<p>ct9999,</p>
<p>awesome, it seems like google is a popular place to be.</p>
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@ Sakky - What you are saying may hold true for base salary , what you are failing to factor in is Stock. Usually most of these companies give you a decent amount of money through stock , while the salary difference between your friend and current undergrad might be only 20k , his stock and overall cost to the company will differ by a lot.
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<p>I have 2 responses to this. #1, stock compensation ought to wash out because newly minted undergrads also receive stock. And #2, in the case of my MBA friend, he didn't exactly receive a lot of stock either. </p>
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Your salaries depend on the location of the job. For example, I got an offer from Lockheed in Orlando, FL, for 50k a year and another one from Lockheed in the northeast for 63k with a bachelors. The cost of living is different at these two locations so your salary reflects that.
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<p>You would like to think so, wouldn't you? Yet the fact is, plenty of people basically get the same offer no matter where they are. Again, in the case of my Amazon MBA friend, he does work in Fernley/Reno, Nevada (which is cheap). But here's the kicker - he would have been paid exactly the same no matter where he decided to work at Amazon. He was offered the chance to work at any Amazon office in the US - but for the exact same salary. I'm therefore not surprised that he chose someplace cheap like Reno.</p>
<p>Well to be honest as far as I know , the stock difference between a BS/MS and a Phd going into the same company like Amazon is huge , around a difference of 10 to 15k between each level. Dont really know the MBA numbers to be sure about that.</p>
<p>And about the location bit , a lot of companies change salaries based on location but most of these giants pretty much give you a free for all on the location.</p>
<p>That's not true for the big defense companies I know of. Starting salaries are usually dependent on your location. Of course, if you transfer from one location to another, they probably won't cut your salary.</p>
<p>Yeah I aint talking about big defense companies , I meant companies like Amazon Expedia Microsoft Google , big software companies!</p>
<p>When it comes to reustmd's numbers, they may seem high but many CS majors from Rose-Hulman come out with a CS/Software Engineering double major. I don't know if he is referring to anyone with a double major, but companies will most likely compensate double majors more.</p>
<p>But remember everyone, happiness can ALWAYS be measured in dollars!</p>
<p>Wait a minute...</p>
<p>Getting above 80k is not that easy. You have to negotiate with the recruiter.</p>
<p>I've actually heard that Google pays substantially less than its competitors, though I can't give hard figures. One case I heard was a senior IBM engineer taking a ~60% salary cut when he left for Google. Apparently the nature of Google's work, and the perks of the job, and the company dynamics were enough to attract talent, so I heard. Given the enthusiasm for Google, I wouldn't be surprised.</p>
<p>Take some recruiting shirts & a Google employee just about doesn't have to spend any of his own money! You can eat, sleep, play there, & even get your dog groomed. Hey, you don't have to go home at all!</p>
<p>I still find it hilarious that most inquiries on CC about job opportunities after school aren't along the lines of "How and where do I look for a job?" but rather "Who will pay me upwards of 130K?" Rude awakenings await some people around here...</p>
<p>Google pays its engineers much more than its business people. I know of people with a bs in cs who have 80k+30k bonuses from google, while another friend of mine (same year) who got a job offer in sales/marketing had an offer with a base salary of $45k (i don't know about the bonus)</p>
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who got a job offer in sales/marketing had an offer with a base salary of $45k (i don't know about the bonus)
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<p>Well, if we're talking specifically about sales, then it's difficult to assess whether such a job really 'pays' better or worse, because so much of the compensation in sales is tied to your commission structure, and base salaries mean little.</p>
<p>As a case in point, I used to work for a tech company where the sales guys made zero base salary, and were paid commission-only. But the commission structure was quite generous, with a number of sales guys making well over 250k in even a bad tech year, and were making close to 7 figures during the boom times (i.e. the late 90's). {Granted, the lack of base salary also meant there were some sales guys who made very close to zero in certain years. } Clearly the top guys didn't really care about base salaries, and in fact, when the company proposed changing the sales compensation package to provide base salaries in return for a lower commission structure, the top sales guys unsurprisingly objected vociferously and used their political sway to block that proposal from being enacted. </p>
<p>In contrast, salaries of engineers at that same company were far less variable. They made much less than the top sales guys, but much more than the worst sales guys.</p>
<p>Sounds about right. Most techy companies in the silicon valley pays roughly >~75K base (nonPhD) new grads. I think there was another thread talking about this.. I'm pretty sure if you live in Mountain View, you won't be able to rent comfortably with anything less. The previous posts from ages ago seem to support this.</p>
<p>Sakky, In regards to the Microsoft & Google offers, My brother actually got a offer from Google for close to 80k base salary. He chose to work for RedHat instead spearheading marketing efforts.</p>
<p>The sales position isn't sales the way that you actually sell something, its more of an analytical position about what google should "sell" so the bonus is tied to performance the same way that the engineering job's bonus is tied to performance. THe base salary is just much much lower.</p>
<p>My husband started working for Google last year. He has a Bachelor's degree, not in cs, and that is it (but he has experience from another company for 10 years). His starting salary was $180k plus bonuses of about 25% per year. He loves the job, but even that amount of money only buys you a 1400 square foot crap box of a house in California - and we paid over 1 million for it. So, be careful what you wish for.</p>
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Google pays its engineers much more than its business people. I know of people with a bs in cs who have 80k+30k bonuses from google
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My husband started working for Google last year. He has a Bachelor's degree, not in cs, and that is it (but he has experience from another company for 10 years). His starting salary was $180k plus bonuses of about 25% per year
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<p>Yeah, but, frankly, you shouldn't be going to Google just for the pay. After all, Google as an employer is a well-known grind, where you can easily find yourself working 80+ hours a week (especially if you're an engineer). If you're willing to work for those kinds of hours, and all you care about is money (hence, you don't really care about what you do on your job), then you might as well just go to investment banking where you can make even more money.</p>
<p>Ya know, my husband loves his job. He's working on something really special and he never works more than 40 hours a week. In fact, he usually works less. I think he just got very, very lucky; and this is not the norm.</p>
<p>Cornell is easily top tier CS. Admittedly I go there but the students in CS are all very motivated and the classes are very good. I have talked with a lot of students about starting salaries and for the top students, $80-90k plus signing bonus plus benefits from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. is fairly standard.</p>
<p>It really depends on schools though because I hear students that do internships find that many companies have very narrow recruiting and only look at certain schools. A little while ago I was on the (formerly Xerox) PARC site and the only schools that they actively recruited undergrads from were MIT, Stanford, Cornell and one other (don't remember).</p>