Slashdot Mirror
Reasonable Salary for Entry Level Programmers?
An anonymous reader asks: "I will be graduating from college in May with a degree in computer science. I have begun the job search and gone on a few interviews. So far I have gotten two job offers which I am thankful for, but the salary seems low. I am not saying that I am too good to pay my dues and work my way up, but I could make more waiting tables. It is somewhat distressing that I have spent 4 years of college and years before that developing my programming skills. I am not trying to get rich, but I was hoping that the high level of skill required would account for something(no offense intended to waiters). Can anyone give me any insight about what a reasonable starting salary would be, for an entry level software engineer?"
Ill be graduating in May as well and the range Ive seen is 45k to 55k
Salary Wizard.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps this sort of data, though possibly with some significant lag time.
Try looking at: http://www.bls.gov/bls/blswage.htm.
While you could make more waiting tables, as you say, you won't be gathering experince in the process. I'm a sysadmin... have been for 10+ years. It was around year 2 or 3 of experience that I was able to make a salary jump... actually, right after year 3 of experience, my salary doubled. Before being a sysadmin, I drove two trucks. Driving tow trucks paid better. But had I kept driving tow trucks and not moved to computers, I'd be making roughly 25% more now than when I started. And therw wouldn't have been a "3 year, double my salary" opportunity. Sometimes the temporary sacrafice has the long term payoff.
BTW and FYI: you're in a very competitive market right now. Many development jobs are going overseas and there are a lot of developers with a lot more experience than you have that are looking for work right now. Many have been out of work so long, they'd gladly take the meager offers you're getting. Consider yourself lucky and take an offer. If a better one comes along within 3 months, take it.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
$20 an hour is what I've seen. It's enough to live on and actually support a family.
The truth about Lindows
I've had this problem in my recent recruiting adventures. What I found to be the most correct assumption is that if you are looking for a simple programming job, it won't pay much.
If you search for a job as a software engineer (which you should be prepared for given a 4 year cs degree), the starting salary should be much higher.
I've recently interviewed for two positions at the same company. The software engineering position paid signifigantly better than the programmer and one of the recruiters and I joked about the likelyhood that the programmer would eventually get outsourced.
This seems to be a pretty common thread in American companies. Programmers, in the view of corporate America, add lines of code. Software engineers add value, and are much harder to repalce and ofter make much more. Who are you going to replace? Someone who writes codes ``head-down'' all day, or someone who designs the product, meets with customers, documents and eventually programmes?
I make $45K in LA, and let me tell you, supporting a family on that in SoCal is hard. We pay almost $1000 for a one bedroom apartment in a safe (but not luxurious) neighborhood, where my wife and I live with our toddler and our infant. Things are tight out here; I had to move from San Diego to get this job, and one of my co-workers moved from Silicon Valley. The salary range actually topped out at $40K but the wanted the skillset I was bringing to the table badly enough to come up the extra five. Asking for forty to fifty when the salary range topped out at forty was maybe risky, but I believe they would either go for it or at the worst hire me for forty. They went for it, and that extra five thousand really helps.
Now, if a person lives in, say, Iowa, or Utah, or, really, a lot of places other than California, then $45K is not bad at all. But around here, it's not easy.
Exactly, it's not like they are THAT hard to find...
l larssense,00.html
For instance, in Australia:
Here's an EXCELLENT resource at... gee... the most popular job search site in Australia, took me all of 5 minutes to track down:
http://careerone.com.au/resources/index/0,8526,do
If you can't be bothered to look up these things, then I don't think you deserve to know... or get paid much.
$20/hour can mean a lot of different things. If it is a unionized government job with benefits in a low cost of living area-it wouldn't be too bad. I can easily see how that wouldn't go far in New York City or Silicon Valley-even for a single guy.
Yahoo's Neighborhood Profiles section, searchable by zip code, has lots of nice data if you're pricing a job.
Grrr.
Without the Amazon-referer whoring:
One thing I forgot: if you have loans, morgages, or credit card dept that carry intest, you want to pay that off ASAP before investing. (Obviously if you can get 7% per year investing and the intrest on your credit card is 15% it makes sense to pay it off first; but some people don't see this....)
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
I thought the US was supposed to have low taxes! You're talking of an average tax rate of 33%. I'm earning a lot more than that but living in Canada... my average tax rate is 26%, although the marginal rate has topped out at 43%. I felt like I was getting a better deal when I moved here from the States, now you've confirmed it! To think my taxes actually include something useful like decent health care.
I don't know your situation (obviously) but page 13 of that same report mentions that Canada's "Tax Freedom day" - the day that the average Canadian has earned enough to pay all of the taxes for that year - in 2003 fell in the 178th day of the year, June 27th. That's even worse than Britain's "TFD", which will be on the 163th day of the year, June 11th. Contrast that with the US "TFD", which was on April 11th. So the US tax rates are lower than Canada's after al - lower by a couple of months!
Of course, they are all still way too high. Even God Almighty only asks for a tithe.
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
You're talking of an average tax rate of 33%.
YEP!! and that's just payroll. Then we get to the fun taxes like sales, property, gas, electricity, telephone, natural gas, cable, capital gains, interest, inventory, self-employment, county, city, vehicle registration, vehicle insurance, etc.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
The national average for all "white-collar/technical" professions is $27.15/hour ($56k). However, in most metro areas, it is around $30 ($62k). Out of college, you should expect about 15% less than average or between $48k and $52k with some prior experience--although many, many people will be more than happy to offer you $26.5k. The point is, you should be able to hit the mean within three years. Don't let ANYONE tell you otherwise. If you are offered less than 15% below the aggregate mean (that is, everyone, not just IT) for your area, laugh hysterically as they watch your ass walk out the door. In most metro areas, that's about $45k, so 15% less is about $19/hour. Really, it's quite therapeutic and they deserve it. Another nice rule-of-thumb is if the salary is less than you paid for tuition, move on. If you went to a school like Georgetown that routinely offers jobs requiring master's degrees for $27k, which is less than a single year of undergrad tuition, you know what I'm talking about.
Look here to get detailed information on actual wages in your area:
http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/home.htm