Computer Engineering Degree Most Valuable 818
Anonymous Squonk writes "CNN reports on the National Association of Colleges and Employers quarterly salary survey. Computer Engineering degree holders once again command the highest starting salaries at an average of $53,117, but Chemical Engineering is gaining rapidly, and Computer Science graduate's salaries are up 8.9% over the year before. Most of the other geek disciplines rank high on the list as well." While starting salaries for some degrees are up, the overall situation is not very good - indeed, your salary may be decreasing.
Good luck to new graduates! (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, until something is seriously done by the government and companies (determing a percentage that can be offshored, completely redoing the tariffs in the so-called "free trade" agreements, etc.), it's difficult to make a case for going to a college or university. To train for what? Everyone behind a desk is vulnerable to being offshored.
Thankfully, Lou Dobb's program is putting the spotlight on this issue each evening! Tonight, he's going to focus on the companies who are the worst abusers of offshoring. Last night, he focused on the owner of a Tool and Die shop who is complaining that "free trade" has ruined his business and it's about to go under. His specific complaints were that tariffs on his stuff going to China is 29.9%. Stuff coming from China to the US has a tariff of 3%. In Mexico, they freely use and dump chemicals that he would go to jail for dumping. This is free trade? Our elected officials agreed to this? Holy cow! The playing field is not level or even close to being level.
Until the tariffs are equal and labor/enviromental issues are equal with our trade partners, America is going to continue to lose jobs, companies, and wealth. Our future is slowly being flushed down the porcelin convenience. Our own beloved industry - IT - has near double-digit unemployment. Good luck to new graduates trying to enter.
Starting salary? feh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i call bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Valuable to whom? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good luck to new graduates! (Score:5, Insightful)
Depressions have been started because competing companies got into tariff wars. And political fallout (steel tariffs and the EU, anyone?) gets nasty too.
Heinlein always talked about democracy being likely to fail when people voted themselves bread-and-circuses. I wish he would have speculated on the sequence of events that could cause it.
Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Nurses and Teachers are the people who should be paid better. Oh well.
Money... (Score:5, Insightful)
But... what exactly is it? (Score:2, Insightful)
I know it was all about the internal computers from microwaves, stereos, etc. where I went to school. [rit.edu] CE people had a very good combination of IT, CS, and various microprocessor-related engineering skills.
What does it mean to you?
Region Dependent (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i call bullshit (Score:1, Insightful)
Next - those numbers in the survey represent the AVERAGE! You're trying to take one individual case and make it the value for all cases. Statistics dont work that way my friend. Wilt Chamberlin may have scored 100 points in a game once (a single individual case), but that doesnt mean every player scores 100 points every night.
curious - MBA stands for "Master of Business Administration." How the hell does one get an "mba in psychology"? Did you mean MA or MS in Psych?
Re:Good luck to new graduates! (Score:5, Insightful)
How about both companies having a 3% tariff???? Better yet, until China has labor/environmental laws that are enforced, THEY should have the 29.9% tariff and he should get the 3% tariff.
Honestly, whoever agreed to these trade laws was totally asleep at the wheel.
Re:Sad (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think anybody who works in IT has much to complain about if you compare your situation with any of theirs...
Re:Money... (Score:2, Insightful)
The best advice a new graduate can hear (Score:5, Insightful)
This was told to me while I was working as a software engineer commanding a decent salary. But I wasn't making the real money. That job belonged to my boss, who saw it fit to pay me a skim from his profit for a job I performed.
What was I to do? Whine? Talk about how "greedy" he was? Criticize him for his lack of technical skills (compared to mine)?
All of that is excrement. Instead, I chose to become an entrepreneur. I found partners, made deals, and now am in the process of opening my second restaurant as well as selling things over television and Internet. I think about business all the time, and work suddenly has become very, very fun. Life itself feels like a massively multiplayer game.
Oh, and here's another piece of advice that I learned that I wish someone had told me earlier: Anyone will loan you any some of money as long as they are convinced that it's in their best interest to do so.
Stop working for someone else. Find partners. Find investors. Find a way that you can make a business work. It's exhilirating and fascinating. And you won't go back once you are free.
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good luck to new graduates! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good luck to new graduates! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, white collar jobs are now vulnerable to off-shoring - but far more blue collar jobs have already been off-shored. There's a reason why factory payrolls just declined for the 42nd straight month, even as total payrolls in the US increased.
