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for the top students, $80-90k plus signing bonus plus benefits from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. is fairly standard.
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<p>Yeah, but that begs the question: what if you're not a top student? Let's face it. Purely by definition, the vast majority of the students will not be top students.</p>
<p>true, but for the top 20% there are some good opportunities</p>
<p>But there's no way to know whether you are going to be in the top 20% ex-ante. Hence, what if you choose to go to Cornell for CS, and end up just being a mediocre student? What opportunities do you have now?</p>
<p>I think that's the real question that people ought to be asking. If even the worst students at a particular school have strong opportunities, then that school is a great place to be. But if only the top students get strong opportunities and the rest don't get much, well...</p>
<p>well if the best students have the best opportunities then it seems logical that the average students would have at least as good, and most likely better, opportunities than the average students at any other school.</p>
<p>I doubt there are many cases where the top students at school A get better offers than the top students at school B while the average students at school B get better offers than the average students at school A. I suppose there are exceptions but probably not too often.</p>
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well if the best students have the best opportunities then it seems logical that the average students would have at least as good, and most likely better, opportunities than the average students at any other school.</p>
<p>I doubt there are many cases where the top students at school A get better offers than the top students at school B while the average students at school B get better offers than the average students at school A. I suppose there are exceptions but probably not too often.
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<p>No, but there are certain schools where even the worst CS students can nonetheless get quite good jobs - in fact, arguably even better than the average students at other school, not only because of the proliferation of local jobs at that particular school, but also because of the relaxed grading schemes which make it hard to identify who really are the 'worst' students and which ultimately decreases the dichotomy between the best and worst students. It gives you the confidence to know that even if you don't do that well in CS, you're still probably going to get a very good job.</p>
<p>A certain school in Palo Alto immediately comes to mind...</p>
<p>LOL! That certain school also offers a wide variety of majors that sound somewhat related to CS but might offer looser requirements.</p>
<p>I am a dev manager with about 10 SDEs at Amazon and the salaries listed by some individuals are rare. If you graduate from a top tier school like Stanford/UCB/MIT and pass interview with "strong hire" across the board yes you may get the 80k+ salary as a BS. </p>
<p>The normal grad makes 65-70 as a Support Engineer III and 70-80 as a SDE I. Depends on how your interview goes. </p>
<p>However you will need to remember that... base salary increases are small at Amazon (on avg less than 3.5%) so it actually behooves you to start as a SEIII at 70k. Promotion from SEIII to SDEI is virtually a sure shot after 1 year, and that carries a 15% (most get this) pay bump and a nice chunk of stock. </p>
<p>And for the person with a MBA... if you take an 80k salary and then had a a 4% YoY increase, your salary at year 6 would be 97k. So 100k is not that bad. Remember Amazon makes it a general rule to pay only in the 50-75th percentile of industry for base salary.</p>
<p>As a golden rule though... don't come to a company based on salary. Google/MS/Amazon are burn and churn units. Unless you like what you do, you will burn out very quickly. Be warned.</p>
<p>re: all the stuff on the first page - what are you guys talking about? MIT EECS grads get those kind of offers all the time (being an MIT undergrad myself, I know a few of them) - those stats you were looking at are from 2005, and they're averages... companies like Google and Microsoft pay above average (apparently Microsoft is in the 65% percentile, actually) and also, there has been a huge salary spike across the board over the past few years. I'm pretty sure MIT grads are getting the same offers (if not better ^_^) as their Ivy counterparts.</p>
<p>Have the starting salaries changed with this economy? Obviously, the economy is not what it was a year ago, much less 2005. I would imagine that there would be more competition for jobs. No?</p>
