[reedF211]

Reading this thread and the other salary thread I have noticed a disturbing trend among developers i.e the amount of greed. It seems that a lot of developers are motivated by finances rather than pure reasons of love of programming. msluyter's post exemplifies this perfectly. In what universe is 50-70k not mindblowing for a fresh grad? That is more money than enough money to live comfortably in most places in North-America. I'm not graduated yet but just last summer I worked for this company making 3k a month for the entire summer (36k for the year) and I had more money than I knew what to do with. Here's my expenditures:

After taxes and other deductions I took approx 2200/month. $475/ month for rent living with a roommate. $55 for internet. ~$50 for monthly bus pass. $150/month for food. $100-150 miscellaneous utilities. All in that's about $880 a month for essentials. That left me with $1320 a month spending money. I bought video games, went to movies etc and still had a lot of spare cash. This with co-op pay of 3k a month. I cannot see a reason how anyone can say that 50-70k is not enough, except greed run amok.

[owyn]

It's not greed, it's lifestyle inflation from being a grown up, combined with location. You are a student, you don't have a family or a car, and you can tolerate living with room mates outside of a major city. That's a totally different situation.

A 1br apartment in SF in a part of town where you don't have to step over human excrement on a daily basis is $1800-$2000. Add another $500 for a new building (the one I live in is 100 years old). A new-ish car payment is $500 + expensive insurance. Add your $400 or so for food + utilities and your starting burn rate here just as a single guy is much closer to 3k per month, let alone what it costs to have a family. Also, $5 a day for food? Really? Around here lunch is $10.

Just saying, I don't think it's greed.

[hga]

And don't forget all those graduating with massive student debt. If you have to pay back $100K plus or minus....