

Stanford Computer Science '10-'11 Salary Survey Results - abi

I'm an undergraduate at Stanford and I recently got this mass email from the CS department. I figured it might be interesting to the Hacker News audience (with all the talk of bubble and stuff). No one said the survey results were not to be distributed so I assumed that it was okay to do this.<p>--------------------------------------------------------<p><i>CS/EE Undergrads</i><p>Data: I received 140 responses which described 360 job offers. 95% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 5% were from the Midwest and East Coast. 10% of the job offers were from start-ups.<p>Salary offers ranged from $64,400 to $100,000. The average salary offer was $79,914. The median salary offer was $ 82,200.<p>About 70% of students were offered stock options. About 80% of students were offered signing bonuses. And about 60% were offered relocation assistance and there were others who did not report the statistics since relocating did not apply to them. Relocation assistance ranged from $2,000 to $10,000 with an average of $3,000. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $25,000 with an average of $5,700. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values.<p>Students who replied averaged about 2 job offers. However, students may not have reported on all the offers they received. The average student who replied to the survey all had some job experience, nearly all of it through summer internships and averaged 3 summer of work.<p>Location, scope of work, salary/benefits, environment/culture, company were the important factors in accepting the offers for the undergrads.<p><i>CS/EE Masters</i><p>Data: I received 145 responses which described 330 job offers. 94% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 6% were in the Midwest and East Coast. 15% of the job offers were from start-ups.<p>Salary offers ranged from $66,000 to $120,000. The average salary offer was $94,634. The median salary offer was $93,000. The candidates who were offered $120,000 was reporting directly to the VP of his research group. Also, one of the candidates was offered $36,000 because the individual was doing an internship instead of a full-time position out of state which I did not include into the calculation.<p>About 78% of students were offered stock options. About 66% of students were offered signing bonuses. And about 43% were offered relocation assistance and there others who did not report the statistics since relocating did not apply to them. Relocation assistance ranged from $1,000 to $8,000 with an average of $1,740. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $35,000 with an average of $4,102. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values.<p>Students who replied averaged about 3 job offers. However, students may not have reported on all the offers they received. The Masters had a little more summer experience than the undergraduates, an average of 3 summer internships.<p>Like the undergrads, location, scope of work, company, and salary/benefits, and environment/culture seem to be the important factors for the MS grads.<p><i>CS/EE PhD's</i><p>Data: I received 26 responses which described 60 job offers. 79% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 21% were in the Midwest and East Coast. 30% of the job offers were from start-ups. 5% of the job offers were from a university.<p>Salary offers ranged from $132,888 to $145,000. The average salary offer was $123,972. The median salary offer was $138,944. One of the candidates was offered $43,000 because the individual was pursuing a Post-doc at a university which I did not include into the calculation.<p>About 45% of students were offered stock options. About 45% of students were offered signing bonuses. Bonuses ranged from $5,000 to $19,600 with an average of $6,150. Relocation assistance ranged from $5,000 to $10,000 with an average of $7,500. However, they may not have reported on all the benefits they received. I did not calculate the range of stock options because stock options offered by companies are so different in their actual and potential values.<p>Students who replied averaged about 3 job offers. However, students may not have reported on all the offers they received. The PhDs had about the same amount of summer experience as the Masters, an average of 2 summer internships and with the exception of 2 full-time experience.<p>Like the undergraduates and masters, location, company, environment/culture, salary/benefits, scope of work seem to be the important factors when it came to accepting their job offer.
======
aelamb
I'm curious how well the study results reflect actual numbers of offers,
salaries, and benefits. I would expect that since it's a voluntary survey,
there would be some amount of the 'high school reunion effect' going on here
and that the survey results would skew higher than the actual. In the same way
that those who look good and have done well are more likely to attend a high
school reunion, I would assume that those students who have had relatively
successful job searches would be more likely to respond to the survey.

