$100k-$120k for undergrad? that's crazy. I guess this is one of the reasons why Facebook and Twitter decided to open offices in Vancouver _specifically_ to hire undergrad. Undergrad salary here can be half of that.
EDIT: I just looked up Software Engineer III in San Jose on salary.com. The median is $108k and the upper 90% is $130k. So how can the salary for someone who just graduated be 100k+? Is that just for google and facebook? And all other companies in SV pay much less?
we can speculate for what reasons facebook opened an office in vancouver, but from what i was told is that it's all about simplifying the visa/foreign worker issue, and opening doors to more candidates/talent (e.g. western canada & beyond).
Honestly though. Unless if you have no experience in the real world, $50-$60k seems a bit low... ESPECIALLY in Vancouver.
Vancouver is a delightful place to live, though personally I don't see the "Chinatown everywhere" as a merit. It's just a beautiful, cultured city that is very livable.
I can say that in the Microsoft area, wages go up, house prices go up, rent prices go up.
When MS did their huge salary bump, apartment prices shot up 20%-30%. House prices went from 600k to 800k. Blech.
Meanwhile, many of my friends who work in Redmond and live on the east side are still underwater.
Some of them might be smart, as in raw talent, but giving 80k up-front and expect them to get up to speed in 1 year is like instant noodle.
Would love to know which companies, and how many are they, that are willing to pay at least 70k for UBC grad with co-op experience.
I mean, if we're talking just one or two companies, they are anomaly.
As a Canadian expat, Canadians who stay in Canada frankly get royally fucked in salary. The curve doesn't exactly close up either - I'm a few years out of school now and the gap between me and a salary I could command in Vancouver/Toronto is still about 100%.
The good news is that Vancouver salary is either close or at the same level with Toronto. That was not the case a few years ago.
The bad news is that Vancouver housing price is, we all know about this, awful.
Those are the first ones that come to mind for me
Microsoft paid 80k for ugrad back in 2008 in Redmond.
I would love to know which companies in the Vancouver that are willing to pay that much for mostly raw talent.
PS: I dealt with mostly UBC co-op and I know UBC CS curriculum rather well and 85k is too much.
In general, a publicly traded company is not going to give that kind of package to an undergrad. Maybe $110-120k in salary, but the stock amount is more likely to be around $80k vesting over 4 years.
Would be alot different than 100k "signing bonus", more sane tho.
I'd say $100k salary is very typical, as are the RSUs (vesting over 4 years as you said).
Even non-CS majors. If they studied a quantitative field, can code, and cleared the dev interview, they got that offer.
You have to stay a full year at the company otherwise you have to pay it back. But yes, it is all upfront; cash.
Attending an Ivy makes it easier for you to be recruited, since offers literally find you. At a lesser school you can still do well, it's just you have to find the offers.
But here's a point of reference https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6448448 Important to note that this is offered to a top-of-the class undergraduate, the average is likely to be substantially lower.
you're good at what you do (proven), and the ramp-up costs of otherwise hiring someone else are non-existent.
Their Vancouver offices (certainly for FB, unsure of others) are visa holding tanks to hold graduates before they can be moved down to the SF offices. I would expect them to be receiving virtually equivalent offers.
There's a reason most people on the market right now are so horrible.