Source:: What salaries should I actually expect? : cscareerquestions
Pain
- international tuition is really expensive
- “I was talking with an American dude a few days ago and he basically said I should expect a 45k/year starting salary, 90k/year for recently graduates are insane, work culture in the US is toxic af”
- Is it really this way or was he exaggerating?
- “maybe the few people that use this sub are just the lucky ones”
- “what salaries should I actually expect after I graduate?”
- want to know for an “average student”
- “I’m mostly concerned about entry-level jobs salaries, but I’d also appreciate expected salary growth for the area, but I understand that that is way harder to tell”
- pay is “awful” in Brazil
- wants Canadian salary estimates too
- OP doesn’t want to pay international tuition if it doesn’t land a job with the expected high salaries
- Is afraid their salary expectation is inflated
- Is afraid of toxic work culture
- Doesn’t want to have to work too many hours
- If concerned they may not be enough of a “high achiever” to get the $90k salaries
- Reply from OP: “How good do you have to be to hit those ($300k+) numbers”
- Reply: “…I just wanted a job. I couldn’t pass the smaller companies and startups (job interviews)”
- Reply: “Asking the expected salary for an entry-level software engineer in the entirety of North America is even more useless”
- Reply from OP: “he said it gets even worse in remote jobs”
- Reply: “Moving to a random spot would be tough”
- Reply: “I am super shy.”
- Reply: “I once worked for a place that was asking 110 hours a week, salary wasn’t great and I worked 7 days a week.” Had to use vacation for household chores and to catch up on sleep.
- Reply: “The salary isn’t the thing you might want to worry about. The bigger issue you’ll run into is finding a job in the first place. It is not easy to get a work visa.”
- Reply: Shyness + moving to a new lower cost of living rural area = no social life?
- Reply: Salary in Toronto is less than US cities
- Reply: “payscale/glassdoor/indeed aren’t the best at salary estimates”
- Reply: “My first job the culture was abysmal”
- Reply: “Felt humiliated of my first salary.”
Jargon
- FAANG
- YOE (years of experience;also NYOE where “N” is number of years)
- CS (computer science)
- graduating class
- good fit
- WLB (work-life balance)
- “in the field”
- flexible (hours)
- starting salary
- work culture
- toxic (work culture)
- sub(reddit)
- internship
- entry-level (job)
- expected salary growth
- NA (North America)
- startup
- unicorn- a tech startup with a total market value of over $1 billion
- base salary
- equity
- bonus
- high performers
- graduating class
- aptitude
- coding
- interview
- resume
- GPA
- Leetcode/LC
- top school
- remote (job)
- software engineer/SWE
- cost of living/COL
- BigN
- TC
- new grad
- crunch
- vacation time
- benefits
- PTO (paid time off)
- burnout
- nine to five (job)
- rural
- macbook
- productivity
- tech elites
- holidays
- SDE- software development engineer
- programmer
- workplace
Worldview
- A high salary is important
- Education should provide a return on investment
- Improving your station is more important than loyalty to your employer
- The wisdom of the crowd is valuable
- Working all the time is no kind of life to live
- Salary is less dependent on talent and more on other factors like interview skills and network
- Achieving what you want is worth working hard for
- If you don’t like where you live, move
- Most people on this subreddit are men (use of “he” even when they don’t know gender)
- Americans work more and Europeans take more time for themselves
- Working for someone else is the default way to make it as a developer
- People should be shamed if they ask a bad question
- Americans complain about everything
- Scorned people give bad advice based on their bad experiences
- Do your own research before asking others for advice
Recommendations
- $30k-200k
- $200k is realistic for FAANG and some others
- up to $300k is realistic with experience
- top 3-5% of graduating class at a major state school for $300k+
- Redirect school studying time to Cracking the Code Interview and Leetcode
- “interview skills and internships matter more than anything else
- Google vs Facebook vs Microsoft - Compare career levels across companies with Levels.fyi to find salaries
- Varies widely down to the city
- work for local government to get great work life balance
- Entry level should expect $60-90k yearly
- “…outside of the hyper-competitive companies in the Bay Area, life as a software engineer is pretty laid back”
- “If you’re looking to pay off student debt then I guess it makes sense to head to one of the high-cost coastal cities. You’ll feel like you can afford less because everything costs more, but the 5% or whatever a month that you manage to save will be a bigger chunk of your debt.”
- “55-75k was the range for new grads from my average state school in the mid west 4 years ago”
- “Join a mid-size company with a decent culture, you’ll likely be able to get around $90k.”
- “…it largely depends on how good you are, your networking skills AND which company you are working for FAANG vs. Local small company.”
- “The salary here (Toronto) isn’t as great as major American cities but roughly you can expect 60k (CAD) as a new grad.”
- “I think you’ll be heavily reliant on networking to get your first job but thankfully that’s what college is for.”
- “You’ll get denied most your applications from some companies because they don’t want to go through the h1b thing even though you won’t need one for 3 years due to stem extension for OPT”
- “So long as you take a job at a tech company (rather than, say, logistics or retail or whatever) and so long as you base yourself in the SF Bay area, Seattle or NYC then $90k starting salary is fairly likely”
- “Just know: even if your first salary is shit, you can switch jobs for a 20%+ raise in 18-24 months. That’s what I’m doing.”
- “One thing worth noting is that as an immigrant, unless you already have citizenship or work authorization, it’s a lot harder to find a job because companies don’t want to have to go through all the paperwork to sponsor you.”