Oh, It a good exciting news for Stanford graduates. They can get high salary and decent job. but, for me , just hunting job. Wow

Why not go after the x-Yahoo’s. I’d imagine any Yahoo! employee at this point is ready to leave.

Great, in about 14 years they can pay off their student loans.

I am a CS Major at Stanford graduating this year, where are my 95k offers? Sigh.

This news is a hoax. There’s no way a big company such as google would hire a fresh graduate for $92K.

Which universities qualify as “another top university”?

michael in california - just about all of them, except Berkeley.

well i can speak for the grad students in the cs dept - and they too are being made offers between 80-100K - though getting offers beyond 100K requires candidates to have at least a few years of work exp. companies in the good pay bracket include a big db company near exit 412 on US-101N, another web based company which is rumored to lay off over 700 people, apart from a few start ups that are doing well - google and microsoft though are not really top of the notch salary payers unless the candidate in question has something exceptional to his/her credit…though i wish i had come to stanford as an undergrad seeing what these guys are making!

Where are your sources from? Newly graduated students do not get this kind of offers, not matter how big the tech bubble is. I wonder where you get such inflated numbers from.

Well, I got 2 offers of more than 95k, one of them 98k. And I have no experience.

I love it when Michael Arrington comments.

Mike, don’t dis Berkeley because you had to go to Stanford instead of Boalt.

Interesting concept, im sure some of these grads could create their own apps and make around the same per year

The barriers to entry are very low and facebook and google and news corp make it that much eaiser

If your a grad and have some ideas for http://www.yupnup.com let me know

feedback@yupnup.com

How do you rate? Check out http://www.yupnup.com

@9 you are wrong.

I’m a Ph.D. student in CS at UCLA. I do know that Google has been making their presence known pretty heavily on campus, though I don’t know how much they’re paying their new hires.
I know that the Google process for hiring Ph.D.’s is much harder then undergrads. A colleague who’s skills I admire and who’s getting his Ph.D. pretty soon just got turned down by Google after the onsite interviews. Doesn’t look so good for me.

Oh, and I haven’t seen Facebook at all around the UCLA campus. I guess they’re not interested in SoCal grads.

Definitely true. I’m a CS undergrad from stanford with offers up to $100k before stock/bonuses/etc. Two keys to success:

-Grades aren’t as important as you think, experience is. Focus on doing independent projects, great internships, and part-time work rather than squeezing out the 4.0. A 3.5 w/ tons of real-world experience and projects to point to is much more impressive because it shows that you can actually get things done in the real world (which is quite different from most classes).

-Get lots of offers. Job hunt aggressively! Don’t be afraid to go for positions beyond your experience level (particularly if you’ve followed point one). Because of my past internships and work during the school year I have been offered senior developer positions right out of college. Also be honest with other employers by telling them that they you are considering other options. If you’re qualified and they want you they can (and will!) increase their offer. This can make a substantial difference ( as much as $10-20k).

Good luck!

Wow, those salaries seem low to me for CS grads from schools like Stanford or Berkeley.

But what do I know - none of our engineers have degrees and they all make more than this.

Last year’s average was more than 70k. I think median was somewhere in the 80’s, according to numbers from computing forum.

@ 17

You could not be more right, experience does count! Why the focus on Stanford and other Cali University’s when Google can find twice as qualified candidates elsewhere?

Can someone explain me what these companies need all these people for? Is this another case of better hire him, so that noone else gets him? I mean I honestly don’t see how Facebook would need the hundreds of programmers that they have on payroll.

It disrupts the job market, doesn’t it?

This is hardly news for the top candidates from best schools. The names that compete for the top talent just change from time to time.

The ones flush with cash can bid for the top talent, whether it is investment banking, biotech, computer sciences, or any other field flush with cash from investors or in fields just adding un-proportionally more value to the economy than most other fields.

Top talent includes being in top of your class, top internships, and interesting extracurricular activities that make you an interesting blend into the company.

agree with #20. there are a lot of other qualified candidates outside of the mentioned schools that aren’t quite as expensive.

@18 , @all, @Zuckerberg especially

Does Zuckerberg hire Zuckerberg if he is a new grads. from Harvard, now!?

