New grads make $100k + bonus and stock
Stanford College Grads Salaries supports house prices
Undergrad Says:
March 22nd, 2008 at 12:19 amI think in general the packages for CS students are high in the US : I myself am finishing my undergrad degree (in a top school in Asia) in CS in a month and have an offer from one of the the big 3 software companies (at an office in N America) with a first year cash compensation that’s in 6 figures USD (excluding the stock and annual bonus).
I just wanted to make sure everyone saw this comment. Further proof that The Real Bay Area is saved.
March 23rd, 2008 at 9:35 am
I call BS on that.
March 23rd, 2008 at 9:58 am
Not BS… High End Java/Ruby developers can make BFB (bookoo f*ckin’ bucks)
not me though, i make my money by sifting through real bay area trash bins for recycled cans, you’d be suprised how much these 6 figure earners are wasting!
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:11 am
I think it’s possible. Remember you have kids in HS who are hotshot programmers already. Hell Woz was designing, and programming, computers on scratch paper in HS. I do think there’s “talent scouting” for programmers that reaches down pretty far, and if you’re a hotshot in college, you can do very well. More power to ya! Watch out for Affluenza though, Airborne won’t help.
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:18 am
Ok lets say it is accurate. This means that average homes should be 500-600k not 800-1 million. Do the math stupid
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:12 pm
That sort of salary for a starting programmer in the Bay Area is EXTREMELY unusual. While it does occur, there are usually circumstances to warrant it; like it was a Stanford or MIT graduate who was at the top of his/her class. Or they had patented some new algorithm or specific way of doing things that made them sought after.
In general however, the starting wage in the Bay Area for a standard developer fresh out of school is around $65k per year. You can verify this on salary.com.
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
90K is to be expected for Cal/Stanford/MIT EE or CS grads. 100K is on the high side but not impossible. If you got good tech skills, a company is not going to sweat over 10 grand. By the way, $10K sign-on bonus is also relatively common.
March 23rd, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I’ll agree with Real Estater’s comments on salary.
However- it’s worth noting that this is also what the starting salary was for top grads in ‘99, too.
So, no effective wage growth for 8 years for that sector of the job market. Meanwhile, top engineers have seen wages grow by about 10-15% in the same time period.
March 23rd, 2008 at 1:36 pm
“Ok lets say it is accurate. This means that average homes should be 500-600k not 800-1 million. Do the math stupid”
Exactly. 100k isn’t anywhere near enough to buy a house or even a condo in this ridiculously over-inflated/bubble market.
March 23rd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I think you can get to hung up on the “right” schools and degrees. If you can’t prove to be able to do the job, you won’t fetch top salary no matter where you went to school. Vice versa if you can prove to do the job very well you will be able to fetch top salary no matter which school you went to, with or without a degree.
Like others have said 100k doesn’t buy you a house in a decent neighborhood in the bay area.
Even with raises, how many Stanford grads are needed to be able to buy every house on the peninsula for 1,000,000. How many companies are willing to pay their employees enough to support these prices? I think the companies are only able to that through stock options, and that means people have to depend heavily on the healthiness of the company and the stock market.
March 23rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Cal/Stanford/MIT degree will put you a quarter to a half million in debt though. Unless you’re a member of a privileged group (black etc) in which case you’ll get in, get the degree, but not be anywhere near the top like a hard-working White or Asian etc will end up being.
This means you get $90k+ and Ramen for 10 years. You’re not buying a house, you’re renting a room.
March 23rd, 2008 at 7:39 pm
I heard that some new grad with MSCS degree from a decent school got a $110K offer from Cisco.
March 23rd, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Did the new grad have experience? Was the new grad some random graduate that obtained the job only because he had a MSCS degree from a decent school or was there something else at play?
March 23rd, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I work with two MSCS guys from Stanford. One is pretty great. The other codes like a monkey. I hope they get paid accordingly.
High-end Ruby developer is an oxymoron.
March 23rd, 2008 at 10:07 pm
That is in fact true. I started at my company 4.5 yrs ago(2003 recession when Java devs. were paid $20/hr). And was shock to hear that some of the new CS grads here(Bac. not Masters’) were offered $93K + stock(flat thought) as ENTRY level QA Engineer….
Even they think they are over paid….. and sorry to say they are all worthless and don’t do much. Big companies have tons of layers to hide.
I do feel like quiting and try re-hiring myself, much easier to walk into it than to earn it….in my book.
The bay area is ridiculous both in the talent pool and real estate. It’s all crap after a while.
March 23rd, 2008 at 10:31 pm
i guess it matters on how you define high-end. you can build some pretty scalable web apps with ruby on rails, and get paid well for it.
anyway, i’m off to the dumpsters as I gotta pay the rent somehow…
March 24th, 2008 at 7:19 am
What you really need to know about salaries for the bay area is not what salaries are here, but what salaries are for engineers in other locales. Indian engineers, for example, were making about 10K in 1999 (and that was on the high side, many were 5K- this is PER YEAR)- so with global internet access available for the first time, this caused the offshoring of many engineering jobs in the bay area in the first part of the decade. Now, with the crash in the dollar and other various inflation, as of 2008 most engineers from India are $60K+ per year burdened cost according to the data I have, and I have it from multiple sources. Anyway you slice it Indian engineering salaries have risen multi fold from where they were at the beginning of the decade. That means the major deflator of bay area salaries is now gone.