Besides, off-shoring isn't the only factor in the job market. Over all, it pays to get a college degree. According to surveys (see article [salary.com]) the average college graduate makes $17,000 more per year than the average high school graduate. Even if you go to an expensive private college at $35,000 per year, you still more than make back that cost over the course of your career.
Re:Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good luck to new graduates! (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a shortage of jobs, but(+) (Score:2, Insightful)
The company I work for has hired a few people in the last year. First requirement on every position BS in something, usually BSCS (CSEE doesn't exist much around here, so they only cover it under "related fields").
So, the job market is recovering slowly, and we are in no danger of outsourcing even job 1 here.
CS people need other skills too (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, that's amazing, because I recently returned from a career fair here at Caltech, and nearly every job needed a heavy programming background. The problem (for you) is, that they want other skills too.
Your REAL problem is that an increasing number of students majoring in physics, chemistry, math, etc have learned to program pretty damned well. That gives us a huge advantage - we can take a job that uses either our science knowledge, programming skills, or more likely both. Companies get somebody with a wider range of skills.
As such, I think the best idea is a major in the physical sciences or better yet, EE, with a CS minor (or double major).
I guarantee you this - if you had an EE/CS double major, or even EE major/CS minor, you'd be beating companies away with a stick. Particularly here in California.
Re:Good luck to new graduates! (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy that the parent poster would like to export stuff to China, which is growing at hyper-speed and has plenty of tool and die customers.
But the Chinese gov't slaps a 30% tariff to encourage local industry.
The US is utterly dependent on the Chinese government and Industrialists buying US Government debt that we accept that situation.
Heck, the "free" market people have even convinced people like you that the destruction of our nation is a good thing!
Re:Money... (Score:1, Insightful)
You do it for love, I desire money. How do you know I won't do a good job. Often times people doing it for "love" neglect other boring aspects and turn out something of no use/reduced use to people. Havent you seen this too?? Be real, don't discriminate on motivation.
Re:Sad (Score:3, Insightful)
ANYBODY with an high-school education can teach children to read and count. Quite frankly, any adult who feels academically unqualified to teach elementary school should sue their high school for educational malpractice. The only bit that makes the job difficult is managing large groups of small children. That's something that can be gained only be experience, and would best be learned in a one-year apprenticeship.
Why am I qualified to make this statement? Because of what I do for a living.
Finally (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:College DOES affect starting salary! (Score:3, Insightful)
If you have a big name recognition school, such as Harvard, MIT, Caltech,etc. You are going to probably be offered more just for the name and the preceived additional skill level of the person who graduates from one of them.
Then you have the local big name school, such as Texas A&M being worth more in texas then in California. Again because of preceived values and a far better chance that the person hiring is from or knows someone from.
Then you have everything else, and thier they just check the books to see if the place is accredited.
Then after a few years of actual work unless you have one of thoses huge top-tier ones it really does not matter.
Re:It got bad, but it's getting better (Score:5, Insightful)
No college grad is worth $60k. Period.
We pay grads $35k. Good workers make it up to $50k in two years, mediocre ones go nowhere and shitty ones get fired.
Re:Good luck to new graduates! (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't the sort of protectionism you are suggesting akin to a socialist command-economy?
I whole-heartedly agree with you on the the unfairness with regards to environmental damage, which is why I believe you government shouldn't have torn up the Kyoto treaty. I don't see how this directly relates with regards to programming jobs moving to India though.
Re:Sad (Score:3, Insightful)
Teachers work 9 months out of the year and are guaranteed employment for life. They teach a state mandated curiculum and have no performance standards to adhere to once they earn tenure.
Salarys for nurses vary widely. The nurse in a family doctor's office does not make alot of money, but doesn't need alot of skills either. Specialized nurses make signifigantly larger sums of money and need to maintain multiple certifications and take continuing education.
If you want to get rich, take a high stress, high risk job. If you want to take it easy, don't expect a huge check.
Re:Good luck to new graduates! (Score:4, Insightful)
Coming from somebody who couldn't afford MIT, and happily went to Maryland.
Re:Starting salary? feh. (Score:5, Insightful)
you need to negotiatie up front for the best compensation possible. all future raises will be based on that going forward.
Re:Starting salary? feh. (Score:2, Insightful)
Putting yourself first isn't always about salary. Young engineers should be more concerned with the technology that they are learning and less about salary. Ultimately, engineering skills are a commodity. If you take the opportunity to develop unique and desirable skills, you will make more money over the long haul than someone with more common skills that chose projects on the basis of salary. You will also be more employable in difficult times. That's how you get rewarded down the road.
