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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29322 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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A STEM researcher at a top UC is foregoing a $100-300k salary to pursue their graduate degree.

Okay, I see this kind of quote a lot, but nobody ever breaks it down concretely. I am a bright-eyed young college graduate with my nice new BSc, I'm twenty-two, I'm looking for a job.

Where do I go to earn $100,000 a year for my first job with no experience and only a bachelors? Can anyone say "If you apply to Muggins, Juggins & Co. they pay their QC lab people that amount"? I want concrete examples, no "in general the field pays this, according to Glassdoor and so forth".

concrete examples

The key is to work in a very-high cost of living area. IE. NYC or SF. Practically all tech jobs pay well above $100k in the Bay Area. Here are incredibly reliable exact salaries you'd get if you joined as a new grad at a tech company.

A moderately competent citizen in the bay area with sufficient math knowledge can wiggle their way into a Data Scientist job within a year of post-grad training. And those pay around 80% of starter software engineer salaries.

Similarly joining as a consultant with a big 4 / big 3 consulting company in NYC should put you around $100k (all included) for starters.

Those are the fields I know of.

STEM researcher at a top UC

To be clear, I am talking about someone who is smart enough to be accepted as a phD student at a top UC.

Healthcare startups are a good place for people with less mathy and more chemistry/biology oriented backgrounds. We are living through the golden age of health-startup funding. So there is VC money to go around.

Quant Finance at a Prop Shop easily pays $300k these days for new hires. Get hired at Citadel (the process is easier than Jane Street) spend like 2 years there and then transfer to a better WLB shop.

Software Engineering

In my experience, DoD contractors pay SWEs pretty terribly in comparison to the private sector. They're constrained by how the DoD itself ascribes value (e.g., credentials and YoE). That being said, a month ago, a buddy of mine with a 3-month bootcamp "degree" got an offer from Booz Allen Hamilton for 80k hybrid (3 days in the office). Granted, that's not 100k, but as I told him... just get 1 YoE and job hop for a monstrous raise.

My company is much more selective; but ~100k (fully-remote!) would reasonable for an impressive junior.

Get hired at Google or Meta.

Sooooo... be really, really good and get hired at the top companies.

Well, that's so easy, isn't it? 🤣

I interviewed at Facebook (years ago) and got an offer (didn't take it). Wasn't something any competent programmer couldn't pass, maybe with some preparation. I am pretty good, but not on "really really good" level probably (I know a lot of people better than me in many aspects). So it's not exactly easy, but probably doable for a significant number of people. Especially now, when they are so big - not everybody needs to work on optimizing compilers and quantum computing, some people would also write scripts to parse logs, etc. And it won't get you the top range $500k+ salary, but getting over $100k shouldn't be a problem.

I mean getting into research at a top tier University isn't exactly going to people with 2.1 GPAs. Unless they've got some identity boosters which would also likely help them a ton in the graduate hiring process.

I get your point, but, with an ask of "Can anyone say "If you apply to Muggins, Juggins & Co. they pay their QC lab people that amount"", what else did you expect?

Does depend how close those graduates want to stay to 'their actual field'.

Most quantitative-adjacent research fields can make the age-old choice between '60k as entry-level Astrophysics researcher' and '130k as entry level data scientist'

Where do I go to earn $100,000 a year for my first job with no experience and only a bachelors?

Google, if you're the worst damn negotiator in the world. Actually that's not fair; their offer will be significantly higher, even just salary. Presumably all the other major tech companies as well.

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