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.
The average intern at Microsoft, Yahoo and Google now makes more than $30/hr.
Most CS undergrads think that working at Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon or Facebook is going to solve all their issues. The best advice is to get entrepreneurial as early and as soon as possible and try not to look like every other top CS student. You start to look like a commodity.
a stanford undergrad (2000), I was hired for $110K plus stock and signing bonuses at a competitive startup (still around today). And that was after my sophomore year. Inflated, yes, but isn’t it today as well?
@Wharton: sorry, i went to wharton, so i will correct the poster’s comment (not that anyone on this forum would care, but nonetheless)
salaries: most people go into investment banking or consulting, and your top end for first year analysts last year on wall street was $60k base + $90k bonus (except for a handful of boutiques that offered $100k bonus) = $150k; work week ~ 85 hours a week, with worst weeks ~ 120 hours. for consultants, that dwindles down to roughly (and i do not know exact numbers on this) $70k base + ~$20k bonus = roughly the number that is being discussed on this forum (and this is at the best firms too, mckinsey, bain, bcg; and the hours at mck can be just as bad as avg banking hours on Mon-Thurs). there were some people i knew who got jobs at d.e. shaw, citadel, sac capital, etc etc; these were arguably the toughest and most competitive hedge fund jobs, and even still, starting salaries were maybe $200k at most. this was all last year mind you. quality of life at these jobs isn’t too bad either, so for the kids who get these, good deal.
so essentially, the wharton poster’s opinion is very much incorrect; also, all the submat MBAs never made more than $300k coming out (with proper MBA students, not submats, this is a different story). haha, that $800k is surely nonsense.
also, an important sidenote is that many start-up employees are taking $90k now, with lifestyle benefits, for maybe $1-$2MM, and potentially much more, in a few years. so, you kind of have to look at it from that angle. how many start-up employees will cash out “successfully”, for whatever that means? i have no idea, and it would be interesting to see what people across the board have made so far in companies that have realized some type of exit strategy
also, as a sidenote, if you had offers from the following companies:
doostang
rockyou!
slide
meebo
all for business strategy and/or bus dev positions, what would you take, and why? i am asking because i am thinking about throwing my resume out to start-ups, and these are a few companies i am really interested in, in terms of what they are doing
re: 98 Ferderand
The best part is that the faulty premise in your post is the concept of “Stanford hotties” to begin with. Have you taken a look around campus? ouch
@ 92
couldnt agree with you more… alot of schools like Stanford, Harvard, etc produce students that think that they are great and dont have the work ethic to prove it (especially in the engineering and CS fields) …
#105: I believe #98 was being blatantly sarcastic. 115K doesn’t buy you shit in Palo Alto
#103 anonymous: for salaries are you talking about undergrad. business program or MBA?
To those who don’t believe the numbers believe them. $90K for a person coming out of a top 4 year school with a CS degree is not on the high end of the spectrum. Google only hires the best and if you have an offer from them then you can be sure it will be at that level. Most decent senior programmers in the valley can look at a base salary of anywhere from $125 to $150K with 5 years of experience plus some kind of bonus or option structure. What one has to realize is that for the programming side the salaries don’t increase as fast on a year to year basis than someone on the business side who starts at possible a lower base salary but has the room to get promoted from an associate to a senior manager over that same five years time. Back in 1999 oracle was shelling out $70K a year salaries plus stock etc. That was 8 years ago so even with our modest inflation it seems very reasonable that Google would pay $95K.
I’ve worked for Amazon, eBay, Orbitz and others and we have always recruited at schools like Stanford and Princeton that are know as being generally excellent at academics but also top CS schools like IL, Indiana and others who have very solid engineering departments.
Michael, your girlfriend is using you to get famous! ha ha!
you are a fool if you take an offer from these stupid Slide/RockYou type companies and expect to have anything long-term. Even facebook, to a lesser extent. These companies are just one big joke, and won’t be around in two years. The US economy is going to run lean and mean if it intends to recover from this shit state; you won’t see any more $90 million investments in FunWall II.
dj: the girls at Stanford are really hot compared to the girls at Solano Community College. I was born in Cebu, Philippines and when I called my dad back home to tell him that I got a job at Facebook and would be dating tall white girls whose parents can afford to send them to Stanford, he said “You make you father and mother proud, son. We love you long time.”