I can honestly say that I've always chosen the job that was more technically exciting or seemed like a big long term payoff because it was a risky challenge instead of short term financial gain. I've gotten screwed a few times when companies failed and the sure thing at a better salary would have netted more. But I look back without any regrets because I was always enjoying what I did.
Why a 3.92/4.00 can't get a job- (Score:1, Insightful)
1) Not minority (dis)advantaged.
2) Not gender (dis)advantaged.
3) Weak handshake.
4) Bad people skills.
5) No networking skills.
The first 2 may sound like flamebait, but I was a recruiter. I had several excellent candidates that I remembered, they had excellent GPAs and great people skills... but the gentleman I had to send the resume's to wasn't interested because they were not a minority.
Thats a fact of life now in business- you'll see companies being rewarded for hiring minorities, with the assumption that that automatically generates the best potential.
In this particular case, ours hired a minority with a 3.2 GPA over a 4.0 GPA.
Oddly enough, I've not been asked back to the recruiting team after I objected to this.
Looking backwards (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's take a longer perspective, shall we? The computer industry has been white hot for many years now. Those of you who were working in it were riding that wave for a long time. Good work!
It couldn't last forever. Those wonderful salaries were not reflected in other parts of the industry. For the experience and training most Computer Science graduates have, an appropriate salary ought to be much closer to what most other engineers earn. That's why so many jobs are evaporating. We'll get them back eventually, at salaries more in line with what the rest of the engineering world is earning.
That's the way business works. The demand was white hot for nearly a decade. Now it's only red hot. It was a good wave while it lasted. Business Revolutions like that come along maybe once or twice per century. Be thankful you had the chance to ride this one.
Re:Sad (Score:4, Insightful)
Add to this the fact that not only do they make less money, they tend to have to spend a certain amount on the classroom, buying books, tools, etc. that the school can't/won't pay for. Ever fill out a 1040? You'll see that educators get to deduct up to $250 in expenses, why, because they generally spend much more than that in a year.
Furthermore, the teachers have to deal with the kids of people like you who don't have respect for what they have to do and only think "gee, it must be easy to only work 9 months a year."
My fiancee has a bachelors and masters degree in education, I have a bachelors in EE/CompE (a real engineering degree, not this bullshit lets rename CS as CE crap) and am working on my MSEE currently, and she earns 1/4th my salary.
It isn't right, but it won't be. Teachers salaries won't be increased much in our lifetimes (we have wacky priorities) and it doesn't matter. A good teacher teaches because that's what she loves to do. My fiancee wouldn't change professions for anything.
All I ask is that you please have more respect for people like teachers instead of ragging on them because you are ignorant of how hard they really work.
-dave
Currency manipulation is worse than tariffs (Score:4, Insightful)
That's hurting more than any existing tariffs. While China's taking advantage of free markets, they're not playing by the rules. I'm all for free trade and I hate protectionism, but China's currency policy needs to go.
Value of degree (Score:2, Insightful)
Linux/BSD/etc are rapidly addressing this, but not fast enough.
Re:Organization (Score:4, Insightful)
Unions exist - as you said - to assist with collective bargaining, to work for better wages and working conditions, and most importantly (imho), to reduce layoffs without cause.
Professional organizations on the other hand can have a variety of functions. Most are focused on knowledge sharing. The AMA, for example, publishes magazines and gives doctors strong recommended guidelines based on thousands of doctors feedback.
There would definitely be a benefit to both types of organizations for computer scientists/engineers. However, try not to lump them together, as you'll get the arguments against both, and few of the pro's for either.
My two cents on unions are that they need to get a foothold in the one place that can make a huge difference - tech support centers. Places like "CallTech" and other minimum wage, low-benefit, high-stress environments are the perfect foothold.
They get the numbers needed to show that people gain benefit from being under collective bargaining, and they build a groundswell of support.
When you then leverage that to move into call/support for say, Sprint or Microsoft, you can see that it would be a trivial extension to break into the server rooms, the switch closets, and the rest of the company.
I don't think for a second that I need to give the Unions ideas though.. they've thought of it, they are working on it, and it will happen in time.
I really like the idea of a professional organization though.. add some strong credibility, and knowledge sharing.
Re:The best advice a new graduate can hear (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, if you can run a bsuiness. I'm terribal at some of the things needed to run a buisness. Selling for instance, I can't sell product. I couldn't sell a cure for cancer to someone dieing of cancer, not even for a penny.
