What was your starting salary (approx.)? - Page 13

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~70K base 2007, MS in engineering major working in major IBD, can't remember bonus for that year, pretty sure wasn't great.

my friends in engineering at the time were getting close to 85K base (MS), and some close to 100K, BS were getting in the range of 65K. the guys who just finished phd in engineering were getting about 100~120K at the time.

1992 NYC Attorney at large law firm.

Can't remember the actual number but it was something like $100k (including bonus.) It was so much more than I'd ever made before that I couldn't believe it.

$55k in engineering in a major Midwest city last year.

Haha.

+1


not really jealousy, just that you don't really know much of anything when you're in college. you're paying for potential, which can be looked at as someone being "overpaid"

You can't be overpaid when you work for a company just swimming in cash thanks to their massive profits. It'd be silly of them to pay new graduates pennies just because of their age.

So because Big Oil is making massive profits they should pay their admin assistants six figure salaries coming out of community college?

Wages are set by the market in a given industry. If a company can pay employees peanuts and still get the type of talent they want, they will. It has little to do with profitability.

$47k, 2009, medical research at a university with great benefits. Then $50k as a high school biology/chemistry teacher with health benefits. But these were just in-between jobs before I go to medical school. edit: with a B.Sc.

I guess you haven't entered the real world, Son.

I'm about to finish my first year at a very small startup that is still in the R&D phase.

I get $25/hr with 150% paid overtime. Also get $2500 per year for health insurance which goes to my pocket because I'm still eligible to be on the parent's plan, and small regular bonuses for hitting milestones (total 2-4k per year.)

No paid time off other than 4-5 holidays per year. My workload is 40-45 hours on regular weeks up to 60 on a week where my work is bottlenecking the project (Maybe 1 out of 4 weeks). The overtime adds significant pay but I'm certainly not doing regular banker's hours.

According to my university website's salary statistics I'm underpaid, but I like the work and the experience. I also question the accuracy of those figures in this economy.

I have never worked in anothers' employment...(only in some part time jobs. I once earned over 100K $ a month, selling various cars from Japan to Australia and Hong Kong; another time also in Asia I was paid considerable sums per night for only sitting in a bar so that I would raise its appeal by my good looks and 'exotic' blond hair...).

Haha? The reason I deleted what I wrote was because I didn't want to start an argument over something so tangential, but suffice to say: 1) I'm not jealous, and I'm unsure how one can be jealous of someone or something that they are not acquainted with (perhaps you can enlighten us simple souls?) 2) I earn more than that figure 3) My comments were based on actual experience, i.e. I actually work in a boutique insurance firm in The City, so I know that these companies don't throw away money, especially to unproven graduates. Many graduates that command salaries of that figure are overpaid simply because they're unproven - a good degree means nothing in the face of raw business experience; engineers and the like are fully deserving of their high salaries; I can just can't say the same for some marketing graduate... Salaries are fixed by labour markets: they pay them 'peanuts' (if that's actually the case) because of lack of experience (obviously), if they don't have experience then they do not, and cannot, command a high salary in the labour market: it's experience, in these types of industry, that differentiates individuals; experience is usually necessitated by age...

Yeah I imagine this is a large part of it. People are posting their starting salaries from a new job, rather than their first job out of school.

Also, yes... people with better jobs are more likely to post and SF is a large enough community that you're going to have a handful of people that are getting $$$ right out of school. Doesn't mean the majority here aren't making shit for income straight out... (or for a lot of us, we aren't posting our first job out because no one is hiring us )


Meh, I kind of hate the "recent grads aren't worth anything" line of reasoning when people argue recent grads are either overpaid or that they shouldn't make much. Its not that simple. I'll use law as an example - People complain that new attorneys aren't worth shit, yet the firm that employs them is still making lots of money with the new grad considering how much they bill the new assoc out at.

Law is a bad example. We're talking about finance and analogues industries (like marketing).