[nmrm2]

> Not by Silicon Valley standards

Ph.D. students don't get "poached", they "graduate or drop out" and then "get jobs". The people being poahced are professors and scientists in permanent positions.

I think people tend to under-estimate a full professor's salary at a top CS deapartment.

The average salary of an associate professor at CMU is $138,000, full professor $194,000. Before consulting, money from research spinoff startups, etc.

Even not adjusting for cost of living, I'm not sure how that's "not by Silicon Valley standards".

And adjusted for cost of living, Pittsburgh is in one of the cheapest cities in the US (e.g., it's not uncommon for CMU grad students to buy houses in reasonable areas of the city on their $30-40k/yr PhD stipends).

I'm not sure about non-faculty research scientists and so on, but I would imagine the $50-$100 range is about right. Which, again, adjusted for cost of living, is right there with SV.

Edit: E.g., according to the obviously-take-with-a-grain-of-salt CNN COL calculator, the average CMU professor would have to make $324,000 to have a comparable salary in SF. So I guess "not by SV standards" is probably actually accurate, just probably not in the way you meant

[rsfern]

Your numbers for PhD stipends are a bit high. I wouldn't be surprised if SCS students were paid that much, but the typical stipend for the rest of us is more like 24k/year.

Even so, there's a PhD student in my program who bought a house last year, and I thought seriously about it myself in my second year. Housing truly is cheap in Pittsburgh.

[nmrm2]

> I wouldn't be surprised if SCS students were paid that much

24 sounds like you're excluding the summer months?

I know in Math and other fields it's pretty common for "no guaranteed summer funding" to be actually meaningful words. But Most CS PhD students at top schools have no problem pulling a summer stipend, making 30 common. I never knew anyone in grad school who had trouble getting summer funding if they wanted it.

And usually CS grad students opt for at least a couple internships; even low-paying CS grad student internships can have 2x+ compensation compared with the phd stipend.

In any case, if a CS grad student at CMU/Stanford/MIT/Berkely is making less than 30k, it's purely by choice or really bad planning/luck.

[rsfern]

24 includes summer, and that's pretty much standard for engineering programs outside of CS, even at Stanford, CMU, MIT and the like. I'm in the materials science program.

[angelbob]

Hm. I know the guy who ran the Master of Software Engineering department at CMU West (in Mountain View.) And he didn't make the "average full professor" amount you're claiming. And one would assume he'd be making at least average for a professor.

That would be crazy money in Pittsburgh. Are you sure that figure is accurate?

[nmrm2]

> Are you sure that figure is accurate?

1. I don't have first-hand information about CMU, I got the data from here:

http://www.american-school-search.com/faculty/carnegie-mello...

Other data indicate that the six figure range is definitely accurate for CS associate and full professorships at research universities:

https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?Survey...

And it's not insane to assume that the top schools pay 30-50k more.

2. It is an average. Lots of compounding factors: Was the person running the program a Full Professor? (Most professors are not full professors, and a lot of faculty aren't professors. Note the 50k+ discrepancy between assistant and full professors.) Did he have a research lab and how does CMU factor grants into compensation? Etc. I don't know the specific details about that particular person (or even CMU), but I also don't have any reason to doubt the numbers given above.

[angelbob]

I'm pretty sure the guy running the department was a full professor, yeah.

They don't say anything about how they get their data, which is a little odd.

Yeah, the numbers on the second page seem more realistic to me. They give more like $95k for a full professor -- which, after Silicon Valley adjustment and the extra $30-$50k you mention is more like $130k-$175k for a full professor. That's much closer to what I've seen than $195k.

So I think the first site is just wrong in how they're estimating, at least for CMU.

[nmrm2]

> So I think the first site is just wrong in how they're estimating, at least for CMU.

Those numbers are FOR CMU, and they are the only numbers we have for CMU. So I'm not really sure how this gets resolved.

> They give more like $95k for a full professor

No, they don't. They say $111,262 (see CS, not overall). Average. (And that's just salary -- a CS professor at a top school has plenty of built-in options for making money on the side.) So you're are assuming that one of the top CS schools in the country pays 15k below national avage.