It is amazing to me the number of people responding to this post from universities where English is clearly a second language. Anyone paying these inferior communicators in English these high salaries is nuts. If you don’t care about their English skills and just need a good propeller head, hire from a developing country for 10 cents on the dollar.
As a Staffing Manager for a SaaS company in the SV one bit of advice to you recent or soon to be grads with CS degrees. It would be a terrible mistake to consider initial offer (Base, Bonus, and Stock) as the primary criteria in determining whose offer sheet you decide to sign. Please also consider risk to reward ratio. Ask your precursors in the class of 2000 who opted for the big bucks instead of thinking about such frivolous things like: 1. solvency of the company, 2. Value proposition of company’s product, 3. Top management, etc;
to 108: i was mostly referring to undergrad salaries; mba is definitely different
mba (WITH experience) as a first year associate investment banker probably gets around $350K all in (all the submats i know that got banking offers were hired as third year analysts EXCEPT for at UBS, don’t know if this is because ken moelis was a wharton submat or not); mba as a first year consultant probably more like $120K-$140K; mba as a first year at a KKR or a TPG or some other huge private equity shop probably something around $600K-$700K
wow, those are some awesome salaries. this just confirms that my 3 years for law school was in vain.
coming from LA, and working for a mid-size (www.freeafterfive.com is my project) i can tell you that the salary listed about is roughly 30% more then what you can expect from southern california.
my friend is a recently graduated with a master’s from usc, and his best offer in southern california topped out at 70K (bonus was not discussed, since he never got a 2nd interview).
for all those who have the opportunity to make that sort of money i hope you consider your good fortune.
#111: why do you say that? i am really curious; what companies do you think will stand tall through all of this? what places do you think would make sense to go to, in terms of maximizing potential payoff? i would think a place like slide would go for alot once exit is realized (i have already heard they raised new money on a roughly $500MM valuation) i’m just wondering what the thinking process should be in getting into one of these startups
also, how much equity/options would one expect, and how does that process work?
Hey Great article love Tech Crunch. I learn about a ton of companies, and opportunities within a few emails.
I wanted to share with the people claiming that grads aren’t getting 90+ offers for jobs. This is mainly for California. 90+ is not a lot in California. Though a lot for a single graduating student it is not a lot in a state where the average house is 400,000 to 525,000.
$90k in that area is only 75k in New York 16% increase. And 46% increase in Chicago.
well shocked to sight such mouth watering offers.
according to my observation i think the current era is the peak level of in IT history. this not limited to USA only even in middle east and south asia where a network administrator can only earn 8000 Rs now offering about 35000 in a month …..
400% increase in salary
Well, as a recent graduate (6 months ago) with a bunch of friends in the area I can offer a little insight.
My friends who are developers are all at startups and all earning ~75k-80k with stock options that range from 0.2%-0.5% of the company.
Google APMs just got a raise recently, so the base (out of undergrad, no work experience) is 95k. I think it’s +15k for 1 year of work experience and +15k for a master’s.
Google software engineers’ base for the same experience is a little lower, but pretty close.
So yeah, this post is pretty accurate (and I’ve go the pay stubs and diploma to prove it)
And to think I’m applying for a job as a professor of CS in the U of California system, with salaries ranging around 55K…
Google also battles against Baidu for CS students here in China. They both offer 150k~200k, in local currency, before taxed.
Bill Gates once famously said that 1 great programmer is worth more than 1000 good ones. Based on that logic, the 10-20k that google, facebook and any other top companies pay as a premium is well worth the investment.
Boris - Software Headhunter
http://www.bincsearch.com
blog.bincsearch.com
I am going to Rensellear out on the east coast and majoring in computer science. Is there a possibility I can get a job at google or any of the above mentioned companies?
Damn this is sooo insane, ppl who are just starting only get in amerika this kind of salaries. In other countries they have to start at the bottom with like 50k. Nice evolution btw
I am a senior software engineer with 10 years of experience but no degree. I only make $115,000. I have created a number of open source projects. Do you guys think I’m getting ripped off? I really really really want to work at google. Do you think they’d pay me a lot more? Seems like a great time to get in now that the stock is back down to $500 and the online ad market is predicted to DOUBLE in the next three years.
