[sanderjd]

One thing I'm always curious about: most of these discussions seem to be targeted at college grads, discussing where they could be after their first 5 years in the industry. The sense I've gotten is that these big companies tend to compensate all new hires approximately the same, caring little about experience outside their company or perhaps one of the other big companies. It seems to me that smaller, less well known, companies are more hungry for experienced people, because they are relatively starved of people who can drive architecture, decision making, and hiring, and are thus more willing to take a risk on paying a premium for experience.

So my question is: stipulating that the numbers favor bigcos for fresh graduates, is the same true for people who already have that 5 (or 8, or 15, or 20) years of experience elsewhere?

[thedufer]

At 3.5 years of experience Google offered me about double what I'm hearing for new grad total comp, so it seems that they value at least the first few years. Given the oft-cited ageism in the industry, I expect that tails off pretty quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years of experience wasn't worth noticeably more than 5 years.