I think your suggestion about graduates from top schools being above the 90th percentile is quite plausible.
Also, part of it could be that programmer salaries have gone up recently, so that the mid-career data you cite won’t be in line with the current starting salaries. This would match up with the anecdata I have that starting salaries for college hires at Microsoft, Amazon, etc. are about 30% higher now than 7 years ago. Have salaries for other engineering jobs increased at the same rate?
I think your suggestion about graduates from top schools being above the 90th percentile is quite plausible.
Let’s see. This article from 2013 reports that 56,742 students graduated with CS majors in 2012. It seems that there are on the order of 100 CS graduates at each top school per year (with the number increasing rapidly over time), so maybe 1,000 total, so 2% of CS graduates. So yes, it’s plausible that they’re above the 90th percentile.
Also, part of it could be that programmer salaries have gone up recently, so that the mid-career data you cite won’t be in line with the current starting salaries. This would match up with the anecdata I have that starting salaries for college hires at Microsoft, Amazon, etc. are about 30% higher now than 7 years ago. Have salaries for other engineering jobs increased at the same rate?
The 2008 source that I cited in particular is dated.
Is it plausible that starting salaries would increase faster than mid-career salaries? Why wouldn’t salaries for senior software engineers rise by 30%, too?
It is leveling of pay throughout the career for CS compared to growth in the first 8-10 years for engineering followed by general leveling, at least from what I see. Entry level engineers see salaries increase 10-15% annually at first! and then leveling off around $110k to a 2-3% annual increase. (There appears to be an age biased decrease after age 55 or so for the median changing jobs as well.)
This happens in cycles… Bubbles if you will. It isn’t really sustainable, and it distorts the market. The numbers don’t make much sense without a lot of detail.
For a given aptitude, earnings potential in engineering and CS are similar.
Is it plausible that starting salaries would increase faster than mid-career salaries? Why wouldn’t salaries for senior software engineers rise by 30%, too?
Yeah, that was the hidden assumption behind my claim. On further reflection I don’t have a clear idea whether it’s correct or not.
It seems that there are on the order of 100 CS graduates at each top school per year (with the number increasing rapidly over time),
I would be extremely surprised if the graduates from the top 10 CS schools as a proportion of all CS graduates were rising. In fact, I believe that some of the top schools stopped increasing enrollment decades ago. To the extent that the list of top CS schools differs from top schools or top engineering schools, it is because it is the places that got into CS early.
The number at Stanford in particular seems to have doubled over the past 5 years – I was extrapolating based on that together with the nationwide trend. But Stanford may be unrepresentative, or I may be reading the data wrong.
Is it plausible that starting salaries would increase faster than mid-career salaries? Why wouldn’t salaries for senior software engineers rise by 30%, too?
How durable is the human capital of software engineers? When the age discrimination in Silicon Valley comes up, a lot of people point out the huge turnover in technologies over decades, which would seem to negate a lot of the benefits of experience.
I’m not a professional programmer, but I do program for my own needs, my older sister is a professional, and obviously I hang out with a lot of programmers between Reddit/HN/Lesswrong/#lesswrong. My subjective sense is that there’s a lot of truth to the turnover claim, although I don’t know how much or how one would rigorously test such a claim.
I think your suggestion about graduates from top schools being above the 90th percentile is quite plausible.
Also, part of it could be that programmer salaries have gone up recently, so that the mid-career data you cite won’t be in line with the current starting salaries. This would match up with the anecdata I have that starting salaries for college hires at Microsoft, Amazon, etc. are about 30% higher now than 7 years ago. Have salaries for other engineering jobs increased at the same rate?
Let’s see. This article from 2013 reports that 56,742 students graduated with CS majors in 2012. It seems that there are on the order of 100 CS graduates at each top school per year (with the number increasing rapidly over time), so maybe 1,000 total, so 2% of CS graduates. So yes, it’s plausible that they’re above the 90th percentile.
The 2008 source that I cited in particular is dated.
Is it plausible that starting salaries would increase faster than mid-career salaries? Why wouldn’t salaries for senior software engineers rise by 30%, too?
It is leveling of pay throughout the career for CS compared to growth in the first 8-10 years for engineering followed by general leveling, at least from what I see. Entry level engineers see salaries increase 10-15% annually at first! and then leveling off around $110k to a 2-3% annual increase. (There appears to be an age biased decrease after age 55 or so for the median changing jobs as well.)
This happens in cycles… Bubbles if you will. It isn’t really sustainable, and it distorts the market. The numbers don’t make much sense without a lot of detail.
For a given aptitude, earnings potential in engineering and CS are similar.
Yeah, that was the hidden assumption behind my claim. On further reflection I don’t have a clear idea whether it’s correct or not.
I would be extremely surprised if the graduates from the top 10 CS schools as a proportion of all CS graduates were rising. In fact, I believe that some of the top schools stopped increasing enrollment decades ago. To the extent that the list of top CS schools differs from top schools or top engineering schools, it is because it is the places that got into CS early.
The number at Stanford in particular seems to have doubled over the past 5 years – I was extrapolating based on that together with the nationwide trend. But Stanford may be unrepresentative, or I may be reading the data wrong.
How durable is the human capital of software engineers? When the age discrimination in Silicon Valley comes up, a lot of people point out the huge turnover in technologies over decades, which would seem to negate a lot of the benefits of experience.
Good point, thanks. Are you a programmer? If so, is this your subjective sense for what’s going on?
I’m not a professional programmer, but I do program for my own needs, my older sister is a professional, and obviously I hang out with a lot of programmers between Reddit/HN/Lesswrong/#lesswrong. My subjective sense is that there’s a lot of truth to the turnover claim, although I don’t know how much or how one would rigorously test such a claim.