Unless you do internship and get an offer out of it or have some good credentials on you, expect starting salary to be 30k or so. Long-term unpaid internships "for experience" are becoming the norm.

This doesn't gibe with my experience. Our CS program is small, and relatively unknown, but well respected by those who know it - every single one of our masters students has been hired within a month or two of graduation, and I haven't heard of a salary offer below $65k (many are much higher).

Even for those with only a bachelors degree, starting salaries seem to be $50k+ at development firms.

In general, expect enterprise development jobs in development to plateau at some 100k. Plan on getting an MBA or Master's in economy/finance to have a slight chance of moving into management.[/quote]
I think your plateau might be a tad off. I don't know that many enterprise developers at present, but I do know a number of sysadmins in enterprise who are plateau'ing at the $150k mark.

Of course, you are going to be paying $50k+ of that in taxes...

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[background=rgb(250, 251, 252)]It's true annoying often. I've just left two jobs in quick succession because the starting pay wasn't great and when it came time to discuss end-of-year performance, people said "Oh yeah, well you've done great but we're giving you nought-point-nought percent because you're being paid above grade.

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There's is a grain of truth in original rant. Namely, to progress, a developer needs to develop a bit of business savvy.

When taking up a job, especially after a few years in the field, it should be natural to estimate growth potential and also accept hard truths. Some companies simply cannot realize promotions or advancement. Their business model, the funding, the org chart simply have no such route.

It's not a sign of a dead industry, obsolete company or non-profitability. But if one were to go work at a bakery as baker, career options are fairly straightforward: first year you'll be a baker, second year too, third, 10th. If owner happens to croak and we don't sell out, you might eventually make it to manager in 20 years.

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Yeah, well we needed someone as good as you, but we couldn't get a senior slot / E8 slot / whatever and the policy says that anyone above grade can't be given payrises... Ah, no, well corporate has imposed a restriction that we can't move people up from E7 to E8 until we've hired some more E5s / there's a promotion freeze on / yeah, we've just sort of decided that everything senior and above needs management training; we could send you on that and see whether you could get promoted in a couple of years?"[/quote][/background][/font]

That's annoying, but at same time, consider the alternative - no rules, no bounds, dog eat dog promotion. Again, developers won't advance, the manipulative friend of a boss will rise through ranks, trampling seniority and anything else.


Most if any IT (format IT industry) doesn't need good developers. If they rely on people, they will fail due to bus principle. So they need to arrange their business processes just barely under the level of average incompetence.

They're incredibly glad that due to overabundance and overqualification of many applicants they can save money by hiring vastly over-competent technical staff, but their business needs to go on even after then leave (not when).

It may look ugly on a surface, but when faced with running a business peak performers are nice, but at the end of the day one needs to be sure that even the bottom of the barrel will get the job done.

Very few companies that provide hard salary, not just lifestyle experience (lower salary for interesting/engaging work) or those that do not have money printing machines (Google and such) can afford to accommodate wide range of talent and interests.

There is a type of company that can get around, but it's not perfectly suited for pure developers. These are the ones which allow and support biz-dev from everyone and help with experimentation at business level (new products, services, ideas, conventions, ...) so that those grow into viable business venues. Pure coders tend to struggle, since it takes a lot of discipline to steer development via business and not technical decisions.

It would make sense if it weren't for the fact that every corporate workplace wasn't advertising 24/7 for entrepreneurial self-starters with top notch skills, experience and education. Of course, once you hire those people you want them to sit quietly and do as they are told for half pay.

Corporate speak needs to be learned, so do soft skills.

In a structured, corporate environment, you will get a lot of people who are drones. They come to work, sit at their desk, bang on keyboard for 8 hours, leave at strike of clock.

These worked well for simple assembly line.

For many of us here, having personal interest in development it may seem strange. But there are many (most?) who see their life like that:
- finish school
- get employed
- work 9-5 on whatever boss tells you
- if boss doesn't say anything, sit quietly
- retire

They will not learn another language, another topic, when their keyboard breaks, they will sit till someone replaces it. When their Gmail breaks, they will sit till someone fixes it. When their chair breaks, they'll wait for someone to replace it.

It's a mindset that companies need to eliminate. This is what most employments are like. Do your job, don't look left or right, don't ask - and there are people whose minds are wired like that.

Corporate speak for "self starters" says they don't want that. It's also another reason why IT/tech is considered so desirable - there are many more that are not like that. But for most other industries, that's the norm.

The fabled COBOL programmer is a stereotype not of language, but mindset. They entered the industry after school. They learned COBOL from some book. They wrote code in same way using same keyboard shortcuts on same terminal for 25 years. If you take a look at code from 25 years ago or today, their style, syntax, typing rate hasn't changed. Unless they were given some training, they they went with that. But it's not specific to COBOL or software development. Many jobs are mechanical - learned once, applied for 30 years.

Other industries are only now catching up to what software has always been.

And it's these types of jobs that are slowly disappearing over an increasing number of industries.

When their chair breaks, they'll wait for someone to replace it.

AND BE FORCED TO STAND LIKE ANIMALS?! I don't think so..

AND BE FORCED TO STAND LIKE ANIMALS?! I don't think so..

The point is - they won't ask for replacement, they won't know who to ask, they won't even know if the chair is replacable.

Here's an example of such behavior and if you spend any time in corporate environments, you'll learn such stories first hand.

That is what "self-starter, ambitious, etc" means.

Sorry you had a bad experience, but frankly, given your attitude in this post alone, I'm not surprised.

Ah yes, the worn out, tired strategy of the tie-wearing set. "More corporate than thou." Someone has a contrary position, therefore they must have an "attitude problem" and they aren't being a "team player." Shout them down. Put them on the defensive. Try to discredit their opinions. Blah blah blah. It's as predictable as the Rose Parade. Save it.

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"More corporate than thou"? BWWAHAHAHAHAHA

In 13 years of work, I don't think I've ever worn a tie outside an interview. Most of the last few years has been spent in shorts and a tshirt. Your attitude to others in this community is bad enough, never mind what you would be like to work with. When you come in and mouth off things that others here know to be blatantly untrue, you just look foolish.

Are there shitty corporate roles out there? Of course. But it is a stupid generalisation to tell experienced members here that they're experience is in the minority. Working for a self important idiot is just as bad in a small team as it is in a corporate environment. In fact, it's usually worse since they're inescapable.