I have in fact found partners to go into buiseness with. I'm a terribal judge of people though. My partners, while excited at first, soon realized this was real work and left me with a buisness that I couldn't make work alone. (It could have made some money if they had done their part...)
I like working 9-5 and not worrying after that. Sure I'll never be rich as far as money goes, but I'm richer than even Bill Gates because I don't tie my life to money. Sure I can't have a lot of things I want, but I can decide what I want to do, and there are plenty of cheap things to do.
I think you need to get your life in focus. Money isn't everything.
Re:The best advice a new graduate can hear (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sad (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate to say it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good luck to new graduates! (Score:5, Insightful)
Steel tarrifs were a HORRIBLE thing. You are only looking at one side of the issue: Steel worker jobs. Think of all the companies in the US, cars, construction workers, machines, that rely on steel. They all had to pay this insane rates because the steel workers couldn't adapt. The end result? Hidden jobloss in these sectors from companies that can't compete well, not to mention inflated prices on the goods these companies produce.
Make no mistake, tariffs are ALWAYS a bad thing, regardless of which side institutes them
Re:From one Comp Eng/EE professor... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Help Me! (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of people don't realize that its not what they know or dont know that is keeping them from getting a job. Its the fact that they have really bad resumes.
*the* IT industry (Score:2, Insightful)
I personally have been in IT for around 8-9 years, well before the dotcom boom. and I've never been out of work for more than 4 months at a stretch especially now that I've moved over to networking and process automation. I have yet to see a qualified network technician stay out of work for very long. the market is there, stop trying to skate your way in @ $50,000 a year coding web pages. get your asses in the trench and do it like the rest of us did. work your way up. a couple years of hard work won't kill ya, and it always pays off in the end. there is an IT market out there and plenty of jobs but without experience you might as well compare it to an etheopian child looking at pictures of a royal feast, i.e. you ain't ever gonna get it.
Re:Sad (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sad (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not anti-union, but I would bet that there are more bad public teachers in the places where the unions are strongest, and I know NY has a very strong union.
Overall, though, working for a public school is like any state job -- the pay sucks, and you have to deal with tons of dead weight and paperwork.
Labor Unions (Score:3, Insightful)
If starting teachers salaries went up, the teachers wouldn't have anything to back up those extra taxes they keep asking for.
Re:I work in Human Resources (Score:3, Insightful)
I am a senior ME major HOPING to get 40-45k as a starting salary. I figure set my sights low and anything above that I get will be gravy.
And you do sound like one of the drone admissions people that work here, I can't fathom why they get paid a salary from my tuition money to bullshit all day.
Re:It got bad, but it's getting better (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Starting salary? feh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Tony.
Uhhh, dude (Score:5, Insightful)
Now of course in the bay area, 35k is practally poverty, you'd be sharing an apartment, maybe even a room, with someone just to make ends meet. So, all things being equal, the same job will pay more there.
Basic economics dude.
Re:Good luck to new graduates! (Score:3, Insightful)
I had a job while I was finishing my degree. At times, I even had two jobs (one full-time, one part-time). It might mean you only have time for one or two courses per semester, but it is doable. (Even a job that takes you out of town occasionally doesn't have to be an impediment...there was a discrete-math course where I ended up faxing in most of my homework for a month or two, and I still managed to get an A.)
Re:The best advice a new graduate can hear (Score:5, Insightful)
The response to your post has been truly sad, but very typical for Slashdot. Essentially, you told people, "well, if you're having this problem, here's a solution that works very well!" But your (our) solution is hard, and scary, and not what people want to hear at all, so they attack and insult you.
This topic comes up about once a week on Slashdot. Outsourcing, lack of jobs, low pay, soulless corporate masters, etc. Every time, somewhere in the discussion is a post from someone who says, "yes, I noticed this problem, too, so I opened my own business, and now things are great!" and immediately the geeks go on the defensive, citing hundreds of excuses why they have absolutely no other option in life but to sit around waiting for SOMEBODY ELSE to provide them with the means to make a living. It's very sad. They seem to take this advice to be some kind of personal insult. Perhaps they feel it exposes the failings in their own lives, and they would rather spit vile back at you than look inward, and reevaluate the choices they have made in their own lives.
