

Ask HN: What is an acceptable starting salary for Upper Middle Class in USA - lightbeing

Being An Indian student studying computer science in  a US university (Cornell), what is an aspirational starting salary?<p>The course i am going to embark upon M.Eng. in CS has 36k$ tuition (its year long course) and salaries are 80k$ per Annum on average. However i know quite a few ppl who went to Microsoft as SDET or Tech Analyst in Amazon who got 85K$ base + ~30-40k$ in stock!<p>So the question is what is an aspirational starting salary in USA.<p>I am interested in creating my own startup as well but just to get an idea.
======
vital101
This depends heavily on location and field. If you are outside of the valley,
anywhere between 45k-65k seems about right to me in almost any programming
related position.

~~~
lightbeing
for nyc or sfbay or seattle?

~~~
vital101
You may want to look at Salary.com, PayScale.com, and Glassdoor.com. They
should give you a pretty good idea.

------
lightbeing
thank you all for commenting

