factor in the better benefits and stability offered by the behemoth. If you want to find a place that pays less... there is a whole 'shadow IT industry' that pays barely above service wages. On the corporate side, you have places like geeksquad. You also have a lot of small ISPs, like, say, my company. It's a place for people who can't get into a VC-backed startup (or an internship at a large corporation) to get a toehold. People move up from 'shadow IT' to 'real IT' whenever they can. That is the path I took, in fact.
- jes5199 13y ago
  I actually worked in shadow IT for a while, too - once I had the skills, I made the switch, and my salary doubled. But now what? Did I top out already? No meaningful advancement until I retire?
  - lsc 13y ago
    >I actually worked in shadow IT for a while, too - once I had the skills, I made the switch, and my salary doubled. But now what? Did I top out already? No meaningful advancement until I retire? Well, the doubling is going to be harder to do again... it will certainly happen much more slowly. But moving from real it in the flyover to real IT in a big coastal city can give you a giant bump; you can also give management a shot, or try to start your own company. Really, if shadow IT paid $15/hr, and you doubled to $30, yeah, you could double again if you are reasonably good and willing to move to a big, expensive coastal city. $60/hr is downright easy if you are willing to be a contractor and work through a body shop; it requires a bit more skill but is still eminently doable to do as a full-time direct-hire with good benefits. Note, my experience has been that if you can gain some network and Linux skills, "production IT" as it were, you have a reasonably large advantage over the windows-only folks, at least in terms of pay. Pay, for SysAdmins, seems to scale more with how expensive the thing you are supporting is than with the actual difficulty of the job, so... keep that in mind
- _delirium 13y ago
  > Median per-capita income in Santa Clara is somewhere around $100K/yr. Incomes vary a lot even in the Valley, though; people seem to self-sort. Santa Clara is $89K median as of 2011, Cupertino even higher at $124k. But Mountain View? $54k median income.
  - lsc 13y ago
    That is... shocking. Especially considering that it's way cheaper to buy in Santa Clara than in Mountain View. I've checked out trailer parks in the area, too... (I'm totally the kind of guy who would live in a mobile home if it was a good deal) but we're talking like $800+ per month for space rent, then you have to buy the mobile home on top of that. Add to that, well, most mobile homes are not particularly mobile, and you have all the problems you expect from owning a building on land you rent. (Note, not lease, rent. Most of the time, they can jack up your rent year over year as much as they like. I have locked-in rackspace for my servers for five years... as far as I can tell, I could not lock in the space rent for more than one.) But yeah, I would totally have bought into a mobile home park if it had more of a 'condo' ownership model where the land was owned in common.
    - _delirium 13y ago
      Oops, I looked things up wrong. So no need to be shocked. Sorry! That was the number for Mountain View, Arkansas... Now Mountain View, California, that's got a median of $91k, which is maybe more what you expected. Only place in the $50k-median range on the Peninsula seems to be East Palo Alto. Oakland's about the same.

by jes5199 13y ago

lsc 13y ago

>In the Bay Area, it's not unusual for 22-year-olds CS graduates to be making more than $80k/year, even at VC-funded places. Maybe that's "less" than what experienced developers can make, but it's just crazy-high for the country on average. Yup. The bay area, in general, is pretty crazy wage-wise. in '07, I think Yahoo was paying it's interns like $24/hr. Now, our housing is crazy, too... you see shared bedrooms going for $1000/person in mountain view. It's different here. Median per-capita income in Santa Clara is somewhere around $100K/yr. The thing is, if those kids got an entry level gig at a large corporation, they wouldn't make that much more, but they'd get dramatically better benefits. I mean, you want grants not options - but you can get those, and that's not the half of it. Also, you have dramatically more stability at a large place, and quite often get severance if you are laid off... something unheard of at a startup, and that is cherished by folks with families. Edit: Also note, you said "even at VC funded places" as if VC backed companies paid less. They only pay less, for a person without a lot of experience, in comparison to corporate behemoths. And even then, only if you factor in the better benefits and stability offered by the behemoth. If you want to find a place that pays less... there is a whole 'shadow IT industry' that pays barely above service wages. On the corporate side, you have places like geeksquad. You also have a lot of small ISPs, like, say, my company. It's a place for people who can't get into a VC-backed startup (or an internship at a large corporation) to get a toehold. People move up from 'shadow IT' to 'real IT' whenever they can. That is the path I took, in fact.

jes5199 13y ago
I actually worked in shadow IT for a while, too - once I had the skills, I made the switch, and my salary doubled. But now what? Did I top out already? No meaningful advancement until I retire?
- lsc 13y ago
  >I actually worked in shadow IT for a while, too - once I had the skills, I made the switch, and my salary doubled. But now what? Did I top out already? No meaningful advancement until I retire? Well, the doubling is going to be harder to do again... it will certainly happen much more slowly. But moving from real it in the flyover to real IT in a big coastal city can give you a giant bump; you can also give management a shot, or try to start your own company. Really, if shadow IT paid $15/hr, and you doubled to $30, yeah, you could double again if you are reasonably good and willing to move to a big, expensive coastal city. $60/hr is downright easy if you are willing to be a contractor and work through a body shop; it requires a bit more skill but is still eminently doable to do as a full-time direct-hire with good benefits. Note, my experience has been that if you can gain some network and Linux skills, "production IT" as it were, you have a reasonably large advantage over the windows-only folks, at least in terms of pay. Pay, for SysAdmins, seems to scale more with how expensive the thing you are supporting is than with the actual difficulty of the job, so... keep that in mind
_delirium 13y ago
> Median per-capita income in Santa Clara is somewhere around $100K/yr. Incomes vary a lot even in the Valley, though; people seem to self-sort. Santa Clara is $89K median as of 2011, Cupertino even higher at $124k. But Mountain View? $54k median income.
- lsc 13y ago
  That is... shocking. Especially considering that it's way cheaper to buy in Santa Clara than in Mountain View. I've checked out trailer parks in the area, too... (I'm totally the kind of guy who would live in a mobile home if it was a good deal) but we're talking like $800+ per month for space rent, then you have to buy the mobile home on top of that. Add to that, well, most mobile homes are not particularly mobile, and you have all the problems you expect from owning a building on land you rent. (Note, not lease, rent. Most of the time, they can jack up your rent year over year as much as they like. I have locked-in rackspace for my servers for five years... as far as I can tell, I could not lock in the space rent for more than one.) But yeah, I would totally have bought into a mobile home park if it had more of a 'condo' ownership model where the land was owned in common.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    Oops, I looked things up wrong. So no need to be shocked. Sorry! That was the number for Mountain View, Arkansas... Now Mountain View, California, that's got a median of $91k, which is maybe more what you expected. Only place in the $50k-median range on the Peninsula seems to be East Palo Alto. Oakland's about the same.