March 24th, 2008 at 8:51 am
All I can say is that the advertising business pays pretty well–advertising being basically where Google and Yahoo and all the rest make their money.
March 24th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Advertising does not create value — it can never be bigger than the actual product being advertised! When the rest of the economy goes into the dumps like right now, advertising will tank right behind it.
And everyone hates ads, right?
March 24th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I wouldn’t take it too seriously whatever some recent grads posted on the web. when it comes to salary, i wouldn’t take it too seriously what people said. they usually blow up the figures anyway.
March 24th, 2008 at 10:15 am
ex-sunnyvale-renter Says:
March 23rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Cal/Stanford/MIT degree will put you a quarter to a half million in debt though. Unless you’re a member of a privileged group (black etc) in which case you’ll get in, get the degree, but not be anywhere near the top like a hard-working White or Asian etc will end up being.
ex-sunnyvale-renter, that’s some F’ed up racist comment. If you think black people are part of a “privileged group,” you obviously know nothing about history and current events. I don’t know if you are a full time licenced racist or just made a dumb post, but you should you know that there are hardcore neo-Nazi/white supremacy groups who share your exact same view.
March 24th, 2008 at 10:47 am
being born black and poor in this society you pretty much get the short end of the stick and far from ‘privileged’. on one end, ex-sunnyvale-renter might be right, they are supposed to be given affirmative action in schools, financial assistance, etc. but to say they are in a ‘privileged group’ is wrong, i think rarely do poor blacks get a chance to take advantage of these programs due to either 1) corruption, 2) the screwed up environment that surrounds them, or 3) not informed that the programs even exist (3 is probably a result of 1)
March 24th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Well this bay area is completely multiethnic and multicultural. Most of the time when you hear the word racism, people are talking about skin-color based racism, and that is becoming a thing of the past. If you look at the best school districts in the bay area, the expensive towns have a high asian population which includes many Indian nationals, some of which have a dark complexion. the classic claims of racism do not apply to this group, and besides its impossible to tell what nationality all these mixed race kids are anyway (qq: what does a kid that is half indian national and half italian look like? ans: an 8 year old Will Smith, hollywood material). Recently hearing Obama go into this chasm on race has really turned me off. Racism is not the number one issue facing the country unless you are in the south and use that as a catchall for every problem that faces the south- and Obama should know better.
March 24th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
So $100K, great. 28% of gross salary = $2333/mo.
Under traditional loan guidelines, and with 20% down, that means someone with a $100K salary should be able to afford a $486.5K house. Not quite the $500-600K that people are quoting, but close. Note that I said traditional guidelines, not some BS Option ARM crap.
March 24th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Most of the time when you hear the word racism, people are talking about skin-color based racism, and that is becoming a thing of the past.
———–
WG,
Is it so? Normally when hear about “racism” we tend to think that white are discriminating against non-whites. That could be “thing of the past”. But too often I heard just opposite stories. You can call it reverse-racism. There are school districts where 60-80% students are asian-indian. And they don’t like white kids either. In fact I heard stories (not sure if they are true) that some school teachers don’t prefer white kids either, because there are more changes of an asian kid doing better than a white kid (it not because the asian kid is more intelligent, but just the upbringing put him/her one step ahead - in term of score). And kids doing better means better API score for schools, better performance review for teachers and more funding.
March 24th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
There may some type of reverse racism, when I was in school no one liked the white kids either and some of them were beaten severely by Mexicans for no reason at all. At least they could move to a white community and not have to worry about this anymore, and they had government institutions on their side.
However, that doesn’t mean that blacks are a privileged class. That’s absurd. Even as recently as the 1980’s blacks were not welcome in many bay area communities. Landlords either wouldn’t rent to them or they tried to evict them. The police would follow them around and cause trouble even for small innocent black children. The governments of the cities didn’t do anything to stop it. A few lawyers were able to help out in some circumstances, but it certainly wasn’t a picnic for black people in the 80’s and I am not convinced that it is much better today even with affirmative action. I guess the best way to find out is to ask a black person about how they are treated when they leave the house, and not just by the population but by those in a place of authority.
There have been incidences of Asians in a place of authority abusing their power against not only whites but also Mexicans and blacks. This is something that shouldn’t be tolerated. I’d sue if someone refused to rent me property, give me job (as happened with a friend of mine) or treated my child as less than equal in the classroom because of race.
March 24th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Ex-SVL-renter, that was a dumbass comment. If memory serves correctly (and it may not), I don’t think it was your first racist comment, either. Maybe you ought to go post on the Prussian Blue fansite instead of here if you can’t stay away from that kind of talk.
