[smeyer]

Wow, I'm just a recent college grad, but you're experience seems vastly different than mine. That's a much more negative view than the one my friends and I developed going through job searches. I wonder what the most important contributing factors to the differences are.

[csmdev]

You're fresh meat and cheaper. There are no downsides for hiring college grads. You take a low pay and learn the exact technology stack the company is using. But when you decide to change jobs, that's when the real fun starts.

[smeyer]

Fair enough. Although the low pay thing is all relative. I went to a top school with heavy recruiting, so pretty much all of my friends going into tech took salaries in the 80k-200k range (or knowingly took a paycut to work somewhere particular such as taking a paycut for equity at a startup). To some people those salaries are massive and to others they're tiny. I guess I'll have to check back in on this comment thread in a few years.

[nicholas73]

Say that again? 200k for a new grad? Where may I ask?

[smeyer]

I had a friend with a few offers from top places (of the google, facebook, microsoft sort of variety) who ended up taking one for about 100k a year base plus about 500k stock vesting over five years. That was definitely atypical, though, particularly on the stock front.

[hansy]

When I graduated from college in 2011, my good friend and classmate went to work as an engineer for a high-frequency trading firm. They offered him a $160K base salary and a signing bonus of ~$20k.

I'm not surprised at the $200k offer.