<p>I'll be starting at Microsoft in July in their finance program, but I've heard some talk pertaining to software engineer salaries.</p>
<p>Generally, I think the starting salary is around 80k with a bonus of roughly 10%. Those people work very long hours though, so there's definitely a tradeoff.</p>
<p>And Seattle isn't too bad. It's a mite cheaper than Chicago.</p>
<p>anyone know of any places that pay comparably to microsoft/google but recruit an engineering type other than software? i'm most interested in mechE or mechE/ECE/BME interface. also, what kind of bonuses can you expect from microsoft/google (i.e. in 5 years how much can you expect to make?). what are the "star" places to work for these other types of engineers?</p>
<p>referring to something sakky said earlier about "why don't people just do ibanking to make more money if they're willing to work that much"? because work at google and work as an ibanker is very different. the people at google generally love what they do, and they grind code because of their own initiative...not so for the first few years of ibanking.</p>
<p>As I am a CS major from one of the Top CS school, I would say 70,000-80,000 is pretty standard for companies like Google or Microsoft... Out of 100 graduating CS students every year from my univ, usually 15-20 go to Microsoft 5-10 go to Google 10-15 go to like Amazon,Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs,Yahoo... so that means if you are in like the top 50% of your class... you can be expecting at least a 65,000-70,000 per year... As for the "Below Average students" (below 50th percentile) I see them get an offer with smaller or lesser well known Companies such as Allstate,State Farm, GE, and several other small trading firms which give them around 55,000-60,000 per year which I don't think it is bad at all.</p>
<p>I nkow a person with a JD for harvard, was a partner for a law firm for couple of years then went to google, manager of something … and now have $100,000 plus stock</p>
<p>“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>
<p>I have a useful data point here - I was hired in 2005 into the sales/support team at Google (non-technical). My initial compensation package was… paltry, I think they started me at 36k, with a stock and option package of indeterminate value (in practice it ended up being worth about $15k/year). That said, after three months I was bumped to $42,500, six months later bumped to $45k (and all new sales hires were started at $45k), another year bumped to $55k, and in the last six months had my base salary raised to $60k even. Not all people I started with had the same salary trajectory, but I think most other good (top 20%) performers got something like it.</p>
<p>I left mid 2008, though my impression was promotions and pay raises would be fewer and farther between from there on out. The annual bonus varied from 20-35% of my base salary, which I think was generally true across Google. Add in the 401k matching (worth ~$7500/year if you maxed it out), free food, a $1k xmas bonus, and the intangible value of having a resume that says ‘Google’ on it, and I actually think I made out pretty well. That said, engineers that started at the same time as me were probably pulling at least double my total compensation, mostly on the strength of a much larger options package. I immagine now the disparity is not as great.</p>
<p>xoogler, just curious, if I may ask, why did you leave Google?</p>
<p>Annual bonus of 20-35% base salary. That is mighty impressive. And I was thinking 12% was good.</p>
<p>@pearlygate: “google logo : work smarter not harder”</p>
<p>…you mean motto? And people, please stop using this phrase. Success requires smart work AND hard work.</p>
<p>For what reasons are ppl getting signing bonuses? What is the chance a job will be rescind if you wouldn’t be starting until >6months down the line?</p>
<p>Providing some solid figures so people will stop guessing:</p>
<p>bachelor CS degree from top tier CS school, some internship experience, no special honors or awards or research or any of that.</p>
<p>Google: 90k + 10k cash bonus + 300 RSU
Microsoft: 85k + 8k cash bonus + 1000 RSU
Apple: 86k + 6k cash bonus + 100 RSU
Salesforce.com: 95k + 9k cash bonus + 300 RSU
Amazon: 90k + 10k cash bonus + 300 RSU
Startups: salary from 70k-80k, or no salary but 2-3% equity
Self-startup: ramen noodle, ramen noodle, ramen noodle, 20 million cut from acquisition.</p>
<p>A couple of offers are my own, the others are from friends that I know very well. The key is that you have to be driven and passionate to seek out opportunities and advancement. I also know people who cannot get a single job offer.</p>
<p>My offer was only $80k from Microsoft with nothing else besides a 6 month break before I start in the new year after I graduate…</p>