; )

i’m waiting your answer too, best commenter Michael Arrington : )

As I have always said, Google hire me.

nice thought Erhan

Given the current exchange rate, they all could earn more in most parts of Europe

(I know, that I do)

get a job with a top tech co., get options, etc - stay there for a couple of years - then leave / cash out

…to start your own company, you’ll have more than enough then to survive a couple years. and have gained clout and connections and what not

The *average* salary of a IST grad from Penn State was $56,000, an average signing bonus of over $5k, with placement over 90%. This is a state school with a competitive but average CS/tech program (PSU is not known for their tech). Merrill Lynch is paying their starting programmers $65k + 20k benefits, or about $85k total comp starting. Top grads out of IST can make over $90k total comp per year starting. I would *hope* that SV-based Stanford grads are making at least that, especially given the talent competition roaring these days.

Hey friends.
You maybe missed the point.The Google and Facebook are specially seeking for ones who have prior knowledge in similar area. In fact, if you have “ANY” open source software or anything that reveals your passion into programming, you will have a big chance to win the offers. I (and maybe you) know a lot of people who woks for Google who doesn’t have any CS degree. Their salary is unimaginable even base upon US standards.

I have friend CS MS from Stanford making close to $200k at a wireless startup.

$90K is basically the starting salary for developers in California.

Why don’t they look at other lesser known colleges they could save themself some money. I can’t believe CS grads at stanford are better than any others.

This is hilarious. I remember when Nortel was making standing offers to entire CS classes with no interview necessary. This was back in 2000 - if you were graduating you had a job paying $60k.

Given the progressive size of funding rounds as of late, hiring and salary trends, and imploding non-tech economy, it is not hard to see what is coming. This is beginning to look like the year 2000 again.

My suggestion is don’t go for the $hitty startup if you can get a job with a company that is rock solid, profitable, and has minimal exposure to outside interests (shareholders, VCs, etc.).

In Europe IT-students can apply for a 3 day event in Dubai by McKinsey. All expenses paid!! (50% solving Business Cases, 50% Leisure according to the agenda)

I’ve known people from Stanford and Berkeley, and interviewed them as well. I haven’t seen an increased ratio of quality developers coming from these schools. If anything, I’d say that they are less interested in learning new things. So in the end, they generally are average. No better, no worse.

Congradulations, but remember that these schools are a bubble in themselves.

As a recent graduate of a top university, I’d say that this is applicable to the top 10%, but most graduates are in the 50k-70k range.

Wow. such a “jealous underpaid journalists” type post.

seriously, it was rumored that bloggers are paid 12 dollars a post writing here. sad and unfair. but wam, not that michael arlington should be the jealous type…

So far, so good. Where does it end? If I narrow things down to my own perspectives, ‘across the pond’ (The Netherlands) a Phd-qualified computational linguist will need about 5 years of experience and a lot of talent to be paid those numbers (taken into account you’re about 10 years older than these students, don’t forget the weak dollar (vs. euro) and life’s a great deal more expensive over here as well). But, as experience and professional levels grow the curve steepens considerably as well.

Where will those guys end up? Go figure.

This is for Stanford Graduates(USA). But what for the Graduates from rest of world like Punjab University College of Information Technology, Lahore, Pakistan.

I graduated from the CS Masters program at Stanford not long back. Google’s offer was in the 85 - 90k ball park but the stock offering made it interesting (since the strike back then was in the 480’s). Even people with 2 years of work experience got the same offer. MSFT’s offers were in the late 70s/early 80s but required relocation to seattle. AMZN made insane sign on bonus offers (in the 35 to 40k ball park with a base salary of 90-95k for seattle). The best i’ve seen is from Yahoo! which offered way more than 100k for really strong candidates. Facebook is pretty competitive given the early stage stock perspective.

130k for APMs sounds ridiculous. I just called a couple of juniors and i havent heard of anything more than 95k. The 130k is probably for MBA graduates from the GSB(Graduate school of business).

For those of you not from Stanford, sorry, but most of us would agree that getting into Stanford CS was the best thing that God could’ve given us! Thank you professors, CS dept chair and everyone else!