------
droithomme
This is very interesting, thank you so much for posting. I must say that I
cringe when I see "Low numbers were discarded because of X" in surveys. There
is always a reason for X, but if possibilities for X are not determined and
justified prior to examining the data, then we are cherry picking.* I am glad
though that the elimination of numbers was at least disclosed.

* People graduating with a degree from Stanford can be presumed to look for full time work at a salary sufficient to pay off student loans and live in a reasonable shelter and buy food and health care. Earning less than a restaurant manager as an intern is not what people choose, it's what they take when there are no better options. Discarding it as invalid salary information is not well justified ex post facto. If we decide in advance of gathering data to discard people doing internships because these are unfavorable situations and not average ones, why not also discard all the favorable situations that are not average ones as well, such as high salaries received in offers where the student has a relative or friend who helped him find an especially favorable position. Or any other arbitrary criteria chosen after the fact upon examination of the data.

~~~
alex1
> _People graduating with a degree from Stanford can be presumed to look for
> full time work at a salary sufficient to pay off student loans._

I just wanted to point out that Stanford has a no-loan policy. Most Stanford
graduates owe either nothing or very little in student loans (anecdotal
evidence so correct me if I'm wrong).

~~~
balloot
I don't know where this claim comes from, but as a Stanford CS grad (MS) I
never heard of such a thing. Stanford definitely offers loans.

~~~
mkjones
I believe this is only true for undergrads, and they started doing this in
06-07 or 07-08. I was undergrad '09 and definitely had loans for the first
year or two, but not in subsequent years after they instated the "no required
loans" policy.

------
hugh3
_Salary offers ranged from $132,888 to $145,000. The average salary offer was
$123,972. The median salary offer was $138,944. One of the candidates was
offered $43,000 because the individual was pursuing a Post-doc at a university
which I did not include into the calculation._

This makes me sad.

~~~
jballanc
$43,000 is actually a bit higher than what Post-docs in other science fields
(esp. biology) can expect to make. Unfortunately, Post-doc salary is often
fixed by the institutions making the grants (typically NSF or NIH) so there is
no competition in the Post-doc market. This wouldn't be so bad if Post-docs
still served their original purpose of bridging a Ph.D. from mentored
researcher to independent investigator. Unfortunately, with fewer and fewer
tenured positions (and the increasing life-span of currently tenured faculty,
especially in the US where there is no mandatory retirement like some other
countries), this is no longer the case. Originally, Post-docs were expected to
spend 2 years until they could establish their own lab. Today, Post-doc
periods of 6 or 8 years are not unheard of.

~~~
emu
CS isn't a field where a postdoc is a mandatory step on the way to a
professorship (unlike, say, physics). Postdocs in CS are not too common, so
it's hard to generalize.

~~~
iqster
It wasn't common in areas like systems until recently. However, it has gotten
common in the past 3 years. In "Theory", I thought most people did post-docs
after their PhDs.

~~~
p4wnc6
The post-doc is now effectively mandatory in computer science academia like
other fields. I don't know where this figure of 75k for an astrophysics post-
doc comes from. The only 70k+ post-docs I've ever heard of are at government
labs like Los Alamos. At Harvard, for example, post-docs make less than 50k
per year (I'm a grad student there and have post-doc friends). If Harvard's
Smithsonian center for astrophysics cannot pay market demanded prices for
post-docs, then I just don't buy this claim that Santa Cruz could.

I second the sentiments mentioned above that the years and low-pay of a post-
doc are depressing now that it is overwhelmingly likely that it won't lead to
a tenured position.

~~~
_delirium
I wouldn't say it's mandatory; about half of my grad-school friends did post-
docs, and half didn't. It depends strongly on your sub-area, and in part on
how flexible you are on location and type of school. In some cases, people who
take post-docs _could've_ gotten professorships, but not at top-tier research
universities, and preferred a year of post-doccing at Stanford to taking a
professorship at a low-ranking school.

