Seattle, Washington. Fresh out of school (with a master's), and 120k base before bonuses/stock. And I have the lowest compensation out of all my friends who graduated with me...
Congrats to you and your friends, but that's nowhere near the average (50th percentile) case.
Out of my friends that graduated with me, in the set of {Google, Microsoft, Amazon, General Dynamics, AMD, Intel} employers, no-one, and I mean no one made above 90k starting. These people all graduated Suma Cum Laude (>3.96), with >3 years experience on average through internships.
No one should ever assume their counterparts are making anywhere close to them.
Holy crap quite a world of difference there then. Wow. A lot of my friends have never even been in internships and make a good amount more than me (I've been in one). My GPA was acceptable, not spectacular. I have some shitty personal projects, many of them have none.
You must only be counting base? With bonuses and RSU grants (counting only what vests the first year) Google definitely pays better than 90k for new grad software engineers.
But it's silly to just count base. When I started I made around $115 my first year. Only 90 base. At my next job the difference was even more dramatic.
Salary depends highly on where you live due to cost of living. Starting salaries in Seattle for example were around 30% higher last I checked when compared to much of the Midwest.
If you make $80k where I am, I would be expect the same person to make around $105k in Seattle. I'd wager the person you replied to is also somewhere in the Midwest.
It's very odd to think about how software development in one place costs a different amount than another place, when it doesn't really concern the place at all. All supply and demand, I suppose, but it's just weird to think about how much different the wage is as a result.
It's not just software development though. Salaries in different cities and states are all higher or lower depending on the cost of living there. For example, the average 2 bedroom apartment rents here for around $900-$1000 a month. Same sort of apartment costs my friend in Seattle about twice that much. Food and goods seem to be about the same here as there for most items, but that's a pretty big increase in rent.
Going out to lunch here at a decent sit-down restaurant is around 8-10 dollars with tip (assuming you're drinking water). Somewhere like SF or NYC will be much higher.
That's true. I am curious what sort of work developers in the Midwest usually do? Here it's most big companies, in the Bay Area it's big companies and start ups.
Same sort of development one would do anywhere from my experience. I'm not sure what you imagine when you think of the Midwest, but I live in a city with over a million people (not Chicago). I have friends that work for companies on the East and West Coast and we trade stories that seem fairly similar about our work life. Startups and large companies exist here too and aren't much different. Startups may not be as numerous, but I've worked for some and moved on past that phase to want more stability.
I'm the tech lead for my team at a medium sized company that builds high demand, critical backend services. Customers include small businesses, some well known Silicon Valley companies and some established Fortune 500s. I like what I do and get to see just how well software I work on scales with customers that push it to the limit. I mostly use C# with a bit of C++ right now, but previous jobs I used Python, Java, JavaScript and PHP. VCSs have ranged from SVN, TFS to Git. The one used mostly depends on when the company was founded. Early 00s probably means SVN while the last 5 to 10 years probably means Git or TFS.
Does company culture differ here? I don't think so really. Like anywhere, it depends on where and whom you work for. I work 40 hours a week on average, have a workstation that rivals my own gaming PC at home (we also had the choice of a high end laptop, but I prefer a desktop) and wear jeans/shorts/t-shirts to work (assuming I'm not working at home that day). My brother works for a company with a similar culture to mine and they have their own personal chef that serves them lunch every day. My employer and his are only about 10 to 15 years old, so that probably contributes somewhat to the cultural similarities.
Interesting, had the impression the Midwest was mostly cornfields. What city do you live in with over a million people? Even Seattle (proper) has a population of 600k.
Feels like there's a real dearth of opportunity here in Seattle compared to the Bay Area. There's mainly Amazon and Microsoft, and nobody I personally know who work in either place like it much. Google and Facebook have some small offices here, but most of the interesting and exciting work they do appears to be done in the Bay Area.
Do you feel like you can find another job you'd enjoy in the city where you live pretty easily?
> What city do you live in with over a million people? Even Seattle (proper) has a population of 600k.
Columbus, OH. Around 800k-850k if you just include the city limits and well over a million with the metro area. Third largest city in the Midwest. Lots of job growth and probably more tech jobs here than anywhere else in state. Factor that with cost of living being pretty cheap, I don't have much of a reason to leave right now.
> Do you feel like you can find another job you'd enjoy in the city where you live pretty easily?
I'm sure I could. I didn't used to think so, until I actually started looking for work after doing mostly consulting and contract work. I think companies here have more trouble finding versatile developers that can wear "many hats" versus developers finding interesting work. Most only know one language well enough to use it (mostly Java or C#) and are either bound into knowing Linux or Windows Platform development and rarely both. That's just my opinion on it though. I'm comfortable with doing most types of development in most languages, so that helps with finding jobs I like.
No interest really in working for large companies. From my experience, that's generally the reason people move West (or East) that live here. I prefer companies where people actually know who I am.