@M

Ooops : )
jealous as u i think : )))

Are they only targeting computer science students? What about all the software engineers (with engineering degrees)?

Google has the best food and Burritos from Andale…:-)

Enjoy the salaries/competition while you can peeps. Unemployment in the Valley was very very high just a several years ago. What goes up usually comes down.

They’re just buying the college name. You could have two candidates with the same skill levels and degrees, and because one went to a “known” school they’ll get the job 9 out of 10 times.

What does 90k equal with the inflated rates of living in California? Can you even comfortably own a house with that?

heh, does this mean we’ll be approached by these companies too? our school is teaching developing applications on facebook as well. And the site’s kick ass. neways, don’t bother me. i’ll be counting my $$$$.

http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~cs3216/

Whether or not a fresh-out-of-Stanford CS grad makes $85K or $95K is largely irrelevant. The bigger issue over time will be the impact on the Valley’s startup ecosystem.

Google and Facebook are sucking the oxygen out of the air, making it extremely difficult for many small startups to find the kind of engineers they need to develop their businesses. We live in a market economy, of course, so we can’t begrudge them their ability to call dibs on the best engineers. But it would be interesting to know how many great ideas are lying fallow because Google wants to throw another ten engineers at some little piece of functionality or Facebook wants to sell another million little bouquets of digital flowers.

Facebook is the greatest site of all times, forget about Google.

Facebook is just the best way to do hundred of things !

http://techiteasy.org/2007/07/.....ks-for-me/

What about business students with experience from the online business in Europe? I wouldn’t mind relocating to California

Happy Student, what a ridiculously stupid class that is.

Oh my God… I must have studied computer sciences??

This all sounds a little too similar to the artificial home prices we’re all too familiar with.

All we need is another tech slow down and a lot of the people with these inflated salaries, and probably over extended budgets of cars and homes will not be able to secure another job paying the same or more.

funny thing is… i’m making near that amount with no degree…in Atlanta!

-Cheers

GEICO’s office in DC is hiring computer science grads too

not really a data point, but… the best students from our Stanford Facebook class aren’t taking jobs at Google, Facebook, Yahoo, or even other startups.

the best teams / students in the class are starting their OWN startups

(and from what i hear, a few are already making more money from their own projects than any of those quoted salaries.)

don’t get me wrong: a few years at an established company like G, F, or Y can be great to learn from smart folks & get your legs under you. but for those who want to dive in & do a startup, there’s no time like the present.

- dave mc

Around U$D 8000 to 12000 per year here in the third world for a decent junior C programmer (embedded devices) and somewhere between U$D 2500 and 3000 per year for trainees/interns in Q&A for the said systems.

Makes me cry.

To everyone who is complaining that they too, should be hearing from Google and Facebook: the answer is to be proactive. If you are sitting at your university waiting for a phone call, you are starting on the wrong foot.

No matter what your starting salary is, it wil be irrelevent 5 years from now. The high flying, high performing engineers will have gotten promotions, started their own company, whatever… and some who started with high salaries will get a 4% annual raise forever.

Attitude is what matters, being proactive. If you take the classes and nothing else, you’ll end up in the 4% category. Which by the way is fine: there are other nice things in life apart from money. A CS day job pays very comfortably, not matter what (even in Silicon Valley).

Some of us will be more aggressive and will climb faster than the rest. Google and Facebook are trying to find those fast climbers, and they do so by casting a wide net. Small startups don’t have that luxury, they need to get the right person or their business will suffer. Google will just park you in a cubicle and leave you there if you are not an overachiever.

In the end, what happens to you mostly depends on you taking the lead, if you want to. A previous poster said that what matters is experience, not a perfect GPA. That is very true.

PS: I would advise against starting your own company right after college, you just don’t have the business experience and contacts. And I’m a big fan of startups. Do it after a few years, and by the way, only when you have an idea that keeps you awake at night.

Alain.

Man, I’ve got to move out to california. I have a CS degree from an east coast school and a couple years experience. At the low end those salaries still approach double what I can make in the great state of Vermont.

Come to Romania - you will recruit great programmers with lots of experience for 40-45000 $ per year.

