Google and Facebook are fighting hard to hire this years crop of computer science graduates, we’ve heard, and ground zero is Stanford. Most of the class of 2008 already have job offers even though graduation is months away.
Last year, salaries of up to $70,000 were common for the best students. This year, Facebook is said to be offering $92,000, and Google has increased some offers to $95,000 to get their share of graduates. Students with a Masters degree in Computer Science are being offered as much as $130,000 for associate product manager jobs at Google.
Apparently the popular Facebook Applications class is getting a lot of attention from other startups, too. Slide and RockYou are both recruiting hard. One source says that RockYou is approaching students and telling them they aren’t hiring them, they’re “acquiring” their “companies” and will let them continue to work on their applications after graduation. That is, of course, some serious smoke blowing - any code they’ve been working on in the class is likely to be shelved by RockYou. Still, it’s a great way to recruit by making these students feel like they’re entering into some kind of an M&A transaction.
Something tells me the Pitzer students who’ve enrolled in the Learning From YouTube class aren’t getting the same types of offers.
If you are a CS student at Stanford or another top university, tell us what’s happening with recruiting.
Update: Good comments below from students confirming these (and even higher) salaries.
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
Marc ll hit the wall 
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
@Wharton: You are not making an equal comparison. Think about hours and environment. The hardest working CS students will likely work 50 hour weeks in light stress environments where they can wear sweatpants to work and play billiards in the office. At your job you’ll be working 90 hours per week and will probably have your first heart attack by the time you’re 40. Quality of life is still not worth $800k.
@ #88
Well, the third company as you can see from my link is a .com (RateMyStudentRental.com). I can somewhat understand the “unless it’s a .com” part of your comment though; I think most .com’s simply plan to become popular and sell out. But if you have a robust business and revenue model that has a solid foundation offline as well, it can be more business-intensive than brick and mortar companies. With a .com, if you play your cards right, you start out with a much larger customer base in a shorter amount of time. Most of what I do is networking, marketing, and customer interaction.
My first company was a used and aftermarket car parts company that I’m thinking about selling off because it hasn’t been very fun or exciting to run for the last couple years. The second company is No BS Web Design and Devolopment (and consulting) (http://www.nobswebdesign.com).
I hope that answers your question. I say knowledge comes form school, experience comes from doing, and success comes when you learn to connect the two. But what do I know? I’m just a college kid.
Wondering: How many of these grads were originally symbolic systems majors?
I just received an offer from one of the companies mentioned here to do advanced HTML and CSS programming and can tell you that the numbers you gave are very low. The starting salary I was offered is $115,000. Once we’re done negotiating my pre-IPO stock options I will be accepting.
You are also wrong about the recruiting only happening at top universities. I just graduated from Solano Community College so they are recruiting at top community colleges as well.
I can’t wait to move to Palo Alto. With my $115,000 salary I should be able to pull some Stanford hotties. Once they see me pull up in my Porsche Boxter and I tell them who’s been viewing their profile they’ll be jumping in and begging me to take them back to my studio apartment at Merrilee Terrace Apartments.
Xie Li’s comment above (paraphrased below) is about right. A lot of the people reporting 100k+ must be MBA/Phd/past-full-time-work-experience hires.
I recently graduated from a top masters program in CS and I can say that the numbers are around 90k +/- 5k for base salary not including salary/bonus/sign-on/relocation for entry masters-level positions.
Undergraduate ranges around the 65k-75k mark.
And as Xie Li said, I do believe Amazon is the top base payer and sign-on bonus employer (~30k sign-on, ~95k base). Google is actually not known to be the highest base payer.
I am making $7/hr at Wendy’s. I must be doing something wrong…