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Comment by poshj | Hacker News Reader

Hi guys, I want to know how much exactly do fresh CS graduate(B.Sc) gets in US nowadays? I'm based in Japan, and we will get 2147 USD(200k yen) for base salary only no matter how good you are. It seems very cheap :( since the high living cost here. The yearly bonus is about 4~5 months of base salary, but you don't usually get it unless you are really recognized by the management team.

EDIT: I must say, this is also the same for big companies like IBM Japan, SAP, etc.

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It varies greatly on skill/pedigree (the two often, but not always, correlate). If you are poor to average you'll start at $50K-70k/year. If you're average to good you'll start at 70k-90k, and 90k+ if you're particularly good (about 150K is the maximum I've heard of, and that's more in modeling or quantitative development than straight programming). About a 10% bonus is normal in my experience, but that obviously varies based on skill/industry. There is also some give based on what sort of company/industry you want (e.g., I personally know someone who just this week turned down a six figure offer at a hedge fund for ~20k less doing AI research).

Those numbers are for a programmer in/near big cities (Boston, Silicon Valley, NY, etc). Revise them down ~10% for more rural/suburban areas (but it's harder to find work beyond code-monkey level at all in many of those places). And all this is based on my anecdotal experience, so figure there is likely some selection bias.

In my experience, between federal and state income taxes, FICA, and sales tax you'll lose ~50% of your of your income to the government. And we have to save for our own retirement (we expect nothing from social security) and our kids' college education (currently ~15k-30K/year tuition).

How are your taxes/retirement/etc in Japan?

Don't pull numbers out of nowhere.

http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresu...

There's no way that an "average" starting salary is 70k. Salary.com is famously inflationary and they have the median at 54K--and that's not just fresh grads. My guess would be more like 40K, with huge variations depending on where you live and whether you went to a well-known school. But then, "average" people don't go to well-known schools for the most part.

First of all, I said my numbers apply to major cites. Your own source places the median salary in th 60K-65K range for most metros.

Second, my numbers aren't pulled out of nowhere they are based on my friends and my experience. And they seem to be independently corroborated by litewulf.

Third, note that my poor/average/good ratings weren't based on quintiles or anything like that - it was based on my personal characterization of skill/pedigree (pedigree being a combination of experience, personal projects, and school - in about that order). I incidentally think that about 90% of programmers are crap (sturgeon's law), so it's likely that the median salary is ~60K with everything I said being true.

Fourth, "average" usually refers to the mean, and for distributions with big upper tails (like salaries), the mean is higher than median.

Your friends aren't average.

FWIW, I've found Salary.com to be pretty good with it's mean and distribution information.

+1 sounds about right. My offers were 80k to 120k. (I'd say I went to a pretty decent university, but I wasn't too amazing.) There is massive massive variance based on the kind of position you are talking about.

I would say your numbers seem about right, though with the caveat that CS graduates can end up doing all sorts of things from IT-gruntwork-level tasks to rank and file software engineers, all the way to, yes, quants who are offered lots and lots of money.

I'd take a gamble and say that the name of the unversity is much more likely to effect your offer than grades. And even then, it probably doesn't scale down. As a hiring manager, you either went to a school I recognize or you didn't.

I don't know if anyone ever looked at my GPA. (It might be on my resume, and "they" might have filtered resumes with some hard GPA cutoff) It usually came down to my interviews and such I think.

Thanks. If I read your comment right, poor to average programmers in big cities will get $40k~/year after taxes, etc. Hmm... I guess it's not so different after all, I was thinking fresh programmers're getting $70k/year after taxes.

In my experience (I'm still in univ. but got some offers from companies), we will get base salary: $2k ~ 2.5k/month after taxes etc, plus apartment(simple one) and transport fee. The yearly bonus is 5 times of base salary, but usually we get only 4 times. This is from fairly big Japanese company, slightly lower than SONY or HONDA. The job being talked is core software development at company's main business. Too bad we don't have 401k plan like in other countries.

I went to Deutsche Bank last year, and it's alot different. We'll get $64k/year after tax, almost no yearly bonus and small allowance for apartment. The job being talked is the usual software development for desktop products.

ahh, we don't get housing either. so you may come out ahead after all

The total effective tax-rate (national+municipal) in Japan for entry-level workers is under 20% unless you work a ridiculous amount of overtime, and even then it wont be much more. Unlike US jobs, most salaried positions in Japan pay overtime after the 40th hour.

sounds correct

also, it seems like a large % of cs graduates are unable to get jobs in programming due to lack of experience

I'm just trying to move back into I.T., and even entry-level positions are asking for 2-3 years of experience. I'd say there are probably a lot of underemployed programmers since getting the foot in the door is tougher these days.

$2100 a month? That is extremely cheap by US standards.

Yeah, I feel cheap too, but it's almost like the standard here :( Unless you enter google or bulge bracket banks, you won't get too far from $2k/month base salary here.

Just my curiosity, did you find this cheap after reading my other comment too: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385479 ? And btw, by CS graduate I meant B.Eng. or B.Sc. not M.Eng or M.Sc.

So, Is it save to assume that entry level programmer will get above $50k/year in US?

I got more then $2100/month doing a phone support job at a small company in a suburban area practically out of high school. Without a college degree I was able to get over $5000/month in an urban area doing web development with no prior "experence".

All four of my friends who just graduated in CS are getting g about the same (55k-65k) in various markets at big companes.

I made more than $2100 a month as a grad student -- and we weren't paid very well.

Hmm.. What can I say man :(

for CS grad student, the base salary is only $200/month different from undergrad (without calculating the yearly bonus).

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