Now, back to Real Bay Area Real Estate!
Wow, if all those Facebook employees are each paid $100K, imagine what will happen to Palo Alto Real Estate! Talk about a Spring Bounce! Each one of them can afford a $500K house, and almost none of them saved up the $100K down payment because they all owe their colleges $160K in student loans. Ooops!
Hey, if you want to keep talking about racism on a real estate site, let’s talk about the delightful practice of banks redlining minority districts, ensuring that those properties stay undervalued and unrepaired.
March 24th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
ESR has had a great deal to say on the subject of races that he doesn’t care for.
The Bay Area looked really integrated to me till I looked for African-Americans.
the expensive towns have a high asian population which includes many Indian nationals, some of which have a dark complexion
Heh. I’m South Asian and my husband is Caucasian. We both have dark hair and dark eyes, and have both been addressed by the N-word: me in expensive downtown San Mateo, him during a mugging in expensive Menlo Park.
The Bay Area looks super-integrated till you look for a black person.
March 24th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Oh and you cannot get 500k in debt for a COLLEGE degree at MIT or any of the Ivies unless you’re on the 10-year Bachelor plan. For God’s sake, tuition’s not over 50k/yr. Harvard have announced that they’ll be handing out significantly more financial aid, and MIT have been making similar noises.
Yes, if you’re in it for a PhD, then you’ll rack up the debt, but you’ll also make it back if you go into industry.
March 24th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Renter4, I went to one of those expensive schools, so I’ve kept track of the current costs. When you add in room & board, it does cost over $60K a year, that’s why I said $160K in debt. If you end up at a state school in California, then lots of people end up taking 5-7 years to graduate because it’s almost impossible to get all your required courses in within 4 years. So same problem even at lower tuition, cause you spend more time finishing.
But that said, I agree $500K is a bit much for student loans unless you went to med school.
About 10 years ago (maybe longer) Consumer Reports did a brilliant article on the actual cost of things, measured not in real dollars but in labor, and they compared them to prices 30 years before. And they concluded that cheap things (shoes, bread) cost the same in minutes of labor, mid-ranged things (stereos, washing machines) cost way less in hours of labor, but expensive things (houses and college tuition) have tripled in years of labor. How many more years do you have to work to pay for four years of college or to buy a house now compared to 1978? I bet it’s more than tripled now.
Since this is a Real Estate blog, that’s the question: how many years will you have to work to buy your house? How many years will you have to work to pay for your kids to go to college? And then answer that question for your parents.
March 24th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Are you sure? Here’s the link for Harvard’s full expenses:
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/03.22/03-tuition.html
Their starting total # is 45k/yr, including room and board.
College/housing is very real for us–if we were in a house right now we could not possibly save for our kids’ college at the rate we want to.
March 24th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
expensive things (houses and college tuition) have tripled in years of labor
I agree, and will add that it’s part of the general erosion of the standards of middle-class life. Housing, healthcare, and education: they’re all a lot harder to grasp than they used to be.
It’ll be interesting to see where this goes. I think we’re about to see college tuition top out, at least at the name-brand schools.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Renter4, I’m wrong. I thought my school’s tuition (alone) crashed thru the $40K boundary years ago. When I started there, it was $6K and was over $10K when I left.
Thanks for pointing me at some facts. I must have turned the annual costs into tuition-only and extrapolated.
Yes, the increase in the expensive items you mention is shows the end of the middle class, while economics know-nothings can argue all they want that a stereo costs less today in 2008 dollars than it did in 1955 dollars.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:49 am
I agree, and will add that it’s part of the general erosion of the standards of middle-class life. Housing, healthcare, and education: they’re all a lot harder to grasp than they used to be.
That is why the majority of those who have a leg up when entering the work force in the United States are those that are foreign born.
A great many new graduates come from countries with heavily subsidized educational systems. Thus, they incur far less debt that their American counterparts. So the general erosion of the standard of living for the middle class will be felt far more by native born Americans who had to get their higher education here versus those that were foreign schooled.
And I hate to say it, but that is how the system modified itself. Cheap labor didn’t mean just offshoring jobs from this country into others. It also meant wooing in technical graduates from various disciplines to come here. I mean honestly folks, how many foreigners do you all know off the top of your heads that were schooled overseas and came here on visas?
It is kind of sad that being born American no longer carries with it the privileges it once did. Our graduates have an uphill battle with mountains of debt and a government who could care less. Along with a general populace that puts the need for education below the need for a brand-spanking new F-22 Raptor fighter. Cause that’s the perfect tool for use against the terrorists.
March 25th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I’d like to let the original poster “Undergrad Says” — who stated that he’s “finishing my undergrad degree (in a top school in Asia)” — in on the fact that he shouldn’t count his chickens before they’re hatched. I work for one of the top four US S/W companies, and we’re pulling out of Asia, India, and interests in other countries. I wouldn’t spend that supposed 6 figure salary just yet.