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I think if you come out of a good school with the right degree and jump right into a good company you can expect market-rate pay or better. If you get a CS deg

I think if you come out of a good school with the right degree and jump right into a good company you can expect market-rate pay or better. If you get a CS degree from Stanford and join Google you'll be doing fine. But maybe you didn't have the money or quite the grades and extracurriculars so you get your degree from San Jose State or City College of San Francisco, you could still be a very good programmer, but you'll have to start by taking lower-paying jobs while you prove it and learn, and at most companies you won't get much of a raise unless you threaten to leave. A friend of mine ended up a technical lead of about a dozen people. He got there by leaving his company for another company, leaving them to go back to the first company, then leaving them again to go back to the second company as a lead. Each time he got a substantial pay raise. For the four years before he adopted this tactic he was getting the customary 5% or so as a mid-level programmer. In the four years he employed this tactic his salary almost doubled.

potatolicious 13y ago
> "If you get a CS degree from Stanford and join Google you'll be doing fine." I disagree. The problem isn't that people are paying below market - Google pays just fine for new grads. You won't find many places paying more than Google does for fresh grads. The problem is that the pay scale for software developers increases rapidly with experience, at a rate no company (Google included) is willing to keep pace with. A new undergrad may be worth $100K starting. Assuming they're reasonably good performers, in two years he/she will be worth $130K+. I don't know of any company that gives 15% annual raises like clockwork, even to solid performers. Personally I've doubled my salary in about 5 years in the industry. That works out to 15%, yearly. Is there any company out there that's willing to keep pace? I've been at companies where the typical non-promotion raise is 1-2%, that's laughable in a market where salaries are skyrocketing.
- lukejduncan 13y ago
  I've seen companies who do keep that pay increase pace. Not that it's the normal.

potatolicious 13y ago

> "If you get a CS degree from Stanford and join Google you'll be doing fine." I disagree. The problem isn't that people are paying below market - Google pays just fine for new grads. You won't find many places paying more than Google does for fresh grads. The problem is that the pay scale for software developers increases rapidly with experience, at a rate no company (Google included) is willing to keep pace with. A new undergrad may be worth $100K starting. Assuming they're reasonably good performers, in two years he/she will be worth $130K+. I don't know of any company that gives 15% annual raises like clockwork, even to solid performers. Personally I've doubled my salary in about 5 years in the industry. That works out to 15%, yearly. Is there any company out there that's willing to keep pace? I've been at companies where the typical non-promotion raise is 1-2%, that's laughable in a market where salaries are skyrocketing.

lukejduncan 13y ago
I've seen companies who do keep that pay increase pace. Not that it's the normal.