------
ricw
Wow. Very high salaries indeed. What I find particularly interesting is that
the PhD's clearly have absolutely no incentive of staying in academia. I
wonder how bad an effect this has on academia..

~~~
emu
There's certainly no financial incentive for a Ph.D. graduate to remain in
academia. That said, there is no financial incentive to do a Ph.D. in the
first place. My understanding is that the opportunity cost (salary you didn't
earn while doing your Ph.D.) is larger than the total expected extra earnings
over your lifetime. My understanding is that by contrast a Masters degree is a
good investment.

There are other reasons to stay in academia --- mostly to do with lifestyle.
You have a lot more freedom to work on whatever interests you than in many
other career paths.

~~~
kosei
There is certainly incentive to get a Ph.D. in many other studies (where the
comparable industry salaries are much lower). Archaeology, East Asian Studies,
etc.

------
pagefruit
One thing I'm curious about is: at a larger software company like Google,
Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, how much of a raise do you typically get
every year?

Also, does Google's 10% across-the-board raise last year not apply to new
hires?

~~~
tensafefrogs
In google if you are really good you could maybe get promoted every 1.5 years,
but realistically this is probably more like every 2-3 years.

Your pay then gets bumped to the next grade (or whatever grade you move in to
in cases where you transfer laterally) and from what I can tell the increase
can be 20-30% increase.

You also will get regular stock option/unit refreshes each year based on
performance, so those will start to add up over the years and can be a
substantial part of your income assuming the stock is doing ok (and
historically it has).

------
orijing
> The candidates who were offered $120,000 was reporting directly to the VP of
> his research group

The candidates or the candidate? It seems like this candidate is easily
identifiable... How many masters' grads from Stanford (145 responses) was
offered 120,000 and reports to the VP of his research group?

This makes me wonder: How taboo is it to talk about your offers/comp details?
When I get offers, I'm told to keep them confidential, but everyone knows that
the numbers are openly discussed between friends.

~~~
snprbob86
This is a real problem. There were TWO of us at Drexel who interned one summer
at Google. They published salary details BY EMPLOYER! I was livid when a
professor made a snarky remark about how my internship paid better than his
career. I gave the dean quite an earful over that.

------
apaprocki
I would be interested to know what % of students would state if asked whether
they would prefer to stay in the Bay Area vs. relocate (assuming assistance)
to another city. I know some companies on the East-coast don't focus too much
energy on recruiting in West-coast schools because it is assumed there will
already be a much lower % which would be willing to relocate in the first
place. I'm just wondering what the actual survey #s would say and how tied the
students are to the Bay Area tech culture.

------
orijing
> Salary offers ranged from $132,888 to $145,000. The average salary offer was
> $123,972. The median salary offer was $138,944.

How can the average be that much lower than the min?

~~~
jamesaguilar
I believe the colloquial term for this kind of event is "typo." Also "that
much" is redundant because the average can never be lower than the min at all
;).

------
metra
abi, sounds like all of these responses are for fresh grads (be it BS, MS, or
Phd). It would be interesting to see the stats for offers after 1, 2, up to 10
years in industry. There was some element of 'hockey stick growth' for me from
the year I graduated (unemployed for some months), to my first job (nothing to
brag about, salary wise), to my second job (which is much better). I wonder if
it will be the same for Stanford grads since they're already starting
relatively high.

~~~
Periodic
It might also be interesting to control for prior experience. Some people
enter the masters/PhD program with years of industry experience, as I did.

I'm a little sad to see that after five years in industry I made less than the
median Stanford masters grad and was pretty much on par with the recipients of
bachelors degrees. I should complete my masters by the end of the academic
year and I'm starting to wonder how much I could conceivably be making so I
know what to ask for during salary negotiations. I'm expecting my experience
should help some, but but I bet the degree will be the eye catcher.

------
eel
Bay Area, Midwest, and East Coast are the three locations for each option, and
they all add up to 100%. What about Southern Cali or the Pacific Northwest,
both of which have at least some amounts of demand for CS graduates? I can't
imagine they are 0%, so I'm guessing they are clumped with the Bay Area.

