Early career setbacks are also likely to set you up for much lower lifetime earnings. Like it or not, how much more you will earn in your next job depends on how much you were making in your previous one. So does how much more you will earn after you get promoted (which happens more often early on). In negotiation this is called "anchoring". So it _really_, _really_ pays, quite literally, to find, get, and hold the highest paying job available right out of school.
How much you make is a powerful signaling mechanism that (if you have a modicum of skill to back it up) utterly dominates everything else, and has a compounding effect over the rest of your career. You will be able to afford to not care about money as much 10-20 years in when you're all set, but initially it's very important that you get the highest paying job you can.
>Early career setbacks are also likely to set you up for much lower lifetime earnings. Like it or not, how much more you will earn in your next job depends on how much you were making in your previous one. So does how much more you will earn after you get promoted (which happens more often early on). In negotiation this is called "anchoring". So it _really_, _really_ pays, quite literally, to find, get, and hold the highest paying job available right out of school.
I graduated in 2012 with a biomedical engineering degree, and the vast majority of my collegiate graduating class made more than me right out of school, including the non-engineers; I worked as a server/busboy and also as a cashier for about 6 months while constantly applying for jobs. In case you're wondering, I did have internship experience most summers in college, nothing stellar, but it was on there. I will say that 2012/2013 was an absolutely awful time to be a non-CS fresh grad in the job market. I hadn't imagined working as a server after completing an engineering degree, and the difficulty I faced in getting industry roles led me to immediately apply for a MS program.
My first "relevant"/industry job was a contract role at a medical device company that paid $22/hr in an extremely high COL area (SF Bay Area). I was likely in the bottom 15th percentile of earnings at this point. 3 years later, I'd worked my way up to ~70k annualized salary. All while doing the MS program part time.
Today, sure there are plenty of people whose earnings far exceed mine, but I'd be surprised if I wasn't at least in the 80th-90th percentile of both salary and lifetime earnings of my graduating cohort.
Now, obviously you won't hear any objection from me against finding, getting, and holding the highest paying job out of school. But I certainly question if it's really as important as people claim it is. And I will say I don't know if I'd be earning as much as I do today, and I'm not sure I'd have a MS degree, had I landed a better, higher paying role out of college.
Frankly I can't imagine why someone would stay in Bay Area if they can't land at least a $80-100/hr job. How do you pay $3K/mo rent on $22/hr? How do you buy that $5 gallon gas or pay twice as much for utilities?
MS is a waste of time IMO, and I say so as a MS myself (my alma mater only offers 6-year MS degrees, so I couldn't bail; if I could, I would). I got zero benefit out of my master's, and I'd be further along in my career (as well as monetarily) if I studied 2 years less. In fact, I'd say I got zero benefit from my degree period, other than to serve as a confirmation to the potential employer that I can survive at the toughest tech school in the country. That's worth something, but I wish I could be done with this hazing ritual in a year or two. Everything I use day to day I had to learn myself, school was barely involved.
70K is where things _start_ in the software industry nowadays, for the bottom of the barrel candidate who's still able to code somewhat competently. Talented grads pull $100K+ right out of the gate pretty easily. FAANG will drop $120-150K on you like it's nothing, and if you don't suck it goes way up from there. Quite obviously, these numbers are US-only. Few people in Europe make this much even at the more senior levels, let alone as a fresh grad.
First, you realize the vast majority of workers in the Bay are not software engineers? And even less people make $80-100/hr?
Second, when you make $22/hr, you aren't staying in a studio for $3k a month. You're in a house sharing a bathroom with a few others roommates for <$1000/mo.
Third, you may have missed the part where I indicated while I currently work in tech, I studied biomedical engineering and worked in the medical device industry. BME salaries do not start at a floor of $70k like software.
As for why? Had I not done all the grinding early in my career I wouldn't have ended up at a "top tier" tech company today. THAT is why one stays in the Bay Area. I agree with your point that everything useful you must to learn yourself for the most part, rather than being taught it in school, but I disagree with the rest of your sentiments.
Why is it "strange"? I'm referring to software industry in particular, with its expectations around career progression, income, standard of living, etc. It's like I was talking about lawyers in SV, and you'd responded with "do you realize the majority of people who are in SV are janitors".
This is borne by my own experience, and is not guaranteed to apply to other industries. Most have much lower earning potential, and for them SV is truly unlivable, so I don't get what they're looking for there either.
That's a poor and inaccurate analogy; neither the original link nor my comment was specifically about the software industry. In fact, my comment was specifically _not_ about it. You responded to my comment, not the other way around, and are going off into some tangent about your personal livelihood, which is hardly relevant to the article as a whole.
There's an unfortunately-not-uncommon "software engineer superiority complex" and general myopia and my spidey sense is going off right now.
Anyhow, I'm not sure how much more to spell it out. My early career setbacks and determination to stay in the Bay Area led me to my current situation in a competitive tech company in a career I enjoy. Had I followed your worldview I'd probably have left for some miserable place in the middle of nowhere and be far less successful than I am today.
While I really can't argue with the "get the highest paying job you can as early as you can", there are also many market dynamics at play and quite frankly your own ability to navigate and bluff and take risks are a major part of it. But yes, on average I would say, aim for the highest paying job you can.
How much you make is a powerful signaling mechanism that (if you have a modicum of skill to back it up) utterly dominates everything else, and has a compounding effect over the rest of your career. You will be able to afford to not care about money as much 10-20 years in when you're all set, but initially it's very important that you get the highest paying job you can.