Ask YC: What are starting salaries for CS grads this year?

[iamelgringo]

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.

[natch]

For 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]

100k 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.

[phaedrus]

In 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]

Sounds like it's time to move?

[goofygrin]

There 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?

[utefan001]

We may want to hire you. Email my yahoo address please.

[aceofaces]

In 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.

[simianstyle]

I 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 :)

[fool]

Academia, 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]

Salary 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.

[ible]

The CRA Taulbee Survey (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!

[donw]

$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.

[notauser]

Here in the UK the starting salary for coders outside London is around $45k (+$5k for a masters).

However that is for a 37 hour working week. Most people can add 50% over basic in overtime (for 40% extra hours, due to premium rates).

Northern Mexico is about $30k which, compared to basic cost of living, equates to about $120k in California :)

[cperciva]

I 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.

[csmajorfive]

Masters is +10 in my experience.

[r0bert0]

Bachelor'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.

[nuggien]

I'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]

That $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.

[cousin_it]

Wow, just wow. I live in Moscow and earn about 30K a year. 25 years old, 10 of them coding for money. Maths degree.

[iamelgringo]

Moscow'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?

[skavish]

My guess is that after taxes, but in the US they are usually talking about salary before taxex. So basically your $30K is about $40K here.

[yan]

Is that before or after taxes?

[dmnd]

80k to start in 2009 at MSFT. Makes me think I should've thought more about inflation before signing.

[menloparkbum]

$80K +/- 5K at GOOG for Stanford grads and $85K at Amazon for a Berkeley grad.

[mrtron]

Roughly the same numbers for Waterloo grads at those places.

[mpc]

60~70 in Cambridge/Boston. There are some major companies here (Google, Microsoft, ITA) that probably offer more to really good hacker candidates.

[lyime]

Friend just got offered 90K from both Adobe and Amazon. Got rejected from Google and MSFT. Has had quite a few good internships.

[humanlever]

According to Fortune's best places to work (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]

In 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]

did 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...

[jomunculus]

I'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.

[rms]

A 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.

[tomjen]

Just write a cobol to java compiler and be done with it.

[Raphael]

But don't let on. Work on your startup with the new extra time.

[itay]

I've seen offers from 75k to 95k (though the 95k was an outlier). Most were in the 80-85k for first tier companies.

[csmajorfive]

On 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?

[swombat]

Don't count on quick raises from a very low salary unless you've explicitly discussed that with your boss or at your interview. In most places I've seen, they're happy to calculate raises using %, which means you get a whopping 20% raise on a £20k salary - which still amounts to peanuts (£24k is not much different from £20k).

Negotiate your starting salary as high as you can, and don't count on quick raises.

Here's a useful article on the topic from ever-helpful Rands:

http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2008/04/11/the_busines...

Daniel

[cstejerean]

Raises? It's called changing jobs.

[CapnObvious]

Any significant 'raise' will require you to either change jobs, or to get a new position within the current company that suddenly takes on a lot more responsibility, and even that will limit you to maybe 10%.

Get a bit of experience and start shopping around, that's how you'll know what you're worth.

Note that the real value of a salary is almost entirely dependent on your location and cost of living.

[timcederman]

As 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.

[wallflower]

So if we take into account cost-of-living adjustments (ignoring quality of life +/- adjustments), the average starting salary is around $50K

[azsromej]

For Atlanta, salary.com says 53-56K; median for Georgia Tech in 2007 was 60K. This is in line with anecdotal evidence I've culled.

[lunchbox]

Try salary.com for statistics on this. -- enter "Software Engineer I" or "web developer".

[tonyvt2005]

In D.C. it's about 55-65, but if you have clearance it can go 5-10 more.