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Comment by donw | Hacker News Reader

$85k +/- 5k seems to be the average here out on the West Coast. I'm curious as to what the difference is for people with masters degrees or doctorates, though.

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Here in the UK the starting salary for coders outside London is around $45k (+$5k for a masters).

However that is for a 37 hour working week. Most people can add 50% over basic in overtime (for 40% extra hours, due to premium rates).

Northern Mexico is about $30k which, compared to basic cost of living, equates to about $120k in California :)

In London, CS grads at banks get around $80k. IT consultants get $60k. You can't really survive on much less than that in London :)

do you mean £40 for grads and £30 for consultants?

yeah approximately. And by consultants I mean grads that go and work for IT consultancies like Accenture, IBM, not grads that become consultants (which are relatively rare from my experience)

I haven't seen anyone even suggest less than $100k for a newly minted doctorate in CS from a good university, and I've seen numbers in the $120k - $140k range thrown around. It sounds like East Coast hedge funds are even more generous.

I have. HR knows that CS PhDs will work for peanuts because they've had their financial self-esteem slowly beaten out of them over the past five years. East Coast hedge funds mostly hire physics and applied math PhDs. Masters +10 PhD -30 but YMMV.

is that supposed to be +30? else that doesn't make sense?

I think he means the PhDs have been flogged by academia longer than the Masters, who thus retain a modicum of self-worth.

I don't know about starting salaries, but DC-area hiring is plentiful, and you should be able to hit $100k in a few years (if not sooner). Of course if you want to be under the bright lights, and not spend your career backstage, then: Go west, young man.

Clearly CS PhDs are different from CS DPhils. :-)

I think it depends on the job. If it doesn't take advantage of your research abilities, then a freshly-minted PhD (without other work experience) probably won't be paid too much more than a M. Sc. (less than an undergrad is plainly nonsense, though). But if you're taking a job at a place like MSR or IBM Research, not only is a PhD essentially a job requirement, but the starting salary is typically around $130k.

Wow, way to make me feel bad for being a postdoc! :(

(Computational physics, not CS, but still...)

I worked as a postdoc for a while, too. The lower salary is the price to pay for having more freedom in our research (and freedom to publish). :-)

Masters is +10 in my experience.

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