Hacker News Reader

Comment by yaacov | Hacker News Reader

That’s because of visas. In the US you can study CS at a good school now and make $200k straight out of undergrad. Makes a technical PhD a lot less tempting

View on HN

Where are you getting that $200k figure? These are for not just out of college:

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/computer-science-salary-S...

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Co...

https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Degree=Master_of_Scienc...

Large tech companies will pay that much and if you've got the skills to get a PhD then you can very likely pass their interview process.

https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...

Also most of the generic pay sites in my experience are down weighted by a bunch of underpaid visa workers, boot camp graduates and so on. Also government workers who don't get paid well but get great benefits.

OP said you can make $200k straight out of undergrad, which is probably technically true, like it's technically true that I can win the lottery or get struck by lightning. There is probably a new grad somewhere making $200k in far-far right tail of the distribution. Just like it's technically true that you can make $400k (or $600k or $1M, whatever the popular number to cite is now) as a software engineer. Yes, these people probably do exist in that long tail, at certain top levels in certain top companies in certain top locations.

I really don't think it's that far out in the tails, especially given we're discussing top universities. If you're at MIT/Harvard/Stanford you're definitely aiming for 200k TC fresh out of undergrad.

Exactly my thought:

A CS degree from Stanford almost has to start at at least 90k.

Its far more likely that you make 200k out of college than win the lottery, in fact at top schools i think most students would disappointed if they didn't get close to that number

His comment was in reference to the lack of PhD as an explanation of the lack of PhDs as mentioned in TFA. He then went to say that the ability to get $200k out of undergrad was, and I quote:

> Makes a technical PhD a lot less tempting

If it's as rare as you are saying, then it wouldn't factor into the broader reasoning of people debating to get PhDs at all. That's my point. I wasn't making any point that it isn't possible to make $200k/year out of undergrad.

If you think it's that far in the right tail then you're really underestimating how much large tech companies pay even new grads.

edit: Also, $400k is about standard for a senior SE at a large tech company or late stage startup nowadays.

Entry level at Google is SDE III. According to levels.fyi the average total compensation for that is $191,860. There are lots of people making $200,000 straight out of undergrad. CMU, MIT, Berkeley and Stanford do not graduate enough students every year to fulfil Google's demand, never mind FAANG's and the same would be true if you expanded hiring to the top 20 CS universities.

https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...

No it's not a lie, look at levels.fyi

If your not from a top school , maybe you have to work in startups or lesser tier companies for $50k less for a year or two, and then go work at MAGMA at the same pay as your stanford equivalent peer.

Somewhat unrelated to the point you’re making, something seems off about the results in that Glassdoor link.

Searching “computer science” in the jobs tab treats that as a keyword and shows results for a variety of job titles related to computer science. The salaries tab, however, seems to indicate it’s only collecting information about job titles that have “computer science” in the title.

From my new grad offer letters 2 years ago :)

The numbers you are looking for are here:

www.levels.fyi

Getting a job at Google, isn't exactly easy. But it is a far cry from "as hard as winning the lotto" that other people were implying it is.

You probably won't make 200k right out of undergrad in bigtech these days. But you will within 2-3 years. Most of my acquaintances in bigtech make 220-260K by age 25 doing run-of-the-mill stuff. This does not require elite level skill or knowledge - just merely bright people who put in the time and pass the filters. Most of us are fairly mediocre.

The top bin in the first link was labeled $187K and the bins are at least $13K wide so it's possible there might be a data point at $193K (probably a bit higher) which is not so far from $200K/yr as a new grad, according to the glassdoor dataset anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com