------
phamilton
"Salary offers ranged from $64,400 to $100,000. The average salary offer was
$79,914. The median salary offer was $ 82,200."

Friends of mine got offers for 64k in Boise, ID. 64k seems low for the bay
area. Or is 64k in a place like Boise, ID just a really good offer?

~~~
vecter
I believe the cost of living in places like Boise is much less than places
like SF/NYC, so that's relatively decent.

~~~
phamilton
With housing costs at almost half what they are in the valley, the cost of
living is much lower in Boise.

I was there last summer on an internship and paying $550/month for a decent
one bedroom.

------
stfu
The question is also how this data was "collected". I once was asked to fill
out some survey of my school were I had to enter a salary number.

Knowing that this is going to be used most likely for some inter-school
benchmark it is making very tempting to polish up the numbers.

~~~
emu
Since this is a copy of an email sent to CS students at Stanford, I'm not sure
it's intended to be public information. One of the staff members in the CS
department emails graduates every year to survey salary data and to ask about
how useful the recruiting resources provided by the department are. I'd
imagine the numbers accurately reflect the responses received, although as
others have mentioned there may be biases in who chose to respond.

------
felipepiresx
damn, i dropped out, so i guess this make me unemployable.

~~~
pault
When I see these surveys from the top-tier universities, I often wonder what
the ceiling is for those of us who are self-educated.

~~~
dodedo
I have no degree. Base salary 160k roughly 50-60k in equity/year. 10 years
experience. I'm not at the top of my game yet.

I started at 70k with no experience no degree.

~~~
alexholehouse
I would perhaps argue that 70k starting with no experience or degree is very
much not the norm. I'm not questioning you, but how/where?

~~~
Vishnevskiy
I have no actual work experience prior to my current job and no degree. I am
23 years old and I have a 6 figure salary and equity in the Bay Area. If you
know people that know what you are capable of and can refer you to a company
then an amazing resume is completely irrelevant. Last week I turned down a job
offer from Blizzard Entertainment (was by referral) because they could not
match my current salary.

~~~
Fliko
I'm jelly, you should post some your story for inspiration for all of us young
people without a 6 figure salary :)

------
agilebyte
If anyone is interested for UK data, then the UK government has a neat table
here: <http://data.gov.uk/appathon-2011>

It is called "Salary of graduates by course topic (National Student Survey)"

------
Shengster
Average starting salaries for the "top" universities in California (not
arranged by degree): [http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/best-schools-in-
califo...](http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/best-schools-in-
california.asp)

------
strathmeyer
"I received 140 responses"

Uh... how many did you send out? How many people are unemployed? I had similar
issues with my university, where I and everyone I knew made less than half the
lowest quoted value, but had never received such a survey.

------
lakex24
For PhD's: "Salary offers ranged from $132,888 to $145,000. The average salary
offer was $123,972."

how can the average be lower than $132,888?

~~~
headybrah
fuck this law school nonsense - wish I had computer science background

------
scatter
Thanks a lot, its very useful information. I wish I had this kind of
information when I graduated.

------
ashitvora
It would be interesting to see how many started their own startup.

------
GuySensei
would be interesting to know how many graduates would be willing to join very
early stage startups. humble salary, good equity, great idea, great work.

------
pitdesi
Carnegie Mellon CS undergrad stats:
[http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/career/Students/gps1/explo...](http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/career/Students/gps1/explore/survey/pdf/scs.pdf)

Max $120k, Min $45k, Mean $85k, Median $87k

Much more diverse by region (39% CA, 21% WA, 17% NE)

MIT's is more difficult to parse:
<http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation10.pdf>

~~~
cema
I assume NE in the above stands for North East (of the US), not Nebraska?

~~~
uniclaude
Yes.

------
teflonhook
You have an error with your PhD stats.