More and more I realize my film degree was a waste of time…

These are bubbled salaries that are just scraping $100,000.

The very best kids here at Wharton routinely get offers approaching $200,000, or more. I know one guy who got a joint undergraduate business degree and MBA at the same time and got an offer of $800,000 per year…at 23. The worst finance majors can get jobs targeting about $120,000 per year (60K base + 60K target bonus).

There is a business world slowdown coming for one year. So knock the number of hires and the salaries by 10%-20%, you still see much higher rewards for Wharton students than CS students anywhere.

Michael,

I’m not so sure you should be touting the “student” confirmations of your story. Can you event verify that those postings are from actual students? Even if you could, do you really think they would post that salaries are not good — I doubt it.

Only vahid’s comment seemed true. The rest of you are just spammers.
The truth of the matter is Google is screening candidates from top unis all around the world, not just Stanford. And the are only “screening” to find if they hit upon that special someone they are looking for. The offers made are only verbal, not legal, just to lure those 22- 27 year olds.
Its a bit like dating. Google, facebook and all others need to innovate and they are doing a constant hunt for innovators.

re #60, your cost of living in CA is going to be quite a bit higher than it is in VT…real sticker shock. If you plan to raise a family at some point in the future, it’s only to get worse, and the quality of the public schools is abysmal. Don’t be seduced by the dollar signs — being part of the echo chamber has some definite (and very high) costs.

These companies should look outside the box for a slice of their employees. Bring on board some creative thinkers, idea generators and communicators who DON’T have a computer science degree, or who AREN’T complete geeks. You can be book smart and degree heavy, but only capable of linear thinking, and not good at communicating with or leading people. Mix it up. There are plenty of innovative entrepreneurs (wihout a doctorate in CS or mathematics) that would bring a whole new creative process to the tech game.

I thought this was high, but I have just hired a Polish grad for £40K , so these grads sound pretty cheap. I guess its down to their lack of experience

Google is one of the top salary givers in India, in competition with Microsoft and IBM. Will Facebook come to India?

Salary.com has a cost of living wizard that calculates what you need to be earning to maintain the same standard of living. From Rochester,NY to somewhere like LA is a 147% increase in pay required. Considering I got hired out of school before my senior year at 65K, I own a large house and live more than comfortably. No way in hell 100k would even come close to giving me the same lifestyle in California.

@Wharton student: yeah, your salaries are cool, but they are in finance, not IT, so stop flashing the big numbers you guys get - you belong to a different pond and you go by different standards.

@all: I am impressed to see how many people are/were at Stanford and other strong universities and make so many spelling mistakes… What did you learn there, people?

i totally agree with Ashy. Google, Facebook and all other startups looking for great innovators must screen candidates from uni’s all around the world. Mr. Arrington, the best minds in the cs industry are not found in your so called “top us uni’s” they are all over the world.Look @ the number of people who contribute great code to open source projects out there….. are they all in your so called “top us uni’s”? please give us a break……

I agree with Alain Raynaud, don’t start your own startup right out of college… start it way before you even graduate! I’m graduating this year and I’m on my 3rd company.

He’s right, you don’t have the business sense or connections necessary to succeed when starting out. When I was a Sophomore, I didn’t have any of these. But I don’t know any faster way to get them than to get out there and start a company. There’s no better safety net for failure than being in college. You’re pretty much guaranteed a place to sleep and eat, so you’ve got nothing to worry about.

The funny thing is even when you succeed (my second company), it’s not enough and you want to do it again (my third company).

Remember, all it takes is one success, and when you get it, people rarely say, “Yeah, but how many times did you fail?”

#72 — Also have a look at all the poorly written open source code from all over the world…

I know that I graduated from Purdue last year and got $65k + loads of benefits right out the door, and that is in INDIANA! I have a lot of work experience, but everyone that I graduated with had jobs lined up by Christmas break. I was 22 when I purchased my first house. Have I mentioned how much I love the technology industry?

I’m 10 years out of school with a CS degree, an MBA and I’m not making much more than the highest quoted salaries that Google is allegedly offering. With salaries like those for kids right out of school I should be getting a lot more money!

