[roel_v]

You talk about 'career in CS' but what you describe is 'being a programmer'.

'Career in CS' = MSc then PhD then postdoc in CS, making you ~ 40 when you will qualify for ~E2000/month jobs. So yeah, too late; also, not worth it (but that's a different topic).

'Being a programmer' = hitting the pavement hard to land your first job, transcend 'junior' status in 2-3 years. There are plenty of corporate programming jobs you can talk yourself into at your age.

Then there is 'I want to do only cool and hip things with computers and get paid well for it'. That doesn't have anything to do with age - or maybe a bit, but either way, it'll be a long hard road ahead.

[arethuza]

Another alternative is to look at one of the well paid but not very glamorous options such as Salesforce development - they have their own language (APEX), data query language (SOQL) and piles of other proprietary stuff that most developers won't touch with a barge pole.

However, if you are competent and can stand the poor development tools (I couldn't) then I suspect you could do pretty well....

Same goes for a lot of big-ticket commercial applications - mainly CRM and ERP, they exist in their own wee worlds of complex requirements, poor tools and high daily rates!

[e12e]

I agree with most of what you say, but: 2000 euro/month -- as a finished Phd in CS?! That's ludicrously low?

Still, there's a difference between working as a developer/architect/engineer -- and doing CS research. I'm guessing op meant a career in "software engineering", not "computer science".

[roel_v]

Sorry I meant that as the salary for a post-doc, which you will be for 2 (if you're top of your field) to 6-8 years (if you are a postdoc for longer, you should reconsider academia imo).

Also I meant 2000 pre-tax, but when I look at it, it seems that in some Western European countries you get paid more; like 2500-2800 pre-tax (I know several postdocs in Southern or Eastern European countries who would jump with joy with 2000 pre-tax though).

Don't think a PhD means you will earn a liveable wage! I personally know of a post-doc in economics (not paid like CS I think, but certainly normally one of the better-paid fields) who came from Eastern Europe to Belgium where he qualified for the equivalent of welfare payments ('leefloon'), which basically meant he made less than 817 euros a month!

[e12e]

Ah, yes, that makes more sense. I was more thinking as a researcher/architect at a private company after getting a phd -- in which case it sounded very low.

I never read op's post as an "actual" "career in computer scinece", more as a "career in software after maybe taking some CS (be that bsc ms phd or just a few courses)".

As for a post-doc in economics -- I would expect them to make more than minimum wage -- but again, if the goal was to make as much money as possible, I'd assume working as a consultant for Pwc or somewhere like that would be much better paid than continuing doing research in academia. Very different career goals though!

[Kurtz79]

Depends of where you are.

Probably ludicrously low for Germany/Switzerland/Nordic countries, likely on par for Spain/Italy/Portugal (and maybe Eastern Europe ?).

Company and sector also factor heavily, and number of paychecks as well (in Spain/Italy is common to have 14 paychecks for year).

Edit: Also, depends whether we are talking about pre or after tax (I assumed the latter)

[intermalta]

When you say "~E2000/month jobs" do you say it based on what? On personal experience? As far as I know, corporate labs (which is an alternative to academia) are paying much more...

[roel_v]

'Careers in CS' don't exist in the corporate world, certainly not in Europe.

Not personal experience in the sense that I took that route, but in the sense that I know plenty of people in positions like that.

Then again, fuck some anonymous dude on the internet like me - for all you know I could be a bored 13 year old pimply-faced teenager in Boca Raton trolling would-be academics online during his civics class. Check out job posts for postdocs on university websites, your eyes will start welling up when you see the salaries advertised there.

[yid]

Careers in CS most certainly exist at Google, Yahoo, MS and Facebook, several of which have research labs in Europe (see MSR, Yahoo Barcelona, Google Zurich).