Long-term earnings by college major

By “elite”, I mean as appears in the interview, whether or not actual job performance ends up being elite. In technical interview questions, mid-level (5-20 years experience) applicants may get hired with “good” answers and partial experience and knowledge match for the role requirements, but very senior (20+ years experience) applicants for technical individual contributor roles need “the best” answers delivered quickly with no hints in order to get hired, and/or perfect experience and knowledge match for the role requirements.

I’m so envious of the knowledge that Data and UCB have about the career opportunities for CS grads. As a female in a social studies field, I feel so unable to offer my son good advice. I only hope that others reading this thread realize just how much info is being communicated by experts

The positions also appear to be rarely taken among top/elite CS majors, average CS majors, or any other grouping of CS majors. I previously mentioned 3.6% of CS majors at Brown took jobs at companies in the financial sector. The percentage remained approximately the same when averaged across the full 3 year period. The most common job titles of these rare few CS majors working at financial sector companies during the 3 year period were as follows. Colleges that are top ranked in CS with public post graduation reports follow a similar pattern. The CS percentage in this small subsection of financial sector are too low to have much relevance to long term earning by college major, which was the point of this thread.

Job Titles of CS Majors Working at Financial Sector Companies
Software Engineer (4 students)
Investment Banker (2 students)
Trading/Technology Associate (2 Students)

It depends on what position they are applying for, as well as the specific company. One of the more common reasons for a senior employee changing jobs is losing the previous one. This includes losing the job to downsizing or similar culling in which poorer performers are generally more likely to be laid off than top performers, with a similar skill set. These poorer performers who often do not give “the best” answers in interviews still generally manage to find jobs at other companies in the industry, including poorer performers with 20+ years experience. Other factors that could be especially relevant to these hires include things like applying for a standard experienced engineer type position rather than a high level principal engineer position (lower salary), networking, and having unique experience and/or skill set.

To take a school grade analogy, a mid-level applicant is likely to get hired with some A (“the best”) and some B (“good”) grade answers. But a very senior applicant will find it difficult to get hired if s/he does not answer every question with an A (“the best”) grade answer.

Very senior applicants are less likely to be considered for mid-level roles because employers perceive them as “too expensive” or more prone to leaving if a very senior role offers them. Unique experience or skill set only helps if it is an exact match for what the employer is looking for (and if it is that unique, it would be rare to find another employer looking for that).

First of all, the data you were referring to are from a few years ago and backward looking. Secondly, Brown isn’t a target school for fintech jobs, so that data isn’t even relevant.

The 3.6% figure was from the class of 2017. My post mentioned that other colleges besides that are top ranked in CS with public post graduation reports follow a similar pattern, including those reporting for the class of 2018. A similar list of companies are most represented at CMU, MIT, Berkeley, and others. These companies include “software engineer” at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, …; and fintech positions are rare (but not necessarily zero). If you step down to slightly less than top ranked CS colleges, then there is often a strong bias towards software engineering type positions at local companies rather than SV, but again not fintech.

Lets try this a different way. Is there any post graduation outcome report for any selective college in the United States that indicates that shows a different pattern in which the referenced fintech jobs are not rare among any grouping of CS majors?

To take a school grade analogy, CS majors who received a lot of B’s during college still generally manage to find jobs in the industry; especially among those who have relevant work experience. However, those B students or students who do not ace every complex interview question may not necessarily be hired for the same software/CS positions as top performers, and/or may average a lower salary. There are a wide variety of different software/CS companies and software/CS positions at those companies.

Different senior CS/software employees often have completely different salary histories. Even at the same company, it’s common for tech employees with the same job title to have very different salary histories. This influences both the positions that they are applying for (many report salary range on job posting) as well as the size of the offer. For example, Payscale reports that ~half of “experienced” (between mid-career and late-career) “software engineers” have salaries below $100k… below the average starting salary for new CS grads that were mentioned in all of the salary surveys of this thread. Many employers do not automatically assume an experienced employee will be to expensive to hire, especially if that experienced employee should already have a good idea of the expected salary for the position.

