13% of CompSci Grads Have Starting Salaries Over $100K

itwbennett writes: That was one of the findings of a survey of 50,000 U.S. college students and recent graduates by Looksharp, a marketplace for internships and entry-level jobs. For general findings across all majors, check out the State of College Hiring Report 2015. But the company shared some more computer science-specific findings with Phil Johnson. Among them: "Of all majors, students studying in CS had the highest average starting salary, $66,161." And, what's more, they know the value of their degree: "On average, they expected a starting salary of $68,120, slightly above the actual average starting salary of $66,161."

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[crow_t_robot]

Bullshit. Not believing any of this till I see paystubs.

Re:Total

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I work in engineering and starting salary expectations were similarly overinflated. These sort of claims mean nothing without a breakdown of what the averages are in different states and cities, starting salaries can easily vary by at least $20k depending on location.

Re:Total

[ShanghaiBill]

Indeed. Employees have a vested interest in inflating these numbers. I have filled out these surveys multiple times, and I always put in about double my current salary. That way my employer thinks I am underpaid, and I am also more likely to get the free magazine subscription that the survey is supposed to qualify me for.

Re:Total

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pretty common in insane cost-of-living places like the CA Bay Area. I finished my BSCS in December and am making 108k now. I had just under 3.5 GPA at a state school and a couple of good internships, so it's not too hard. Though that salary isn't even enough to buy a house here.

Re:Total

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally not bullshit out here in California, ESPECIALLY in the bay area.

I just graduated and I'm making $100k at Citrix Systems in Goleta, CA as a Software Engineer 1

That's about as high as you can get here in the Santa Barbara area out of school.

Everyone I know from classes that went to the bay area are making over $100k out of school.

Re:Total

[knightghost]

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.

Lets see a breakdown that calculates geographical cost of living and hourly wages (rather than salary). $100k isn't much when you're working 100 hours a week and live in silicon valley.

Re:Total

[AuMatar]

No engineering intern makes 0. The law is that an intern can only be unpaid if they do no work relating to the company. For example, an unpaid intern at an advertising company can sit in on meetings and bring coffee, but they can't draw an ad or write copy. If they do, they have to be paid. An unpaid intern at a software company wouldn't be able to write source code. SO basically worthless. So engineering interns get paid, just a lot less. Generally a good chunk more than minimum wage though, as there is competition for interns.

geography is key

[swan5566]

Where are these jobs? Silicon Valley? A small town in the Midwest?

Undergrad only?

[assantisz]

Are they talking about undergrads or did they include graduate students and PhD graduates as well? I really doubt that somebody fresh from college with an undergrad degree can make mid $60k right off the bat.

Re:Undergrad only?

[bmajik]

All of the numbers in this article are very believable.

I have a BS degree from the University of Nebraska. And not the prestigious Raikes school, but the normal old pre-Raikes degree program.

After a summer internship, I got an offer from McDonnel Douglas for 48k.

My offer from Microsoft was more like the 60k figure. I took that one, because it didn't involve living in St. Louis.

The year: 2000

So, 60k to start right out of college was a going rate for top-tier companies... fifteen years ago.

Some companies paid much more, and sometimes that was a company decision, and sometimes it was a reality of where the position was located. For instance, before I had even finished my degree, I was recruited for a position with a 99k starting salary. That firm, however, was in NYC. When you adjust for NYC cost of living, it's not such an eye-popping number.

Subsequent to these numbers from 15 years ago, I have been involved in lots of hiring at Microsoft in the years I've been here.

Starting salaries have adjusted upward significantly since I was hired.

If you can score an engineering position with a top software/services company like Microsoft, you will be paid exceptionally well. For someone fresh out of college, there is just an obscene amount of money on the table.

Different companies target different spots in the industry pay curve. Microsoft by no means targets the top of the salary scale, but neither do we target the bottom. At times, Microsoft has been seen as, to put it mildly, "pretty uncool". At times, there has been lots of startup money and equity available for top quality grads to go after.

In those time periods, Microsoft has to offer more money to continue to attract new talent.

If you want to work at a company where lots of people want to work (e.g. a games company, or SpaceX), those organizations don't have to compete as much with offer packages, since their brands have a high intrinsic draw.

While I don't know what a Netflix offer package is like, Netflix states that their policy is to pay very high wages - the wage they'd be willing to pay to keep someone excellent who wanted to leave.

Finally, it's important to consider the type of organization you're looking at joining. Do they do software/IT, or is that a cost of doing business for them? If a company is in the business of selling shoes, but has an unavoidable need for software engineers, they're going to treat software engineers as a cost of doing business.

If a company is in the business of building software, they're going to think differently about compensation and retention.

