Honest discussion of salary expectations for computer science majors undergrad vs graduate school.

My son is trying to decide whether graduate school is worth it. What is Amazon hiring now for software engineers undergrad vs graduate?

See what other people say - I have seen similar discussions on here before. But the general consensus is that for tech the graduate degree does not boost your salary.

Sometimes it’s not the salary that is the prime motivator, but having the choice of projects. If one wants to be a software developer, I doubt it matters. If one wants research, then it does.

Is he just graduating this year or has he been working in the field? Does he have an interest in acdemia?

For someone with an undergrad CS degree, there’s usually no point in getting a Masters for employment purposes. Companies won’t raise someone’s salary simply because they have a graduate degree if someone with an undergraduate degree can do the same work.

The one exception would be if you were able to study and do research into a cutting-edge technology that companies found valuable. Otherwise, two years of work experience will count as much as two years of graduate school.

I have a Bachelors in CS and a Masters in Industrial Engineering. I loved my Masters program, but nobody I worked for after I got it seemed to care about it. They were only interested in me because of the CS degree.

Even if you earn a bit more money with a MS than a BS, keep in mind that you’ve lost 2+ years of salary, plus the cost of the MS program.

As others have said, the really advantage is the choice of projects. If you get a masters and do research in “big data” or AI, then you’re much more likely to land a job in those fields. Lots of jobs available for CS majors, but the ones that are research related are much more competitive.

People I work with who have CS grad degrees make the same amount of money as I do.

If he loves the field and wants to pursue a grad degree later, many companies have tuition reimbursement programs.

If you want an “honest” discussion you’re going to have to provide a lot more information than you have…

http://www.sjsu.edu/careercenter/docs/Salary%20Survey%20Report%202014-15.pdf is a 2014-2015 pay survey report from a state university. You can compare the bachelor’s and master’s level average pay levels for computer engineering and software engineering (for some reason, there is no information for computer science at the master’s level).

https://gecd.mit.edu/resources/survey-data is MIT’s career survey, including bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral level.

The usual thought is that cutting edge research may prefer those with PhDs. But more common software jobs are willing to hire either bachelor’s or master’s degree holders. Most US citizens and PRs go to work with bachelor’s degrees (a few may have coterminal master’s degrees), but it is usually internationals who go to work with master’s degrees (because funded graduate programs are usually the way they enter the US in the first place).

The financial ROI on going to graduate school for CS after a bachelor’s degree in CS is not great, unless your bachelor’s degree graduation happens to be during an industry downturn (e.g. 2001-2003), in which case funded graduate school would be a better place than the unemployment line to wait out the downturn.

Many super stars in tech never even finished undergrad. Masters ROI is not there in this field

Just to chime in even more: I would say a specialization in something could help if one has not been getting interviews/jobs in that area. For example jobs in Cybersecurity, Big Data might be easier to get with a Masters in that field than a bachelors in CS.

Seconding pretty much everything above. A Masters will open more doors for specialized fields in some cases, but will not boost salary otherwise.

Pretty sure the same for general software engineers. Same with Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.

Salary differences between bachelor’s and master’s is not noticeable. Maybe like 5 to 15k depending on the company but I would generally say around 5 to 10k (and many times just 0~5k).

Also, much of your salary for CS in the workforce has more to do with the cost of living around your university’s area than anything else. For instance, SJSU notes $92,883 {software engineering} but you should not be expecting that in most schools in the US.

In fact, even if you were to graduate from MIT, I would expect around only five-eigths the CS students there would make around there or above. The rest would be below even from a school like MIT. I know the website notes “110,000” as median in MIT but only 46 people have inputted the result in 2016 and generally only those that get paid “more” from my experience take the survey. If even after that, you look at the numbers, it ranges from 66,500-175,000 meaning the range in between the median is pretty extreme (and with a small group not being employed too).

Location matters more for “pay” than anything else. Cost of living has to be factored in. Having stated that, please choose schools in which you can mature as a person and be surrounded by academically motivated peers. Don’t opt for schools based on salary reports. Cause if salaries are so important, then people would opt for schools like SJSU over Princeton since California just pays more than any other parts of the country (since it’s so expensive to live in the San Fran area), and trust me, there are many great schools that are more rigorous and help better grow your kid (academically and socially).

If your child has already graduated, please disregard the above. i just want to be informative to the collegeconfidential parents at large. It seems there seems to be some misunderstandings with the salary to most parents. Prestigious college != high salary.

My D and I have recently been researching CS salaries in the Boston v. DC /MD areas. Amazon in Boston starts new software engineers in the vicinity of $84K, average salary is just under $100K. The DC/MD area (not Amazon) companies start just a bit higher. The companies in the DC/MD area appear to offer better benefit packages including telecommute, flexible scheduling, and a better match on retirement plans. The cost of living is comparable. The commute comparable if we talk south of boston in to the city and MD into DC. These figures are new undergraduate students. There weren’t many positions advertised that required a graduate degree so I can’t speak to the ug v. g difference.

There weren’t many positions advertised that required a graduate degree so I can’t speak to the ug v. g difference.

This speaks volumes - if only a few positions require a graduate degree then you won’t make more for having one.

One does not need masters decree in computer science to start a job. If you are driven enough, you can start as early as high school. Summer internships as a high school kid starting 11th or 12th grade is a great way to explore. Internship pays around $20 per hour or more depending on location. You work side by side of kids who are doing undergrad or PhDs from elite colleges. These internships are very hard to get but you can do it by showing your drive, tenacity and work ethics. We know many many kids who are doing so. Two kids we know make more than 75 k as they are into video game design while still in high school.

In some areas, a masters or higher could be good…

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-07/just-how-shallow-is-the-artificial-intelligence-talent-pool

Son has honors math and regular CS major undergrad degree, plus had work experience before big player recruitment. His job title was software developer, then software engineer depending on the company. He is not doing research, but development of cutting edge software. He is gifted and claims grad school is not needed. I suspect if one wants to be a researcher grad school may be useful but in CS people self teach so much. Also, he does not want to be management. So far it doesn’t seem that the cost/benefit ratio of spending an extra two years for the MS would be helpful salary wise. He is also being intellectually satisfied, which can count as much as making extra money.