Does anybody know starting salaries for Google etc. in Europe? I’d be particularly interested in Google’s APM programme…
Hi does anyone know what are the chances of finding developer job in USA after Ph.D. in UCI for non-american resident ? (Don’t have experience, but have won some competitions like MS Imagine Cup - up to the world final)
Wow, I just woke up from this dream where these kids were talking about $100K+ job offers right out of college! Oh well, back to reality and my lowly $45k job. Life is not a race to the finish line, its about constancy…
Wharton student- you’re stupid. Kids from Stanford also get those ridiculous finance numbers when they work at INVESTMENT BANKS and PE shops. The DIFFERENCE is that they work 9-5, and investment wankers are working 90 hours a week.
Wharton kids are just finance monkeys who will be replaced by software in the next 10 years. Software written by Stanford kids.
“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.”
You do realize that many companies have offices outside of the SV? I live in the Pacific NW in a city that has offices for Apple, Oracle, Intel, Yahoo, Google (a few miles out of town).
I used to work in the SV and I can guarantee you that you can find smart people outside of there.
“@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.”
I take it you have NEVER worked in tech before? Get ready, you are going to just looooove it
boo-ahh ha ha ha…
“I am going to Rensellear out on the east coast and majoring in computer science. Is there a possibility I can get a job at google or any of the above mentioned companies?”
You’d be better off going to a west coast university. Google is known to have a thing for west coast grads even if they are not from a top-20 school. And not just California universities…U of Washington, Washington State U, U or Oregon, Oregon State U, and U of Arizona, Arizona State U all have good reputations.
The west coast is a bit different from the east coast. In the east most of the good schools are private. On the west coast along with great private schools like Stanford most of your good schools are state schools. (And I don’t mean to overlook the UC system….just trying to give everyone else their props.)
Hmm… Before I started my current classes at Stanford in the Engineering department, I had been making $125K base with 20% bonus to do software consulting. That’s $150K right there, before considering stock programs that have added more than 10K a year.
And actually, my first tech job that I entered with no relevant degree and no professional experience paid me $85K, which I quickly surpassed.
So I’m not surprised at all that people graduating would be getting in the high 90s. If they’re strategic, they should be able to hit six figures pretty quickly. It’s all about picking a job for which there is demand and a job that is critical to a company. They won’t pay you a lot to build a smoother system for marketing to manage their press releases, but if you can get in the true value chain for a company to increase revenues or valuation by millions of dollars, then they’ll pay you.
Come on boys and girls, Stanford CS grads command top dollar, that’s the bottom line. Just look at how many startups have stanford ties not to mention stanford is one of the tops schools in nation we really talking like the top 1-3% of grads here for cs. Just some recent offers last week.
Facebook 70k 12k restricted units
Apple 82K 10Ksign on no options=)
Oracle 87K 6K sign on 3k options
Poster 133:
I’d totally agree with you where public school on west coast are great. But I don’t see how you can say that any company can prefer one coast over the other. East coast has MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Princeton…
Does anyone have an recommendations/comments/suggestions on the following schools CS Undergrad programs?
- NYU
- Columbia
- Florida Tech
I am from IIT (India) and recently hired by MFST for 90K + sign bonus. 90K is common even for IIT gards in US.
Computer science is in itself in my terms an Art, I think more than science it’s a creative field where you explore unimaginable things that normallly we would have visuallized or created.Hence I strongly belive it’s not a science but an art form which is sophisticated enough for us to clutter it with science,of course we will make 110k, :”)
hello!!i wanna ask a question?I am beginning to put thought into my CS graduate studies. I really want to extend my knowledge of my field to the max possible. I really feel that a Ph.D is right for me because I want to be the person who researches and implements new ideas and technologies into the Computer Science field. However, the road to the Ph.D seems so daunting and difficult. Will obtaining a Ph.D really give me the tools I need to become a pioneer of this wonderfully expanding field? When they say Ph.Ds are for research, I feel that it diminishes my thought of what I want to be. I want to create new, innovative technologies. I don’t feel that just obtaining a master’s degree will allow me to fully do this.
Oh my god… I ‘m so disappointed. I am a student in master degree in CS. I’m looking for a job for 20$ hourly and I couldn’t find it. why really?? Because I’m going to calstate university? Is that it? How these people are so successful not me??can you help me please….