During the last bubble I remember hiring kids right out of school at close to $100k. That was for a company that quickly went bankrupt. These days we are hiring kids out of school with CS degrees but little programming experience starting at half of that, if they are lucky.

I don’t know what the pay rates are like out there in the Valley, if they are that high it might be worth it for me to move out there.

From MIT….salaries are higher than those reported for Stanford, for the smart kids in the class…

cost of living plays a huge part too. i was ecstatic upon receiving an 85K offer back in 2001 coming out of a masters program at university of michigan, but once I moved out to silicon valley, realized that’s 85k is a lot like making 60-65K in a lower cost of living state like Michigan.

Of course, in the first few years out of college, you can expect your salary to go up another 20-30%, so that helps

what about IT consulting? do they pay higher actually? If you do well in consulting, you can get high price tags too.

May be some companies pay so high. But which one, Google, Facebook, Yahoo are oversaturated with talents. And while Yahoo is laying off jobs for thousands, how CS kids getting so much. As is mentioned in an earlier comments those start-ups go bankrupt soon. Now the world is full of CS students.

100k is still nothing. what about the billions of dollars larry and sergey will make when some “inexperienced” kid from stanford develops the next killer app for google.

In Brazil, students of a very very good university, don’t hava plus of 3000 dollars for year… is very bad =(

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$100k +/- $30k seems to be pretty standard salary for a software engineer these days. Kudos to Google for stepping up the scale for entry level engineers but it’s not unreasonable compensation.

ppl making 100K would tell everyone about their experience.
ppl making 50K won’t, so rumor chaser will report that everyone is getting 100k.

As a senior at MIT I can confirm these kinds of offers. Hell, INTERNS can make 60-80k nowadays if you play it right.

I love Arrington’s hatred of Pitzer.

I have a b.a. from Pomona and an M.A. from Chicago (3.7 and 3.9 gpa respectively) - I’m a senior analyst.

I don’t make 100k, but I moved to a specific city because my wife (a math ph.d. from Chicago) is making that. I took the first job that came along that let me do what I want and paid enough to satisfy my standards of living.

I can report 250k+ (that’s base before signing and options) offers being thrown at math ph.d.s from Chicago.

Curious, what is $100,000 worth in Santa Clara or Solano County these days? Adjusted for tax & regulation crazy Democrat representatives and absurd real estate prices?

#73
What are these companies? I’d be interested to see what a college kid can d without any experience (unless its a dot.com).

? I’m flummoxed

http://termlifeinsuranceonlinequote.net/But I don’t know any faster way to get them than to get out there and start a company. There’s no better safety net for failure than being in college. You’re pretty much guaranteed a place to sleep and eat, so you’ve got nothing to worry about.

It’s a simple formula why companies go after college kids:

1. They are not married, have no family, etc. This means you can squeeze much more work out of them as they don’t have to run home to the wife and kids in pursuit of their “balanced lifestyle” and external responsibilities.
2. Younger folks fresh from college aren’t jaded just yet as they have not tasted bitter failure just yet. They come out of college with energy and enthusiasm and aren’t necessarily “burnt out” or have the same world and work view like the 10+ year veterans of the industry.
3. College kids don’t necessarily do the math on the concept of time, money and their worth relative to one another. Money is near infinite and time certainly isn’t.

as someone who has managed large teams, i can tell you that Stanford has no patent on talent. i have hired Stanford phds who have turned out to be utter losers. the only thing you are guaranteed out of stanford is an “attitude” so buyer beware. a more predictable source of engineering quality without the BS is the University of Ilinois.

I am not an Illinois alumnus.

Average salary offer coming out of Carnegie Mellon CS has been 110k for those coming to the Valley, with yes, Google leading the way.

@25

January 31st, 2008 at 12:09 am

“@18 , @all, @Zuckerberg especially
Does Zuckerberg hire Zuckerberg if he is a new grads. from Harvard, now!?
; )
i’m waiting your answer too, best commenter Michael Arrington : )”
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Lol Erhan! I think we uld wait Marc Zuckerberg s answer for ur question as u said
Great catchin’ fun Marc ll hit the wall