As listed at https://viglobal.com/2018/06/13/tech-industry-battles-highest-attrition-rate-in-the-world-and-its-costly/ , well known tech companies have an extraordinarily high attrition rate for software/CS type employees. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and similar all average employees remaining for only ~2 years. I’d expect the attrition rate is highest among younger employees, rather than senior employees. In hiring decisions, employers will certainly consider if the employee is likely to break the trend and stick around. For experienced employees, one of the most important ways to identify who is likely to leave and who is likely to stick around is looking at how long they stayed at past companies on their resume; rather than making assumptions based on experience alone. For example, they’d likely draw very different conclusions about an experienced employee whose resume showed he rarely remained at any one company for more than a year, and an experienced employee whose had been working at the same past company for more than a decade. The employer may ask related questions during the interview as well.

There are many types of tech/CS positions. Many companies work on somewhat unique technologies, which have few direct competitors. These technologies are often not taught well (or any many case at all) at colleges. However, employees who have worked at the company previously or its few direct competitors are far more likely to possess such knowledge. This can lead to common job pathways among experienced employees. It may be common for employees from company A to switch to company B. This leads to person in hiring decision at company B already being familiar with the applicant who previously worked at company A, with related referral bonuses. Persons at company B knowing that the applicant A gets the job done and is pleasant to spend time with throughout the day can be very influential in hiring decisions, even if the applicant is not “elite:”.

^^Just make a few points regarding this topic:

  1. These higher paying jobs are very recent phenomena. There fields didn’t produce meaningful numbers a couple of years ago. They aren’t just limited to fintech.
  2. Majority of CS majors do become “software engineers” and the title has different meanings at different places.
  3. Competitions for true talents in the more cutting-edge areas of CS/DS are more intense than in the more traditional areas, driving up the compensations.
  4. Financial services firms looking for this type of talents tend to look only in a few places (not surprisingly, perhaps).

^ This is why I asked about vesting. I got the impression that although these companies give huge options, most don’t stick around to be able to cash in.

^ Most companies have one year or less vesting cliff and then quarterly.

Equity stakes are mostly granted over a 4 year vesting schedule. That is the case in 2 out of 3 offers our S has. The third front loaded an initial grant on signing. Graduates should understand the differences between true options and RSUs. Different companies will use options, RSUs, or combinations.

Based on they type of company, different levels of risk should be associated with equity stakes in compensation. There is fairly lower risk with established companies compared to startups. Although, the upside to startups could be astronomical (as in Instagram when they went public). IMO, the best way to look at options/RSUs is as a longer term investment and not as a means to supplement your income (base pay).

Trying to measure this is a fools errand. Give it up and allow your kids to follow their passion.

I admit I have heard now twice of meals being part of a compensation package.

What form of compensation is “meals” beyond “free food at work”? (I do understand company cafes and sushi bars and whatnot).

But if they’re being offered more than lunch at the office, they’re expected to work long days, is what that suggests to me. Unless the “meals” compensation includes fresh-boxed dinner subscriptions or restaurant gift certificates or something.

~Signed, mom of a software engineer with a great benefits pkg that doesn’t include meals AFAIK

Yes, free (or heavily subsidized) food at work enables working more (even for lunch). However, some employees may derive some benefit, in that if they do not enjoy preparing food at home, and/or going to restaurants is more time consuming and inconvenient, then s/he may prefer working an extra half hour to spending that half hour preparing food at home (and buying food at grocery stores at other times) or going to restaurants for food.

Here’s a typical days schedule from one of my son’s summer internships.

  • Catch the 8 AM bus to work (heavy traffic). Use wifi on bus to catch up email
  • Arrive around 9am. Catch full breakfast or grab coffee and croissant.
  • Work, then lunch from one of the many lunch spots
  • Finish work around 5-6, then have dinner if desired
  • Catch the 7 pm bus home (less traffic)

I never heard of “expectations” or pressure for long hours although he did put in some long hours (not unusual). Additionally, he could take a guest to dinner a couple of times a month at no cost.

Not all of his options have such extensive meal options. Others (smaller companies) only have catered breakfasts and lunches. Having the option to eat is good, saves money, and is simply - convenient. So, while meals are not called out in his offer letters letters under “compensation” they are a nice benefit.

The place my DD interned and going to work after graduation had few restaurants on campus with excellent chefs that serve breakfast , lunch and dinner. In addition each floor has cafes where they provide drinks as per order Starbucks style. Dinner starts at 7pm but most people go to onsite gyms and then grub dinner. They don’t serve dinner on Fridays since most people work remotely or have other dinner plans for Friday night .