Finally, companies that aren't well established players in the software space can have difficulty making big offer packages. At times in my career, I've been frustrated and have looked elsewhere, and the smaller, less profitable companies I've spoken with are offering tens of thousands lower than what I was already making.... making the friction of leaving financially tremendous.

(my personal financial plan is to expect a 50% paycut when something happens to my MSFT employment)

In summary, I have no problem believing the numbers. Top quality CS people at top quality organizations are paid outrageously well.

However, I get that lots of people are expressing disbelief. Let's talk about why that may be. The survey data could be skewed by multiple factors:
- the locale of the person responding
- the self-selection bias of the person responding (e.g. are people happy with their comp more likely to fill out a survey?)
- the kind of organization the survey respondants work for...

If you surveyed internal apps developers at regional insurance offices, in the Midwest, you would get a different picture from a survey of facebook engineers...

Re:People are overpaid in the USA

[fustakrakich]

Gotta cover the prices. The rest of the world is underpaid. Nobody should ever have to work more than an hour to buy a case of decent beer.

wage inequality

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why there is a major push to get the H1B program expanded and more women into CS. To drive down salaries. H1Bs can be abused by their employers at will(indentured servants anyone?) If anyone thinks that the gender pay gap is going to go away by more women getting into CS they're nuts. What's going to happen is, more women will get into CS related jobs as employers know they can get away with paying women 20% less.

So..there is some food for thought for you....

Neither article talks about LOCATION

[dav1dc]

$150k in Silicon Valley = $90k in a more modest location... (adjusted for the cost of living in the area)

My $0.02 CDN.

Must be Silicon Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

...where they need $100k just to keep your head above water. The cost of living is ridiculous over there.

Re:Must be Silicon Valley

[byteherder]

I always thought that the cost of living argument (SV vs non-SV) was bullsh*t. Let take two recent CS grads, Call them Alex and Bob.

Alex takes a job in San Francisco and is making $100K. He buys a house at 5x his salary ($500K) and lives in it for 30 years until the mortgage is paid off.
Bob takes a job in the midwest and is making $50K. He buys a house at 5x his salary ($250K) and lives in it for 30 years until the mortgage is paid off.

After 30 years, both Alex and Bob sell their houses and move to Florida. Both houses have doubled twice in those 30 years (look at the price of houses in 1985 and don't you wish had bought back then). Alex comes to Florida with $2M, Bob comes to Florida with $1M. So who is the winner, the one that lived in the low cost area or the one in a high cost area.

My point is that those in high cost of living areas are compensated for it and win in the long run.

I hope they realize...

[Pfhorrest]

I hope all these CS graduates making this kind of money right out of college realize the kind of rarefied strata that they are in.

More than half of all people on the country make less than half of their starting salaries.

I see so much flippancy from some people here in Slashdot who don't seem to realize the kind of money that most people in this country have to live on.

Re:I hope they realize...

[Pfhorrest]

It's not about guilt, it's about recognizing the way that other people have to live, so that when you make broad generalizations about society you don't assume that everybody has he advantages you have and dismiss the problems they suffer from lacking those advantages.

I kinda hate the way "privilege" gets thrown around a lot of the time, but this is pretty much the clearest sense of privilege here. And like all privilege, the point is not that it's bad that some people have it and they should feel guilty for it; it's bad that a lot of people don't have it, and those who do should bear in mind the different challenges that those who don't face.

Re:I hope they realize...

[danaris]

That's where not being a leftist comes in handy. I get paid well, and don't have to feel guilty about it, nor about wanting more. And I can walk past the beggars in the subway faking disabilities or telling some sort of bogus sob story and feel nothing more than mild irritation.

s/leftist/uncaring, selfish bastard/

Dan Aris

50%+ Unemployed/Underemployed

[Anonymous Coward]

Our survey found that only 45.4% of the class of 2014 is currently enrolled in a full-time job meaning 54.6% of grads from last year are unemployed or underemployed (this is excluding students enrolled in graduate education).

This seems to be more noteworthy.

Re:50%+ Unemployed/Underemployed

[TooManyNames]

That statistic is for all college grads, though; not just those graduating with a CS degree. While that is noteworthy, it's not really relevant to the discussion on how CS grads are fairing.

Re:Salary vs. cost of living?

[__aaclcg7560]

I make $50,000 per year and rent a 475sqf studio apartment for $1,400 in Silicon Valley. For my needs, it's perfectly fine. Then again, I'm not trying to live the American dream of having it all. A modest lifestyle can go a long way in an expensive area like Silicon Valley.

Not in Canada

[iONiUM]

I hire a lot of developers for my company, and recent grads are slotted in our "junior" role (unless they somehow had a lot of experience during university) and the starting salary is between $55-70k depending on many factors that are personal to them. I have never hired anyone out of university for $100k, and I think that is nuts. Companies should pay for quality, not ambition.