I also find it so interesting how it juxtaposes with the typical Slashdot libertarian bent. There are dozens of people with the "people who trade liberty for security deserve neither" quote in their sigs, or who smugly insist that every business has to "adapt or die!" followed by analogies about the buggy-whip manufacturing industry. However, when it's time to apply those same principles to their own lives, they expect someone else to take care of them. "A company has to give me a job!" "The government has to make these companies give me a job!" They refuse to understand that their own "business model" of
1. Get CS degree
2. Get job in tech industry
3. Profit!
no longer applies. However, "adapt or die!" is only good for the RIAA, not for themselves.
Yes, there are a hundred reasons why going into business for yourself is hard. Yes sometimes you have to work 100 hours a week. Yes you have to pay for your own health insurance. Yes, you may have to retrain in another field. No, you might not be a fantastic salesman right now, never having really tried it or had any sales training in your entire life. No you don't get two weeks paid vacation. No, you don't get a paycheck for the exact same amount every two weeks. Yes, it is harder when you already have kids and a mortgage. Working for yourself is hard, and anybody who says otherwise is a filthy liar. But so is anybody who says it's impossible.
Re:It got bad, but it's getting better (Score:2, Insightful)
"Programming is easy! Programming is easy!"
If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that from someone who then proceeds to create the most atrocious mass of spaghetti-code...
Here's an article [apa.org] for you. You may want to remember that there's a large degree of difference between mere competence and mastery.
Re:Wow good thing I didn't go to College (Score:5, Insightful)
So let's translate the first premise:
To think if I only made $53k out of college, I'd be taking a 50% paycut. (O, P)
That's:
O > P (this notation means if O then P)
Now the conclusion:
Good thing I didn't waste my time and energy on a useless college education. (W, C)
C > W Conclusion (If I go to college, I was time)
Now, there's an implied premise: If I went to college, I'd be making straight out of school money. (C, O)
C > 0
Okay, now let's look at the truth table:
O P W C O > P C > O C > W
1) F F F F
2) F F F T F F
3) F F T F
4) F F T T
5) F T F F
6) F T F T F F
7) F T T F
8) F T T T
9) T F F F
10) T F F T F T F
11) T F T F
12) T F T T
13) T T F F
14) T T F T T T F
15) T T T F
16) T T T T
Oops! It appears that line 14 has a false conclusion but has all true premises. This means the logic is invalid. Roughly translated, this say that you can go to college, make out of school money, *AND* have it not be a waste. Gee, who would have thunk it.
Now, if you had added the premise that the only reason to go to school is not make more money then you'd have a technically valid argument. However, I would you and I would still disagree that the only reason to go to school is to make more money. In other words, having a valid argument doesn't mean the premises are true, just that the line of reasoning beginning with the premises is good.
Now, I might suggest that going to school might help you either articulate your arguments better or realize that money is not the only reason why you'd want to learn. Maybe that's a set of life-skills that would be useful for you.
Re:I work in Human Resources (Score:2, Insightful)
HR departments are filled with idiots, sleazeballs, and the vile progeny of high ranking executives who are too incompetent to hold real positions, but can't be fired for political or financial reasons. So what do you do with them? Put them in the place where they can do the least amount of damage to the organization... HR!
And, as an aside, suggesting that WU students are better than those from CMU, Caltech, MIT, Stanford or ANY of the Ivy League schools is complete and utter bullshit. Grads from these school dominate the high-powered executive positions. These are the facts of the case, and they are indisputable.
Re:The best advice a new graduate can hear (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet, you still cling to the hope that "bean counters" (as you casually relegate them to a status beneath your exalted place in life, as a techie) will wake up, realize how horribly wrong they were and give you a great job with fantastic benefits and high pay. Because you're soooooo good, and sooooo much better than Indian coders are now, or will be soon. Don't hold your breath.
I think your problem is arrogance. You want the world to adapt to your way of thinking. You want that great job, the benefits, job security, high pay, respect, etc. You see the world as a place where you deserve all of those things; you are entitled to them. The economy revolves around you, and your job. I love this quote:
BTW, nobody's going to pay you to take their picture because nobody's going to have a job
It's tech jobs getting exported. Not doctors, not lawyers, not auto mechanics, not office managers, not landscape architects and restaurateurs. You equate "techies aren't going to have jobs" with "nobody's going to have a job." Again, notice the arrogance. "The economy revolves around tech jobs. If I don't have a job, then nobody has a job!"
Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever been hired by an engineer in the first place. Techies generally don't value art much to begin with, and certainly don't want to pay for it. Somehow, I think the doctors and lawyers and small business owners and all the non-techies in my community will still hire me.
The world is changed. I suggest you change with it.